Fort Wayne, Indiana
Fort Wayne is a city of 250,000 in the northeast corner of Indiana, and the state's second largest city. I was born in Fort Wayne in 1975, and have lived most of my life here.
When I was young, Fort Wayne was a thriving industrial city with a large and prosperous middle class. Men like my father could graduate from high school, as he did in 1968, and immediately begin work in jobs that paid solidly middle class 'family man' wages.
By the time I graduated from high school, that was all gone.