- Oct 9, 1999
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I have a personal history with this town. I grew up less than 15 minutes away.
The latest news is no surprise.
Years later, when I came back to my home area from Europe, I was stunned to see what had happened. It was like a large scale war had been fought and lost in Chester. There was little, if anything, left.
It was so bad, almost all the stores and ALL the major ones had left the MAIN STREET in what had once been the main shopping district in the middle of town . . . and the street had been narrowed and closed to auto traffic.
Unbelievable.
Btw, as stated in the first link, as a kid I swam in the winter for the Chester YMCA. We had a powerhouse team, and went all over SE PA -- Reading, Harrisburg, et. al., beating up on other YMCA teams.
The cream of all the surrounding boroughs' summer swim club teams -- the guys I regularly vied with for summer finals championships in freestyle, butterfly and backstroke - we all swam for Chester.
Looking back, lol, there not only wasn't one single black on the team, I can't remember seeing one single black in the entire building (could be wrong about the latter.) This in a by far majority black city!
Oh well.
At age 16 in our middle/working class burbs, all of us immediately got our licenses. We had no "mommy and daddy are absent" palaces to go drink beer, so we'd do it riding around in cars (no matter who's car, I always ended up driving because I wanted to stay alive) or in the woods or parks or playing fields at night.
One memory, at 16, is of a bunch of us driving into Chester at night to buy beer to go at a bar on the theory that they'd be more lax about serving us. We were just pasty-assed suburban white kids, but I always looked the oldest, so I was nominated to go in for the buy, at night.
There were a bunch of black kids our age or older hanging on the steps and sidewalk outside on this sultry summer night. All black adult clientele inside, with a tough, grizzled white bartender. He asked for ID, I told him I'd recently lost my wallet, and, for whatever reason, he let me buy two six packs.
Going back out, I had to step through the young black throng. One said something like, "Hey, ofay, gimme one of them six packs" and then another said, "Leave him alone, Tyrone."
I got in that car real fast.
Anyway, excerpts from a more detailed article. 20 murders a year in a city of 30,000 is a lot, friends:
The latest news is no surprise.
Growing up, Chester had between 50,000 - 60,000 residents. Now it's population is under 30,000. It was a rough, mostly black minority place (no Hispanics then), but it was still functioning.Troubled Chester, Pa., extends state of emergency
(AP) – 40 minutes ago
CHESTER, Pa. — Leaders of a troubled Philadelphia surburb have approved a monthlong extension to a state of emergency declared after a rash of shootings killed four people in eight days.
The current emergency declaration in Chester was to expire Wednesday, so Mayor Wendell Butler Jr. and the City Council agreed to extend it by a month.
Under the declaration, people in five high-crime neighborhoods aren't allowed on the street from 9 p.m. until 6 a.m. without a legitimate reason. No gathering of three or more people is allowed in those areas without a permit.
Police officers are also working shifts of 12 hours or more.
Major League Soccer's Philadelphia Union is scheduled to play its home opener Sunday at a new stadium in Chester.
Years later, when I came back to my home area from Europe, I was stunned to see what had happened. It was like a large scale war had been fought and lost in Chester. There was little, if anything, left.
It was so bad, almost all the stores and ALL the major ones had left the MAIN STREET in what had once been the main shopping district in the middle of town . . . and the street had been narrowed and closed to auto traffic.
Unbelievable.
Btw, as stated in the first link, as a kid I swam in the winter for the Chester YMCA. We had a powerhouse team, and went all over SE PA -- Reading, Harrisburg, et. al., beating up on other YMCA teams.
The cream of all the surrounding boroughs' summer swim club teams -- the guys I regularly vied with for summer finals championships in freestyle, butterfly and backstroke - we all swam for Chester.
Looking back, lol, there not only wasn't one single black on the team, I can't remember seeing one single black in the entire building (could be wrong about the latter.) This in a by far majority black city!
Oh well.
At age 16 in our middle/working class burbs, all of us immediately got our licenses. We had no "mommy and daddy are absent" palaces to go drink beer, so we'd do it riding around in cars (no matter who's car, I always ended up driving because I wanted to stay alive) or in the woods or parks or playing fields at night.
One memory, at 16, is of a bunch of us driving into Chester at night to buy beer to go at a bar on the theory that they'd be more lax about serving us. We were just pasty-assed suburban white kids, but I always looked the oldest, so I was nominated to go in for the buy, at night.
There were a bunch of black kids our age or older hanging on the steps and sidewalk outside on this sultry summer night. All black adult clientele inside, with a tough, grizzled white bartender. He asked for ID, I told him I'd recently lost my wallet, and, for whatever reason, he let me buy two six packs.
Going back out, I had to step through the young black throng. One said something like, "Hey, ofay, gimme one of them six packs" and then another said, "Leave him alone, Tyrone."
I got in that car real fast.
Anyway, excerpts from a more detailed article. 20 murders a year in a city of 30,000 is a lot, friends:
Marjorie Clark lost her husband to the swing of a baseball bat against his skull after he dared confront a drug dealer in 1993. Her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, was attacked about 12 years later by a man who broke into their home. Last week, her 2-year-old neighbor was shot in the head and killed just outside.
"It's getting worse and worse. I'm angry. I don't want to be here no more," said Clark, 66, who has lived for 20 years in this historic but troubled riverside city of 29,500.
[...]
Wendell Butler Jr., mayor of this once-mighty manufacturing center halfway between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., responded to the recent shooting deaths of four people in eight days by instituting a curfew in five of Chester's high-crime neighborhoods, putting police on 12-hour shifts and announcing that eight more officers will be added "as soon as possible" to the 96-member force.
[...]
Some residents in the city's most violence-prone sections doubt those changes will make them any safer.
"It's kind of too little, too late, isn't it?" said Charles Stansbury, 56, whose 2-year-old cousin, Terrence "Pop" Webster, was among the victims of the recent spate of slayings. "This is nothing new in Chester. Why did they decide to not do something until now?"
Terrence's parents were ambushed outside their apartment June 13, police said. The boy was shot in the head, and his parents suffered minor injuries and have not returned home.
Clark, the little boy's next-door neighbor, said that the crimes against her daughter and her husband, who had shoved a drug dealer near the family home, were never solved.
"He came home and went to bed, and his brain swelled. He died," she told The Associated Press, wiping her brow and her eyes as she sat in a folding chair under the shade of a tree outside her home.
[...]
Situated on the Delaware River, Chester was settled in 1644 and was the site of William Penn's first landing in America in 1682. It grew into a robust manufacturing and shipbuilding town of 65,000 by 1950; "What Chester Makes Makes Chester," boasted a sign greeting visitors.
After World War II, however, Chester made less and less. Unemployment and poverty rose as factories that assembled cars and locomotives and mills that made lace, parachutes, yarn and textiles vanished.
The 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau estimated 29.8 percent of Chester families live below the poverty level, compared with 9.6 percent nationwide.
The city has had 11 homicides this year, compared with seven in the same period last year. In recent years, the murder rate has averaged about 20 per year.
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