'Growing up the way he did, it made him stronger.' In JD Vance's hometown, beers and joy

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio – People were watching sports, not talking about the election at a Central House of Brews bar during Monday's hot, humid afternoon.

Around 3 p.m., moments before a summer storm littered city sidewalks with surprising hail, Donald Trump announced that JD Vance , a Middletown native, would be his vice president running mate. Trump was formally nominated for president by the GOP at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday.

Some locals getting off work and filling up at the bar on Central Avenue did not know much about Vance or did not want to talk about him. Others, though, who had read Vance's best-selling memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," which thrust Middletown into the national spotlight in 2016, were satisfied with Trump's pick.

"I couldn't be happier," said David Kallsen, 69 and a lifelong Middletown resident. "He used to work across the street at Dillman (Foods). He lived down the road."

Around the corner from Central House of Brews is McKinley Street, where Vance lived for portions of his Middletown childhood. His grandmother, whom he called Mamaw, lived just a few houses down the same street.

Amanda Bailey, 35, has lived in Vance's childhood home for about a year and said neighbors told her the Ohio senator grew up in the house. A Middletown native, Bailey said she had seen the Ron Howard-directed film, "Hillbilly Elegy," released in 2020.

"I'm good with it," she said of Trump's VP pick.

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Vance graduated from Middletown High School in 2003. His recollections of a chaotic childhood – rife with domestic abuse within his Kentucky-transplant family – fill the pages of his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy." Vance's mother suffered from drug addiction during his youth and early adulthood, so his grandmother took an active role in raising him.

"I think JD's a good choice," Jerry Dobbins, 67, who has lived on McKinley Street off-and-on since 1980, said. "I remember him as a boy."

Dobbins said he knew Vance's grandmother, mother and aunt.

"I think growing up the way he did, it made him stronger," he said. "We all have those things in our lives that make us stronger or make us weaker, and I think it made him stronger."

In his memoir, Vance also addressed his neighborhood's strife at large. The city saw one major job provider, Armco Steel, now Cleveland Cliffs, falter due to a nationwide steel recession during Vance's youth.

"We all had that same story," Kallsen, who read Vance's book, said. "Maybe that's why we related to it."

Vance served in the Marine Corps after graduating high school and went on to attend Ohio State University and then Yale Law School. He and his family now live in Cincinnati's East Walnut Hills neighborhood.

Trump's VP announcement came in the middle of the first day of the convention and just two days after the former president was shot in the ear at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Janet Hydeman, 65, a Republican who's lived in Middletown for 15 years, was mostly satisfied with Trump's pick, although she worried that Vance, 39, is too young to be VP ("Maybe I'm just jealous," she joked). But she was more concerned about gun violence in Dayton, where she previously lived, and across the country – a worry she said was compounded after Saturday's assassination attempt.

Hydeman did not agree with Vance, who blamed the shooting on Biden's "rhetoric," and said both sides need to deescalate political violence.

"We all need to look within ourselves and calm it down," she said.

Middletown sits in southwest Ohio's Butler and Warren counties, both of which went for Trump in 2020. In Butler County, 61% of voters chose for Trump, and in Warren County, 65% voted for the former president.

Middletown by the numbers

(Ohio figures for comparison in parentheses)

• Population: 51,478.
• White: 78.4% (80.6%).
• Black: 11.8% (13.4%).
• Asian: 0.8% (2.8%).
• Hispanic: 4.3% (4.8%).
• Foreign-born: 2.9% (4.9%).
• Home ownership rate: 53% (66.8%).
• Median home value: $135,200 ($183,300).
• Bachelor's degree or higher: 16.1% (30.4%).
• Median household income: $50,457 ($66,990).
• Persons in poverty: 19.2% (13.4%).
• Source: US Census

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: 'Growing up the way he did, it made him stronger.' In JD Vance's hometown, beers and joy