To have lived decades in Greater Johnstown is to have experienced the steady drip of losses year after year after year.
In no particular order, during my lifetime I’ve seen us lose our steelmaking industry, a host of supporting companies, most of our underground coal mining, our low crime rate, a large amount of our population, many of our formerly desirable residential areas, downtown department stores, hilltop malls, local ownership of media outlets, functioning infrastructure and even success at the once-proud Johnstown High School football program.
Of late, we’ve gotten word of another impending loss, that being the Thunder in the Valley motorcycle event that likely won’t be back next summer. I’ve written of this before, but felt compelled to write again because the local newspaper was out with yet another tale regarding Thunder in its most recent weekend edition.
Curiously, the story led with the assertion that putting a “precise” economic value on what losing the event would cost “is not possible.” I’ve been saying that for years, but from the standpoint that the impact is overestimated in keeping with promoting the all-tourism-all-the-time mantra we hear constantly being pitched as our economic salvation.
The thing that stuck out in my mind is that I seem to recall vividly the $20 million number being offered a lot in regard to Thunder.
As an aside, I pride myself on my memory, although a flood of TV advertising suggests someone my age (68) needs chemical aid to recall what they had for yesterday’s dinner.
In a self-performed memory test, just last week I called a former Tribune-Democrat colleague, Mike Mastovich, who is the hockey history guru of Johnstown.
I was recalling the days when we had a very good minor league team, the Jets, and they played a Czech national team. I wanted Mike to confirm my recollection that it was in the late 1960s, possibly 1968, and the Czechs had won, 8-4. He checked this in one of his books. Bingo. Bingo. Bingo.
Further research by me revealed that earlier in 1968 the Czechs had won silver medals at the Winter Olympics, behind the Soviet Union team and ahead of the Canadian team.
The Jets eventually became another another Johnstown loss decades back, to be replaced by the Chiefs and now the current Tomahawks, who will end up leaving some day, too.
Back to Thunder: A quick internet search confirmed my $20 million recollections to be accurate.
I found entries on the WJAC-TV web site for 6/27/17 ($20 million) and for 6/28/21 ($20 million).
There also was a 5/23/20 posting on the Tribune-Democrat’s web site, under the byline of the very same guy who wrote the Saturday 9/16/23 piece. That 2020 story, lamenting the COVID forced cancellation of Thunder, cited an “estimated $15 million to $20 million annually” pumped into the region by the event.
There was no citation for the source of this estimate. But I’m wondering how just a few years later the best the story could do was an estimate of “millions of dollars” with the disclaimer that exact numbers are impossible to determine?
Why not recycle the oft-used $20 million estimate?
Allow me to leave you with a story, perhaps apocryphal, that I’ve seen attributed to the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
As the story goes, Churchill inquired of a woman at a dinner whether she would sleep with him for a million pounds (back when British pounds were worth much more than U.S. dollars). She would.
Churchill was then said to have asked, “What about five pounds?” to which the indignant woman replied words to the effect of, What sort of woman do you think I am?
Replied Churchill: We’ve already established that. We’re just haggling about price.
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