Even as the rest of the country was slowly recovering from the Great Recession, things were not looking good for Walker County. In August of 2010, the Blue Bird school bus plant closed its doors and hundreds of employees were laid off. Shannon Pettyjohn was caught completely off guard when he lost his job at the plant, along with 350 of his coworkers. "It was shock, disbelief; it was a lot of mixed emotions. Then reality set in and we found ourselves scrambling to find work in an already weak economy," he said. By the end of the year, unemployment had soared to 11%. For a while, things were rough for Pettyjohn, ... (full story)