My father and mother moved here in 1974. They had a really small home in Maple Heights and were looking for a nice home with a big yard. At the time, Streetsboro had a lot of land. Big open spaces.
My parents still live in the same home I grew up in. I’m actually back in that neighborhood. I’m really near them. It’s likeEverybody Loves Raymond. Well, I’m not quite that close. I’m not next door. I’m just a few blocks away.
There was a time I was kind of restless here.
Man, I grew up here. I’m teaching here. What am I doing? But teaching allows me to travel in the summer.
Streetsboro is kind of devoid of culture.That is one of the sour points. There are other cities nearby, like Kent, that have historical stuff. They have the university. We don’t really have that. We are missing that uniqueness.
This community is now much more diverse than it was when I was young. Racially diverse for one. And even economically a little more diverse. There have been more affluent people moving in of late. People here think it’s really diverse, which means we have 15 percent African-Americans, but for here, that is diverse.
All kinds of things have sprung up, business-wise. It was much more rural before.
Now we have Home Depot. Lowe’s. All those chains have appeared. I love the convenience; I don’t love the traffic that it brings sometimes. The industry and the businesses that have come have been a positive thing.
It’s happened in the last decade. It’s happened relatively quickly.
People really care about one another here. They support one another. Just recently, my kids and I were on CBS’sEarly Show Singing Family Face Off. My brother and me and my two kids were in the top six, so we were on national TV and playing and all that. The community really came together to support us. They did pep rallies for us. They were genuinely excited for us.
