Wilmington, Ohio's Long Recession

This week marks the third Christmas of the Great Recession. The decline that began in December 2007 has destroyed more than seven million jobs. But that's just the half of it: millions more have had their hours cut to part time or have just quit looking for work. Altogether, that comes to 17 percent of the workforce.

There are pockets of severe unemployment all across the country in places like Wilmington, Ohio. 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley first reported about Wilmington this time last year, when its major employer was closing.

Full Segment: The Long Recession
Web Extra: Still Helping Others
Web Extra: "We Need A Hand Up
Web Extra: What Happens Next
January 2009: Portraits of Hardship

It's exactly the kind of town that Washington hoped to rescue with stimulus spending, cash for clunkers and mortgage relief. But when 60 Minutes returned last week, we got an idea of what it's going to take to bring the country back from the long recession.

In Wilmington, two days ago, 59 homes went to the auction block. The struggle to make the mortgage or work things out at the bank ended in foreclosure.

Jim Curtis' home was auctioned on Friday. It went into foreclosure after his payments doubled, and then he lost his job. Curtis moved his wife and boys out well before the auction to get it over with.

Asked what he thought when get received the foreclosure notice, Curtis told Pelley, "I let me my family down…I've always been kind of taught to stand on my own two feet and that I've responsible for taking care of 'em, and it's tough on us."

Curtis built a career, 24 years, at Airborne Express, later bought by DHL. The courier's national hub was Wilmington's old air base, what they now call the Airpark. Curtis managed more than 100 people in the hazardous materials department.

But when DHL Express closed its domestic delivery service, 10,000 people lost their jobs. When we visited last December, DHL was counseling workers on unemployment and retraining. And like many, Lora Walker was scared.

"To me it was like being on the Titanic. It's not only filling with water, we're goin' down," she said during one of the counseling sessions.

Since then, she grabbed every lifeline. In the past year, she improvised jobs and went to classes in medical records management, a new field where she might find work.

There were new text books to buy, an oven to fix for a side business baking cakes, and a job at a farm supply for which she's paid in bales of hay.

The hay is for horses she still has from the days when her late husband raised them on the farm she's struggling to keep. She had to put two down recently. They were old and sick and she couldn't afford to care for them anymore.

"You look out into the field and think, 'Who can I euthanize?' And you start with the older ones and you go from there," she explained.

With bartering, baking, and unemployment she and daughter Allison live on one quarter of her former paycheck.

"This is another notice that they're gonna turn my electric off," she told Pelley. "I can't go without car insurance. I can't go without my life insurance. I don't have health insurance because I can't afford it."

She has life insurance but no health insurance.

Asked why that is, she explained, "I'm more concerned about Allison having a roof over her head than I am about me."

"You're more concerned about your daughter's future than your own health?" Pelley asked.

"Sure. 'Cause I'm not gonna leave her. You know, after my husband died, it hit you like a ton of bricks. You know, I'm a single parent. And she was 13. And if anything happens to me, what's gonna happen to her?" Walker asked.

People started asking that kind of question last Christmas. They bought presents on severance pay then. But this holiday is different. The pawnshop has filled up with anything and everything a family can sell.

With Christmas 2009, Wilmington and many places in the country are facing something new in unemployment.

It's one of the unique things about the Great Recession - never before have so many people been out of work for the long term. At least, not since they've starting keeping records back in 1948.

Today, 40 percent of all of those who've lost their jobs have been out of work for six months or more.

There's a ripple effect that reaches all over town. Tax receipts are down, so the schools cut a million dollars from their budget. The hospital lost $7 million when many of those Airpark workers who once had insurance became charity cases.

Dr. Seema Nadkarni ran the pediatric clinic, which the hospital could no longer afford to keep open. She welcomed poor families on Medicaid that other practices wouldn't take. The clinic had 2,000 patients, many of them chronically ill like a five year old named Desire who has spina bifida.

"That's what breaks my heart," Dr. Nadkarni told Pelley. "These children, you know, they're great kids. And it's really difficult. It's hard for the parent who was fighting, you know, foreclosure and fighting, trying to find employment. And now they have to look for a doctor for their child."

The clinic was shut down last week; two thirds of the patients haven't found a new doctor.

"Think that was the hardest, you know, hardest part of closing the office was what about all my kids. You know, and that it…I just have trouble finding words to describe," Nadkarni said.

"And you don't have an answer to that question?" Pelley asked.

"I don't unfortunately. I don't," she replied.

Wilmington is being helped by federal emergency aid. Eight million dollars went to retraining workers. Washington spent more than $1.5 billion bailing out Ohio's bankrupt unemployment fund.

But other programs you've been hearing about have helped less than you might think. David Raizk is the mayor of Wilmington. He applied for some of the stimulus money and got a paving project for Main Street.

Raizk told Pelley they got $5.1 million in stimulus money, and that it would create local jobs in construction.

Asked how many, he said, "I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 to 200 jobs. It could create that many."

Two hundred out of 10,000 lost. Raizk doesn't know how many of his citizens have moved away. But he has a clue there is some kind of exodus: the revenue of the water utility is down by a third.

"Everybody's cut back, whether it's been in the government, whether it's been individual families, you know, they're pullin' those belts pretty tight and puttin' extra holes in 'em," Raizk said.

"Mr. Mayor," Pelley rejoined, "you're paid to be an optimist, and I think you're an optimist by nature, but we're talking about 10,000 jobs, those are not coming back soon."

"It's gonna be very difficult to get them back soon," Raizk acknowledged. "You know, how do you look at the glass? Unfortunately ours is not half full or half empty, it's almost empty, and we've gotta start adding some water to it."

"The town runs on hope at this point?" Pelley asked.

"The town runs on hope," the mayor agreed.

A lot of hope came Wilmington's way in the year after our first story. In February a dozen trucks from the charity, "Feed the Children" rolled down Main Street.

Folks lined up for blocks, thousands of them, for free food.

In May, Jay Leno staged a benefit show in Wilmington; in October, Rachael Ray sponsored an extreme makeover of the Sugartree Ministry soup kitchen.

And the people of Wilmington pulled together. In the fall, they harvested community potatoes, part of a drive to grow food all over town.

And now in December, again, the line, this time, is for Christmas gifts donated by folks who have a little something to spare for neighbors who don't.

Folks who are out of work are volunteering.

Anita Bach used to work two shifts at the Airpark, sleeping in the company cafeteria in between. Now she helps out in the soup kitchen. But what Wilmington has learned in this year of unemployment is that charity, retraining and government can't replace the enormous number of lost jobs.

While she volunteers, Bach and her family also get most of their meals in the soup kitchen.

Asked how her children are coping with the economy, Bach said, "One day at a time. My son, he had come to me and asked me if I had a couple extra dollars to give to the homeless shelter. Or if we had any extra toys at home that they can give to 'em for Christmas."

"Your kids are looking for extra toys at home that they can send to the homeless shelter?" Pelley asked.

"Yes, so they have Christmas as well," Bach said.

People like to say their jobs drive them crazy but, in truth, work keeps them sane.

This Christmas many in Wilmington sorely miss the dignity and purpose they once had. Lora Walker says she learned that lesson years ago when her late husband Roger lost his job as a machinist and refused to be anything else.

"I watched what he went through by not making the concessions, by not making the changes. He didn't go back to school, he wasn't willing to think outside of the box," she recalled.

He couldn't find full time work for six years. Then he was hired again and given business cards and a lapel pin by his new company. Before his first day on the new job he had a heart attack.

"And I went to the hospital, and I went in, and I was so surprised," Walker remembered. "And you know, the first thing he said to me was, 'What about my job?' The first thing he said to me, 'What about my job?' That's a hard thing…and then he died Sunday morning. And I was there holding his hand when he died. And at the funeral, at the visitation, I took that card, that business card, that lapel pin, and I put it on his chest, so everyone could see. And before they closed the casket, I slipped it in his hand, 'cause he was so proud that he finally had a job. I don't want that to happen to anybody else."

In Wilmington they say it's a bad day when you get a thick newspaper.

Jim Curtis' house was listed among six pages of homes up for auction. Ten years ago, his company used him in a video when he was head of hazardous materials. At one time he was vice president of the company charity.

Now he's sending out resumes. "One hundred and twenty-three, to be exact. I was counting up the other day…123 resumes have been sent out," he told Pelley.

Asked what he's doing to make ends meet, Curtis said, "I have my unemployment while it lasts. I do odd jobs, anything. I've cleaned houses, scrubbed toilets, waxed floors."

In Wilmington, the third Christmas of the Great Recession is about improvising, pulling together, and discovering generosity among those with little to give.

"It's about people helping people," Mayor Raizk said. "It's about neighbors helping neighbors. What is the spirit of Christmas? Spirit of Christmas is Wilmington, Ohio. If you don't have any Christmas spirit, just spend a day in Wilmington, you'll get it."

Produced by Solly Granatstein and Nicole Young