Colleen Sanders
By Natalie Cook
Edited by Elizabeth Dockett
SCRANTON- Colleen Sanders, 64, has lived in Scranton for over 40 years with her husband, George. In the 1960s, Sanders and her family moved from Baltimore, Maryland to Scranton when her father’s Army depot job had been relocated. After some time, they moved to Georgia where the rest of the family still resides. In 1982, Sanders felt that Scranton was a good place to settle with her children and decided to come back. She’s been here ever since. Sanders has settled on North Irving Avenue and works as a finance assistant for NeighborWorks.
Q: Why do you live in Scranton?
A: I had younger children when I moved here, and it was very community oriented. I always felt like it was a good place to raise kids. At the time, they could go out and play and you didn’t have to tell them, they knew the time for them to come in. I knew it was a good place for kids to be.
Q: What’s appealing about living in Scranton?
A: While it’s not a big city, you have a lot of things that they have in the bigger cities. You’re close to New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, if you want to go to something like professional football games, college games, etc. In New York, you can go to shows, shopping, etc. and you’re close enough to do all that in a day and have the serenity of coming back home and being home. Most of my family is in Georgia, and I do travel down there a lot. It’s fast paced and I like all that it has to offer, but it’s nice coming back home.
Q: What does Scranton mean to you?
A: Home, it’s home. It’s weird because you can go almost anywhere and even prior to the show “The Office,” people had heard of Scranton. When I was younger, even if they hadn’t been here, they knew of it just because it was always mentioned in the movies.
Q: What do we aspire to be as a city?
A: As a city they tried to aspire to being like the big cities as far as offering all the cultural and arts or things of that nature without changing the city to becoming the fast-paced big city. They’re moving towards becoming a walking city where you’re able to walk to a lot of the things that the big cities offer without having to leave Scranton.
Q: What are your hopes for Scranton?
A: My hopes as a homeowner are to eliminate real estate taxes. Just to strive to become more of a community, embracing all the different cultures in all seasons.
Q: What about Scranton’s story makes it our nation’s story?
A: The fact that we have so many different cultures right here and in this small area you can find just about any nationality, race, or whatever right here.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about Scranton?
A: I like the schools they offer now. Before it was just the 日本一级片, and it was Marywood, and now you have Lackawanna College and Johnson College. It’s becoming that area where you’re getting a lot of different options in such a small space, and I like the way they’re now trying to connect all of them.