This report is about unemployment in the town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Thompson writes about not being in the town in the past 20 years and how depressing it looked. He focused on The Greenbrier Resort, a golf resort in the town. He includes facts from sources such as the New York Times, The Wheeling News Register and Casion Gambling.
The director of public relations for the resort, Lynn Swann, said that the assets have been falling since 2003 and that it filed for bankruptcy in March and was sold in May and will become an underground gambling complex and a restaurant in October. Swann said that in the darkest days, "I just wanted to crawl into a hole."
A lot of the people that inhabit the town feel that it is a place for church and religion and that gambling is not the answer to their financial woes. This story is noteworthy because the people of an entire town have seen their town fall out of glory and they want it back. It seems like the only way to help it out though is for gambling to take over.
This was written by Doug Thompson of the Blue Ridge Muse website. It was written on October 6, 2009.