ABC News recruits Baylor family to try living with only American products in the home

Regular viewers of ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer” saw a series of features earlier this month in which a Dallas family was asked to live life buying only American products. Could they do it? What would they have to give up? ABC covered the story all week in a series of vignettes, showing the family cleaning out the house to get rid of anything not made in the U.S. (including much of their furniture) and then wrapping up the week by seeing how things were working out with all-American products.

As you may have guessed by now, that family was headed by a Baylor Bear. Jon Usry, BA ’94, MBA ’97, lives in Dallas with his wife Anna and two kids, son Landon and daughter Ellis. The family agreed to participate in the experiment, perhaps won over by the notion that, as ABC reported, if every American spent 1% more on U.S. goods, it would create 200,000 jobs. And though at times finding American replacements was a challenge, Jon said at the end of the day it was worth it.

“I would encourage everyone out there to do the same thing,” he said. “Go turn over your plates, your appliances, your comforters, whatever, and start looking at tags. You’ll be surprised, as we were, to find out how difficult it is to find stuff that was made in America. It’s out there, but you have to hunt a little bit. Buy American; you’ll be happy with the quality and feel good about yourself for doing it.”

Sic ’em, Bears!