A former West Virginia woman quickly found Marysville to be her permanent home 42 years ago, and she still considers the city to be as great as when she arrived.
Deb Groat has been a councilperson for the City of Marysville since 2008 and was brought on as a customer support representative at the Richwood Bank in Marysville in 2017. For more than 30 years, she was a Latin, English and math teacher at Marysville High School (MHS), retiring in 2012, and taught Sunday school lessons and other Bible studies at First Presbyterian Church.
So how did someone who’s been involved with the community for so long even get here?
“I took a compass, put it on The Ohio State University and drew to 30 miles,” Groat said. “Marysville was right there at 20 to 25 miles from Ohio State, and that’s how I chose Marysville.”
She said she got here when the population was around 7,000 people. The high school had 150 students in its graduating class at the time.
Coming from a larger community, Groat said she still carried her caution of living in a risky environment with her.
With how small Marysville was at the time, she wondered if it was still safe to leave the windows of her ground floor apartment up while she slept. She said she was astounded when her landlord at the time assured her she’d be safe.
“Marysville hit me as a community where you could walk anywhere you want,” Groat said. “It’s an incredibly safe place.”
Being religious, she immediately got sucked into the church scene after moving here, getting involved and teaching Sunday school services.
“I am so sure this is God-directed and that this is a working plan,” Groat said. “I can mess up, and I have messed up before, but the plan was there: for me to move to Marysville and to have a job so easily… to move (to a place) that’s such a phenomenal community.”
She said the atmosphere of a small-town, small business, strongly religious, agricultural and family oriented community has been well preserved over the years.
However, she said she’s seen the area grow confused about how to deal with its burgeoning population. She said its newcomers are gladly accepted into Marysville, but there is a “lack of intelligent growth” to accommodate them.
She also said the people have changed, which has “definitely shifted demographics to a more blue collar approach.”
When she first got here, the focus on housing arrangements was to help families who had many children and intended to buy a home. Now, the city has to look to accommodate smaller families and people who want to rent rather than own.
“Every time you grow, you have to be very conscious of what you’re introducing in the mix,” she said. “I’m so comfortable Marysville has grown, and since the demographics have shifted, I don’t think the fundamental morality of this community has gone significantly downhill.”
She said the community needs to maintain awareness to preserve its identity, meaning the public has to become aware when the population’s morality shifts.
“I’m not trying to make it all rose-colored glasses, but I think there’s an awareness of what we have here is unique,” Groat said. “I don’t want to see it messed up. There’s always a fear of it getting messed up. We’re one generation away from losing all morality.”