‘What’s going on? Am I really happy?’
By Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN
Photographs by Christopher Griffith
Bedford, New Hampshire
Video: Tyler's Decision
This pause could last another few months, maybe another year. Not forever. He allows he might want the apartment and the office job someday, or even soon. He's not sure about the rest.
Sometimes, he gets in the car for long drives to nowhere in particular. Once he might have considered it a waste of time, but lately he thinks he gets a lot done when he lets his mind drift: work, his little brother's college decision, his friends' money worries, politics, the world, right and wrong, what's next.
"What's going on?" he wonders. "Am I really happy?"
In November, for the second time since he's been eligible to vote, he will walk into the booth as an Independent and cast a ballot for president. His political opinions rock and sway as he learns more; he's not enthused by Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but he feels an obligation to make an educated choice.
Simply by growing up in New Hampshire, Tyler soaked in the politics of its swing-state status and precious early primary. It holds only four electoral votes, but campaigns know they can put competitors on defense here. Obama won New Hampshire in 2008, but Romney is a friendly face, a former governor of neighboring Massachusetts who owns a vacation home on Lake Winnipesaukee, about 60 miles from Tyler's parents' house.
This election season, like all the others, diners and churches are crammed with candidates and their surrogates. Political signs skewer every corner. Rally traffic is terrible. TV, unwatchable. Tyler's parents' land line will ring for weeks with pollsters collecting more of those famously independent New Hampshire opinions.
Candidates are fighting for voters like Tyler. He's a millennial who doesn't always know what he believes but remains confident the country can be better. In New Hampshire, people younger than 30 turn out in high numbers almost every Election Day, according to the nonpartisan Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Young voters boosted Obama's win in 2008, and both campaigns are chasing them now. They're on college campuses to talk up affordable education. Romney is hoping Paul Ryan, a 42-year-old Gen-Xer, will inspire young people. Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, a major issue for many millennials.
Back in 2008, Obama had Tyler's vote. Not anymore, or at least, not yet. Tyler was in college then, caught up in a hopeful narrative. He believed Obama was serious about cutting out the partisan wrangling that gridlocks Washington and divides the country, but he's seen no change. He's disillusioned, but distrustful of the Republican option, too. He saw one version of Romney across the state line but sees a different man on the campaign trail now. To Tyler, Romney never seemed like a guy who wanted to hear other people's perspectives. In the New Hampshire primary, which Romney decisively won, Tyler voted for Jon Huntsman.
Still unburdened by the stuff of adulthood, weighing what it means to lead a good life, this might be the first big choice Tyler makes.
He doesn't believe his indecision stems from youth, naïveté or ignorance. He thinks people favor parties, incumbents or familiar faces because they're too overwhelmed to ask important questions of the candidates -- and themselves.
"People settle for it to be easier," he says.
Tyler is deciding he doesn't want to live that way. He is coming to believe this uncertainty is how it's supposed to work, that none of those choices are meant to be easy.
Tyler has lived in his parents' cream-colored colonial most of his life. He was just a few weeks old when the York family moved to this cul-de-sac in the Manchester suburb of Bedford.
His parents, Gail and Don, had been high school sweethearts in Manchester, about an hour's drive from Boston. They saved for a house before they married, saved for babies before they were pregnant and saved for college once they were expecting.
"I feel like we were more grown up sooner, in a way," Gail York says. "We were very diligent, and kind of disciplined, kind of ready to take on responsibility."
When they were growing up, downtown Manchester was an exciting place to be. Along the river, giant red brick mills, "skyscrapers on their sides," were packed with workers making Pandora sweaters and tennis shoes.
Even as textile manufacturing disappeared and the mills emptied, the Yorks never considered moving too far. Bedford, a wealthy and growing suburb, was the perfect place to raise kids. The community was familiar and close to mountains, beaches, big cities and the little athletics store they ran together.
For more than 30 years, they've owned Indian Head Athletics and the embroidery and screenprinting business in the basement below. The store's wood-paneled walls are crammed with baseball gloves, Little League bats and sweatshirts for the Manchester West High School Blue Knights, Goffstown Grizzlies or Memorial Crusaders. Every order is handwritten by the store's employees, and each of Gail and Don's five boys worked there for a summer or two.
All the York boys were athletes, tall guys with dark hair, younger versions of their father. The rules of the field -- sportsmanship, competition, teamwork -- still course through their lives. Tyler learned early on that natural talent doesn't matter without work. Once, when he was a kid running on the football field, his mom told him he didn't look like he was putting in much effort. A petite woman with long hair, she dared him to a race in the backyard -- and won. He decided after that to at least try, always.
He played baseball, soccer, basketball and his favorite, football. He picked up lacrosse just for fun, and worked as a lifeguard at a neighboring community pool. He was captain of the football team at Manchester West, like two of his brothers before him, just like his dad was at Manchester Memorial High.
On the field, he motivated the guys and called the defensive plays. He liked setting the tone for the team, an outlook he thinks could apply to politics, business or his weekend flag football league: Talk trash, but don't dismiss your opponent.
"You still want to bury 'em, but you respect that they're giving you a challenge," Tyler says. "I'd much rather play someone who's beating me every time than someone I continually beat all the time. When you do win, it's that much more a feeling."
A major blow came his sophomore year of high school when he tore his hamstring in three places during a scrimmage. He sat out most of the season, his first on the varsity squad. To stay close to his team, he went to every practice and game and spent hours in the weight room with athletic trainers, trying to maintain strength and avoid more injuries. Under their care, he realized he might have found his next step.
As he began to think about college, he zeroed in on athletic training as a major, but there was something else to consider: His parents wouldn't allow him to go more than a few hours' drive from home. The rule was the same from the first York boy to the last. With a 17-year span between their sons, Gail and Don didn't want them to grow up strangers. They expected them to be at each other's big games and birthday parties, to return home for weekend get-togethers. If they instilled the habit of staying close while they were young, the parents thought, maybe they'd stick around when they were older, too.
Tyler decided on Plymouth State University, his dad's alma mater and home to a competitive athletic training program.
"The day he left, I'm not gonna lie, we all cried," says Dylan, the youngest York brother, who was 11 when Tyler headed to college and the last one still living at home. "It was definitely different to get used to. I was always by him. We'd literally spend all day together. We'd go play catch, go watch TV. When his friends would come over, I would try to hang out with them, and he always let me. I don't think he ever really kicked me out."
Like his parents hoped, Tyler came home often during college: Friends, a girlfriend, his grandfather's last years all drew him back to Bedford. But he had been one of a few accepted into the athletic training major, and the coursework was rigorous. He had summer jobs fitting casts for broken limbs and school-year training gigs with soccer, lacrosse and football teams. His friends and college roommate describe him as focused but friendly, a guy who could talk to anybody. "A professional wingman," one friend said.
He graduated in four years, in May 2009, just as the dust was settling from the imploded job market.
Tyler shows up a bit late to his little nieces' pirate-themed birthday party.
They've already moved on from eye patches and stick-on beards to heart-star-glitter-covered bathing suits. Still, they fall into giggly, shrieking fits when Tyler arrives with his girlfriend, Emily Getto. She's tall and slim with long, soft waves in her hair and a knack for vintage style. She works for Panera Bread in Boston -- she was on a poster promoting the store this year -- but her degree, and dreams, are in fashion design. Her voice is high and sing-songy, like a Disney princess, and she crouches to make eye contact when talking to the little girls. It's the kind of thing that makes the whole family love her.
Tyler went on long drives or stared at his bedroom ceiling: Was he too young for a second career?
When the boarding school asked him back, he thought fondly of the kids and the classes, of maybe getting to use the athletic training education his parents' planning had paid for. He was tempted by a reliable income and benefits, by getting his own place and starting a life away from home. It seemed like a job he could grow into and enjoy for a long time to come.
He turned it down.
"I don't necessarily need to have a full-time job," he says now. "It's part of that system. You work hard to get good grades, get a job. Your life is almost planned from when you're born."
Instead, he pieced together part-time work producing videos and managing interns for his brother's marketing firm; guiding the speaking and writing career of a friend, an African refugee; and managing a music- and brand-marketing site his brothers helped launch, 1 band 1 brand. He works from home, from the marketing agency office, and from a shared workspace for tech startups in Manchester.
In each role, he feels like he's learning something new, like an apprentice with flexible hours. He's meeting all kinds of new people and generating new ideas. He likes being able to grab a bagel from his parents' fridge between Skype meetings, and to talk business with his brothers over birthday cupcakes.
As the party for his nieces winds down, the little girls turn their attention to one of Uncle Tyler's presents: Silly String. His sisters-in-law hate the stuff, but he brings it to every birthday anyway. Tyler chases his nieces around the yard, lines of goo trailing behind them, wrapping their ankles and streaking their hair.
Here's a choice made: He's willing to work hard, to take risks, to learn more. But he never wants to miss a Silly String battle because he was too busy talking about a job.
One morning this summer, Tyler hangs out in his brother Kyle's office at Dyn Inc., a tech company in downtown Manchester. A whiteboard covered in notes and calculations fills most of one wall. Above the board, a sign reads "Welcome to New Hampshire -- Live free or die." Kyle is the company's chief revenue officer. He's married, and their first child, a boy, is due in a few weeks. They recently bought a home in Bedford, close to Don and Gail's.
Kyle travels a lot, spends hours on e-mail and Twitter every day, and the company is taking off. Dyn employs about 160 people and operates from a 30,000-square-foot space in one of Manchester's old mills; it's filled with desks and conference rooms -- and a rock-climbing wall, a stage where bands sometimes play, a comfortable room for breast-feeding moms, and, behind that, a hangout space with a well-stocked bar. The median age is 34.
Between Kyle's meetings, the brothers debate who would make a better president: Matt Damon or George Clooney?
It's a joke, although the brothers agree the actors seem like passionate guys who care about the world and know how to command a room.
"What is the role of the president?" asks Adam Coughlin, a childhood friend of the Yorks who works with Kyle. "The CEO of the country? The ambassador of the country?"
"First and foremost," Tyler says, "he's the leader of the country. He's in the position to lead."
"What's leadership?" Kyle asks.
"It's people flocking and encouraged around what you're doing," Tyler says. "Motivation. You inspire."
Tyler can rattle off a quick opinion on almost any issue in the news. He thinks we should rework education and job training entirely, move away from using coal for energy and give women complete, unbiased medical information if they have an unexpected pregnancy. He's fine with paying taxes but wants the money spent wisely on libraries, fire departments and schools. He does not like public money to be funneled to boondoggles, like, he thinks, Boston's Big Dig. After all that time and money, he doesn't understand why it still needs fixing, or why he sits in traffic for hours to visit his girlfriend at her apartment near Fenway Park.
None of those issues are likely to decide his vote. He would back a candidate he disagreed with if he thought the person could make people work together, he says. Tyler thinks all elected leaders -- not just the president -- should cooperate to help the country grow. He might not like some of their decisions, but he respects the process.
"Being a voter, you just want to see progress, and there really hasn't been for how many years now?" Tyler says. "If you have a strong argument supporting your opinion that's different than mine, I'm more than willing to have that conversation with you. I want to talk, I want to understand why you think that way. It could change my mind … but I won't know unless I have that conversation."
He thinks his vote will be decided by watching Romney and Obama debate. It's the ultimate test of whether they're listening to each other, he says. During primary season, Tyler was sold on Huntsman after watching him in a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate with Newt Gingrich. The former House speaker seemed like a loose cannon, he says, but Huntsman seemed like a smart guy who wanted to connect.
Tyler does not like to feel played. He does not want to be appeased. He doesn't want candidates to say what they think voters want to hear.
He doesn't want candidates to tailor their policies to him, his family, his situation, his state.
Of course he doesn't want his friends or family or anyone else to struggle or be at a disadvantage, he says, but he doesn't think that'll happen if politicians will stop being stubborn and start working together.
"It might be naïve, but it's sort of what my vision is," Tyler says.
"Typical millennial," Kyle says.
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