West Virginia Focus - January/February 2015 by West Virginia Focus

January/February 2015

We find comfort among those who agree with us, and growth among those who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. Frank A. Clark

Huntington on the Mend Biometrics in Support of the Warfighter The economyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s real zing is in the small business sector, and the state is taking note.

volume 2 | issue 1

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Ken Allman, Robert Bastress, Rachel Coon, John Deskins, Morgan Grice, Brian Lego

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Focus January/February 2015

Editor’s Letter Small is Big

igger isn’t always better. As a small business owner, I know firsthand that small companies tend to be more nimble, make decisions more quickly, and respond to change faster. When I started my company, New South Media, in 2008, I had one employee—me. My company now employs 12 people, plus three independent contractors and a slew of freelance writers and photographers. Nationally, small businesses are now getting their fair share of recognition as the most important driver of the economy, and West Virginia is taking notice. According to Business Insider, small businesses outnumber corporations 1,162 to one. Small, locally owned businesses are long-term wealth generators that serve local and regional needs. They tend to rely on local resources and capitalize on local history and heritage. Small businesses give back to the community. I was surprised to learn that in West Virginia, the number of small businesses is declining and that we operate far fewer for our population than the national average. Those alarming statistics made us wonder, why? And what is the state doing to support small business growth, especially given that 96 percent of all businesses in West Virginia are considered small? You’ll want to read our feature on small businesses on page 44. I wish I had known about the resources the West Virginia Small Business Development Center and the U.S. Small Business Administration offered when I was starting out. The success of any business is only as good as the people in it. I once read that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos said if it takes more than two pizzas to feed your team dinner, then your team is too big. Small groups inspire creativity. According to Ken Allman, the founder and CEO of Hinton’s PracticeLink, putting together a great team is the key to success. He shares his strategy for team building on page 68. Just because you own or may be thinking of starting a small business, it doesn’t mean you should think small. In fact, the smaller the business, the bigger you need to think and dream. I believe that’s one of the driving forces behind small business success. One town that is embracing small businesses and dreaming big is Huntington. When writer Katie Griffith traveled there for the first time to work on a story looking into Huntington’s drug and crime problems, she says she had the same assumptions about the city that many from around the state have: “Why would you ever want to go to Huntington? It’s Little Detroit.” But when she arrived, the city, its people, and its leadership changed that characterization. She found a city with many issues to fight, not the least of which is drug addiction, but

I am honored to have been chosen as the SBA’s 2014 Woman-owned Small Business Champion. Receiving the award from SBA Regional Administrator Natalia Olson-Urtecho and SBA WV District Director Karen Friel.

with an optimistic and dedicated attitude to addressing those problems. “Other cities have a lot to learn from what has happened in Huntington,” she says. “The leadership in Huntington seems so dedicated to fixing this city and is willing to admit where it went wrong and what needs to change now.” Huntington is trying very hard to fix its problems and shouldn’t be avoided. With wonderful restaurants, beautiful buildings, great shops, and lovely parks, there’s plenty to see and do. Huntington is indeed a city on the mend. Speaking of mending towns: We are excited to announce the winners of our 2015 Turn This Town Around competition. This year we are heading to Whitesville in Boone County and Ripley in Jackson County after receiving more than 23,000 votes in one week. Turn This Town Around has generated considerable buzz and interest around the state. Visit wvfocus.com to read about what others are saying about it and help spread the word. This is something you’ll definitely want to follow throughout the year. I hope your year is filled with BIG dreams!

nikki bowman Publisher & Editor

Focus wvfocus.com

Dialogue Featured Contributors

Robert BastresS Robert M. Bastress, Jr., is the John W. Fisher, II Professor of Law at the West Virginia University College of Law, where he has taught since 1978. His teaching and scholarly interests center on constitutional law, employment law, and local government law. He is the author of The West Virginia Constitution: A Reference Guide and co-author of Interviewing, Counseling, and Negotiating: Skills for Effective Representation.

Rachel Coon More than 23,000 votes were cast for the second annual Turn This Town Around competition in late 2014. While Whitesville and Ripley pulled ahead to become our next towns, here are a few more comments from our Facebook followers:

Rachel Coon earned her master’s from West Virginia University while working for New South Media, Inc. as an intern turned associate editor. For three years she had the great fortune of living in the Mountain State and traveling to discover its incredible people and places. She now lives in Wyoming with her husband, Mark. She has written for WV Living, WV Weddings, Morgantown magazine, and Fort Collins Magazine.

“For all those who voted for Logan, thank you. We gave it our best shot. But it was not enough. Congratulations to Whitesville in Boone County and Ripley in Jackson County! ... We are so grateful for the positive response to Turn This Town Around and hope that all of West Virginia’s towns will be inspired!” Bob Stidham

John Deskins

Brian Lego Brian Lego serves as research assistant professor at the Bureau of Business and Economic Research. Lego holds a master’s degree in agricultural and resource economics from WVU and specializes in economic forecasting and applied economic research.

“Yay, way to go. Whitesville needed this." Tina Barker “Thank you for doing this and we are so excited!” Michelle Scrivo Allen “Congrats to the winners! Vote Hundred, West Virginia next year!” Lori Lough Bell “Way to go Ripley!” Amanda Stewart Hersman

Focus January/February 2015

Correction Our story on the King Coal Highway (Nov/Dec 2014) misidentified the Deputy Executive Director of the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority. At the time, it was Leasha Johnson. With the December 2014 retirement of Executive Director Steve Kominar, Johnson takes the helm. Congratulations!

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Contents FOCUS ON 10

Science

Turn This Town Around

The National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown is a hub for the nation’s scientists and local environmentalists alike.

We announce the winners of the 2015 campaign. 22

Education

Power Lunch

An updated look at competitive teachers’ pay in the state.

Later Alligator serves creative crêpes in Wheeling.

Finance

A law authorizing asset protection trusts would keep money in the state.

Work-Life Balance

These businessmen know how to get away from the grind.

Philanthropy

Charleston’s Fonda and John Elliot give back in a big way. 14

Founders

Larry Groce talks music, the Mountain State, and the popular Mountain Stage live radio show. 16

Agenda

Aging West Virginians can maintain their right to vote. 17

Top Issues

Lawmakers debate the “spill bill” after the West Virginia water crisis.

Focus January/February 2015

Noteworthy Launch

Senator Jay Rockefeller leaves an even bigger mark on West Virginia University with a new archive and school. 32

Revitalization

The people of Thomas look to improve the city’s trail system as part of a greater effort to revitalize the beloved community.

Focus [ Jan/Feb 2015]

TOOLKIT 66

Ten Things

Two restaurant owners share insight about the world of fine dining. 68

Leadership

Hinton’s Ken Allman spells out the must-haves for making winning teams. 70

B2B

A construction and design expo brings the best ideas and people from across the state to Charleston. 72

Marketing

Hardman’s Hardware markets small-town charm and personal service. 74

Law 40

Biometrics in Support of the Warfighter

The hub of the Department of Defense’s work in biometrics is in Clarksburg. 44

The New Big

Small business means more to the state than West Virginians may know. 54

A City on the Mend

Perceptions about Huntington start to change after years of crime and drugs.

Robert Bastress looks back at 2014 in the Supreme Court of Appeals and tells us what to watch for in 2015. 78

How We Did It

The James & Law Company adapts while maintaining a commitment to quality products, from furniture to textbooks. Editor’s Letter

Dialogue 4 Power Points

Focus wvfocus.com

“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

Full of Holes Following the January 2014 Elk River chemical leak that contaminated drinking water for 300,000 in the Kanawha River valley, the Public Service Commission of West Virginia launched an investigation into West Virginia American Water’s actions. Redacted documents the company filed in December 2014 in the investigation include this page of parent company American Water’s Issues Management Protocol.

Vidal Sassoon

Community Public art makes Charleston’s West Side a little brighter. pg. 30

Queen for a Day New Martinsville native Jacque Bland shares her queenly dictates. pg. 10

Big Idea

SCORE looks to revitalize the southern coalfields of West Virginia. pg. 18

Energy

The Eastern Panhandle paves the way for turning household trash into fuel. pg. 34

Who’s Stepping Up An Ivy League doctor gives back to the region that raised him. pg. 36

Who’s Stepping Up

Cass Scenic Railroad State Park gets a new lease on life. pg. 37

Focus wvfocus.com

Science

The Heart of Conservation The National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown attracts everyone from NASA scientists to heads of state. Written by Mikenna Pierotti

Focus January/February 2015

Full course descriptions and their requirements as well as information about renting NCTC facilities for outside events are available at nctc.fws.gov.

Queen for a DAY New Martinsville native Jacque Bland has worked in communications in the Office of the Attorney General and at Chesapeake Energy, and was previously an editor and reporter in Wheeling, Charleston, and Washington, D.C. She’s a graduate of West Virginia University and has an MBA from Waynesburg University.

If I were queen of West Virginia for a day, I would: Heavily fine people who don’t take their shopping carts back to the cart corral. Come on, people. Come on. Have people write thank you notes to their teachers. It may take years for you to realize it, but those teachers really helped make you who you are. Make Sharpie the official pen of the state of West Virginia. Require folks to take a basic class in turn signal usage.

Courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; courtesy of Jacque Bland

n October 2007 scientists, conservationists, and members of coastal fisheries came to landlocked Shepherdstown, to the secluded campus of the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC), for a meeting about horseshoe crabs and shorebirds. One of the birds in question was a squat little thing with a russet belly called the ruddy turnstone, which passes through the Delaware Bay on its long migratory path. “It comes down the coast to feed and gather fat reserves from the eggs of horseshoe crabs,” says Karene Motivans, training curriculum manager at NCTC. “Well, there are crab fisheries, and there’s also some medical collection of horseshoe crabs for research in that region, and the crabs were starting to decrease in numbers, which affected the turnstone population.” Through a discussion at the NCTC aided by experts in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, stakeholders on all sides came to an agreement on how to manage the crab population without making it harder for the turnstones. “That’s an example of using NCTC as a place to facilitate compromises that, in the end, everyone can live with,” Motivans says. It’s also one reason why this sprawling campus located just four miles outside Shepherdstown is considered the beating heart of U.S. conservation efforts. It’s a living laboratory, a hub for decision-making, and a place conservation professionals go to be immersed in the history and heritage of conservation while getting hands-on training. The center’s list of distinguished guests includes former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. “We are the

national home of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and we’re also a place where the conservation community can come and solve the conservation problems of our times,” says Jay Slack, the center’s director. From this cluster of wood and stone buildings set in a 500-acre campus, conservation experts in both the public and private sectors network, conduct research, and take classes— online and in the center’s state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories—on subjects like climate change, field biology, policy and planning, and professional development. “That’s where it came from—that need to have hands-on training in all areas related to conservation and the science behind it,” Motivans says. “You cannot learn this stuff from watching a PowerPoint.” Constructed in the late 1990s, NCTC’s mission is multifaceted. Along with protecting and sharing conservation history and heritage, training service employees and scientists, facilitating important discussions, and modeling green practices like composting and solar electricity, it also focuses on inspiring the next generation of scientists by providing youth courses and free educational resources. The center opens its doors to the general public for lectures and film screenings. It offers free podcasts, videos, and other resources from its website and plays host to the American Conservation Film Festival each fall. “We’re dedicated to environmental conservation and everyone who is involved in that, not just supporting a government agency,” Motivans says. “We all have to work together to be effective conservationists. Because it’s not just a state or local or national thing—conservation is a global issue.”

the power lunch

Décor Galore

Why Alligator?

Owner Susan Haddad spent three years transforming an 1869 building that was once a saloon into a bustling lunch and dinner spot. She did the majority of the work herself. “I took out four drop ceilings until finally discovering the original ornate tin ceiling.” From ripping out plaster to repairing damaged tiles to installing the bricks in the outdoor courtyard, the resulting exposed brick walls, soaring tin ceilings, and creative use of salvaged materials have transformed the restaurant into a charming venue.

“I wanted an animal I could humanize. I asked Wheeling artist Bob Villamagna to work with me on designing the alligator. We went through many versions until we had it right. Then I had to call Bob back and say, ‘We’ve got to work on it again. You have to put my red shoes on the alligator.’”

Sweet Endings Finish your meal with a cup of French press coffee and an artfully folded sweet crêpe, such as the Last Tango (chocolate-hazelnut spread with seasonal berries and freshly whipped cream) or the Strawberry Fields (fresh strawberries and freshly whipped cream).

Seating Options A large patio in the back doubles the seating capacity during warmer weather. Haddad laid the brick patio herself.

Three Popular choices

Pulp Fishin $8.77

Tomato basil soup topped with a puffed pastry alligator $4.97

Last Tango $8.57

When Susan Haddad decided she wanted to open a business, she originally thought she would open up a coffee shop, not a crêperie. “It took me three-and-a-half years to renovate my building. By the time I finished, a coffee shop had opened right around the corner. The Centre Market District had a fish market, a deli, a diner, a Lebanese bakery, and everything had an ethnic ring to it. I knew I needed something unique,” she says. And with that Wheeling was introduced to its first crêperie. Now, eight years later, Later Alligator is still dishing out popular savory choices like the Merican in Paris (turkey with brie and oven-roasted tomatoes) and the All Hat and No Cattle (southwest Cajun chicken, black beans, Monterey pepper jack cheese, oven-roasted tomatoes, and spinach, all topped with Mornay sauce). Sandwiches like the Pulp Fishin (marinated shrimp and sliced avocado with lettuce and tomato on a toasted croissant with fresh herb dressing) and the newly introduced Blue Bayou (shredded roast beef with sautéed mushrooms, onions, and roasted red peppers) are also popular options. “Running a restaurant is not easy,” Haddad says. “We’ve had our ups and downs, but we are at a good place. Wheeling has given back to me more than I’ve ever given it.”  2145 Market Street, Wheeling, WV 26003, 304.233.1171, lateralligator.net

written & photographed by Nikki Bowman

Finance

Keeping Our Assets at Home A law authorizing Domestic Asset Protection Trusts could stem the flow of capital out of the state. written by Pam Kasey

irst, understand this: Even if you’ve taken steps to protect your assets, you may have failed. “Under West Virginia law, when a trust is created, the assets in the trust are available to the beneficiary’s creditors,” says Charleston estate planning attorney Christopher Winton. In one exception, a “spendthrift trust,” assets placed by a father in a trust for, say, a deadbeat son cannot be tapped by the son’s creditors. But, Winton says, “since it’s such a powerful idea to exempt assets from creditors, our Legislature says you can’t create one for yourself.” Of course, titling real estate in both spouses’ names can protect it, as can putting money in an IRA or in the name of a son or daughter. But each has disadvantages. So the second thing to understand is, West Virginians who want a better way to protect their assets send them out of state. “If I’ve got a doctor as a client and he has an extra $2 million he wants to protect, ultimately I have to tell him, go to Alaska. An attorney will set you up in an Alaska bank with an Alaska Asset Protection Trust. Or go to Delaware. Or Missouri. Or South Dakota.” Those states and 25 others allow people to exempt assets from their creditors through some form of Domestic Asset Protection Trust (DAPT). With a DAPT, Winton says, the doctor can sleep well at night “knowing that, if he gets sued and loses all his other assets, he always has that to fall back on.” A family might be exposed to unexpected liability through the unfortunate find of an old toxic waste dump in the backyard, he says. A bad marriage can create a need for protection. Some people just can’t handle money and need protection from themselves. But what if that doctor really is negligent?

Focus January/February 2015

That’s the kind of question that came up when Winton and others made their case before the the Joint Standing Committee on the Judiciary in October 2014. Or, say a borrower takes out a mortgage and transfers the assets to a DAPT, a scenario Colorado attorney Edward Brown, who co-wrote a guide on DAPTs and presented at the meeting, says was discussed. The borrower makes payments, but only until the statute of limitations has expired for a creditor to recover protected assets from the trust— leaving the bank, in lawmakers’ fears, high and dry. It’s not like that, for two reasons, Brown says. The lender would likely have a lien against the collateral real estate, and so would be first in line before the DAPT. In addition, the statute of limitations would only begin when the lender learned the assets had been transferred to a protected trust—as long as state law provides for that. Asset protection planning isn’t typically pursued by people seeking ill-gotten gain, Winton says more broadly. It’s pursued by people who want to protect what they’ve earned and saved. The potential upside is untapped economic activity. “Money is leaving West Virginia and it’s sitting in the First National Bank of South Dakota,” Winton says. The bank’s trust department earns management fees, pays taxes to the state, and pays attorneys to file those tax returns. Brown says trustee fees in Nevada, one of the first states to enact DAPTs, are estimated at more than $10 million a year, and there are other economic benefits, too. Legislation Winton drafted as a member of the West Virginia State Bar Association to authorize DAPTs in West Virginia may be introduced in the regular 2015 legislative session.

CHEERS & JEERS Gary Southern and several other Freedom Industries owners and managers were federally charged in December 2014 for violations of the Clean Water Act following the chemical leak that left 300,000 without drinking water in January 2014. #HoldingFeetToTheFire

West Virginia University graduate Justin Chambers won a $10,000 award at the November 2014 TransTech Energy Business Development Conference. His business, WindPax, specializes in portable power-generating wind turbines. #InnovationFindsSuccess

Former coal executive Don Blankenship, who led Massey Energy at the time of the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion, was federally indicted in November 2014 for violating mine safety laws. Twenty-nine miners died in the Massey-owned mine—the deadliest mine disaster in 40 years. #Accountability

Shale contractors were ordered to pay more than $4 million in back wages to thousands of workers in West Virginia’s and Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region in December after a federal investigation uncovered violations of federal wage laws. #PaymentIsNonnegotiable

West Virginia billionaire and mine owner Jim Justice failed to pay $2 million in fees for safety violations, according to a November 2014 NPR investigation. Justice’s violations topped the list of thousands of mine operators NPR called out for safety practices. “As of April … 500 penalties were overdue, four times as many as any other delinquent mine owner.” #JusticeForCoalWorkers

Giving Back Philanthropy

A Charleston couple is as committed to quality health care for West Virginians as they are to their causes. Written By Morgan Grice

Courtesy of Kent State University

ohn and Fonda Elliot are in the business of compassion. For more than three decades, the Charleston-based couple has owned AMFM Nursing & Rehabilitation Centers, the largest privately held multi-facility nursing home company in West Virginia, with 15 locations spread across the state. But this self-made duo isn’t just a health care power couple. In the world of West Virginia volunteerism, the two also top the list. The couple’s causes truly run the gamut. Both sit on the board of The Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences; Fonda Elliot serves on the board for Charleston Area Medical Center; John Elliot sits on the board of the Buckskin Council and is chairperson of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. In fact, the two currently sit on or preside over so many boards, associations, and foundations—on the local and national

level—listing them all wouldn’t leave any room for the driving force behind the couple’s commitment to giving back. That force comes from a firm belief in the idea that success is not just about reward, it’s about responsibility. “Leadership is all about service,” John Elliot says. It also comes from an unwavering dedication to education and not forgetting where you came from. The first in their families to attend college, the Elliots met as undergrads when he was an architecture student and she was pursuing nursing. Upon graduating, John Elliot opened his own architecture practice, while Fonda Elliot began her health care career. The couple’s interests would serve as good complements when, within a few years, his practice began focusing on building nursing homes. As the business prospered, the couple founded AMFM in 1982 and began their life in Charleston shortly thereafter.

As their success grew, John Elliot says he always kept in mind that whether from family, community, or professors, he’d always had help along the way. “My father came to this country from Ireland with nothing,” he says. “But I know I didn’t make it on my own.” Remembering that success is never bred alone has been integral in the couple’s determination to pay it forward. Though long committed to active volunteerism, it’s only been in the last decade that the pair’s philanthropic efforts have met their own high standards of contribution. “It took from 1970 to approximately 2005 for our entrepreneurial spirit to finally bear the financial stability so that Fonda and I could add philanthropy to our volunteerism and giving back,” he says. In 2008 the couple and their sons began The Elliot Foundation, which has given well over $1 million to organizations geared toward mentorship, arts, and education—most of which the two were already actively involved with. And their support— in terms of time, effort, and money—has been key to keeping important entities like the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra alive. “John’s unending dedication to the symphony is the reason the institution is able to bring great music and music education to the entire state of West Virginia. His sharing of his time, talent, and treasure is a model for other patrons and donors to the orchestra,” says Joe Tackett, the organization’s president. As for future philanthropic efforts, the couple recently announced their largest landmark pledge of $5 million through The Elliot Foundation to the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University in Ohio—where the couple met. The money will go in part towards developing a master’s program for health care design and 10 new scholarships for architecture grad students, extending the couple’s compassion to financially strapped college students. John Elliot says, “If it wasn’t for Kent State and the school of architecture, I would not have had the foundation to develop my architectural practice and a health care company that employs more than 1,500 West Virginians and provides care for over 1,100 patients.” Focus wvfocus.com

Founders

West Virginia I loved the people, I loved the place. I felt at home.â&#x20AC;?

josh saul

â&#x20AC;&#x153;When I came to

Larry Groce Founders

MOU N TA I N STAGE HO ST | I n te rv iewed by Shay M au n z

In 1983 Larry Groce helped found Mountain Stage, a two-hour live performance radio show that is now distributed by NPR Music and Voice of America. He’s served as the show’s host and artistic director since. Before Mountain Stage, Groce was a working musician—he’s recorded 22 albums, everything from Americana to gospel to children’s music—and in 1976 was nominated for a Grammy for Disney’s Children’s Favorite Songs, volume I. Groce grew up in Dallas, Texas, and first came to West Virginia in 1972 because of an artist-inresidence program through the National Endowment for the Arts. We caught up with Groce recently to talk about music, Mountain Stage, and doing the impossible.

»» I grew up in a more suburban lifestyle, but I liked the rural lifestyle. When I came to West Virginia I loved the people. I loved the place. I felt at home.

»» Usually when you’re a kid you like pop music, and

I did, too. I liked pop music and The Beatles and everything else—but I had another strain that was interested in folk music. I bought my first Bob Dylan album when I was 13 or 14.

»» When we decided to start Mountain Stage we had no equipment, no experience, no nothing, so it was a big leap of faith. We didn’t know enough to know that this was pretty much impossible to do, and I think that’s a good thing—it’s harder to write a new song after you’ve heard 100,000 songs. »» It’s a certain naïveté that let’s you do something like this—or maybe it’s better to think of it as innocence. But you’ve got to keep some of that, “Why not do this?” You can talk yourself out of it all day, but at some point you just have to do the thing you want to do. »» Nothing stays around for 30 years without evolving. We have a format, fortunately, that allows us a lot of flexibility.

»» I come from a time before mission statements, and

I’ve never been particularly comfortable with that whole idea because I think a lot of the best things are done by instinct. You do have to have a system and a rational way of approaching things, but a mission statement to me gets a little too close to saying, “I’m going to have focus groups and decide what to do based on what these focus groups say.” And that’s not art. Art is an individual’s point of view.

»» We wanted to bring on a broad selection of music, and we found it was easier to do a show where we could grab a bunch of different genres and take the best music from them, rather than taking one genre. »» The position of host on the show is not to be the star by any means. It’s someone who doesn’t say too much, just brings on the acts warmly—and every once in a while says something funny. »» West Virginia is a great place, it really is, and some

people need to be convinced of that. I want to see young people growing up saying, “Man, this is cool.” And that’s always on our minds when we’re doing this show.

Focus wvfocus.com

Agenda

Maintaining the Right to Vote Voters confined to health care facilities on Election Day can ensure their access to the ballot.

written by Pam Kasey

e U.S. citizens value our right to vote, but sometimes we have to take steps to maintain that right. Take, for example, the citizen who moves into a long-term care residence. In the course of dealing with the move and, often, medical issues, a family may be little concerned with ensuring the ability to vote—yet for elders who are lucid and engaged it remains a meaningful part of citizenship. Others suffer sudden hospitalizations just before Election Day and, without full information, may be deprived of democratic participation. As West Virginia’s population ages, a growing part of the state’s electorate may face either of these situations. West Virginia Focus had a look at the rules.

Long-term Care

A lot of elders move into long-term care facilities for help with some of the tasks of daily living, but remain mentally engaged. There are about 10,000 licensed nursing home beds and 3,300 assisted living beds in the state, and some share of that represents interested voters. The state Bureau of Senior Services not only encourages seniors in long-term care to exercise their voting rights, says Commissioner Robert Roswall, but also encourages facilities administrators to help their residents vote. Seniors and their families can take some steps on their own. Long-term care residents who wish to continue voting need to register at their new addresses. It doesn’t have to be done in person: The registration card can be downloaded from the secretary of state’s website and mailed to the clerk of the county

Focus January/February 2015

of residence, and must be postmarked at least 21 days before an election—we’ll get to what happens if the move takes place within that 21-day window below. If immobility due to illness or age is a consideration, that’s justification for an absentee ballot. That application also may be downloaded from the secretary of state’s website and must be received by the county clerk more than six days before an election. But seniors in long-term care may also benefit from assistance from their places of residence. State licensure rules for nursing homes and assisted living facilities call for encouragement and assistance, although no specific requirements are laid out. “Practices vary from provider to provider, says West Virginia Long-Term Care Ombudsman Suzanne Messenger, “with some merely providing information about the absentee process and others actually providing transportation to the polls.” Wyngate Senior Living Community, an independent and assisted living community in Weirton, provides transportation for anyone who wants to vote. “An upcoming election is part of our newsletter for the month, and it’s the activity for the day—the activities person turns on the TV and talks about politics with the residents,” says Residence Manager Mark Cummings. In the assisted living section of 60 beds, four or five residents typically vote, and most residents in the 10 independent cottages vote. At Ravenswood Care Center assisted living facility in Jackson County, staff make residents aware as Election Day

approaches, according to administrator Phyllis Meyers. Families typically provide transportation to the polls, she says, while the facility provides transportation for those under the its care through the state. The admission contract may hold information about how a provider promotes its residents’ right to vote, Messenger says. Residents and their families can also contact Messenger at 877.987.3646 or a regional ombudsman at 800.834.0598 with questions or complaints.

Emergency Voting

Taking up a new residence is one thing— having emergency surgery on election eve is another. What do you do if you find yourself in the hospital on Election Day? Cue the emergency absentee ballot. Emergency ballot service presents ballots on Election Day directly to voters who are recently confined to licensed health care facilities, according to Secretary of State’s office spokeswoman Amber Epling. Some counties deliver to voters who have lived in long-term care facilities for less than 30 days. But the service primarily covers people who are in the hospital. Some counties even deliver to hospitals in adjacent counties or within 35 miles of the county seat. The rule for obtaining an emergency ballot is to call the county clerk by noon on Election Day. “Here in Marion County, we can go to Harrison County if a voter is at United Hospital Center or Monongalia County if they’re at Ruby Memorial or Mon General,” says Marion County Voter Registration Clerk Mary Gay Priolette. “Emergency ballot commissioners stay there while the person votes. We did emergency ballots for eight people in this last election.” Some circumstances merit flexibility: “One gentleman just got out of the hospital and we took it to his home.” The numbers vary. For the general presidential elections of 2008 and 2012, around 200 emergency absentee ballots were cast, according to the secretary of state’s office. For lower-profile elections, the numbers are typically in the several dozens—just 36 were filed in the November 2014 election. sos.wv.gov

top issues

What’s Up With Our Water? One year later, is West Virginia’s water safer? Written by shay maunz

nikki bowman

t’s been a year now since the January 9, 2014, chemical spill that left 300,000 West Virginians without potable water for days. In the immediate aftermath of the spill, which happened on the second day of the 2014 legislative session, there was a rush to action. With an engaged citizenry breathing down their necks, lawmakers spent the next two months hammering out legislation that could prevent another emergency like this one and make West Virginia’s water safer all around. The result, Senate Bill 373, was introduced January 16 and approved by both houses on March 8, after being amended more than 60 times. In its final form, the “spill bill” edits or creates 50 sections of state code. The legislation went into effect June 20, 2013, and then moved into a phase just as uncertain as the legislative process: implementation. Many of the reforms introduced by SB 373 had loose ends—some reforms will take years to implement, and some are so complicated that there’s bound to be tweaking. To study and monitor the implementation and effectiveness of SB 373 the Legislature established a special group called the Public Water System

Supply Study Commission. That commission submitted its first annual report on December 15, but much of what members were asked to assess is still being sussed out. On three of the five points they were asked to weigh in on, the answer was something along the lines of, “We’ll have to wait and see.” There are two provisions in the bill that are especially ripe for changes. The first is a new rule that says most public water systems have to create or update their source water protection plans. Those plans aren’t due until June 2016, but there’s already been some talk of that deadline as being unrealistic. There have also been complaints from people at some small utility companies who say they don’t have the expertise to craft these plans in-house or the money to hire outside help. To that end, the commission recommended that legislators appropriate $12.2 million over three years for the development of these plans—which could be a hard sell for some lawmakers. “I’m very concerned that with the tight budget we’re facing, and with the possible expense of this, that some people will balk and we’ll not fully fund what we need to do,” says Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, D-Monongalia. Then there’s the rule requiring that all aboveground storage tanks be registered and inspected by the state—it’s estimated that there are 50,000 tanks in West Virginia, and the idea is that regulators should know more about them than they knew about the tanks at Freedom Industries last January. It’s pretty obvious now that lawmakers will be revisiting the guidelines saying which tanks

must be inspected and which are exempt. “There’s probably going to be a big debate about exemption,” says Evan Hansen, an environmental consultant with the Morgantown firm Downstream Strategies. “Should we exempt all tanks from the coal industry? That’s what they’re asking for. Should we exempt all tanks used by the natural gas industry? That’s what they’re asking for.” Senator John Unger, the lead sponsor of Senate Bill 373, says that while we shouldn’t leave whole swaths of industry exempt from regulation, we will have to make some new exemptions this year. “If there’s an attempt to weaken Senate Bill 373, it’s going to be detrimental,” he says. “But we know more today than we did back then, and changing provisions to meet the needs of our present environment—that’s something we should do.” With the change in the balance of power within West Virginia’s Legislature—Republicans now have the majority in both houses—Fleischauer is worried some lawmakers’ distaste for government regulation will result in a weakening of the bill. “I think there’s a lot of confidence after the election, and people may say that's a mandate to do things differently,” she says. Plus, last year’s bill was passed under intense public scrutiny—this year it’s different. Everyone is drinking their tap water now, after all, and thinking less about what’s going on in Charleston. “I think the concern is that the people won’t be as engaged this time as they were before,” Unger says. “I’m concerned that some special interests could weaken the legislation for their own economic benefit, to the detriment of public health.” Unger is optimistic the “spill bill” won’t be gutted by lawmakers this year though. After all, it was unanimously approved in 2014. “The people in the leadership roles here voted for it,” he says plainly. “West Virginia will not be judged on what happened to us in January with the chemical spill, because that could have happened anywhere. What we’re going to be judged on is how we reacted to it and what we put in place to try to prevent it from ever happening again.” Focus wvfocus.com

Keeping SCORE Big Idea

Lawmakers are looking for answers for southern West Virginia.

ne person is worried about housing for the aging population. Another thinks we need to do more to support child care centers. There’s someone who thinks we need to attract more light industry to augment the energy industry, and someone else who thinks we really ought to invest more in solar power. A few people are concerned about the water supply and want to know what we’re going to do to keep it clean. Several mention tourism and say they want the state to do more to fund and promote it. That’s a lot of ideas—which is a good thing, because this meeting was all about ideas. This was the second meeting of a West Virginia legislative task force called SCORE, or Southern Coalfields Organizing and Revitalizing the Economy. In midNovember 2014 around 50 community members and a handful of lawmakers came to the Southern Appalachian Labor School for this meeting. The lawmakers sat at a table at the front of the room, facing a podium. The community members crowded around round tables, waiting their turn, until one by one they were invited to speak—to tell the assembled legislators what they think would most help southern West Virginians. The result was a sprawling mass of complaints, comments, and ideas—some of them more practical than others, but all intended to help people and economies in the southern part of the state. Then-Senate President Jeff Kessler formed SCORE in mid-October, calling it an early step toward finding ways to give southern West Virginia opportunities to diversify and strengthen its economy. “Southern West Virginia has become a region stricken with a lack of opportunity

Focus January/February 2015

and hope,” he said at the time. “It’s time to change our way of thinking so that it can once again become a region that offers our children and grandchildren opportunities for a better future.” In essence, SCORE was a listening tour. Kessler and the 12-person task force—all lawmakers from southern counties—held three community meetings in three southern communities. The idea is that

lawmakers will take what they heard from citizens and work it into legislation when the next legislative session begins in midJanuary. That might not sound entirely novel— lawmakers spend a lot of time talking about what kind of legislation they should pass, after all, and even have a lot of community meetings similar in format to this one. And SCORE was indeed

Lynette Masselli

written by shay maunz

“Southern West Virginia has

become a region stricken with a lack of opportunity and hope. It’s time to change our way of thinking so that it can once again become a region that offers our children and grandchildren opportunities for a better future.” Jeff Kessler, Senator

inspired by a similar initiative in Kentucky. But SCORE is taking an especially hard look at an especially vexed issue: the increasingly dim economy in southern West Virginia, and the precarious position of the coal industry there. “Layoffs and mine closings have become almost routine events,” Kessler said when he announced the formation of SCORE in October. “This is a time when communities need and deserve serious attention and action from our government officials.” In an interview Kessler said SCORE signals lawmakers’ intention to do just that and insisted it isn’t just lip service. “We spend a lot of time just passing legislation,” he says. “We’ll have the next 60 days in the session to worry about legislation—this gives us an opportunity to form legislation based on real needs in the communities that we represent, based on the issues they perceive to be a problem and the solutions that might be available, particularly in the short term.” Three members of SCORE—Senators Mike Green, Truman Chafin, and Greg Tucker—lost re-election bids in November, which led to some confusion about the status of the task force. Would it be put on hold? But no, Kessler says he never intended to halt the project after the election—no matter the outcome. Will the change in leadership make it more difficult for the task force to see real, concrete legislation come out of all this talking? Maybe, but SCORE has been touted as a bipartisan effort—three of 12 members are Republicans—and Kessler says the legislation that emerges from these meetings should be the same. “The problems in southern West Virginia still exist after the election,” he says. “The problems of dealing with stresses on the local economies based on the downturn in the coal industry aren’t going away based on the passing of the gavel from a Democrat to a Republican or a Republican to a Democrat.” Focus wvfocus.com

New Towns TTTA

More than 23,000 people voted to select our next Turn This Town Around towns. Meet the winners. written by shay maunz

watched the people there talk, plan, and make things happen. Now it’s time for two new towns to get to work. In December 2014 we announced the finalists in two categories—towns with fewer than 1,500 people and towns with between 1,500 and 6,000 people—and opened up voting on our website. More than 23,000 votes later, we have our towns: Whitesville and Ripley. We’ll hold the first meetings there in February 2015 and then watch as these communities work to find ways to revitalize their downtowns, build new business, and diversify their economies. But first, let’s get acquainted.

Whitesville

year ago, in our very first issue, we launched a bold initiative called Turn This Town Around. The idea was simple but ambitious: Take a team of people who have skills and expertise in community development and

Focus January/February 2015

place them in two West Virginia towns that are hungry for change. Over the last year we at West Virginia Focus, along with our partners at the West Virginia Community Development Hub and West Virginia Public Broadcasting, have spent a lot of time in Grafton and Matewan. We’ve

Whitesville is a tiny town nestled into the southern coalfields in Boone County, around 20 miles from the spot where John Peter Salling first discovered coal in West Virginia. Even in its heyday Whitesville was a small community, but it once thrived. The Main Street was lined with businesses, and travelers driving Route 3 often stopped there for food, gasoline, and shopping. But over the last few decades the area’s coal industry has declined, and Whitesville along with it. “It’s definitely one of those towns that’s seen better days,” says Hollie Smarr, who owns one of the few small businesses still operating in town. “In the last 20 years we’ve seen a slow decline, not just in population but in businesses. In the last few years it seems like everybody has just lost hope.” A few months ago the town’s only grocery store closed. Now the closest place to buy groceries is 25 minutes down the road; most people make a weekly trip to Charleston, an hour away, to shop. “It’s hard,” Smarr says. “It seems like the last thing to go in a community is always the grocery store.” Smarr grew up in Whitesville, just like her parents and grandparents before her. She moved away to go to college and then pharmacy school, but in 2013 she and her husband decided to move back to her hometown to open their own pharmacy. “It’s one less vacant building in town,” she says. A few months ago she and a friend

interested in reviving Whitesville, Adam Pauley, started a community group. “I think we had all reached a point where we were all tired of it,” Smarr says. They called it ROST, or Reviving Our Small Towns, and held a meeting to get the community involved. Around 25 people showed up to talk about what they want to do to make Whitesville a better place to live—and then Pauley pulled out a copy of this magazine, and turned to an article about Turn This Town Around 2014. “I’d watched the progress Matewan and Grafton made over the course of the past year, and we thought that we would be a great candidate,” he says. “I think a lot of people are eager and willing to work and participate, but we realized there is a lot of professional help that comes along with the program, and we need that.” Pauley and Smarr nominated the town for the 2015 round of Turn This Town Around. The community— and then some—turned out to vote: In the end, Whitesville beat Alderson, the closest competitor, by 1,273 votes. That’s more than twice the population of the town.

Population: 514 Area: 0.3 square miles Median Age: 42.5 Median household income: $19,250 Mean travel time to work: 28 minutes Notables: Upper Big Branch Miners Memorial; birthplace of musician, playwright, humorist, and poet Billy Edd Wheeler

Ripley

Ripley sits at the intersection of U.S. 33 and Interstate 77, about halfway between Charleston and Parkersburg. That central location is both a boon and bane for the community—Ripley isn’t so remote that residents feel isolated, but it’s such a short trip to those larger towns that people easily leave Ripley and drive 30 miles to see a movie. “We need to keep our people here to go out and spend money and do things,” says Carolyn Rader, Ripley’s mayor. “I want the kids to grow up and say, ‘Gee, when I was growing up in Ripley I had so much to do there.’” The town has a modest but active small

Turning Around Towns Grafton

Ripley

Whitesville

Matewan

business community. The Mountain State Art & Craft Fair, one of the top traditional craft fairs in the country, has been held in Ripley every year since 1963—it was founded for West Virginia’s centennial celebration—and has given rise to a handful of local businesses that center around primitive crafts and home decor. But, as in many small towns, the number of local establishments has declined in recent years. “We used to have a bowling alley, we used to have two movie theaters,” says Mike Ruben, director of Ripley’s Convention & Visitors Bureau. “It’s different than it used to be.” Rader says 12,000 cars take exit 132 off of I-77 every day to get gas and food from a chain restaurant just a few miles from downtown Ripley. “We need to get them over the hill and into downtown,” she says. It was Ruben’s idea to nominate Ripley for Turn This Town Around 2015, but Rader and the rest of the town embraced it with gusto. Rader herself took to the streets to campaign, holding a sign on the

side of the road, encouraging community members to vote. At a city council meeting she told some high school students about the campaign. “They said, ‘Mayor, we are on this. Don’t you worry,’” she says. “My daughter teaches at the high school, and she says there were kids in school sneaking into the corner with their cell phones to vote.” In the end, Ripley edged out Hinton by 376 votes. The first question Rader asked of us when she heard the town had won was simple, but also grandiose: “How big can we dream?” she says. “I think Ripley is going in the right direction, but we want it to move forward. We want to think big.”

Population: 3,252 Area: 3.3 square miles Median Age: 46.1 Median household income: $25,861 Mean travel time to work: 25 minutes Notables: Cedar Lakes Conference Center, Mountain State Art & Craft Fair Focus wvfocus.com

Education

Teaching, for Richer or Poorer West Virginia’s teachers are making more—but is it enough? written by shay maunz

e hear a lot about how much money teachers make in West Virginia. The average teacher’s salary here looks paltry compared to the national average—we rank 48th among states in that measure. Just across the state line, teachers earn between $5,000 and $12,000 more, depending on the state. And it’s gotten worse in recent years. In 2013, the average West Virginia teacher made 3 percent less than in 1999, accounting for inflation. Then, in 2013, we heard all that would be improving. That’s when state lawmakers

Focus January/February 2015

approved a flat $1,000 raise for all teachers. After years without a pay increase, aside from small incremental raises meant to keep up with inflation, this was a welcome, if not overwhelming, change. Union leaders were quick to say that $1,000 increase would not be enough. “That’s just a step in the right direction,” says West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee. The real win, Lee says, was in language included in the bill that set a much loftier goal for the future: a $43,000 starting salary for teachers by 2019. “Now we have to determine whether we want to make that commitment to our kids going forward,” he says.

Critics say that $43,000 goal is unrealistic—it would mean a $10,000 pay increase in five years, or a $2,500 raise every year, and lawmakers had to dip into the state’s Rainy Day Fund just to fund 2013’s modest raise. Still, that kind of raise is what’s needed to put West Virginia’s teachers on par with the rest of the country—nationwide today the average starting teacher makes around $36,000. It would also mean West Virginia teachers would probably make more than teachers in Ohio and Kentucky, if not the rest of the bordering states. What we talk about less is why, exactly, all of this matters. And that’s different than what happens in most other places, where there’s plenty of debate about whether an extra $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 paid to each teacher is going to help students learn better. Would the money make teachers work harder? Would more talented people enter the field? Research consistently shows that teacher quality is one of the most important factors—if not the single most important—in improving student performance, but it’s hard to say what exactly it is that makes a great teacher so great. Some people have guessed paying teachers more money might help make good teachers great, and that’s sparked debate nationwide. When a small charter school was founded in New York City in 2009 with an auspicious premise—teachers would be paid $125,000 annual salaries in an effort to boost student achievement—it made headlines nationally. More headlines came in October 2014 when a study of the school’s progress suggested it could be working: The school has attracted a team of all-star teachers, and its students are doing better than comparable students in New York’s public schools. In West Virginia the conversation is different and the goals less lofty—when we talk about increasing teachers’ salaries here, it’s mainly to entice enough qualified people to teach in West Virginia’s classrooms. According to numbers from the state Department of Education, West Virginia was short qualified teachers to fill nearly 685 positions during the 2013-14 school year. Around 1,400 people graduated from West Virginia colleges with education degrees and fewer than 500 went on to teach in West Virginia. Many

“We must work together in a collaborative fashion to ensure that our teacher salaries are competitive with border states.” Michael Martirano, West Virginia State Superintendent of Schools education officials think West Virginia’s low salaries are part of the reason. Teachers see that they can get similar jobs in other states, even close to home in one of West Virginia’s border states, and make more money. It’s an obvious decision. “Money talks,” says Michael Martirano, West Virginia’s state superintendent of schools. “When you’re talking about an increase of thousands of dollars, over the lifetime of your career that’s huge. As much as I know teachers are very altruistic and very giving, at the end of the day it is their livelihood. Teachers are extremely savvy, and we have to have higher salaries because we have to have that competitive edge.” Martirano became the state’s superintendent in September 2014, and in October he released a plan outlining 10 priorities for the start of his time at the helm of the state’s school system. In it he directly mentions teacher salaries—signaling that the issue is not going away anytime soon. “We must work together in a collaborative fashion to ensure that our teacher salaries are competitive with border states,” the plan reads. “We must retain our teachers. This is the main vehicle that allows all student goals to be achieved.” The question is, how many more pay raises can the state afford to give teachers in the next several years? And how much money do we have to pay teachers to improve retention and recruitment? Martirano doesn’t think we need to get into an arms race with surrounding states, but he does think West Virginia needs to work to hoist itself onto an even playing field with the states bordering it. “What I want to do is take salary out of the equation so our teachers aren’t thinking about leaving us based on money,” he says. “I understand there’s a finite amount of money, and we have to determine where we’re going to spend those dollars to get the most bang for our buck. I’m of the belief that we need to spend those dollars on things that keep giving for future years. We want to provide hope for our teachers, to let them know they’re working in a state that values them enough that, even during tough economic times, it’s going to make an effort to provide increases to them.” Focus wvfocus.com

Extreme Escape Three West Virginia businessmen share their experiences with extreme adventures. Written by Katie Griffith

arathons, mountain climbing, extreme kayaking, and highspeed racing—when it comes to an after-work release it seems there’s nothing West Virginia’s businesspeople won’t do. We asked a few to share their experiences with thrilling sports and their inspirations to do them. A Race to See the World One thousand five hundred and seventy. That’s a low estimate of the number of miles Charleston commercial lawyer

Focus January/February 2015

Jim Sturgeon has run in competition throughout his life. “I’ve been running marathons and racing for close to three decades,” Sturgeon says. He claims he’s finished more than 60 26.2-milers in that time, including three Boston Marathons, two through New York City, two through Chicago, and two through Berlin, plus races in Prague, Dublin, and Edinburgh. Why so many races? “It’s a hobby,” he says. “Why do people play tennis or golf?” Marathon racing is perhaps a little more extreme than golf, but his running is more about seeing the world. Travel, his real hobby, has taken him across the globe—

sight-seeing in Iran, trekking through Patagonia, and, recently, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest freestanding mountain in the world. The trip was Sturgeon’s first real high-elevation experience. “Kilimanjaro is a doable mountain climb,” he says. “It’s not like Mount Everest, which has an incredibly high risk factor. I thought it would be a fascinating thing to see.” Sturgeon’s tour went up the mountain’s western breach, described as the most challenging way to climb Kilimanjaro but also the least crowded. “We started climbing at 4 in the morning,” he says. “At that hour of the day the temperatures are so low that the rocks are more likely to be frozen and less likely to come down on top of you. You have to be up over the rock fall areas before the sun comes up.” After a long climb, the group camped out at 16,000 feet, on top of the clouds. “It’s an incredible view from that height,” Sturgeon says. “You usually can’t see the top of Kilimanjaro from the base of the mountain because of the clouds. When you get above the cloud level it’s unlimited visibility and quite bright.” Despite the breathtaking views, Sturgeon says he has no plans to climb Kilimanjaro again. The tents were too cramped. Instead he’s heading off on a twoweek bird-watching trip to Japan. A Whirlwind of Family When Kevin Bealko was just a boy, the youngest of five brothers, he was bitten by the racing bug. After his father, a miner, was killed in the mine, Bealko’s brothers became his mentors. “My oldest brother, Rob, was a gearhead up in Uniontown, Pennsylvania,” he says. “Carts, bikes—whatever it was—we loved to race.” Once he started college, however, that family pastime sort of fell away. “Between basketball and getting a college education, racing was way down on the list.” Getting married, raising kids, and founding the Bridgeport coal-loading business Marion Docks didn’t allow much time for racing, either. But several years ago when Bealko’s mother passed away, he says the five brothers realized the glue holding their family together was also gone. “We didn’t have a reason for everyone to get together,

courtesy of jim sturgeon

Work-Life Balance

courtesy of Kevin bealko; courtesy of fred glotfelty; courtesy of jim sturgeon

The Bealko family has two race cars and a squadron of fans. Fred Glotfelty unwinds by kayaking in South America. Jim Sturgeon has run many marathons and even climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

other than the holidays,” he says. They decided to get back to that old boyhood passion and create a drag racing team. “Everyone thought it was a wonderful idea. This would be a great way to stay in touch and do what we do.” They called their team Black Diamond Motorsports, after the family’s history with coal mining. What started as a fun hobby has turned into a sponsored gig with an entourage and more than a dozen events per year. “We have two cars in our arsenal and we’re just loving it,” Bealko says. “I do it mainly to network with my brothers and our friends, but there’s nothing like driving these cars. It’s the thrill. Six seconds, 225 miles per hour. When you let up the clutch it’s a real kick.”

Defying Death on the River Navigable rivers can range in difficulty from Class I to Class V, the latter defined as “hazardous” and requiring expert moves to avoid serious injury or death. Fred Glotfelty’s first white water trip was on a Class IV run. “I came out of my first river kayak with two broken ribs,” the West Virginia tire heir says. “I jumped into it headfirst. It was a rough adventure, but it didn’t discourage me.” That was in 1995. Glotfelty, now vice president of the family-owned Glotfelty Tire empire, was looking for something to do on his own. His family, he says, is full of enthusiastic hunters and, while Glotfelty has always enjoyed the outdoors, hunting wasn’t for him. Before kayaking, he was

into mountain biking. Before that he was traveling in the military. “It gave me a bug,” he says of his time in the military. “It’s part exercise and part my love of nature. I spent a lot of time in the woods my entire life, exploring, climbing rocks, and being outside.” He’s completed hundreds of river runs since those first broken ribs, including three rivers in South America, three in Costa Rica, and dozens throughout the United States. “Wild and scenic rivers are hard to beat,” he says. One of his favorite memories was a run in Peru that requires a three-day commitment. “The everyday can get you stressed out a bit, but the scenery of the river and the adrenaline release takes it all that away. It cleanses you.” Focus wvfocus.com

Noteworthy Launch

from another state and people thought he was only trying to make a name for himself. He’s also a Rockefeller, of course. And that’s what people focused on at first,” says John Cuthbert, director and curator of the West Virginia and Regional History Center at West Virginia University. Rockefeller would go on to become the longest serving member of his family—as everything from governor to secretary of state to senator. In 2013, nearly half a century after first setting foot in a tiny mountain town in West Virginia, the senator made the decision to leave office at the end of 2014, but not before giving one last gift to the people of the Mountain State. In November 2014, Rockefeller passed his legacy on to the public in the form of hundreds of thousands of documents, artifacts, gifts, awards, photos, and mementos from his time in office—all of which will be housed in the West Virginia University Libraries. Although only a portion of the Rockefeller collection has arrived and the library is in the process of cataloging it and preparing it for use, Cuthbert says students and scholars have already inquired, looking to dig into the long history of a man who dedicated much of his life to social service. “Here’s a guy who came from means. He didn’t necessarily have any financial mountains to climb or empires to build. But he wanted to do something meaningful. He saw people needed help and knew he was in a position to really make a difference in the world.” His biggest achievements included becoming one of the strongest advocates for health care reform, with uninsured children, working families, seniors, veterans, retired coal miners, and steelworkers being key subjects of his

Celebrating a Legacy A new archive and school at West Virginia University will preserve and share Senator Jay Rockefeller’s 50 years of service. Written by Mikenna Pierotti | Photographed by Elizabeth Roth

ay Rockefeller was born in the shadow of history. Even his full name—John D. Rockefeller— already had a legacy. His great-grandfather, also John D. Rockefeller, had been founder of the Standard Oil Company and was the country’s first billionaire. Rockefeller family money and effort had gone into everything from iconic buildings—like the Museum of Modern Art and Rockefeller Center in New York—to historical restoration projects like Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. And the Rockefellers had already made a political

Focus January/February 2015

Senator Jay mark, with governors, Rockefeller and senators, and a vice WVU dedicated president among a new gallery, archives, and the their ranks. School of Policy So when the tall, and Politics. handsome 27-year-old Jay Rockefeller from New York pulled into Emmons, West Virginia, in 1964, ready to get to work on things like rural poverty as a VISTA volunteer, he turned a few heads. And when that experience inspired in him a desire to do more and he ran a successful bid for governor in 1976, it’s no surprise he ran into a little skepticism. “He was coming

work. Education, adoption and foster care, increasing minimum wage, reducing violence in the media, and increasing schools’ access to the Internet were also major parts of his career. And he worked to attract foreign investment to the state and strengthen industry—two tactics that have won West Virginians thousands of jobs. With the addition of Rockefeller’s records, Cuthbert says WVU Libraries will become an even greater resource on state history. The West Virginia and Regional History Center in the Downtown Campus Library, already the state’s leading historical archives library, will now include more than a million items from Rockefeller—nearly all of which will be open to the public for historical research. Many other objects will be on display in the newly dedicated John D. Rockefeller IV Gallery, also in the downtown library. “We already have the papers of approximately two dozen West Virginia politicians—including Waitman T. Willey, who introduced the bill into the U.S. Senate to create West Virginia,” he says. “By acquiring Senator Rockefeller’s material we will really be running the gamut of West Virginia history.” Rockfeller also gave his moniker to a new school at West Virginia University— officially named the John D. Rockefeller IV School of Policy and Politics—in November 2014. The school will be housed in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and will bring together the political science, public administration, international studies, and leadership studies programs. “Consistent with Senator Rockefeller’s career in public service, the establishment of the Rockefeller School at WVU is a powerful way to fulfill our land grant mission and to capture the breadth and depth of WVU’s expertise and apply it to meet the needs of West Virginians,” says Scott Crichlow, the new school’s director. “At the same time, the school provides a venue for increasing public confidence in and awareness of the value of government and the vital role government has in solving society’s problems.” wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu, eberly.wvu.edu Focus wvfocus.com

connections

Honk if You’re Home What do you do when you cross the state line into West Virginia? There’s nothing quite like the feeling of coming home. In November, New South Media polled some of its followers on WV Living magazine’s Facebook page, asking, “Do you have a ritual or tradition for crossing the state line back to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia?” More than 150 of you commented. The verdict? Y’all are serious horn honkers.

“I always flash my headlights and blow the horn as I cross the state line.” Tim Toothman

“Yes! We hoot, honk, and holler all the way through the tunnel while blasting Davisson Brothers! And every time, we tear up. It’s always an amazing feeling to cross back into our home state.” Anita McPherson Mummaw

“I have to hit Tudor’s Biscuit World! Also turn on ‘Country Roads’ or start singing it.” Zach Chittum

“I have been driving back and forth from North Carolina to Morgantown for 30 years. I always lay on my horn when crossing the state line.” Karen Williamson Floyd

Focus January/February 2015

“We always honk our horn. My parents did it and now we carry on the tradition!”

“My grandma always said to blow the horn, so I do.”

Angela Snyder

Jess Parkins Hodges

“We always blow the car horn— been doing so for over 35 years.”

“We always beep the horn when we hit the state line. Home sweet home.”

Tressa Bunch

Jessica Pressman

“I always turn to my husband and say, ‘West Virginia welcomes Warren,’ and he turns and says, ‘West Virginia welcomes Christine.’ It is always a rush to who says it first.” Christine P. Keller

Focus wvfocus.com

Public Art as Public Good community

Can murals and sculptures help transform a blighted business district in Charleston?

written by shay maunz | photographed by g.L. Callihan

harleston’s West Side neighborhood isn’t often thought of as a hub for art and culture. It’s the most troubled neighborhood in Charleston, and one of the most troubled in the state—the poverty and crime rates are high, and rates for employment and educational achievement are low. And there are a staggeringly high number of vacant buildings there—13,000 according to one estimate. Still, there are good things: The infrastructure of this once bustling working-class business district is

Focus January/February 2015

still much intact, if dilapidated. And there are signals that business district might be coming back to life, if slowly: There are a few more restaurants on the main drag today than there were five years ago, and several new businesses in the office buildings. There’s a new public park. Every summer there’s an ice cream social in the streets, and every fall there’s the OctoberWest festival. All of those good things are due at least in part to West Side Main Street, an economic development group formed in 2005 to work on reinvigorating the ailing neighborhood by

concentrating on the heart of the community: its downtown. To that end, West Side Main Street has tried a lot of interesting initiatives—from using grants to coax property owners into upgrading the facades of their businesses to planning neighborhood events designed to foster a sense of community. But none of those things has made quite the splash that the West Side Wonder Mural has. “People are coming over here to see it—I’ve seen people getting pictures taken in front of that mural,” says Adam Krason, president of West Side Main Street’s Board of Directors. “It’s really become a focal point and a draw.” That mural is the most recent public art installation on the West Side, and maybe the most striking. The piece, designed and painted by prominent Charleston artist Charlie Hamilton, covers the entire side of one two-story building downtown, with colorful, whimsical creatures packed into every nook and cranny—some imaginary, some real, some historical. There’s everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Maya Angelou to Charleston Mayor Danny Jones. “And it’s all there to help people connect with the neighborhood,” Krason says. “It’s a mural that helps build a sense of place.” It’s not the only one. There’s a series of smaller murals that tell the history of the

“It’s a mural that helps build a sense of place.”

adam krason, president of West Side Main Street’s Board of directors, of the west side wonder mural

neighborhood, a steel sculpture that houses a free book exchange, and a temporary installation of plastic bottles filled with colored water and fitted into a chain link fence—a response to the January 2014 water crisis. In all, West Side Main Street has been involved in the installation of seven public art projects in the neighborhood—a lot of art for one two-mile Main Street. It packs a big visual punch. These pieces aren’t just public art for art’s sake—this is art in the name of economic development. “A lot of the time when people talk about public art they start by looking at it like,’ Can we get people to visit our area to see the public art?’” says Paula Flaherty, chairperson of West Side Main Street’s design committee. “What we’re trying to do is look at ways we can improve the neighborhood, help people establish a

connection to the neighborhood, help people feel comfortable in the neighborhood so people will come over here to shop, eat, spend time.” The idea is to pretty up the business district so visitors, the community, and business owners see its potential. Public art just happens to be an especially charming—and cost effective—way to do that. In the last year or so West Side Main Street has taken a special interest in vacant buildings that are especially ripe for development in the hopes of enticing property developers into buying or leasing them. West Side Main Street’s biggest public art success story to date might not be the West Side Wonder Mural, even with all the good press and praise from the community. It might be the project at the old Staat’s Hospital building—a historic building that has been in disrepair for years.

Locals have long complained that the blight of that prominent building has been holding up development in the business district as a whole. In September 2013 West Side Main Street hired a local artist to paint window scenes on plywood boards, which were then installed on the building’s broken windows. There was also a new sign advertising that the building was for sale and supplying contact information—a simple project that gave the building a bit of a facelift. “It was really a remarkably simple, affordable project, Krason says. But it worked. In May 2014 a pair of property developers purchased the building and began planning renovations. “We’d like to think that project had something to do with that success,” Krason says. “And that we can repeat it at other buildings.”

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REVITALIZATION

Sprucing Up Thomas This tiny Tucker County town continues to improve upon an already great thing.

ature, community, the arts— the 500-some population of Thomas has long been a place to escape to. People seem to be the best versions of themselves there—hiking, skiing, making art, or just having fun—and folks on the ground are working hard to make life there even better. “The first time I came here was about eight years ago. A lot of young people were moving here, making life work, starting their own businesses or piecing together jobs. We wanted to be in the mountains,” says Emily Wilson-Hauger, AmeriCorps member for local nonprofit New Historic Thomas (NHT). Originally from Pennsylvania, she and her husband have lived in the Canaan Valley for three years. Wilson-Hauger says the biggest project NHT has taken on centers around the banks of the North Fork of the Blackwater River. The Thomas Riverfront Park Development Plan—developed by Green Rivers, NHT, and the city—has been talked about for years, but it moved closer to reality in 2014 when NHT received a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The money will be used for environmental site assessments, cleanup plans, and community outreach. The environmental assessments will include sampling the site’s soils to test for contamination. “Since there was past railroading and mining activity, we want to make sure it’s safe to have a park there,” Wilson-Hauger says, adding that getting the EPA grant was a huge deal. “It was very competitive. We’re one of the smallest towns to get one, and it’s all volunteers managing the grant.” The riverfront plan aims to connect several miles of rail-trail and 200 acres

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of park that are split by the river. A trail follows East Avenue on the main, storefront side of Thomas for about a half-mile, and on the other side of the river are a few more miles of trail. “You can’t get to it from this side of the river without going over the highway bridge,” says Thomas Mayor Matt Quattro, who hopes funding for a pedestrian bridge comes in by spring 2015. NHT was working with the city to apply for a Division of Highways recreational trails grant in December 2014 to help cover a pedestrian bridge. “Getting these trails connected so someone can come into Thomas, go shopping, go eat, but then hop on their bikes is so important,” WilsonHauger says. Quattro was born and raised in Tucker County before moving away, but has been

back in Thomas for some 20 years. He’s watched as the city went from booming coal town to quiet ghost town to a place that buzzes with tourists. He and others, including Reid Gilbert, saw that the town was depressed in the ’90s and decided to do something about it. Quattro says Reid was an instigator behind bringing the arts to Thomas, as he studied under Marcel Marceau as a mime and came to Thomas for its 1902 opera house—of which restoration efforts are still under way today by nonprofit group Alpine Heritage Preservation. Quattro and Gilbert were both part of the original NHT group, founded in 1996 before slowing to a halt around 2005. The riverfront project was just one of the efforts originally conceived by that early NHT group, though the group could never

elizabeth roth

written by Laura wilcox Rote

get enough funding to bring it to fruition. “The riverfront plan has been there for a long time,” Quattro says. “It’s really what the town needs.” While the nonprofit essentially went dark for many years, a good-sized group started holding meetings again just a few years ago and a new board was elected in 2012, Wilson-Hauger says. “The West Virginia Community Development Hub really helped them get momentum going again.” Current NHT membership is 20 or 25, though a lot more people give their time, she says, from beautification efforts to making trail signs. Working with the mayor and city council, NHT’s mission is to preserve the city’s built and natural environment, businesses, and people so Thomas continues to be a thriving

environment for residents, visitors, and the business community. “Thomas has had a lot of its downtown buildings restored in the last five or so years,” Wilson-Hauger says. “NHT would like to keep that momentum going, to work with property owners and Woodlands Development Group to help encourage more of those buildings on Spruce Street to be fixed up as well.” In 2012 NHT also completed a Vacant and Dilapidated Buildings Survey to help prioritize redevelopment efforts. “If you go to most small towns this size you wouldn’t see the change and community development and quality of life and economic development that you see here,” Wilson-Hauger says. “A lot of community development workers don’t get to see what their work is doing because it

The Thomas might be years down the Riverfront Park road before they see any Development Plan was developed by change, but we’re seeing Green Rivers, NHT, it. It’s incremental, but and the city. NHT it’s here.” has a small core team plus many Quattro is hopeful volunteers devoted about Thomas’ future. to beautification “We have a different and revitalization. group of people now in the last five years,” he says. “Most of them came here to work in the ski industry or summer tourist industry. They liked it here, they stayed here, they developed businesses, and they put roots down. The revitalization is because of the younger people. I tell them, ‘It’s all yours. You need to take it and run with it.’ And they have.”

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Waste Not Energy

Much of the Eastern Panhandle’s household garbage will soon be converted to a solid fuel.

written by Pam Kasey

ive years or so ago, the Berkeley County Commission decided to acknowledge the elephant in the Eastern Panhandle: As the area’s population grows, the space for landfilling its garbage diminishes. “They recognized that a future landfill would be difficult or maybe impossible to site,” says Clint Hogbin, chairman of the board of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority (SWA). “They wanted to know about alternatives to landfilling.” The SWA looked at several ideas: waste-to-diesel fuel, waste-to-gasoline, waste-to-briquettes. Then local cement manufacturer Essroc suggested a solution its sister companies in Europe use: Entsorga Italia’s technology for converting waste to a high-BTU solid fuel. “People went to Europe and looked at it, and it took years to work through it and get comfortable with it—it was not something that’s been pushed real fast,” Hogbin says. But in October 2014, after several years to get project partners and details in place, Entsorga West Virginia received its last permit and was cleared for construction. Here’s how West Virginia’s first wasteto-solid fuel operation will work. Rather than trucking waste directly to the SWA’s landfill, residential hauler Apple Valley Waste Services and a local counterpart will deliver waste collected in Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan counties to the new plant, to be constructed on property the SWA owns in Martinsburg. A mechanized process will separate the waste into several streams: recyclables, low-BTU waste for landfilling, and high-BTU waste to be dried using a circulating warm-air process and shredded to a uniform consistency. The

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Disposition of Municipal Solid Waste EU27 (2012) U.S. (2012) WV (2011)

landfill

Recycle/compost

Energy Recovery

Sources: European Commission, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Columbia University state-by-state study. Note: EU energy recovery figure is incineration with or without recovery, the best data available.

solid fuel that results will be trucked a couple miles to Essroc’s plant. “The whole concept is a win-win-win on a lot of levels,” Hogbin says. While landfill space is conserved, the SWA’s revenues actually increase: Entsorga West Virginia will pay the SWA the same 50 cent-perton fee it gets now for each ton of waste delivered, and also will pay millions over the course of a 30-year lease on the site. More thorough attention to material recycled is expected to double the volume. Co-fired with coal by Essroc, the new fuel will decrease the cement plant’s carbon dioxide emissions. And 12 clean, high-paying jobs are created. Throughput volume at the new plant is not yet certain. Incoming, the facility is

permitted at the same volume as a Class B landfill, Hogbin says: up to 500 tons per day, with a cap of 9,999 tons per month. Apple Valley has committed to supply 7,300 tons of waste per month, and other sources may come into the project as well. Outgoing, about 5 percent by weight is expected to be recyclables, 25 percent low-BTU materials like glass and vinyl plastics that will be routed to landfill, and the remaining 70 percent material that, once processed, will result in fuel of about half the weight of the total original incoming volume. So every 1,000 tons coming in would leave as about 50 tons of recyclables, 250 tons of landfilled material, and 500 tons of fuel. For our energy-geek readership, the fuel the plant produces will

courtesy of berkeley county solid waste authority

have about 75 percent the BTU content of This Essroc plant in Martinsburg will coal, by weight. burn Entsorga’s While the waste-to-solid fuel concept fuel to reduce is new to West Virginia and Entsorga’s carbon dioxide emissions. particular technology for making it happen is new to the U.S., the Italian company has built five such facilities in Europe. The state and nation are benefiting from Europe’s experience. “Over the last 20 years the push of the European Union toward coordinated policies for recycling, waste recovery, and diversion from landfill has transformed Europe into a global lab for new technologies and new business models related (to) waste and sustainable development of advanced economies,” reads an Entsorga presentation on the project. Entsorga West Virginia expects to begin construction on its $19 million facility in March 2015 and to produce its first fuel in late 2016. While other parts of West Virginia aren’t experiencing the Eastern Panhandle’s growth, Hogbin thinks resource recovery could still be a good approach. “Movers and shakers in the solid waste industry are predicting 15, 20 years from now resource recovery will play a major role,” he says. “Just because we have the land to build a landfill doesn’t mean it’s the smart thing to do.” entsorgawv.com Focus wvfocus.com

An Ivy League-educated oncologist is bringing his expertise to southern West Virginia. written by shay maunz

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thought experiment is helpful when trying to understand one of the largest, if most basic, shifts in the health care industry that’s happened in the last decade. First, think of health care as a product. Like any product, it has to be delivered to the people who want and need it. But how? With the traditional model, it’s simple: A patient sees a doctor and is maybe sent to one specialist, then another, and perhaps referred to another provider for therapy after the fact. “We could look at it in terms of a vertical structure,” says Anshu Jain. “We could say the product starts in one place and then goes to the patient.” But over the last several years another model has come into favor—a more collective, collaborative approach. Think of all kinds of health care providers huddling in a circle, with the patient in the center. “We can focus on a center of excellence,” Jain says. “We can form a center of excellence around, say, oncology, in which we pull physicians and service providers from other disciplines, and get them all together in a horizontal structure where they all are focused on the overall comprehensive care for the patient.” That means getting a lot of physicians and health care professionals—everyone from surgeons to nurses to occupational therapists—to talk to one another, regularly and often. It’s a tricky proposition in any setting, but especially in rural areas, where geography is a barrier. In big hospitals in cities, physicians are assigned to teams that follow individual patients or come together regularly for meetings. In rural settings partnerships tend to be more informal, which means they can be harder to build and maintain. Jain, a radiation oncologist, has taken a special interest in this, what he calls the “organizational design” of health care—he’s researched and published academic papers on the health care system and what makes for good leadership within a health care team. And he’s watched the way large academic medical centers are trying to revamp organizational design in urban hospitals: Jain did his postdoctoral training at Harvard University’s Massachusetts General Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center’s New York Presbyterian Hospital. “I got to

Courtesy of Anshu Jain

Doctor in the House Who's Stepping Up

“It was an opportunity to practice in the community that raised me.”

Who’s Stepping Up

A Pass for Cass A new operating agreement means the historic railroad has a new lease on life. written by shay maunz

Nikki Bowman

Dr. Anshu Jain see firsthand and be a part of the way care is delivered there, and all the decisions that are made as far as physicians, nurses, patients, and how all those factors interact,” he says. “What I didn’t have a sense of is oncology in a rural community and what challenges are faced by those rural communities in terms of delivering care. How can we use some of those tools that larger medical centers are using?” So when his residency at New York Presbyterian came to an end, Jain didn’t rush into a job at another large medical center. Instead, he returned to his hometown in Ashland, Kentucky, just 16 miles from Huntington, to take a job at the Ashland Bellefonte Cancer Center, and he took his dedication to rural health care one step further by joining the Logan Regional Cancer Center in Logan. “It was an opportunity to practice in the community that raised me,” Jain says. He’s now working with his father, a medical oncologist who has been practicing in Ashland for three decades. He’s also a clinical instructor at the Yale University School of Medicine, and travels to Connecticut a few times a month. Returning to his hometown isn’t necessarily a reflexive choice for such an accomplished young physician—Jain says his friends thought he was nuts not to stay in the big city, or take a job at a larger health center—but after a lot of debate he decided it was the right thing to do. Jain wants to spend his professional life doing something that matters, and he thinks there’s more room to improve the system we use to deliver care in rural settings than in urban ones. Plus, with his rural Kentucky upbringing and Ivy League pedigree, he’s uniquely qualified for the job. Since he returned to Appalachia in August, Jain’s been working on building informal partnerships with health care providers in Kentucky and southern West Virginia. He wants to have a short list of “enthusiastic and passionate” people who he knows are ready to see patients in their own communities. He thinks that, with those partnerships in place, the Logan Regional Cancer Center and other rural centers can offer care for most patients that rivals what they would receive in larger urban hospitals. “If I can make people feel more comfortable about staying at home for treatment I think we’ll have accomplished something important,” Jain says. “I never undervalue the psychological aspect of being in your community and being surrounded by friends and family as you go through something like cancer. For something that is so fundamentally transforming a patient’s life, I think we owe them that.”

hen rumors started circulating last spring about the possible closure of Cass Scenic Railroad State Park, a furor erupted. A Facebook page called “Save the Cass Railroad” was formed in April 2014 and within five days had more than 5,000 “likes.” Supporters passed around contact information for lawmakers and media outlets, urging the public to contact them and beg for Cass to be spared. The scenic railroad, which runs excursions on a fleet of historic engines, is one of West Virginia’s most cherished assets. Still, state officials say Cass has been operating at a loss of around $1.5 million for years now, putting a strain on the state Division of Natural Resources. Enter the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad, which already operates several successful train excursions out of the Elkins Depot, including the ever-popular Polar Express train rides every winter. In November ownership of Cass was transferred from the DNR to the state-owned West Virginia Central Railroad, with the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad under contract for operations of the railroad. That means Cass is safe, and all the people who love it will come to see it, not shuttered, but instead operating more and longer train excursions. West Virginia Central Railroad owns track that connects with Cass and is already working on coordinating the schedules of all its trains so passengers can take longer tours of the state by rail. Focus wvfocus.com

Hometown

Written by Shay Maunz

Today Luke Frazier is an accomplished musical conductor—he’s the principal pops conductor of Fairfax Symphony Orchestra and often serves as a guest conductor at halls across the country. But before all that, Frazier was a kid growing up in Parkersburg. Here, we talk with him about his favorite hometown spots.

The Smoot Theatre

“As a kid it was such a special, magical place,” Frazier says of the Smoot in Parkersburg. The theater was built in 1926, and it was used as a vaudeville house and movie theater. In 1989, days before the old theater was set to be demolished, a group of local volunteers stepped in to buy it, and then worked for years to restore it. The Smoot has since hosted theater, dance, comedy, lectures, and all kinds of music. “Growing up in a small-ish town, to get to go see a theater, to go see dressing rooms, and to see how a stage worked—it was all so foreign,” Frazier says. “I fell in love with it.”

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Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park

“That’s the place I grew up visiting for family picnics and everything,” Frazier says. He’s not alone—the island and the historic mansion on it are a favorite family destination. “Riding over there on a sternwheeler—that’s a really neat experience,” he says. Sternwheeler is the only way to reach the island, and once there visitors can opt for more novel transportation with a horse and carriage ride. The grand mansion of Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett the burned to the ground in 1806, after the owners were accused of treason and fled their island home, but visitors can now tour a reconstruction.

The Blennerhassett Hotel

Frazier remembers the Blennerhassett Hotel as the go-to spot for any “really fancy school event” when he was a teenager, but his appreciation of the historic hotel has survived well into his adulthood. “The history of the place is great,” he says. “And they have really beautiful meals.” The Blennerhassett was designed and built by a Parkersburg businessman in 1889 to serve the oil and gas elite. Today the elegant, iconic building is a Parkersburg staple, hosting locals, visiting businesspeople, and wedding parties alike. “It’s a special place,” he says.

Seeing Greenbrier World-class luxury is right here in West Virginia.

n case you’ve forgotten, one of the best resorts in the U.S. is here in West Virginia, in the Allegheny Mountains. The resort receives plenty of recognition in an ordinary year, but 2014 saw The Greenbrier racking up even more awards for its excellence in the industry. In August, Condé Nast Traveler named The Greenbrier one of the Top 20 Resorts in the South. The magazine also put the resort on its Gold List, which lists the best places to stay in the entire world. The Greenbrier’s collection of five golf courses hasn’t gone ignored: Golf magazine gave the resort its Platinum Resort Medal and named its Old White TPC one of the top 100 golf courses in the country in 2014. And the spa, with its sulphur spring water baths, was named one of the Top 25 Spas in the World in 2014 by Condé Nast Traveler.

greater parkersburg cvb; Carla witt ford (2); Nikki bowman

Luke Frazier’s Tour of Parkersburg

Travel

HEALTH

Targeting Black Lung A national expansion of a miners’ health service rolls out this year.

Written by Katie Griffith

he 2014 expansion of federal mine safety regulations did more than increase dust monitoring and lower exposure limits across the country’s coal mines. The regulations expanded a major effort to track mining-related lung diseases that researchers estimate have killed tens of thousands of miners since the 1960s. In 2015 every coal miner, underground and surface, will be eligible for free health screenings that track the development of black lung and related diseases for the length of a miner’s career. Since the early 1970s, the Morgantownbased National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has offered the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program to underground miners nationwide, free of charge. Miners are eligible to have x-ray

The NIOSH mobile screenings upon entermedical unit takes ing the mining profesthe health surveilsion and then at five-year lance program to hard-to-reach areas. intervals throughout their careers to screen for evidence of coal worker’s pneumoconiosis (CWP), more commonly known as black lung disease. From 2000 to the end of 2009, NIOSH Respiratory Disease Studies Director David Weissman says the program identified 900 cases of CWP in the country, with West Virginia accounting for one-third. Of the total number of CWP cases found, 100 were the most severe kind of CWP, progressive massive fibrosis, and 45 of those were in West Virginia. “Black lung is a bigger problem for West Virginia than for many states,” he says. The disease, which is caused by inhaling coal mine dust, produces scarring in the lungs, trouble breathing, and chronic coughing. With the new federal mine safety regulations, the program has been expanded to include surface miners, who are particularly at risk for a disease called silicosis. As surface miners cut through silica rock to reach coal seams, they inhale the dust, which can cause similar scarring in the lung tissues. In addition to CWP and silicosis, NIOSH can now also screen for COPD—chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—with the surveillance program’s addition of a test measuring the speed and quantity of air

that passes through a person’s lungs. According to recent studies, three times as many miners have COPD as have CWP. “If people get any of these diseases, and they’re severe enough, they can cause shortness of breath, particularly with exertion,” Weissman says. “If it’s really severe, they won’t be able to walk up a flight of stairs or even do simple things like household chores.” The costs of the program have run about $1 million per year, shouldered by mine operators and NIOSH. With the surface mining expansion rolling out in January 2015, costs are expected to increase to $2 million. Participating medical facilities, paid for by mine operators, are responsible for assuring that x-rays are examined on-site by qualified physicians, who report back to the miners. The facilities then send the x-ray images to NIOSH, which does more in-depth analyses. “NIOSH separately notifies the miner of those results,” Weissman says. “If the physicians looking at the x-rays for NIOSH see anything that requires quick medical attention, like lung cancer, NIOSH directly calls the miner to make sure they know about it.” Miners found to have black lung disease are legally eligible to be transferred to different jobs within the mines where they would be less exposed to inhalants. They may also be entitled to compensation. The program is voluntary, though mine operators are required to post information. According to Weissman, participation levels have traditionally hovered around 30 to 40 percent of the mining population. “So it’s likely that there are more cases than what we’ve found,” Weissman says. In an effort to increase participation, NIOSH has a mobile medical unit that targets problem areas where participation is low. “It’s beneficial to miners to know if they have disease, particularly so they can take steps to protect themselves and prevent things from progressing,” Weissman says. “The other benefit is the ability to see across the country if there are still issues and where they’re occurring so we can target efforts to try to make things better.” Focus wvfocus.com

Biometrics Warfighter in Supp or t of t he

The Department of Defense uses biometrics to identify terrorists and insurgents, protecting U.S. soldiers abroad. But when Defense’s biometric database works with Justice’s and Homeland Security’s, they’re all more powerful. w r i t t e n b y Pa m K a s e y P ho t o s c o u r t e s y o f t he U. S . De pa r t me n t of De f e n s e

ore than 3,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the field by improvised explosive devices. IEDs could be an anonymous and almost riskless act of violence for the killer, except for one thing: Bomb fragments retain fingerprints. Or if military personnel find a remote detonator in the field, they can sometimes recover the prints of its maker or user. Matched against records in the Department of Defense’s biometric database, latent fingerprints like these identify terrorists—and lead to their capture. “We had what we called a ‘superhit’ a few years ago,” says Vincent Johns, of the DOD’s Biometrics Identity Management

Activity (BIMA), in illustration of the potential for biometrics on the battlefield. “This individual was connected to 154 latent prints from 42 separate IED cases over a two-year period. We caught that guy.” DOD’s use of biometrics is embodied in the motto “Deny the Enemy Anonymity,” and it’s carried out in Clarksburg, where BIMA maintains and operates the department’s Automated Biometric Information System. ABIS stores fingerprints and other identifiers collected from military detainees, prisoners of war, and terrorist suspects around the world, along with latent prints collected from bombs and scenes of other hostile activity. Focus wvfocus.com

DOD’s biometrics activities first came into West Virginia with the establishment of the agency’s Biometrics Fusion Center (BFC) in Bridgeport in 2001. The choice of location put it near the FBI’s criminal fingerprint repository, which the Department of Justice had located in adjacent Clarksburg a decade earlier. The BFC was a temporary operation created primarily to test biometric devices. But following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the BFC’s focus shifted to enhancing the security of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. “The greatest problem they have over there is trying to determine who’s who on the battlefield,” then-BFC Director Sam Cava explained at a conference in 2005—for example, when boarding ships on the high seas. “Traditionally they’d go up and say, ‘Do you have any terrorists on board?’” he laughed. It was a wry joke that underlined the difficulty of protecting U.S. soldiers in unconventional war zones, where combatants may wear civilian clothing and blend in with the general public. “We’re trying to add one more tool to the toolkit to help establish identities.” Working with

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U.S. soldiers capture the FBI, the BFC in 2004 created ABIS: a fingerprints in the field repository of biometric data collected in and send them by satellite to the Department of military operations, patterned after the Defense’s biometric FBI’s renowned Integrated Automated repository in Clarksburg. Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). ABIS now contains more than 280,000 latent fingerprints. Here’s how that helps the U.S. warfighter distinguish friend from foe. Say a soldier submits a fingerprint, via satellite, collected from a local who’s waiting to pass at a military checkpoint. “If it matches one of these latent prints, things can be set in motion,” Johns says. “They can apprehend that person or, if they already have them in custody, they can keep them in custody.” ABIS also helps with the orderly establishment of local peacekeeping by keeping insurgents out of positions of sensitivity or power. Some Iraqis applying to be trained at the Iraqi Police Academy, for example, have matched records in ABIS. A surprising and valuable insight came from early comparisons of war zone biometrics with the FBI’s database of U.S. criminal fingerprints. Some people fingerprinted in Iraq and Afghanistan, it turned out, already had criminal histories in this country: For

courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense

The Value of Interoperability

example, more than one out of 100 detainees fingerprinted in Afghanistan in late 2001 appeared in the FBI’s database for earlier arrests in the U.S. “The records suggest that potential enemies abroad know a great deal about the United States because many of them have lived here,” wrote The Washington Post in 2008. That insight led to greater collaboration between the departments of Defense and Justice and also later with the Department of Homeland Security, which keeps a biometric database to help enforce immigrations and customs laws. Each of the three repositories is designed to support its department’s particular mission, but interoperability makes all three more powerful. Because of its success in the military theater, biometrics has come up through the ranks of the DOD. The temporary BFC evolved into today’s BIMA, a major branch of the Defense Forensic and Biometric Agency that was created in 2013.

courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense

BIMA’s Future A massive 2009 software system upgrade turned the 2004 ABIS prototype into a leading-edge, multimodal biometric system, with support for tenprints, palm prints, iris scans, and facial images. Next Generation ABIS, created by Northrop Grumman, saw so much use that it was already well over its planned capacity by 2014, storing 12 million biometric records on 7 million individuals and fielding 15,000 queries each day. While it remained efficient— it matched more than half a million identities in fiscal 2013 and, according to Johns, only about 10 percent of queries required manual processing—the system is undergoing another upgrade, to ABIS 1.2, designed to store 18 million records and manage double the daily transaction volume.

Those 15,000 queries per day are, of course, Taking an iris scan. not all internal to the DOD. The collaboration with the departments of Justice and Homeland Security continually grows, and BIMA has added other interagency and international partners as well. “Over the past five years the submissions from interagency partners have gone from just a handful to more than a third of our annual submissions,” Johns says. “That tells me our interoperability is gaining ground—and we are more cooperative and therefore more relevant.” About 170 work at BIMA’s office, now located in Clarksburg. A handful are government civilians, while most are employees of the contractors that provide services to BIMA. “Contractors are involved in every facet of this organization. They’re vital,” Johns says. “They’re biometric and forensic experts, many of them graduates of West Virginia University and Marshall University. They’re also database administrators and software engineers, and also the folks that fill in the whole host of administrative functions any organization needs.” BIMA has also sponsored college interns, who often are later hired by contractors they’ve worked alongside. While Johns can’t predict the scale of BIMA’s future operations— “we expand and contract to handle our global requirements”— he notes its coming move. In an even deeper acknowledgement of the value of interagency cooperation, BIMA joins the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services division in 2015 in the 360,000-square-foot Biometrics Technology Center under construction on the FBI’s Clarksburg campus. “Working with our sister agencies is proving very valuable for protecting our borders,” Johns says. “We have a planned, sustained presence in North Central West Virginia.” Focus wvfocus.com

Small business gets its due in West Virginia. written by Pam Kasey | photographed by Carla Witt Ford

fter flying high for decades, Air Photographics of Martinsburg survived a near miss in 2014. It faced the same mid-flight decision all firms that shoot aerial photographs for mapping services have faced over the past few years: Upgrade to a $1 million digital camera, or compete for scraps in the shrinking film market. It was losing altitude fast. Longtime clients were moving on, and staff had dwindled from 34 employees to just seven. Enter Robert Marggraf. A corporate executive and entrepreneur turned business coach with the West Virginia Small Business Development Center (WVSBDC), Marggraf helped Air Photographics negotiate a camera on lease so it could fly the 2014 season for digital customers. Solid revenues proved the company could work in the digital market—and that led to financing that let the company buy the camera outright in November 2014. “Bob really went to bat for us,” says Vice President of Operations Don Siler. Without Marggraf’s coaching, “We would have gone out of business around May. Now we’re going to be hiring more people in the spring.” Small businesses in West Virginia are struggling. Consider two things:

“Small business

needs to be thought of as the wealth generator.” Kristina Oliver, WVSBDC Director

The number of the very smallest employers in the state— those with one to four employees—has dropped hard from a 1997 peak. Far fewer small businesses operate in West Virginia for its population than the national average. Yet small businesses are critical for two big reasons. On a micro level, they strengthen the fabric of our communities. “I don’t want to pick amongst my children, but I’ll say this,” says Keith Burdette who, as secretary of the state Department of Commerce, works to grow businesses of all sizes. “Small businesspeople typically have lived in their communities most of their lives. They coach Little League, they’re in the church choir—they’re not dealing with just customers, they’re dealing with their neighbors.” On a macro level, small businesses are the roiling, white-hot center of the economy, the place where risktakers turn passion to competition. “Small businesses, new businesses, are trying to overthrow existing businesses. They can be innovative, and that forces existing businesses to be more innovative,” says John Deskins, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University. “Having an environment where there are a lot of small businesses means your overall economy is doing more to push forward.” Such an environment may be just around the corner for West Virginia. Marggraf’s work with Air Photographics refreshed the company’s competitiveness, preserved the career satisfaction of seven workers in Berkeley County, and opened the door to new jobs to come—and it cost the company nothing. Marggraf is part of a WVSBDC push to expand the services of small business coaches to every entrepreneur who needs the help. And, increasingly, tight linkages between the WVSBDC, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s West Virginia District Office, and educators support entrepreneurs through everything from business plan to succession plan. WVSBDC Director Kristina Oliver sums up a new attitude that could turn the state’s economy around: “Small business needs to be thought of as the wealth generator.”

Focus January/February 2015

Got a business? Got an opinion? The West Virginia Small Business Development Center invites all businesses with fewer than 500 employees to share their needs and concerns in a brief survey. Visit wvsbdc.org in January 2015 to participate.

Got a question? Call the West Virginia Small Business Development Center’s Ask Me! Line with any question 888.982.7232

Pilot and Air Photographics executive Don Siler sits with the million-dollar Leica camera that saved the company. Some business challenges call for the help of an experienced business coach. Focus wvfocus.com

The Numbers

Figure 1

Let’s talk first about just how many businesses there are in the state. We know this in some detail—the U.S. Census Bureau has been keeping track of it since the mid-1970s. The total number of firms in West Virginia peaked in 2007—just before the Great Recession—at something over 124,000. It was down to about 118,000 in 2012. The breakdown by size shows that the number of larger firms is low and stable year to year in the low hundreds. But there are lots of the very smallest firms, and they wink into and out of existence all the time: between 1,000 and 2,000 firms of one to four employees open and a similar number close every year in the state, out of some 14,000 to 17,000 firms. The dynamic illustrated by all this is just what we might imagine: A little corps of large businesses troops on from year to year while a vast flutter of small businesses tries to make a go of it. Given that context, let’s think again about the meaning of those two statistics. Something has changed. Have a look at the number of those smallest firms, those with one to four employees (Figure 2). From 1997 to 2012, the number fell 20 percent from a peak to the lowest level in the entire 35-year period we have data for. This is not true nationally. It could be related to the structural shift in the state’s economy away from the kind of industrial manufacturing that has extensive supply chain needs, Steve Cutright speculates. He’s an entrepreneur and director of the WVU BrickStreet Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The rise of big-box stores has been part of the shift, too. When Walmart became the number one employer in the state in 1998, the top 10 employers were a mix of industrial, utility, retail, and health care companies. In 2014 it’s almost all retail and health care. “It doesn’t take much supply chain to sell clothing and provide health care,” Cutright says. Something may not be optimal. Far fewer small businesses operate in West Virginia for its population than the national average (Figure 3). In 2012 the state had about 1,500 businesses with fewer than 100 employees for every 100,000 residents, compared with 1,650 nationally. Unsurprisingly, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia among surrounding states exceed the national average, while Ohio and Kentucky track closer to West Virginia. States in the northeast and northern plains tend to have high numbers. Cutright cites a low tolerance for risk—“We see failure to be terminal whereas in the high-development places like California and Oregon they look at business failures as lessons learned”—as well as difficult access to capital. No one knows for sure. So many factors affect the business community, Deskins says: tax and regulatory policy at various levels of government, local entrepreneurial culture, the larger economy, and technological change, to name just a few. And the truth is, small business simply has not been a focus of study. “Economists didn’t differentiate between large and small business in theory or analysis until recently,” he says. “It’s a pretty new phenomenon in economics—like in the last 15

Focus January/February 2015

WV Firms by Size, 2012 sole proprietorships (76%) 1-4 employees (12%) 5-9 employees (6%) 10-19 employees (3%) 20-49 employees (2%) 50-99 employees (1%) 100-249 employees (0.3%) 250-499 employees (0.08%) 500+ employees (0.06%)

Figure 2

WV Firms with Employees 1977-2012 18,000

# of Employees

1-4

16,000

5-9

14,000

10-19

12,000

20-49 50-99

10,000

100-249

8,000

250-499

6,000

500+

4,000 2,000

1975

1980 1985 1990

1995 2000 2005 2010

2015

Figure 3

Firms with <100 Employees per 100,000 Population 1,900 1,850 1,800 1,750 1,700 1,650 1,600 1,550 1,500 1,450 1,400

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

years. For the overall body of economic research, that’s pretty new.” One important question we have no framework for gathering data on is what’s behind businesses failures. How many are natural and appropriate, death of the least fit—owners who realized their business models weren’t workable or decided entrepreneurship wasn’t for them? And how many are unfortunate losses to the economy, caused by factors that could have been foreseen and addressed by an astute business coach?

Wealth of Experience Bob Marggraf moved to West Virginia to retire and, by his own admission, failed. A former chief operating officer and president of several companies in the Washington, D.C., area, Marggraf in his past has raised $160 million in venture capital and conducted 11 mergers and acquisitions. He’s worked in resort development and, with his wife, has built up and sold two retail operations. “We built a second home here in West Virginia some time ago and decided to move up here and retire. We love the state and particularly the Eastern Panhandle,” he says. “Berkeley Springs is a unique town and we enjoy the arts and the health and wellness and the kinds of things the town stands for.” Marggraf joined the West Virginia Small Business Development Center as a contractor in 2011. “In my particular area here, I work with companies that are typically in place and established,” he says, distinguishing his typical work from that of coaches who help businesses with start-up. “They’re looking to recapitalize, expand, do an acquisition, or sell themselves, or maybe I’ll get involved in succession planning.” Marggraf has been pleasantly surprised to learn of the wealth of resources available to small businesses in West Virginia. “Between the Natural Capital Investment Fund, INNOVA, and the state’s Capital Access Program, there are a number of ways you can help companies that are barely bankable get capital. And the variety of experience in the WVSBDC network and the teaming that Kristina Oliver has built had been very effective in moving companies forward.” Why does an accomplished businessperson turn that expertise to the benefit of others? “It’s fun to sit down and work with these organizations and see the ‘Aha!’ moments come up, and to continue to work with them to drive them to success,” he says. “I guess I do it for the fun.”

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What Small Business Owners Think

SBA Loan Guarantees > $1 Million in Fiscal 2014

When Delegate Tim Miley became speaker of the West Virginia House of Delegates in 2013, he created a standing committee on Small Business, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development. “I didn’t feel like enough time was being focused by the Legislature or government in general on small businesses and entrepreneurs,” says Miley, himself owner of small business Miley Legal Group in Clarksburg. Throughout 2014, the committee hosted “Seeking Solutions, Celebrating Successes” listening tour stops at 10 locations across the state. Here’s some of what was learned.

• Isaac Jackson Hotel, Elkins

Streamlining Primary among the common themes that emerged during those sessions, Miley says, is a hunger on the part of small business owners for simplicity. “It’s not just as easy as filling out forms to become an S corporation or a C corporation or an LLC,” he says. “Different types of businesses also have different permitting and licensing issues. People want a one-stop shop where they can do everything from deciding on the type of business entity they want to form to meeting their licensing and permitting obligations.” Capital Limited access to capital is another obstacle businesses reported at the listening sessions. Continued development of the state’s angel and venture capital community would help, Miley says. While acknowledging that it isn’t the state’s role to be a bank, he also thinks the state could do more to offer help with start-up capital to small businesses. “Maybe there’s a way where the state could partner with others who have expertise in evaluating risk. But I think if we want to continue to grow our economy we have to continue to help small businesses and entrepreneurs prosper and create an environment in which they view West Virginia as offering that path to prosperity.” Workforce Another challenge discussed again and again at the sessions was a perceived lack of workforce preparedness. “Most of the small businesses that were panelists at these events have expressed a desire and willingness to hire more employees—many could expand tomorrow, if they could hire,” Miley says. The solutions to that are various, he notes, as is much discussed: encouraging all residents to get some form of posthigh school education, tightening the links between curricula and workforce needs, retraining older workers whose industries are changing, and connecting qualified grads and employers. Miley wants to revitalize 2014 legislation that didn’t go as far as he would have liked. “Last year both the House and Senate passed Project Launchpad, which provides incentives for high-tech businesses and jobs, but the governor vetoed that. So we might see how we can overcome his objections and try to revitalize that,” he says. And of new legislation that builds on listening tour lessons, he says he hopes at minimum to introduce legislation in 2015 that would expand access to capital. And some of these issues are already being addressed by the growing network of small business support.

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• Fred L. Jenkins Funeral Home, Morgantown • Skyline Management Group, Glen Morgan • Mace’s Pharmacy, Philippi • Ohio Valley Investors, Moundsville • Fritz’s Pharmacy and Wellness Center, Lewisburg • Neel’s Fence Co., Bridgeport • Even Hospitality, Morgantown • Greenbrier Technical Services, Ronceverte • Beckley Drilling & Blasting Services, Glen Morgan • Greenbrier Valley Brewing Management Co., Maxwelton

Building Capacity, Bridging Gaps

Part of a nationwide small business support network, the 30-year-old West Virginia Small Business Development Center has been on a new path for the past five years. That’s when Oliver, an entrepreneur and teacher of entrepreneurship, came on to direct the center. To give the WVSBDC a user-friendly front door, a simple way of matching needs to resources, Oliver re-organized the agency around this Three-Step Jump Start: A six-minute online video that explains the WVSBDC’s services. Half-day business fundamentals workshops held around the state for businesses just starting out or up to one year old. These take place frequently—there were eight across the state in December 2014 alone. The workshops are not quite free, but nearly: “It’s $35,” Oliver says, “because we believe you’ve got to put a little skin in the game.” Free, one-on-one business coaching Small business founders and owners know all about the goods or services they’re providing, but don’t necessarily know anything about how to get started or navigate business challenges successfully. The business coaching is the WVSBDC’s primary focus. Over fiscal 2011-13, WVSBDC coaches served nearly 4,000 clients across the state, Oliver says, and helped start more than 300 new businesses. She’s been growing the coaching staff and hopes to have at least 22 coaches statewide in 2015. Coaches are experienced businesspeople. “I’ve always looked for someone who’s been there and done that,” Oliver says. “If I’m sitting across from you and you’ve never felt the dilemma of, ‘Oh my gosh, payroll’s this Friday, what am I going to do?’ it’s going to be harder for me to take your advice.” And she works the coaching staff as a team, rather than by region. “If a coach in the Eastern Panhandle needs to partner with somebody in Charleston to get

A Lender’s Perspective With a 28-year banking career that spans three major financial institutions, markets across the state, and a heavy dose of commercial lending, Clay County-based business coach Sam Payne brings an invaluable perspective to his services. “When I was a banker, I had to look at, ‘Is this person in a position to borrow money?’” Payne says. “As a coach I can share in the enthusiasm of what they’re trying to accomplish. I can look before they go to the bank and help them get their balance sheet, their income statement, their cash flow statement together so they can present a better picture to the banker. And I can tell them if they’re not ready to go to the bank because they don’t have their financial position up to par. I hope I’m an essential partner in that way.” New to the WVSBDC in July 2014, Payne introduces himself in part by going door to door among existing businesses. And like all coaches, he takes referrals from the WVSBDC’s Ask Me! line and Business Fundamentals workshops. “I’ve had a couple folks who wanted to start small shops and we’re able to help with that. We’re also looking at existing businesses that want to make sure they’re properly positioned for growth,” he says. “One lady has a small business and wants to expand, and she said, ‘I’m just real excited that someone’s taking me seriously about what I’m trying to do.’ I understood exactly what she wanted to do. I will try my best to help that happen.” Asked why he coaches, Payne says, “It’s adding value to the community.”

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the skills together for what a client needs, that’s what we do.” That means entrepreneurs across the state have free access to the combined business wisdom of nearly two dozen helpers. The U.S. Small Business Administration works in threes, too— the three Cs: Counseling through partnership with the WVSBDC and with SCORE, previously known as the Service Corps of Retired Executives. SCORE helped about 200 West Virginia businesspeople directly in 2014 and provided trainings for about 1,000, says SBA Public Affairs Specialist Nikki Bowmar. SCORE has chapters in Charleston, Fairmont, and Huntington, and is working to add more. Capital The SBA doesn’t gives grants or directly make loans itself, Bowmar says, but its loan guarantees give a lot of small businesses the backing they need to get financing. In 2014 the West Virginia District Office guaranteed more than $42 million in loans to small businesses. Huntington Bank and MVB Bank were the top SBA lenders in 2014. Contracting The SBA certifies businesses in categories like disadvantaged, woman-owned, and disabled veteran-owned that give them priority for government contracts. “The federal government is the world’s largest buyer of goods and services, and 23 percent of government contracts are supposed to go to small businesses,” Bowmar says. “In 2014, $266 million was spent utilizing West Virginia businesses.” The WVSBDC and SBA work closely together so, for example, if an entrepreneur calls an SBA lender relations specialist to talk about the possibility of a loan guarantee, he or she might first be referred to the WVSBDC for help with the business plan—together, they might make a loan possible that otherwise wasn’t. And both agencies collaborate with chambers of commerce and economic development authorities across the state.

Raising Entrepreneurs from Scratch In March 2014, John Marshall High School senior Sierra Cook won a $10,000 college scholarship for her plan for a business to grow and sell shiitake and maitake mushrooms to restaurants in the Ohio Valley. Cook was one of 100 students across the state to enter the inaugural West Virginia High School Business Plan Competition. The jury is still out on whether entrepreneurs are born or made. Whichever it is, a little practice can only help. Now a decade old, the West Virginia Collegiate Business Plan Competition hosted by the BrickStreet Center has nurtured more than 100 teams from across the state through the process of creating competitive business plans. Thirty-six have started businesses. In the belief that entrepreneurs can blossom even before college, the WVU College of Business and Economics and the state Department of Education (WVDE) kicked off the high school business plan competition in the 2013-14 school year. Now in its second year, the competition attracted 102 entries from 21 schools, and response to a $1,000 Innovation Grant for the school with the most entries resulted in a tie: 16 each from Greenbrier East High School and Mercer County Technical School. “Statistically, about 5 percent of people will be entrepreneurial,”

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Cutright says—his BrickStreet Center admin- John Marshall High School’s Sierra Cook istered the high school competition in its won the WV High first year and now plays an advisory role. School Business Plan Competition in 2014. “We’re trying to teach entrepreneurship at earlier levels in the educational process. It’s my belief we should concentrate on sixth graders and beyond.” Participating in the competitions helps students develop the entrepreneurial mindset, he says, and that opens new possibilities in the long run. “In the college business plan competition, as many non-winners have started businesses as winners. If we can teach students at a young age to evaluate business opportunities, it may be 10 years before they elect to start their own business, but we’ve taught them a skill for life.” Ultimately, he says, “If we can contribute businesses to geographic segments of West Virginia that might be economically challenged, I think we can have a positive outcome.” Ultimately, our best hope for raising a corps of dauntless West Virginia entrepreneurs may be to start earlier still. “We need entrepreneurship education in K-12 for every student, every year,” says Gene Coulson. Formerly with the WVDE, Coulson now directs the nationwide nonprofit Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education. This material could be integrated into word problems and writing assignments early on, Coulson says. In middle and high school, students in the arts need to know that, if they’re going to sell their creations, they’ll have clients and pay bills and taxes—they’ll be entrepreneurs. The scientific-minded need to be taught how, if they invent the Next Big Thing, to go about marketing it. “They need to know they can start a business in high school, in college, after college, after working for someone else for 10 years—or if they’ve been laid off, or after they’re retired,” he says. “We need to teach our kids that, whatever they’re doing in life, that entrepreneurial pathway is there, just waiting for them to make the decision.” After a generation of lifelong entrepreneurial education, in Coulson’s view, West Virginia would be less dependent on big industry. “Our small rural communities would be healthier because they’d have more small businesses, businesses that stay put because they’re tied to the needs of their communities. Our state tax base would be more diversified,” he says. And maybe the biggest prize: “We we would reduce the brain drain in our communities. We would have more kids staying home.”

Irrepressible Entrepreneur Since leaving her successful career as a corporate marketing executive in the late ’90s to help with her father’s Ohio River valley telecommunications business, Lisha Conny just happens into new businesses. “Two of our companies do cellular towers and fiber-optic communications, and that was a branch-off from my father’s company,” she says. She bought some commercial screen printing and embroidery equipment to help with branding, then set up a business around that equipment. When she and her husband, Joe Conny, bought the commercial property where their businesses are located, they also ended up taking on a feed store that was housed there. “And we’re just about to start our sixth business, in real estate development,” she says. Her husband encouraged her to reply to the WVSBDC’s ad, and she started as a Parkersburg-based coach in October 2014. Small business owners don’t always realize what they’re getting into, Conny says. “Say a hobby woodworker makes beautiful rocking chairs and his friends and family say, ‘You should sell these.’ He quickly finds out most of his time is spent in human resources, sales and marketing, IT, whatever, and he might get to spend 5 percent of his time doing production. You don’t want a business owner to get disenchanted at that point. I’ve been that HR-IT-finance person, so I can take them through that.” Conny promotes her services in part by introducing herself to local commercial lenders: “Hey, I know folks come to you who want to start a business—I can help with the business plan they may bring to you on a napkin.” She works closely with the U.S. Small Business Administration and with city and county agencies in a six-county region, and with the statewide network of business coaches. “I tell these folks, I’m here to walk this journey with you. I’m here because I want to be here and I really want to give back.”

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After years of crime and drugs, bright days are ahead for Huntington. written by

Katie Griffith

photographed by

Elizabeth Roth

he sun rises, a blue sky gradually becoming visible among streaks of iridescent clouds. Shadows recede. A new day dawns in the Jewel City, its glimmer tarnished by a decade of depression. The roaches, as the mayor calls them, are retreating. The insidious fog of addiction and crime that has enveloped Huntington, West Virginia, and its residents for years is slowly being beaten back. For years those witnessing its decline from the safety of the La-Z-Boy in front of home TVs and the nightly news have winced at the thought of visiting, let alone living in Huntington, with its streets reputedly crawling with gun-toting drug dealers and prostitutes. Today the city’s scars are visible and fresh wounds await tending, but the healing has begun. Huntington’s wide boulevards bustled through the 1940s and ’50s with more than 80,000 residents. The population was sustained by the steel and manufacturing industries, buoyed by the rivers and rail running through the heart of the metro area. At the end of a busy work day Huntington’s residents retreated to bedroom neighborhoods—the elite to grand houses abutting even grander parks, and the blue collar workers to snug communities surrounding the downtown business district. The downtown had a proud history: When the Hotel Frederick opened in 1906, it was reputedly the largest hotel in the South. The Keith-Albee, an opulent vaudevillian theater, was built in the 1920s at the cost of $2 million and lit up Fourth Avenue with its live performances and motion pictures. Even through the mid-to-late-20th century, as industry declined and the population began to dwindle, Huntington glittered with big-city attractions and a neighborhood feel. But something changed. Sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s Huntington lost its reputation as West Virginia’s crown jewel for one of a crime-ridden ghetto. Focus wvfocus.com

Jewel City to Little Detroit “The way this happened was twofold,” Huntington Mayor Steve Williams says. “One, we had a reduction in law enforcement that opened the door, if you will. But the next part isn’t a Huntington problem, it’s an Appalachian problem.” Expert after expert point to the fall of economic opportunity as a precursor of drug addiction. As steel, glass, and mining dried up, jobs left Huntington and the state. Some followed work to major cities. Others stayed to scrape together lives with the remaining jobs. Those who could do neither found comfort in chemicals. “As a result, I have a city, we have a state, that is sick,” Williams says. “It’s almost like a Huntington daytime and a Huntington nighttime. In Huntington daytime what you see is a beautiful sunny day, clean streets, a vibrant downtown. It doesn’t look at all like this would be an area that’s infested with drugs. But then when the sun starts to go down, those who are addicted start looking for their fix.” A fix may have begun with prescription pain pills acquired from unscrupulous local medical providers, but a cycle of drug epidemics soon emerged. A new industry moved in, bringing violence with it. “Drugs in Huntington sell for about three times the price of what they would in Detroit,” says Huntington Police Chief Joseph Ciccarelli, a former FBI agent who previously headed the southern West Virginia drug beat. “I tell everybody—what you need to know about the drug business you could learn in a marketing class or an economics class. We have the market, so there’s going to be somebody who fills that need and supplies the demand.” A Northern Panhandle native, Ciccarelli arrived in Huntington in 1975 to attend Marshall University, first as a political science student and later as a criminal justice major. He joined the Huntington Police Department as an officer through the late 1970s and early ’80s, before the FBI took him to Miami as an agent fighting the influx of cocaine across America’s borders. In 1998 he transferred back to West Virginia, determined he could make more of an impact in his home state. “I spent 11 years in Miami as an agent and worked cases on an international scale,” Ciccarelli says. “There were huge quantities of drugs—things they make movies about—but I think the impact is much more felt in West Virginia, at this level.” West Virginia is classified as a user state by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, meaning it’s the last stop on the drug trade pipeline. Ciccarelli took demotions three times so he could stay in West Virginia and not be transferred. He rejoined the HPD in 2014, after retiring from the FBI. “I realized I’ve got 35 years of law enforcement experience that I’m not ready to put on the shelf. I have something to offer in terms of bringing that experience to the table and helping make this city better,” he says. “I see good things happening and I want to be a part of it.” In the early 2000s, when Detroit drug dealers and others from Columbus saw how lucrative the trade could be in West

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Huntington Mayor Steve Virginia, they rushed to fill the demand. Williams and newly “The drug dealers in Detroit, being ever appointed Police Chief the businessmen, decided there’s not a Joseph Ciccarelli are leading a citywide effort market for pills in Detroit but there sure is to clean up Huntington in Huntington,” Ciccarelli says. “Then, the and its reputation. price of a pill was so expensive that they realized, ‘We’re killing ourselves in the market. We can fill that same demand with heroin at a much cheaper rate.’ So we get inundated with heroin.” Huntington law enforcement seized more than 5,000 grams of heroin in 2013. One seizure alone found 1,700 grams, a record amount for the city. But the cycle is starting to change again. Crack cocaine is on the rise, a drug problem last seen in the 1990s, even before the prescription pill surge. Through 2014, police estimate crack seizures in Huntington rose more than 500 percent, while heroin seizures dropped by 30 percent. The problem with any drug addiction is the rise in violent crime— addicts will do anything for a fix and dealers will do anything to maintain their turf. Between 2003 and 2007 Huntington’s violent crime increased by 20 percent. “Our Fairfield neighborhood was one of those where the crack cocaine epidemic just destroyed it,” Ciccarelli says. “It was a traditionally African-American community that was tight-knit and close.”

West End

I-64

1. 2005 quadruple homicide 2. Barnett Center 3. Old public housing 4. New public housing 5. Former gas station drug front

A City Divided by Tracks “When I first came to Huntington, people knew each other. People had close-knit friendships,” says Samuel Moore, 30-year resident of Huntington and pastor of the Full Gospel Assembly Church in Fairfield. In the 1980s when Moore arrived, he says Huntington was the only town in Cabell County with a sizable black population. Fairfield, the neighborhood around Hal Greer Boulevard that carries drivers from I-64 into the city, was traditionally a black, working-class area. After work or on the weekends kids chased each other outside and neighbors socialized on porches. “If I went out and saw African-Americans, I knew those faces,” Moore says. “Huntington at that point had the largest population in the state, but you still knew people.” In the late 1990s, those faces stopped being ones Moore recognized. Out-of-staters arrived from places like Newport News and Detroit, bringing heavy drugs like crack cocaine with them. The modus operandi of out-of-state dealers was to identify someone in the community, quite often a young single mother, and move in with her. The dealer would provide help with food and living expenses in return for a place of operation. “That really started to change the culture,” Moore says. “You go out and you don’t recognize the faces. They were strangers, for lack of a better word. There were turf wars.” Neighbors spoke of hearing gunshots almost daily. For a while the drugs and violence stayed in Fairfield. Its neighborhoods deteriorated, cut off from the rest of the city by the railroad that separates Fairfield from more affluent neighborhoods. City Hall, grocery stores, and the police and fire departments sat on the north side of the tracks. On the south side, Fairfield had public housing and a gas station that became an epicenter of drug trade. “The attitude of the Huntington community was, as long as drugs and crime were in public housing, we could tolerate it,” says Tim White, community activist and coordinator of the Prestera Center’s drug abuse prevention and outreach program. “In May of 2005, two blocks from public housing, four high school kids were

execution-style murdered on prom night. The site of the 2005 quadruple homicide has That snake slithered across Hal Greer become a memorial and Boulevard, and it’s two blocks from Ritter healing place dubbed “Hope House.” Park.” Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Ritter Park is one of the most affluent areas of Huntington. There doctors, lawyers, and university elite live in magnificent houses built in Huntington’s heyday. “All of a sudden, Huntington has a drug problem,” White says. “Well, we’ve always had a drug problem. The community didn’t want to admit it or recognize it until it showed up in their backyard.” On May 22, 2005, 19-year-old Donte Ward and three other teens were gunned down in the early morning hours. Their bodies were found strewn outside 1410 Charleston Avenue in Huntington. Ward is believed to have been the target of the attack, after having allegedly ripped off a Detroit dealer, stealing money or drugs. The three other teenagers are believed to have been killed in order to leave no witnesses. The Charleston Avenue shooters have yet to be found. The quadruple homicide was a shock to the city, but it wasn’t Focus wvfocus.com

the only violence to occur. That year saw eight homicides, a sharp spike from the city’s more typical three or four. Robberies and burglaries also increased. “The Fairfield African-American community makes up less than 15 percent of the overall population in Huntington, but 80 percent of the drugs and crime were in their community,” White estimates. Meanwhile, the city’s police staffing levels had dipped dangerously low.

Budget Cuts and Broken Windows Through the 1990s Huntington’s police staffing fluctuated between 95 and 105 sworn officers, with a population north of 50,000 residents. In 2002, the city lost 22 officers, 16 of whom were laid off, bringing sworn officer staffing from 96 in fiscal year 2001-02 to 74 in FY 2002-03. Nationally, officer-to-resident ratios hovered around 2.3 officers per 1,000 citizens. With the 2002-03 drop in Huntington’s police staffing, the city’s ratio was 1.5 officers for every 1,000 residents. “So these drug dealers are businesspeople,” Mayor Williams says. “They see that they can go into an area where there’s going to be less resistance. That’s why it became known as the Wild West here. There was no resistance and they came in to take over.” It’s easy to take over when there’s no one guarding a city’s gates. It’s easier still when there are row upon row of empty houses awaiting tenants. Huntington’s housing stock can easily accommodate the population of 80,000 of the mid-20th century. Today, as the city’s population hovers around 50,000, there are hundreds of abandoned and rental properties whose owners live hundreds of miles away. “They’re in very poor repair, and that kind of environment allows criminal activity to fester,” Ciccarelli says. But the abandoned and dilapidated property wasn’t central to Fairfield. It was all over Huntington. An empty lot stretching four city blocks in the middle of downtown was nicknamed the Superblock. It sat vacant for more than 30 years before the city and developers could acquire it and begin construction on the large Pullman Square shopping and entertainment center in 2004. West End, a district that traditionally housed lower middle class workers, began to empty with the pullout of industry like the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. When the company closed in 1993 more than 600 workers were laid off. Today rows of houses in West End still sit empty. Highlawn, a once-affluent neighborhood on the east side of Huntington, is currently witnessing the abandonment of its

Focus January/February 2015

stately brick homes. “When I was a police Abandoned properties dot Huntington’s West officer the first time, you could work the End, but economic revitalization efforts Highlawn area and drive up there and go continue—like the to sleep,” Ciccarelli says. “It was essentially opening of Wild Ramp a bedroom community. Everyone there in the area’s antiques district. had a nice job, they came home, they went to sleep. Now we’re seeing the same things that we’re seeing in other residential neighborhoods where housing has declined.” The county assessor estimates a large percentage of the homes in the district are non-owner-occupied, while neighbors figure the number is over 50 percent. “We know what kind of issues that brings,” Ciccarelli says.

Tim White says rebuilding efforts are under way near the site of a former gas station and reputed drug front.

The Cleanup The cleanup began in Fairfield with community efforts led by Tim White. Before White began working for Prestera, he was director of Huntington Weed and Seed, a Department of Justice grant-funded program that encourages communities to “weed” out violent crime, drugs, and other illegal activity from neighborhoods and “seed” those areas with revitalization, prevention, and intervention projects. The program came to Huntington late in 2008. The city was to receive $1 million over five years. Federal funding for the program was cut short, but not before Huntington received around half a million dollars, according to city estimates. White had previously found success working in Fairfield as a drug elimination program manager with the Huntington Housing Authority. For eight years his efforts encompassed the public housing in Fairfield, most of which would become part of the Weed and Seed focus area. “One of the things we realized is that if you don’t get buy-in from the people who live there, nobody or no group from the outside is going to come in and make a difference,” he says. Getting buy-in from Fairfield, a community long ignored and left to fend for itself, wasn’t easy. “Talking to residents, there was a huge disconnect between law enforcement and the community. It was the whole ‘snitches get stiches’ thing,” White says. “People didn’t trust the police.” White says that attitude began to change in 2008 with thenpolice chief Skip Holbrook. Like every other public service, the police station sat on the north side of the train tracks, but Holbrook had a vision of a police force more involved with the community. “On his own, every Sunday morning, he would go to a different church within the Fairfield community and he would sit there. He

wasn’t there to be recognized. He wanted to learn the aspects of the community,” White says. “And one thing we learned in the Fairfield community, there’s a very high regard and respect for clergy. For most people, the church is where they get their information. They don’t get the newspaper. A lot can’t afford cable.” In partnership with those neighborhood churches, community members, and the city, White opened the Barnett Center in 2009. Located on the corner of 10th Avenue and Hal Greer Boulevard, the building sits just blocks away from the spot of the 2005 quadruple homicide, in the center of Fairfield’s struggle with crime. Calling on the support of local businesses, White raised the funds separate from Weed and Seed money to renovate the building. Though the building became the Weed and Seed headquarters, it was also able to stay open once the federal grants ran out. The Barnett Center has since become a focus of civic life, accommodating cooking classes, Focus wvfocus.com

exercise classes, after-school programs, and Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Down the hall, several rooms house a city police K-9 unit and a street crimes unit dealing with prostitution and drugs. Across the street from the Barnett Center, the city is pulling down barracks-style public housing blocks built in the 1940s to build senior townhouse complexes, new single-family homes, and affordable housing units throughout Fairfield. The city’s goal is to build a grocery store, which the area currently doesn’t have, and other commercial opportunities. Artisan Avenue, a couple blocks north, once the hotbed of criminal activity, now hums with rebuilding. New public housing units, freestanding houses spread out among yards, help to alleviate the concentration of poverty once synonymous with Fairfield. A few blocks away, a gas station was a drug front just four years ago where addicts could purchase drugs and packs of utensils to use them, White says. It’s been torn down and the lot sits ready for the city to build a fire department. Weed and Seed ended four years ago, but the Barnett Center is still going strong. Redevelopment continues throughout Fairfield and the neighborhood is markedly changed. Marshall University co-eds jog down the streets, blocks from campus, passing families with strollers. “Fairfield went from being 80 percent of all the drugs and crime to less than 10 percent today,” White says.

“

Fairfield went from being 80 percent of all the drugs and crime to less than 10 percent today.” Tim White, past director of huntington weed & Seed

Chasing the Problem Despite the success in Fairfield, residents and city officials alike are worried the problems are just being pushed into other neighborhoods. “I do think there have been tremendous strides made in cleaning up the violent activity here in Huntington,” Pastor Moore says, adding that there is much more work to do. “Fairfield was the target area initially, but it scattered to other places in the city. I don’t see that as a remedy. I see that as spreading it elsewhere.” Chief Ciccarelli talks of enterprising young dealers adapting to pose as Marshall University students, complete with caps and T-shirts. In a city-wide drug sweep in August 5, 2014, a heroin dealer was arrested working out of a house in an affluent neighborhood in Southside near Ritter Park. “The problems started in Fairfield, but the roaches went out everywhere,” Mayor Williams says. At one time West End was a lower middle class neighborhood with blue collar families who owned their homes. Like in Fairfield, neighbors knew neighbors. “It was a safe neighborhood, and it’s not that anymore,” says Ford Price, pastor of the Central United Methodist Church. The issue began in the 1990s but picked up through the last decade. “West End supposedly has the highest incidence of crime in Huntington now.” Though West End makes up less than 6 percent of Huntington’s geographic area, 11.3 percent of the city’s drug crimes and 12 percent of violent crimes in 2013 occurred in the area, according to police. Price says much of his congregation is made up of the area’s long-time families, but most have moved away. “We have a lot of dilapidated homes and a lot of abandoned homes,” he says. “There’s vandalism now.” To combat the drug tides, the city has begun an initiative called River to Rail. Modeled after Weed and Seed, the program focuses on economic revitalization, particularly in what’s known as the West End antiques district. The city sponsored the 2014 move of local agriculture anchor Wild Ramp into the Central City Market to bolster the shopping quarter. So

Focus January/February 2015

far, store managers say the move has been successful. “They are really working on the economic piece of it and that will help,” says Price, who serves on the River to Rail committee. “The piece that is missing is the community center.” Unlike Weed and Seed, River to Rail doesn’t have the same centralized effort under a direct supervisor and it isn’t headquartered in one building like the Barnett Center. It also lacks the hundreds of thousands in federal funding. “People are struggling and there’s nothing for the kids to keep them off the street,” Price says, adding that, while he and the community would like to see a more cohesive effort, the River to Rail program is only two years under way. “We’re trying to take back this part of the community. It’s going to get better, but it does have a ways to go,” he says. “These are infant stages.”

A City in Flux A major step in Huntington’s revitalization has been the city’s efforts to reform its code enforcement. “In 2012, the year before I became mayor, we had one code enforcement officer and there were just over 100 citations over the entire year,” Williams says. “After we implemented the program last year we had over 2,000 citations in six months.” Eighty percent of those citations, he says,

were complied with. “Anybody who comes and visits Huntington now, particularly those who were here years back, they say, ‘My god, this town is so much cleaner.’” And it is. Downtown practically gleams. “Our budget now is about $3 million more than it was just three years ago and I didn’t raise fees,” Williams says. Instead the city began aggressively pursuing past-due bills. “I come from an investment background,” Williams says. “I learned a lot of lessons in those years I was running my business.” He calls it enterprise budgeting. The funds collected by the additional code enforcement officers from people who didn’t take care of their properties paid for the officers’ salaries. Williams also hired a man—a retiree who, legally, could only earn $15,000 under social security laws—to collect past-due tax bills. “Within three weeks he had collected nearly $50,000,” Williams says. A decade ago, the city’s financial situation was dire. “There were concerns the city would have to file bankruptcy,” Chief Ciccarelli says. The police department had fewer than 75 officers. That has changed dramatically. “Now we’re at an authorized strength of 120 officers. That’s, I think, the first time it’s been back to that level since the 1980s.” With an increased police presence, there has been an increase in enforcement. In West End, River to Rail has been joined by a sister law enforcement program called River to Jail. In anticipation of the August 5, 2014, crime sweep, officials say, the 11 a.m. bus heading to Detroit was full.

A New Reputation Police data show Huntington’s total violent crime is down by about 20 percent since 2006. As of early December, the city’s total number of violent crimes in 2014 sat at 279 incidents, under the national average for a city its size. “When you try to compare us to Chicago or New York, we’re not even on the radar,” Ciccarelli says. “If you look at Charleston, which is almost identical in population size, you’ll see about the same numbers.” The city’s homicide rate has lessened to the more typical number of four to five per year. Through November 2014, the city saw four homicides and non-negligent manslaughters. Most of those, officials says, are drug-related crimes. “Huntington, in the last 10 years, has had such a series of problems, all drug-related, that has left an impression that you would come down and it is going to be like O.K. Corral—shootings everywhere, unsafe,” the mayor says. Residents and city officials across the board tell of incredulity on the part of other West Virginians when they mention where they live. But Huntington’s reputation, like the city’s streets, seems to be on the mend. “We’re not going to try to fight the rumors,” Williams says. “We’ll invite people in to look through our town and they’ll start to see for themselves. When I hear people say, ‘I don’t feel safe coming into downtown Huntington,’ I’ll immediately challenge them and say, ‘Well, when was the last time you were here?’”

Focus wvfocus.com

Focus January/February 2015

B2B

Marketing

Explore the construction and design expo.

A century-old store knows how to use old-fashioned charm.

pg. 70

pg. 72

Weatherproof W Protect your business from a harsh winter.

inter can be good for business: People love meeting for drinks and meals and probably spend more time at the gym, and they need everything from outerwear to home and automotive supplies and services to survive the weather. But a harsh winter, we all remember from 2014, can be a different story. Retail and restaurants lose traffic during storms and severe cold snaps, and again when consumers slammed by high heating bills decide to conserve cash. Tourism drops off. Businesses that make or receive deliveries suffer delays and employees miss days due to bad roads or kids off school. Some of this is unavoidable—the seasonal rhythm of commerce. But some of it can be planned for. We culled some survival tips for all types of weather from the web. Calculate the cost of a business interruption of a week or a month— or whatever time period worries you. Building a cash reserve that can get your business through the scenarios of concern will keep your business going and give you peace of mind. Establish relationships with alternative vendors for occasions when your main supply lines are interrupted. Place orders with them from time to time to keep your accounts active. Review your insurance coverage. Answer the question, “How much can I afford to

The exceptionally snowy and cold winter of 2013-14 cost businesses nationwide an estimated

$20

billion

lose?” Know the value of your inventory and property and protect yourself. Keep your business’s mobile connectivity up-to-date so you or your employees can be productive from home when necessary. Make sure it’s simple enough for any employee to use and doesn’t require tech support. Use technology that lets you and your employees keep email, calendars, contacts, and files synced. Maintain a written telework policy. Consider a weather-related marketing strategy. Downtown lunchtime business customers might respond to a reminder during storms that your restaurant can deliver or an email listing weather-appro-

priate supplies your shop carries. Have a crisis communications plan in place. Maintain secondary contact information to be in touch with staff and vendors. Use Facebook and Twitter to update customers and clients about your weather operations and recovery status. Extreme weather is an opportunity to punch up your customer service. Anticipate ways your business can meet customers’ weather-related needs. Keep your parking lot and walkways clear and dry. Sources: Business News Daily, Planalytics, U.S. Small Business Administration.

Lessons Learned

Titanium

titans

A Preston County company is putting hard-earned expertise to new use.

Timeline

itanium is a tricky thing for a manufacturer. On one hand, it’s strong without being dense, so it can be used to make lighter, smaller parts that are just as strong as their bulkier counterparts made from steel or other metals—which is useful when building things like airplane parts or replacement knees. On the other hand, it’s expensive, and traditional titanium manufacturing techniques leave a lot of waste—for every shape cut out of titanium, there’s some scrap that doesn’t get used. Scrap is OK with some metals, but with titanium that waste is pricey. “The popularity of titanium has always been questionable because of the cost,” says Eric Bono, vice president for engineering solutions at Puris, in Bruceton Mills. “Everybody wants to use it because it’s the strongest metal out there per unit weight, but the problem is that it’s very expensive.” Craig Kirsch, the CEO of Puris, puts it another way. “Even though it has better properties, the costs outweigh the benefits, and people don’t use titanium,” he says. The United States Air Force grappled with the cost 15 years ago, and its solution was something called a titanium matrix composite—that’s a way to manufacture

Focus January/February 2015

1993

parts that are infused with powdered titanium, giving them much of the strength of titanium but without all the waste. There was just one problem. “Part of what they needed was titanium powder, and what they found was that the powder they could buy in the open market just wasn’t good enough,” Kirsch says. So in the early 2000s a company called FMW Composite Systems, based in Bridgeport with a manufacturing plant in Bruceton Mills, started working on the titanium matrix composite. The idea was that the team at FMW would develop a way to make high-quality titanium powder and parts from that powder, then sell them to the Air Force and other government agencies. “The government put a lot of time, money, equipment, and people into

FMW Composite Systems incorporates in Bridgeport to make rubber fuel systems for military vehicles.

2011

developing the technology,” Kirsch says. Pretty soon FMW could make more titanium powder than any other manufacturer in the world. But FMW relied on government contracts, and in 2013 those contracts dried up. “With all the hard work these guys had done they’d really kind of neglected the commercial side of it,” Kirsch says. “As a result the entire plant and the very valuable technology, it was all at risk of going away.” In 2013 FMW filed for bankruptcy. But in March of 2014 Summit Materials, a Pittsburgh company that specializes in manufacturing unique materials, bought FMW’s assets and used them to form a new company: Puris, LLC. The result is a company that is taking all the lessons FMW learned in those years filling contracts for

FMW expands its Preston County facility to increase production of titanium matrix composites.

2013

FMW’s government contracts dry up and the company declares bankruptcy.

written by

shay maunz

Photos courtesy of

Puris, llc

Puris has a unique process to transform solid titanium into powder. t uses machinery made of titanium so the powder can’t interact with—and be contaminated by—other metals.

Kirsch’s transition tips Don’t be afraid of change. “Any time you have a big shift at a company you have to implement certain changes. The biggest one for us has been from historically producing a very low volume of product used by research departments at universities or companies, to doing a lot of volume.” Be mindful of company culture. “We’ve kind of shifted the culture by adding, not taking away. We’ve been able to maintain people, but added more people.” Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. “We had some knowledge in the general area we were getting into. Not a lot, but we had enough knowledge to know what we didn’t know and those holes are filled by the team that we inherited.”

the government and applying them to its commercial pursuits. “The big thing is the technology guys we have here—we’ve been able to maintain them,” says Kirsch, who came over to the new company to manage the old FMW team. “So all that knowledge that has been building up over the last 10 or 12 years, we have it. And that goes from the Ph.D.s to the technicians who know how to run these machines on the ground floor.” Because of all those years FMW spent developing technology for the government,

2014

FMW emerges from bankruptcy and is bought by Summit Materials to form Puris, a new company devoted to making titanium powder and parts to sell commercially.

the team at Puris now makes what they argue is the best titanium powder in the world. It’s the best because it’s the purest. To make titanium powder, most manufacturers start with a block of titanium and run it through a machine made of steel; inevitably, some tiny pieces of outside material make their way into the titanium powder, which compromises the strength of the products eventually made from it. Puris uses a unique all-titanium system to atomize titanium molecules—there’s no way for outside particles to mingle with the titanium, and the end product is as strong as titanium cut the old-fashioned way. Kirsch and his team were interested in titanium powder because of the role it can play in what they call additive manufacturing—what we know as 3D printing. The world of 3D printing is a perfect home for

Today

Puris has added employees and can produce more titanium powder in a single month than FMW did in years.

titanium: Instead of cutting away from pieces of titanium to make parts, 3D printing uses a computer to put down layers of titanium powder. There’s almost no waste. Plus, with 3D printing, just a little bit of titanium powder can be added to an object to make it stronger. “It allows you to design or put titanium into parts where nobody has done it before, or could have done it,” Kirsch says. “With the growth in additive manufacturing the real question is, what parts are going to be made out of titanium?” The people at Puris are betting there will be a lot of them—and the company is poised to fill the demand for titanium powder when the 3D printing boom hits. They’ve been ramping up production since Puris opened, and today the company can produce some 300,000 pounds of titanium powder in a year—the company claims that’s more than any other manufacturer in the world. “We’re going from a historically small market for titanium powder to one that we see is going to grow so fast and so big that we believe we have to look at installing a second manufacturing system,” Kirsch says. “That’s the kind of growth we foresee.” purisllc.com Focus wvfocus.com

10 Things

Written by

laura wilcox rote

Provence Market Café owner Anne Hart has it seen it all since opening her Bridgeport restaurant more than a decade ago. “Coolers always go down when you have a big event the next day,” she says, sharing just one of the many things she’s learned over the years.

The customers are not always right, but they are still the customers. While you may never

of Owning a Restaurant

No one would dare say running a restaurant is easy. It’s hard work, and it’s certainly not all delicious food and creative menus. That may be the fun part—but as most restaurant owners will tell you, there’s a lot more on their plates than dinner. We talk to two in the industry about the lessons they’ve learned over the years.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Café Bacchus owner Judy Spade strives to keep her fine dining establishment in downtown Morgantown fun and innovative. “If successful, you’ll find that many other businesses will follow what you are doing,” she says. Her advice? Take it all in stride. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. “This motto took a while for me to embrace,” she admits.

Free is not always free. Provence Market Café owner Anne Hart says quality equipment goes a long way at her Bridgeport restaurant with a French bistro feel. “Purchasing a really inexpensive used reach-in refrigerator might not be such a good deal. Older equipment costs more to run, so check the age and the efficiency factor, as parts might not be readily available. On that thread, purchase the best cookware, furnishings, et cetera that you can afford at the get-go and it will not have to be replaced as often.”

Focus January/February 2015

Fresh today, stale tomorrow. Café Bacchus Chef Heath Finnell is classically trained at the Culinary Academy in San Francisco, and Spade says his dishes are cutting-edge. “However, it may be a few months or years before the same dish becomes popular, and then it’s played out. The perfect example of this is pork belly. Chef Heath made this dish about seven years ago and no one wanted it. Now pork belly is popular in Morgantown, but it may be unpopular again soon.”

Don’t be afraid to over-plan. “Things don’t always go as planned,” Hart says. “Have a Plan B, a Plan C, and a Plan Z.”

There’s no such thing as 9 to 5. Restaurant owners and chefs learn early that the typical 40-hour workweek does not apply to them. Hart says, “You have to love what you do as you will be doing overtime every day.”

Social media can be your best friend, or your worst enemy. Speaking of social media, Spade points to a report from American Express that shows how people respond to both negative and positive experiences. “Give them good customer service and they will tell 15 people, but if they get bad customer service, they will tell 24 people. Take the time and make it right; it’s worth the effort.”

Follow your heart. Spade finds inspiration in Steve Jobs’ words from a 2005 commencement speech. Jobs said, “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice … Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Don’t delay. Pay today. Hart advises restaurant owners always pay their bills for their product the moment the truck drops it off. “Then you won’t have to worry about a mega bill at the end of the month.” Roll with the punches. Hart is prepared to take on anything. “You can still operate when storms knock out your power and you have a full dining room if you have plenty of candles and flashlights,” she says. Café Bacchus, 76 High Street, Morgantown, WV 26505, 304.296.9234 Provence Market Café, 603 South Virginia Avenue, Bridgeport, WV 26330, 304.848.0911

Carla Witt Ford

The Ins, Outs, and Eats

please everyone, you have to try. “Our customers are particular about their food. They may have a different expectation of how a dish should be prepared,” Spade says. “If a customer says his or her steak is overcooked or undercooked, you need to make amends. You have to try to turn that negative into a positive, especially, with social media.”

Leadership

Written by

ken allman

Hungry, Humble, Smart W

hen I started a business in the physician recruitment industry more than 20 years ago, I had firsthand experience of the day-to-day joys and struggles of the job I had been hired to do. I’d already been employed as a physician recruiter for about two years, and I could see areas for improvement when it came to the process that links physicians to the communities that need them. It was the dawn of the Internet age, and this new technology played a big part in PracticeLink’s strategy and growth. And when the business grew out of my ability to control every aspect alone from my humble apartment, I was lucky enough to be able to take the next step in our company’s life and assemble a team. My hometown of Hinton was also home to those first employees. And though we have grown substantially over the years, Hinton remains the headquarters for PracticeLink, the most widely used physician recruitment resource. The many members of PracticeLink’s teams now are spread throughout offices in five states and we have a presence throughout health care nationwide. We’ve also started MountainPlex Properties in Hinton to meet the needs of our growing company and revitalize the Hinton Historic District. Ask me now what my firsthand experience is in, where I most experience the day-to-day joys and struggles, and I’d say it’s putting together great teams—teams that work well together, that unite for common goals, that help us all succeed. Great teams don’t happen by accident. It

Focus January/February 2015

takes work, effort, and help—from experts. When I recognized the need for that expert help, I headed to the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis to earn an executive MBA. In the course of that experience, I came across a mantra that has shaped our company culture and has helped us build and develop great teams: Humble, hungry, and smart. Humble, hungry, and smart—and happy—are the most important things we look for in a PracticeLink or MountainPlex employee. They’re the individual qualities that provide the foundation for great teams. And they are the qualities that shape our corporate family. We’ve found

that identifying candidates with these qualities makes the negotiation process more pleasant—a conversation rather than a battle. It helps us identify candidates who are hungry enough to help our company grow. It helps us find people who are eager to learn, willing to put in the effort, and happy to work with others to get the job done. We look for people humble enough to share successes, hungry enough to be self-motivated toward improvement, and smart enough to know what to do and when to ask for help. It’s the set of qualities that makes our organization distinctive, promises a particular kind of employment experience, and appeals to those who will thrive and perform at their best in our culture. They’re the guiding principles we all aspire to, encourage, and celebrate. It’s the way we hire, the way we interact with clients and each other, the way we grow. When those qualities are out of balance, everyone in the organization feels it. And when they’re aligned, it’s magic. Putting together great teams is now one of my most important roles. “Humble, hungry, and smart” has served us well, and we hope you find it a valuable tool to remember as you build your teams, too. Ken Allman, MBA, is founder and CEO of practicelink.com and MountainPlex Properties. He invites readers to visit practicelink.com or to drop by in the Hinton Historic District.

Courtesy of Practice Link

Look for this trifecta of qualities to help build winning teams.

B2B

Heavy-DUTY NETWORKING

or efficient business-tobusiness networking, there’s nothing like a trade show. In West Virginia, the Contractors Association of West Virginia’s spring Construction and Design Exposition—lovingly known as the Expo—is the granddaddy of them all. And it’s free to attend. “I don’t know where, for the small investment you make, you can see such a large, qualified group of attendees,” says Pat Parsons, former show manager and member of the Expo board. In 2014 the 35th annual two-day show had more than 450 booths in the Charleston Civic Center plus five outdoor exhibits. Attendees could get industry updates and, in many instances, continuing education credit at more than 80 meetings and seminars. That bounty attracted 5,300 attendees from more than half of U.S. states and four countries. Parsons attributes the show’s longevity

Focus January/February 2015

“If we didn’t have this Expo, it would be a significant loss to the construction market and industry in this state. It brings that type of benefit every year.” Vince McComas, C.I. Thornburg

and draw to its broad base. “A lot of shows in other states are focused on one industry,” he says. “This show has four sponsors and 25 co-sponsoring organizations and they represent disciplines including engineering, architecture, and public works as well as

private industry, whether it’s mining or manufacturing or trucking—and all those groups are users of the goods and services.” The Expo is a chance to catch up with everyone in the state that has an association with construction, says Vince McComas of water and wastewater engineering company C.I. Thornburg—“not only the end user but customers, funding agents, banks, and attorneys.” His company exhibits every year. The Expo is a great place to see the latest better mousetrap, he says. C.I. Thornburg learned at a recent Expo of an alternative to heavy concrete vaults made of light, easily handled drainage pipe—a product the company is excited to offer. “I think it’s going to have a huge impact in the near future in both the water and wastewater markets in the state,” he says. An exhibitor from the beginning, equipment sales, rental, and service business Walker Machinery has used its Caterpillar rental store as its theme at

courtesy of contractors association of wv

The networking value of the spring Construction and Design Exposition in Charleston draws people from across the U.S.

written by

pam kasey

Timesaving Tip Participants in the Expo can now maximize the value of their time using ShowGizmo. The app brings together the event schedule, floor plan, and speaker and exhibitor information, and users can build personal schedules and communicate with other users—doing away with a lot of the cumbersome programs and stacks of business cards. ShowGizmo is available for free through your device’s app store.

the Expo since the late 1990s. “Last year we demonstrated technology,” says Walter Clark, general manager of Walker’s equipment rental division, Walker Express. “We have GPS technology on our equipment and we set it up so a customer could come in and look at the flat screen TV monitor and watch what a machine was doing in Raleigh County.” Beyond showcasing its products and services, Walker sponsors seminars as well. “The Expo is a great opportunity to provide some education for your customers,” Clark says. It’s those opportunities to see new products and technologies in action that make the Expo really hum. “I keep up with changes in materials and equipment and make contact with the people who can supply them,” says long-time annual attendee Carol Costello, general manager of engineering at Mountaineer Gas. Her recent finds include a lighter, easier-to-handle rock shield for backfilling pipe trenches to protect pipeline. “It’s a product we may not have otherwise stumbled upon,” she says. The Expo is a highly focused networking opportunity—it’s open only to those directly engaged in construction, design, and maintenance and to the customers who hire and the trade professionals who support these activities. “We recognize it’s an investment of everyone’s time and resources and we just want to make sure they’re talking to people who really need what they have to offer,” Parsons says. When co-sponsor West Virginia Manufacturers Association started scheduling its annual ethane development conference— now called the Marcellus and Manufacturing Development Conference—in association with the Expo in 2012, the event became more comprehensive than ever, Parsons says. “It strengthened the show because development of the Marcellus Shale is such an important element of the economy now,” he says. “I think it just makes sense to bring all this together under one roof.” The WVMA will celebrate its 100th anniversary in conjunction with the Expo in 2015. Exhibitor details and the seminar schedule will show up on the Expo website through January. There are no hard deadlines, Parsons says; spaces are leased until they run out, and attendees can register in advance on the website or in person at the event. wvexpo.com Focus wvfocus.com

Marketing

That Country Quality In the era of the superstore, Hardman’s Hardware holds its country store charm as sacred as ever.

here once was a time when your local hardware store was more than just a place to buy basic building and home supplies; it was a Main Street staple, a friendly place “where problems were solved and tales were told.” At least that’s how Tom Hardman, president and CEO of Hardman Supply Company—a.k.a. “Hardman’s Hardware”—remembers the good old days, long before big-box stores like The Home Depot and Lowe’s ruled the realm of home improvement. Hardman’s Hardware is a 107-year-old family-owned hardware and home store with seven locations throughout central and eastern West Virginia. Hardman is part of the third generation of Hardman men to run the company, having taken the reins with his two older brothers in the early 1970s. With the stores’ host towns claiming 500 to 3,000 residents apiece, each operates as a unique “old-fashioned hardware store, where the wood floors creak, the smiles are big, and you can still buy goods of quality and value,” according to a company circular. Spend a little time in the Hardman’s Hardware in Spencer—the company’s original store and home of its corporate office—and you quickly see that this oldfashioned spirit isn’t just some marketing

Focus January/February 2015

gimmick. Employees and customers are on a first-name basis, or will be next time. And the enthusiastic greeter behind the register? She’s worked in the store for 23 years; her grandfather worked there, too. Hardman’s Hardware is that kind of small-town store, the kind where history and familiarity breed loyalty. “Our customers’ perception of shopping at the big boxes is that they will not encounter the same employees on repeat visits,” Hardman says. “Therefore, the relationship with the store is less personal. We want personal relationships. That way, we know our customer’s name and what their project or problem is.” But familiarity alone can’t sustain customer loyalty, at least not in the long run. So in the era of the superstore, when most mom-and-pop hardware stores are seen as sweet but obsolete relics of rural America, how has Hardman’s Hardware continued to not only survive, but thrive? The answer lies, on the one hand, in maintaining the clear, consistent perception that Hardman’s

Hardware is the same old-timey country hardware store it’s always been. That’s achieved in part through the atmosphere at the stores themselves. It’s also achieved through tried-and-true marketing techniques. “One of the mainstays of the program that continues today are the circulars. Just last spring we did a complete revamp (assisted by Do it Best) of their look and style. Some of the notable items that we continue to promote are our employees and their years of service,” Hardman says. “I also record all of our radio ads to reinforce the local family image.” At the same time, while maintaining its country image, the company responds strategically to evolving markets—getting access to the “World’s Largest Hardware Store” online through its membership in the 3,800-member Do it Best hardware co-op, for example, and managing active Facebook and Pinterest pages. No matter the changes, Tom says, it’s imperative that Hardman’s Hardware is always seen as a family-run operation

written by

morgan grice Photos Courtesy of Hardman's Hardware

Top Tips

for Country Store Survival Make customer relationships paramount Customer relationships are priceless. Big-box stores will never offer your particular brand of familiarity. Keep a clear, consistent message when shaping your image While products and services constantly evolve, it’s crucial that your customers know who you are and what you stand for. Adapt to changes in the world Today, you need to have a significant online presence just as much as much as you need to have a sign out front. Hire exceptional people who love to help people out We want employees to interact with our customers, to find out what they need. Then, we want to take care of the needs of every customer, every time.

Hardman’s Hardware dates back more than 100 years and now has seven locations in West Virginia—from Ripley to Spencer to Moorefield.

with a track record of bending over backwards for its customers. And the company certainly has that track record. Whether it’s by embracing niche opportunities that will benefit the community— as it did by jumping into the telephone wire business in the 1930s, the ready-mix concrete business in the 1960s, or the cell phone business in the 1990s—or responding to an emergency need for generators during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the company has long been committed to responding to its community. “Our stores aren’t cookie-cutter. Since each one is in a small town, we can always adapt to the needs of the market,” Hardman says. Hardman’s Hardware is on the cusp of another change. Hardman is the last of the third-generation brothers still involved in the company’s day-to-day operations—the oldest brother passed away last spring and middle brother is retired—and he plans on retiring in the near future. But the company’s future still rests in Hardman hands. Four of the brothers’ children now sit on a recently created family board of directors, marking the first time any real corporate structure has been introduced to the company. Though the fourth generation won’t be as hands-on as the third, Hardman is optimistic that, if it preserves the company’s focus on customer relationships, Hardman’s Hardware will keep its place in West Virginia communities. “The customer doesn’t come to buy from Tom Hardman, they come to buy from the employee who knows their name, who they have a relationship with. Developing that relationship is priceless. It’s hard for a bigbox store to take that away or compete with us.” hardmans.com Focus wvfocus.com

Law

West Virginia

Supreme Court Year in Review Statutory Interpretation

few 2014 cases dealing with the meaning of state statutes were particularly important. The state’s Wiretapping Act received attention in State ex rel. State v. Burnside. The act severely restricts the state’s ability to eavesdrop surreptitiously on individuals’ conversations. One section provides that no device may be used to intercept a conversation in “the place of employment of any attorney.” Nevertheless, the court ruled that a recording of a law office conversation between a lawyer and his client while executing an illegal drug transaction could be admitted into evidence. The conversation was intercepted by a wire the police had planted on the client with his consent. The court concluded the conversation was not a privileged lawyer-client communication and did not fall within the statute’s purpose to protect such exchanges.

Focus January/February 2015

State v. Yocum upheld the state’s AntiTerrorism Act, passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, against a challenge that it was vague. The statute prohibits, among other things, conduct likely to result in serious injury to persons, property, or the environment and intended to “affect the conduct of a branch or level of government by intimidation or coercion.” The court concluded that language was sufficiently clear to satisfy due process, but also held that it could not be applied to an individual who was handcuffed in the backseat of a police car when he threatened to sexually assault a police officer’s wife and daughter. In Robinson v. Bluefield, a 3-2 court held that a state statute that authorizes magistrate and circuit courts to order the destruction of vicious dogs precluded Bluefield, or any city, from enacting a law authorizing its municipal court to order the destruction of dangerous animals. The majority reached that conclusion despite several facts: Among them, that the state constitution and municipal code empower cities to enact any law not inconsistent with state law, and that the state code says state and municipal laws

are not in conflict unless compliance with both cannot be attained. As in most election years, the court was drawn into disputes regarding candidates’ eligibility for the ballot. In 2014 the court decided two such cases. The first, State ex rel. Tennant v. Ballot Commissioners, held that state law provides that, when a judicial vacancy occurs after the last primary during that term of office, the governor shall fill the vacancy by appointment and that appointee shall serve until the end of the term. The court thus voided an attempt by Mingo County political party executive committees to put candidates on the ballot to elect a family court judge in response to a resignation in that position that had occurred after the primary. In the second case, State ex rel. McDavid v. Tennant, the court interpreted the election laws dealing with identification of ballot replacements for nominated candidates who withdraw after the primary. The code permits such candidates to withdraw for “extenuating personal circumstances.” The State Election Commission determines whether the candidate has met that standard. If the commission permits a

Courtesy of west virginia university

Not every year produces blockbuster decisions from the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. In 2014, there was a steady diet of the meat and potatoes of the court’s business: interpreting statutes enacted by the West Virginia Legislature and shaping the state’s common law.

written by

Robert M. Bastress, Jr., is the John W. Fisher, II Professor of Law at the West Virginia University College of Law, where he has taught since 1978. His teaching and scholarly interests center on constitutional law, employment law, and local government law. He is the author of The West Virginia Constitution: A Reference Guide and co-author of Interviewing, Counseling, and Negotiating: Skills for Effective Representation.

candidate to withdraw, then it cannot deny the candidate’s party the opportunity to replace him or her on the ballot for lack of extenuating circumstances.

Robert M. Bastress, Jr.

Cases to Watch in 2015 Several cases of importance are on the court’s argument docket for the next term of court. The issues include whether a couple can be denied the ability to adopt a child because the couple is gay, whether an employment discharge of an employee for enforcing the Water Pollution Control Act violates a substantial public policy, and whether a $24 million award in a condemnation suit was valid. A particularly intriguing and novel case will address whether a suit by prescription drug addicts against their suppliers—physicians and pharmacies—can proceed despite the plaintiffs’ admitted participation in illegal activity.

Torts

The court faced numerous questions of tort law this term. Two cases drew considerable attention. In Manor Care, Inc. v. Douglas, the court upheld part of a $91 million verdict against a nursing home for negligence in the care of an elderly woman. Notably, the court held that the state’s Medical Professional Liability Act, which severely limits damages in medical malpractice cases, did not apply to most of the plaintiffs’ claims for negligent care in the nursing home. The majority also upheld the jury’s decision to award punitive damages that were seven times greater than its award of compensatory— or actual—damages. Another highvisibility case, West Virginia Regional Jail Authority, etc. v. A.B., addressed the question of the authority’s liability to a plaintiff inmate who alleged that she had been raped by a guard 17 times. The court

concluded that the authority could not be liable for the guard’s misconduct because the agency had not violated a clearly established right of the plaintiff’s in its hiring, supervision, or retention of the offending guard.

Constitutional Interpretation In State ex rel. Morrisey v. West Virginia Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the attorney general sought a writ to prohibit the office from enforcing an advisory opinion that the attorney general would violate the rules of professional conduct if he or his office prosecuted criminal cases not authorized by statute. The court first concluded that the attorney general lacked standing to

pursue the petition because he was not threatened with imminent injury—thus, there was no case or controversy, and the court could not constitutionally issue advisory opinions. However, because the attorney general’s criminal prosecutorial authority presented “a singular issue [of] immense importance to our criminal justice system,” the court found “it necessary to address this collateral matter.” In doing so, the court conceded that attorneys general historically had common law authority to prosecute criminal cases, but held that the state constitution’s creation of the office of county prosecuting attorney had the effect of abolishing that authority. Thus, the attorney general can criminally prosecute only cases the Legislature has expressly empowered it to do.

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Economy

Mountain State Business Index A West Virginia economic look-ahead

he Mountain State Business Index remained essentially unchanged during November 2014, snapping seven months of uninterrupted gains. Not to worry: The index remains 2.2 percent above its year-ago level and 3.3 percent higher during the last six months on an annualized basis. These healthy rates of growth suggest solid economic progress into the early spring months of 2015. For the first time in nearly a year, a majority of components made negative contributions to the MSBI. Coal production, initial claims for unemployment insurance, and the state trade-weighted dollar hurt the index by similar magnitudes, while the yield curve also made a small negative contribution to the index. By contrast natural gas output, stock prices for the state’s largest employers, and building permits for new single-family homes boosted the MSBI in November. Natural gas production has been a major contributor to economic growth in West Virginia over the past few years. Although it’s just one of seven components to the index, it has accounted for roughly onethird of the index’s overall growth since January 2013. Prior to 2011, statewide natural gas production was relatively stable for a long period. Since then, output has skyrocketed, thanks to massive

Focus January/February 2015

development of the Marcellus Shale play using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies—a pace that has only accelerated more recently. Prior to 2011, statewide natural gas production had been relatively stable for a long period of time. Since then, however, output has skyrocketed thanks to massive development of fields in the Marcellus Shale play using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies. After doubling from about 75 to 150 billion cubic feet (bcf) per quarter between the first quarters of 2011 and 2013, the state’s natural gas output has grown to approximately 240 bcf as recently as the third quarter of 2014. While Harrison County remained the state’s leader in natural gas output through 2013, several counties have enjoyed a boom in economic activity as a direct result of the industry’s expansion. Marshall, Wetzel, Doddridge, Ritchie, and Ohio counties have each registered massive growth in natural gas extraction over the past two years. These counties have also experienced significant development in gas distribution pipelines and mid-stream processing that have spurred growth for the state’s struggling construction sector. Finally, most of the recent expansion in natural gas output in these areas has come from rich gas deposits. These deposits typically contain a host of by-products such

Nov. 2014

112.5, +0.0% m /m as ethane, propane, and other compounds that are key inputs for the chemical, plastics, and other manufacturing industries located within West Virginia. Growth in the state’s natural gas industry presents additional opportunities in the local development of downstream processing capacity to break ethane down—or “crack” it—into materials such as ethylene and polyethylene that are used in a wide assortment of manufacturing processes. Securing more of these types of downstream activities in the state could greatly enhance the impact of the gas boom in the long run.

written by

John Deskins and Brian Lego

What is a leading indicator? The MSBI is comprised of seven measures of the economy that have been identified as leading economic indicators—that is, they’re good predictors of a change in West Virginia’s economy within four to six months’ time. Combined into a single index, these measures signal a coming contraction in the state’s economy if the index declines by at least 2% on an annualized basis over a six-month period and a majority of the individual components also decline over that same time period.

John Deskins serves as director at the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at WVU, leading the bureau’s efforts to serve the state by providing rigorous economic analysis and macroeconomic forecasting. Deskins holds a Ph.D. in economics from The University of Tennessee. His research has focused on U.S. state economic development, small business economics, and government tax and expenditure policy. Brian Lego serves as research assistant professor at the Bureau of Business and Economic Research. Lego holds a master’s degree in agricultural and resource economics from WVU and specializes in economic forecasting and applied economic research.

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How We Did It

Following the

Golden rule

For more than a century, The James & Law Company has provided cutting-edge office solutions with unprecedented customer service.

taying relevant and in demand in any economy is a challenge. Staying relevant and in demand for more than 100 years is a success story of the first order. Through two world wars, the Great Depression, and the most recent economic doldrums, The James & Law Company has not only survived but thrived. Since the early 20th century, James & Law has served North Central West Virginia and beyond from its offices in downtown Clarksburg. “We have adapted over the 100 years-plus,” says Alice Godfrey, senior sales manager and project consultant. “We’ve sold everything from organs and pianos to film processing equipment to schools—actual schools. Over the years we’ve reinvented ourselves to continue to be a profitable company. We’re not as small as people think, we’re not just a little mom-and-pop.” Sure, the company’s sales history includes everything from musical instruments, sporting goods, and highend gifts to office supplies and materials. But oh, how far they’ve come, says President Gib Brown. “We’re a far cry from the days of having someone pick out a desk or panels—the scope of what we’re outfitting has mushroomed exponentially. We have a very experienced staff who, with their knowledge, can go from a customer’s concept to implementation— the delivery, installation, and setup— using cutting-edge CADD programs.” With computer-aided design and drafting (CADD) software, James & Law offers

Focus January/February 2015

clients a 3D experience. “Basically they can do everything short of a walkthrough,” Brown says. Sales managers and project consultants work with architects and engineers to take clients’ ideas from the blueprint stage to final finishes. But it’s not all computer-based. With recent renovations to its building, James & Law also boasts thousands of square feet devoted to displays. “Nobody in the area has a space like ours, where people can walk in and kick the tires, if you will,” says Brown. “Businesspeople value being able to walk in and run their hand across a piece of furniture. It gives them confidence in James & Law.” Confidence is something the founders had when they set out in 1903 to merge their two stationery companies. From the

beginning, The James & Law Company sought to provide quality office supplies and a pleasurable shopping experience. Today the privately held West Virginia corporation prides itself in continuing to offer quality products and services. It’s also stayed in demand as the second oldest textbook depository in the U.S. Since 1912 the company has offered West Virginia school administrators one-stop shopping for procuring state-approved textbooks and instructional materials, offering educational publishers in turn an economical distribution system for their materials in the Mountain State. “We work with practically all of the schools across West Virginia,” Brown says. “We offer simplicity for school administrators and the more than 50 publishers we represent.

written by

rachel coon

photographed by

carla witt ford

James & Law’s

Keys to Small Market Success ➊

Flexibility Willingness to add or eliminate a product line is crucial in order to remain relevant in the marketplace.

➋ Relationships The opportunity to develop associations, even friendships, with customers and vendors is key to repeat business. The James & Law Company of Clarksburg works with clients all along the I-79 corridor, like Steptoe & Johnson and PDC Energy, to offer an array of products and services— including office furniture, delivery and installation, computer-aided design, school supplies, and office machines and technology.

They get superior customer service because we have in-state representatives who have personal relationships with people in every county.” Relationships have been key to James & Law’s success. The company has grown from employing a mere handful to more than 30 staff. “I’m not the exception, I’m the norm,” Godfrey says about James & Law’s employees, most of whom, including herself, have been with the company more than 20 years. For James & Law, success also comes from constantly striving to do the right thing and using the Golden Rule as a guiding principle— “do unto others,” Brown intones. Whether working with clients or employees, it’s a relationship-based approach and desire to always do right by its people that has kept the company afloat for so many decades.

“In this industry, in any sales position, many come and go. But James & Law is very family-oriented. We’re not a familyowned company, but we are a family company—we take care of one another,” Godfrey says. The scope of James & Law’s desire to take care is apparent in all it does. The company listens to its clients and delivers. Case in point, recently it’s seen a shift to collaborative workstations. “The millennial generation is more attuned to working in groups, so rather than companies wanting us to fill huge office spaces with panels and separate desks, there’s more of an effort to provide collaborative work spaces—and small conference rooms rather than large board rooms,” Brown says. It’s exactly this kind of work that Godfrey loves most. “I would

➌ Consistency Consistent application of policy with regard to customer and employee relations is critical to transparent operations. do this for free,” she says. “I’m working for HGTV in an office environment. I get to pick out colors and fabrics—it’s the whole interior design aspect. It’s so much fun.” For a company that’s been around for so long, Brown says one of the greatest challenges naturally becomes dispelling perceptions of stodginess. Constantly evolving product lines and services, continuing to educate its staff, knowing the industry inside and out, and staying ahead of current national trends—these are the efforts The James & Law Company makes to stay reputable and relevant. “Small business is the heartbeat of America,” Brown says. “Especially in a state like West Virginia where small businesses are critical to the success of the communities.” jamesandlaw.com Focus wvfocus.com

Joanna Tabit POWER POINTS

This circuit court judge stays true to her mission while chasing a dream. Written by Katie Griffith | Photographed by Nikki Bowman

» The hardest thing was to make the commitment. Do I want to do this? Do I want to file as a candidate? But once you make that decision you’re committed to the hard work you know it will entail. It’s known that you want something badly enough. » It’s important to make sure you let people know about a goal, once you’ve made the decision to pursue it, and to give others a chance to see you in that way. » Our training ground is to be a lawyer. The rules of lawyers are a little different from the rules of judges. A lawyer is an advocate: The rules are to represent your client to win the game. The judge is more an official, a referee. The best advocates are the people who zealously represent their client’s interests. It’s critical for people to apply their reasoning powers and their knowledge of law to see both sides of the case. The best advocates can recognize that—they can represent their clients’ interests but evaluate cases fairly. That’s what you need to do as a judge—fairly look at both sides of the case and apply the law. When Joanna Tabit began working as a clerk under West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Thomas McHugh early in her law career, something clicked. “Working at that level and seeing him do what he did, having the exposure of appellate-level and triallevel work—it was really a challenge that I enjoyed,” she says. After that experience, Tabit made it her life goal to reach the bench herself and has worked tirelessly to that end. In October 2014 she was chosen as Kanawha County circuit court judge, replacing Circuit Judge Paul Zakaib Jr. Her journey to the bench, however, is not something she strategized. “I was very fortunate to have opportunities

Focus January/February 2015

present themselves,” she says. “All of my work and all of my career was focused on the courtroom and I think that’s what helps you as a judge—having that courtroom experience.” In November Tabit left Steptoe & Johnson and a long, widely respected career as an advocate for low-income and underprivileged communities, to begin her appointment. She was sworn in November 13, 2014, in a well attended ceremony in Charleston, and she took the bench the next day. We talked with Judge Tabit about her road from young lawyer to respected citizen and now circuit court judge.

» It seems that a lot of lawyers aren’t trying cases as often as they used to, and that’s not a bad thing—resolution is good—but young lawyers aren’t getting the same opportunity to get into the courtroom as I did. That’s key to an understanding and appreciation of, procedurally, how things work in a courtroom. The best experience now is working as an assistant prosecutor or assistant public defender. Those are the people trying the most cases as young lawyers.