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The folks of Clay Center are anxiously waiting to find out whether the aircraft company will locate there. And Deanna Fuller, who maintains a storefront office next door to city hall, is working on a dozen other possibilities. Already she has assisted in organizing a community campaign to help expand a manufacturing plant that makes grain augers. Editor Ned Valentine, whose family-owned newspaper has chronicled the town's ups and downs for 100 years, is optimistic. Says he: "The difference between towns that survive and towns that don't is attitude, not population." Clay Center may have the moxie to thrive once again, but for hundreds of other tiny U.S. towns, their little spots on the map are seriously endangered.
