Beallsville Focus of Wall Street Journal Column
It was a tough week for the Beallsville community. WesBanco confirmed the town’s only branch bank that opened four decades ago will close in January.
Wall Street Journal columnist Bob Greene penned an opinion piece, “No more Football Fridays in Beallsville, Ohio: A small town suffered wartime devastation and later decline” focusing the nation, once again, on the town’s unbearable losses during the Vietnam War.
Greene is a longtime writer and columnist for the WSJ whose career began at the Chicago Sun-Times and was was a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He wrote:
“Football Friday nights in Beallsville, Ohio, have gone silent this October, in a town that became accustomed to absorbing body blows many years ago”.
“I think about Beallsville every time the world grows especially bellicose, and talk of preparation for armed conflict becomes animated. It is always government officials in locked-down Washington conference rooms who make those plans. But it is families in towns like Beallsville who in the end pay the price”.
For the past half century writers like Greene have been drawn to remind our nation of the losses endured by this small Monroe County community, often each year near the Memorial Day or Veterans Day observances.
During the Vietnam War, Beallsville lost more sons than any other town in the United States. Six men were killed in combat, a rate 75 percent higher than the national average, drawing national media coverage of the town’s profound loss.
After five casualties, Congressman Clarence Miller asked Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and President Nixon to withdraw the community’s other soldiers to no avail. Then, the town’s sixth son was claimed.
In the intervening years, deep coal mines have come and gone and a new combined elementary/high school building erected at the east end of town, costing $13 million and serving as a high school for a mere 10 years. The Switzerland of Ohio Board of Education unanimously voted to close the high school in May due to low enrollment ending 130 years of Beallsville High School commencements.
Greene’s comments are protected by the Journal’s pay firewall at this URL. Nonsubscribers may purchase a limited 30-day online subscription for $1 a day.
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