Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank says Glendale has not been abandoned and I hope he is sincere, for I have emotional ties to Glendale.
In the spring of 1969, my family needed to move. The house we'd rented for nearly four years had been condemned by the Salt Lake County Health Department because the wiring was dangerously outdated. My parents had six young children and a limited income.
My family did not fit into that East Millcreek neighborhood because we were different. My mother came from Mormon pioneer ancestry, but my dad never joined the LDS Church. We were further stigmatized for being poor, and I am sure the fact my father frequently staggered drunkenly home down 2300 East from the bus stop did not help matters.
Even our last name was weird by local standards at the time. Most of the kids I knew had English or Scandinavian names. Jensen. Johnson. Young. I was . . . Vipperman? What kind of a name is that?
My life improved when we moved to the "wrong side of the tracks." After a few months renting a house near Jordan Park, Mom and Dad were able to buy a house six blocks west in Glendale, where my widowed mother still lives today.
In those days, Glendale was considered a decent working-class neighborhood, full of starter homes built mostly in the 1950s to accommodate the baby boom. My father made candy for small local companies. Other fathers were truck drivers and police officers and electricians.
The only time I felt alarmed was when we rode the bus to and from downtown. I would shudder a little near what is now called the Gateway neighborhood. It was considered seedy and dangerous.
Even in the 1960s there were drugs in Glendale, though I would venture to say most other communities had similar issues with marijuana and LSD. I knew of no weapons except those owned by hunters and police officers. If there were gangs, I was not aware of them.
I went to the local schools. On hot summer nights, we slept outside in our backyards.
It was in Glendale that I learned to appreciate diversity, long before I ever knew the meaning of the word. I met people of different religions, and not everyone was white. I had never heard Spanish spoken until we moved to Glendale.
Neighborhoods are made up of people. Many of the people I knew in Glendale moved away after growing up, including me. Like most of my siblings, I moved to the suburbs for economic reasons.
Most of my mother's friends have died. There are a few older people like my mother, but there are many other people who now are as my parents were when we came to Glendale in 1969 - young, full of hope.
I know that Glendale is not what it used to be - but what is? I don't think I live in the same state, country or world that I grew up in. I accept that, but that doesn't mean I have to accept that a neighborhood like Glendale should be ceded to society's criminal element.
Let's not abandon Glendale as some other cities have abandoned their troubled areas. My mother, and the other good people in Glendale, deserve to live in a decent neighborhood.
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* LISA VIPPERMAN lives in Sunset with her husband and their two dogs. She teaches at a school in Ogden.
