Like the dogwoods and crape myrtles ablaze on the green mountains, hillbilly pride is blooming in this corner of a changed Appalachia. We hope to dispel that. Thanks partly to federally sponsored development efforts, Appalachia has moved from a backward region in 1960 to one that now is close to national norms of unemployment and poverty.
Miners are now technicians rather than laborers.
But the economy hereabouts no longer relies solely on the mining industry. For instance, Sykes, an international computer troubleshooting firm, has communications centers in Pikeville and nearby Hazard. It employs more than 1,000 highly trained residents of Appalachia to deal with computer problems of people around the world. If someone is on line in Hong Kong and his mouse dies, the customer calls a computer company's help line. Pikeville College's School of Osteopathic Medicine will graduate its first class of new physicians this spring, she noted.