On a clear spring evening, between my last class of the day and holing up for the night in my apartment, my roommate and I drove to Millfield. It’s about 10 minutes away from Athens and is best known as being a former mining company town and home to one of the worst mining disasters of the 20th century.
We pulled into a gravel ditch, where I took photos of the Ohio Historical Marker designating a crumbling smokestack as the foremost remainder of the event.
Similarly, an article I wrote with a classmate, “Labor Exploitation and Media Framing of the Millfield Mine Disaster,” is the only tangible remainder of my experience with Millfield. But it’s not representative of the emotional steps I took to get there.
It doesn’t mention my hours in the Alden Library archives, looking at reports of events no one now remembers. Of course, I didn’t include everything I read into the article, but it helped form my story, providing structure and roots.
This is what it feels like now to graduate. I won’t dumb down the paper of a diploma to just “words on a page,” wondering how all of this can fit into something so small. But I will say that, in the same way, researching, feeling, seeing and doing are all important in the curation and final development of an article, my time at Ohio University has informed my personality, goals and interests too.
My favorite parts are the simple things, like getting coffee with friends at Donkey Coffee or catching a movie at The Athena Cinema on Court Street. And even the little things like walking along the bike path or staying up late talking to my roommate.
But it’s not just this that I’ll carry with me. It’s the context of the place itself that informs my own history.
The major thing here is that Appalachia is and always will be. Appalachia continues to be harmed and exploited when it has given us so much.
If the fog that fell heavily on my late-night trips back down to Athens, smothering State Route 33 and Wayne National Forest, lets up and the light bearing down reveals only upturned dirt—then I have failed. Really, we will have all failed. Administration, faculty, students and all. OU, in its lengthy history, is intertwined with the nature here.
In a previous report I’ve done by The Post, I talked about the history of the trees on College Green. Once, American Elms planted by a former president stood there, and unfortunately, plague wiped them out 80 years ago. Now, no one remembers what used to be a landmark. In the same way, if we let go of what makes OU, OU, we’ll become any other college and lose a sense of togetherness and identity.
Three years ago, I worked as an engagement ambassador and called alumni. I talked to people who had graduated only a year prior and people who had graduated 50 years ago. When I think about this university, I think about this throughline of crumbling past and startled, shaky present.
I’m leaving here with a hope: to continue to try. To continue to learn about place and culture and to speak for those who can’t. To think about places like Millfield, like Athens, and let them wash over me. Good luck, OU, and good luck, Athens.
Maia LeClair is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Maia about their column? Email them at ml858121@ohio.edu
