A Tiny Town's Triumph

Tillicum's potential for success has been heralded recently, and rightly so, in and on the city's website.  Much has been made of curbs, gutters, sidewalks, sewers and Habitat homes.  While all noteworthy, certainly costly, the true measure of a town's triumph has far less to do with infrastructure, or superstructure, than something light-years more important but very seldom acknowledged, much less even recognized.

As Lakewood’s Community Services Resource Team (CSRT) prepares in this new year for an “all-community” meeting on how to encourage, among other goals, attendance at neighborhood gatherings – a stroll down the streets of a little town in an out-of-the-way place is worth the walk for the startling conclusion of what contributes most to the success of a community. 

Roseto, Pennsylvania, is a town of just under two thousand people.  There is no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime.  No one on welfare.  Virtually no one under fifty-five showed any signs of heart disease.  No peptic ulcers. 

Why not?  Was it diet?  No.  Exercise?  No.  Genetics?  No.  Environment?  No.

Mystified that no medical reason could account for the wherewithal of the entire town, Dr. Stewart Wolf, professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma, together with colleague and sociologist John Bruhn, scoured the sidewalks in search of answers.  It was as they yet again toured the town that they were struck by what was to become “a fascinating and provocative blueprint for making the most of human potential” (Economist). 

With Tillicum’s western border about to be overrun with a torrent of Camp Murray traffic, and the town’s eastern flank to be run through with the saber of High Speed Rail, word from the outside that help is on the way would be welcome were it not for the fact that reinforcements have already arrived. 

An excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outlier helps explain that in Tillicum - regardless of the success or failure of the resident’s battle in court (Feb.3, 10 a.m. City Hall) with Lakewood and Camp Murray on the one hand, or (5,500 signatures needed by March 2nd) on the other – the ‘cavalry are us’.  Just as the strength of any community lies with the rolled-up-sleeves of those who call it home, we are the reinforcements.

“The secret of Roseto wasn’t diet or exercise or genes or location.  As Bruhn and Wolf walked around the town, they figured out why.  They looked at how the Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat on the street or cooking for one another in their backyards.  They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof, and how much respect grandparents commanded.  They saw the unifying and calming effect of the church.  They counted twenty-two separate civic organizations in a town of just under two thousand people.  The community discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failure.”

Bruhn and Wolf disclosed their findings to the medical world “where their peers were presenting long rows of data arrayed in complex charts and referring to this kind of gene or that kind of physiological process, and they themselves were talking instead about the mysterious and magical benefits of people stopping to talk to one another on the street.  No one was used to thinking about health in terms of community.”

Tillicum’s success, or that of any neighborhood, lies in the two-fold conclusion of researchers Bruhn and Wolf – a two-part harmony that serves as a simple melody for what constitutes a happy – and successful - community: “(It is) the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with (that) have a profound effect on who we are.”

Maybe that’s the greatest benefit of being in a battle with behemoths bigger and badder-if-you-will than all of us put together.  We’re talking.  Over back yard fences, in regular monthly neighborhood meetings, as we rebuild porches, and through multiplied hundreds of emails and other practical means of caring, sharing and, well, talking – we’re organizing and implementing strategy for our streets, however the landscape changes. 

Because we occupy – and take ownership of and pride in - our community: the people that live here.