“As quaint as Elmira was, it wasn’t a safe place for me to prosper,” says Robert Rumsey, former Southern Tier resident turned makeup artist

Sometimes I wonder if I count as a Southern Tier expat because I was born and raised in Maryland.

“Life choices made me competitive” says Apalachin native and NASA Astronaut Doug Hurley.

I left the Southern Tier in 2010 because I had been laid off, during the Great Recession