Terry Foster: Copper Thieves Are Stealing The Detroit I Grew Up With

By: Terry Foster
@terryfoster971

Happy New Year mom.

I was finally able to say those words Tuesday night four days after the ball dropped in Times Square. Mom was the victim of scrappers who cut wires in her Detroit west side neighborhood while rampaging the house. They selfishly were in search of copper, she believes, to sell on the open market. That meant she had no cable, no television, no telephone and no Internet for four days.

That meant that neighbors who worked from home needed to go to a Starbucks or other coffee shop, which is difficult considering there are no Starbucks or any other coffee shop in her neighborhood. It meant seniors who needed to be in constant communication with loved ones moved out of the house for a few days.

Why?

Copper. Detroit's black gold.

Copper is one of the reasons why my old Detroit neighborhood is a mess. It is one of the reasons why my wife's hair dresser Miss Sybil moved out of her old Detroit neighborhood. She had the only house occupied in a three-block area.

What normally happened is someone would move out of a house and copper thieves rolled in and tore the house up. Squatters moved in and accidentally set the place ablaze. This happened over and over again until she was the last house standing. Miss Sybil lived in a dark and dangerous neighborhood. She left for Southfield where she has a back yard and neighbors.

She came back to visit her house. And you guessed it. The copper thieves did their thing again.

Copper is not the only reason many Detroit neighborhoods have crumbled. You can blame the 1967 riots, thousands leaving the city and people using Detroit as a dumping ground. Now that I have this forum, I plan on showing you photos of my old Detroit neighborhood. It will shock you. I love that downtown Detroit is on the rebound. I love what Mike Ilitch, Dan Gilbert and Roger Penske and Mike Duggan are doing for the city.

That is the Detroit we see. Soon I will show you the Detroit I grew up in and why a tear comes to my eye every time I visit.

Happy belated New Years mom. Hopefully we can talk sooner when we celebrate 2017.

Terry Foster can be reached at Terry.Foster@cbsradio.com.