Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town

Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town tells the story of growing up in the rubber community of Firestone Park in Akron, Ohio—the former Rubber Capital of the World. The book begins with the rededication of the bronze Harvey Firestone statue on August 3, 2000, at the Centennial celebration for the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. The statue—perched high on a hill at the entrance to Firestone Park, the residential community Harvey built for his workers in 1915—was sacred to the author, Joyce Coyne Dyer, and her father, Tom Coyne, during the fifties, a time when the Coynes worshipped the company and thought themselves members of the Firestone family.

Joyce Dyer is director of writing and professor of English at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, where she teaches courses in literature and creative writing. Dyer is the author of two books, The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings and In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey, and the editor of Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers. Dyer has published over a hundred essays in magazines such as North American Review and High Plains Literary Review. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including a 1997 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council and the 1998 Appalachian Book of the Year Award.