The truth about growing up in Coatesville
Let’s set the record straight, once and for all
I wouldn’t call myself a world traveler (but I hope to someday). I’ve never been outside of the United States, actually. There are no stamps in my passport. However, I know how to get around San Juan better than my home city of Philadelphia. I lived for three months in Bud, West Virginia – a zip code consisting of a church, post office and gas station. I’ve had the privilege of living and visiting a variety of places from the pink sand beaches of St. Petersburg, Florida to crumbling trailer parks in Kentucky but I’ve never fallen in love with any place more than I’ve fallen in love with my own hometown: Coatesville, Pennsylvania.
Now, some of you may have raised your eyebrows at that. If you’ve heard of Coatesville it was probably not for any good or decent reason. Our reputation overshadows the truth of what Coatesville is really like, which is a pretty awesome place.
For spring break this past year I spent the week doing service work in the rougher parts of Atlanta and the similarities I found between there and Coatesville were astonishing. My basic conclusion: Coatesville is not a city that belongs above the Mason-Dixon. It’s a rather conservative community with a church on every corner and where all races live together in harmony (most of the time, anyway).
We’re as diverse as a city of 13,000 can be. I didn’t realize how spoiled I was by going to a diverse school until going to a college with a primarily Caucasian student body and seeing how some of my fellow classmates had such little understanding for people from other nations.
On top of that, my school was normal. Normal meaning, there weren’t shootings or people getting mugged in the hallway like people from other towns liked to assume. We had the occasional fight but in my time there, I never once questioned my safety in my school. I attended Coatesville High School with a student body consisting of everyone from inner-city kids to farm kids and I received an education that could not have better prepared me for the transition to classes at Penn State.
For the vast diversity in the citizens and community of Coatesville, we have ways of coming together. People don’t leave Coatesville. They’re born at Brandywine Hospital, go to CASH for high school and graduate and then just stay put. Naturally, this puts the high school at the center of all things in town (not to mention the fact that the high school is pretty much in the middle of town). Whether it’s a musical, a basketball game, a concert, or a football game – especially a football game – we all turn out and cheer on the noble red and black. It doesn’t matter how different our socioeconomic positions are, we’re all Red Raiders and we all have a deep love and respect for our town.
The atmosphere of Coatesville is constant. People always say that they leave home and then come back some time later and they realize it’s not home anymore. That hasn’t been my experience. It is probably Coatesville’s undoing that we never change but it always feels like home to me. It shaped me to become who I am today. I wouldn’t call high school the best four years of my life but they may have been the most important.
That’s something that I can’t easily forget or let go of. The pride never changes, the camaraderie of students and community members never changes, and the talent of our Red Raiders never changes.
As a rather well-informed resident of Coatesville, I recognize that we have our problems. But our problems are not so different from what any other urban area suffers from. We have our fair share of crime and gangs and just overall danger but the reason for why we’re looked down upon is because we are the only place within forty miles with that environment. We’re the only city in all of Chester County.
Key word: city. Cities are typically dangerous. I see that. I simply choose to look at the good instead. I know that in this day and age, being optimistic is not normal but I can see great things in the future for Coatesville. In truth we’re a city that’s like your old trusty hammer. We’re rough around the edges and have taken some hard hits but in the end we’ve stood strong and we are not going anywhere, anytime soon.