http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/PovertySeries_Crawfords.mp3
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The jobless rate in northern Michigan has more than tripled in the last decade, and those who climb out of poverty are the exception, not the rule.
In an occasional series, IPR's Linda Stephan has been telling the stories of people who are Finding a Way Out of Poverty.
Today, we hear from a Pellston family that fell on hard times as the state's economy teetered. They say they're actually better off for having gone through the struggle.
A Busy Dad
Ken Crawford rushes home from work. He's greeted by his four-year-old daughter Harmony and he eats standing in the kitchen of his Pellston home before rushing out again for the ball field across the street to help to coach 13-year-old Jeremiah's all-star team.
"I enjoy taking something I know and figuring out a way to get it into them, and then seeing them perform it," he says. "I think that was a part of me that was missing."
It was missing during the days when Ken Crawford was making plenty of money. Then he had little time for family, community, and school sports.
The family had a spacious downstate home, in Lapeer. But they also had more bills, and sometimes Ken was putting in 70-or-80 hour work weeks, commuting three hours a day. Then, as the state's economy continued to falter, the Crawford family's already stressful life went into tailspin.
Tailspin
"I came out of a union, which was a very high-paying job to making $10-to-$15 dollars an hour," he says. That's without benefits. And Ken Crawford has a big family to feed. He and his wife Jenny have seven children, today their ages range from four to 17. They all come to the practice, quietly lining the outfield fence.
In 2007, the family walked away from a house they could no longer afford. They handed the keys back to the bank and moved north, even leaving behind heirloom furniture from Jenny Crawford's grandmother.
"Everything, we left everything and basically we came up here to start over and make life new," she says sitting at her dining room table with a cup of tea in hand. The oversized table runs the full length of a room.
Tight Quarters
For a while this big family shared a three-bedroom home owned by Jenny's dad in Petoskey.
"I didn't even bring dressers," she says of the move north, after the foreclosure in Lapeer. "We used plastic tubs for their clothes."
There couldn't have been room for dressers, had they had them. There was one room in that little house for the couple, one for the girls. The last room housed, all together, five boys.
Tight quarters and financial stress: Ken and Jenny's marriage had long been on the rocks. Ken was taking any work he could find. At one point the whole family was pitching in with odd jobs around church. And the whole time Jenny Crawford was holding it together.
"Honestly, I don't think I, I don't think I actually allowed myself anytime to lose it ever, because I had to be strong for the children," she says.
The Worst Yet To Come
Jenny Crawford also says the kids took their new life and the small house up north as an adventure, and things did slowly improve. Ken was getting some contract work with the state and the family moved to a rental home with a lot more space.
But then came a cancer diagnosis for the youngest Crawford, little Harmony. At the time was two years old.
"It just felt like the last blow to me because, really, Harmony was one of the things that kept me going," Jenny says. "She was just such a joy in my life and she was that little girl that I had waited for and so, at that point we didn't know what the outcome would be and I thought I was going to lose her.
"That was hard. And I remember staying up all night the one night and I was praying. In fact, I was more yelling at God. I was just really mad. I was angry. And I felt like, I didn't know what happened, or if I had done something wrong, or what was happening."
Sitting in a stroller, Harmony directs her mom across the street, as they head to the park to play on the swings and to watch that baseball practice with her dad and older brother. After lots of pokes and hospital stays and chemotherapy, Harmony is now in remission and from all appearances healthy.
That was the hardest year yet, the year she was sick. The family was putting in thousands of hours to help build their new house through Habitat for Humanity. Meanwhile, Harmony needed specialized care, and she was sometimes hospitalized for months in Grand Rapids.
Seeing A Silver Lining
But in all that, Ken and Jenny's marriage improved as they worked through tough medical choices for their little girl.
"So, I think we've undergone a complete overhaul with every area of our life," says Jenny Crawford. "If you can survive what we've been though, I think you can survive anything."
Today, the family lives on about a third the income they had downstate.
They also have more of a community. The people of Pellston raised money for family expenses related to Harmony's illness, and strangers prayed for little girl. The school trades program built the new family home through Habitat for Humanity, and the lead builder has become a family friend.
For the first time, Jenny Crawford says she feels at home. Ken does too, but he tries not to forget the struggle.
"Yeah - some days I like to force myself to remember because, I think, ours isn't really an unfamiliar story," he says. "There's so much of that that's happened to so many people in the last few years in the United States. It's been hard."
Ken believes in hard work, but he's also a religious man and, at the end of the day, he says life is little more than a walk of faith. And, he says, hard times could come again.