West Virginia Focus - July/August 2015 by West Virginia Focus

July/August 2015

WEST VIRGINIA’S FOOD DESERTS Even in a growing nutritional wasteland, the seeds of community are sprouting.

STUDENT LOAN SQUEEZE THREATS OF BIG DEBT LEAD TO DIFFICULT DECISIONS

MIND THE GAP JUMPSTARTING THE STATE’S STALLED WORK ETHIC

VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 4

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New South Media, Inc. 709 Beechurst Avenue, Suite 14A Morgantown, WV 26505 1116 Smith Street, Suite 211 Charleston, WV 25301

304.413.0104 | wvfocus.com PUBLISHER & EDITOR

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Nikki Bowman, Carla Witt Ford INTERNS

Maia Brumage CONTRIBUTORS

John Deskins, David Gilmore, Brian Lego, Emily Porter

EDITORIAL INQUIRIES

Email info@newsouthmediainc.com. West Virginia Focus is published by New South Media, Inc. Subscription rates: $20 for one year. Frequency: 6 times a year. Copyright: New South Media, Inc. Reproduction in part or whole is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of the publisher. ÂŠ New South Media, Inc. All rights reserved

Focus July/August 2015

Editor’s Letter CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Cabinet Secretary for Education and the Arts Kay Goodwin visits Wirt County High School Simulated Workplace teacher Deb Hartshorn. Hartshorn created a nontraditional classroom modeled on an office environment. The Alderson Green Grocer transforms into a community gathering spot.

Searching for Solutions

hen we launched West Virginia Focus, we promised that we would tackle the problems facing the state. As this issue came together, our editorial team worried that maybe this issue covered too many “heavy” items. Our features probe the problem of student debt and rising costs of education, the decline of a work ethic in our workforce, and the epidemic of grocery store closings and the inevitable food deserts left behind. These are tough topics. All the more reason we need to address them. If we bury our heads in the sand instead of searching for solutions, it will lead to dire consequences. The townspeople of Alderson, when faced with the closure of their only grocery store, quickly took matters into their own hands and raised $30,000 to open the Alderson Green Grocer. I attended the grand opening and was truly blown away by the concept. My first thought was that this would work in other areas of the state, like Whitesville. Not only is it providing fresh, locally grown produce, but it’s also created a community corner where folks can gather for a cup of coffee, and a café and deli. The store even offers delivery of food. Anyone can shop there but, if you become a member of the Alderson Community Food Hub, you not only get discounts but you also are given a plot in the community garden and can sell your produce in the community market. I’m so impressed with the ingenuity and determination of this community. When outfitting the green grocer with shelving units, the founders purchased units on wheels so on weekend evenings they could roll the shelves aside and use the space for a small concert venue. Cool, right? When you read stories like this, where the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, it’s hard to believe that our workforce lacks personal enterprise. What happened to our work ethic? Is it a generational issue? Are we not instilling future generations with this key ingredient for success? Where does work ethic come from? A year ago, I visited a lumberyard outside Elkins and the supervisor said something that stunned me. He was complaining about the lack of drive and dependability of workers. He said, “Getting people to just show up and show up on time is one of my biggest problems. I know that when welfare checks are mailed out that a good percentage of my workforce won’t show up to work the next day.” What are we, as a state, going to do? I’m excited about the promise of the Simulated Workplace program spearheaded by Kathy D’Antoni, the West Virginia Department of Education’s Chief Career and Technical Education Officer. I’ve followed teacher Deb Hartshorn for the past year as she implemented this program at Wirt County High School. The first thing she did was create a classroom that didn’t look like a typical

classroom. She has taught students entrepreneurial skills, money management and budgeting skills, and practical skills like creating polished resumes. Inspired by Turn This Town Around, she introduced her own curriculum to motivate students to be vested in their communities. Teachers like Deb Hartshorn need to be lifted up and rewarded for their creativity and dedication. If we are going to turn our state around, it is going to start in the classrooms, and we are going to need more Kathy D’Antonis and Deb Hartshorns in every school in every county. So, yes, we’ve got some struggles ahead, but I am optimistic. I have faith West Virginians will come up with solutions to our problems. We’ve been doing it for centuries. We are doing it now. I hope that our publications continue to address the challenges we face and serve as a conduit for creative change. I heard someone say once, “Seek the truth or hide your head in the sand. Both require digging.” Let’s keep on digging for solutions,

nikki bowman Publisher & Editor

Dialogue Feedback Insider’s view of TFA

An interesting article (“Multiple Choice,” May/June 2015)—my oldest daughter will be teaching with TFA in eastern Kentucky beginning in the fall. I can personally attest to the very stringent application and acceptance process for TFA. I am an educator, and I can absolutely say that I didn’t go through anything so involved when I was hired to teach in Mercer County, WV. Are there some bad TFA teachers? Maybe. And there are bad teachers who have education degrees, too. TFA teachers won’t come to Mercer County; they won’t be in Kanawha County or Monongalia County or in Cabell County. They’ll go where certified teachers wouldn’t dare. They’ll go to McDowell County and the inner cities across the country—and just maybe if we’re all lucky, they’ll make a difference in a child’s life and in an education system that is broken, in places almost beyond repair. Dianna Putorek, Princeton

Free market firewater

Great write up (“Happy Hour,” May/ June 2015). Thanks for the story. I remember when the state was still in the retail liquor business. Hopefully, the West Virginia Legislature will take this up in 2016 and completely remove itself from the liquor business. Prohibition ended decades ago. All vestiges of it need to go away. Liquor sales belong with private enterprise. Kelly Merritt, Charleston

Celebrating a century of red sauce

Leonoro’s spaghetti—it’s definitely the best in town (“Charleston’s Best Kept Secret,” May/June 2015). I’m not sure how many years I’ve been feasting here, but my addiction includes at least three to four times a week! Here’s wishing a wonderful family with a wonderful product, another 100 wonderful years! Vivian Parsons, Charleston

Focus July/August 2015

Featured Contributors JOHN DESKINS 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.

DAVID GILMORE David Gilmore, PLA, MBA, is director of landscape architecture for the Community Solutions Group of GAI Consultants. In this role, he coordinates projects and marketing activities for all of GAI’s offices throughout the Northeast and Midwest regions. He is a past president of the West Virginia chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects and has won multiple design awards from the ASLA for his work.

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.

EMILY PORTER Emily Porter and Bobby Oberlander (The Oberports) are a married photography team based in Charleston. During the last seven years they’ve photographed more than 180 weddings together and have both won international wedding photography awards. When they aren’t working, they enjoy cooking, spoiling their two cats, and going to baseball games.

ABOUT THE COVER Managing Editor Zack Harold got this image at a recently closed grocery store in Quincy, Kanawha County, with the help of some friendly employees at a pharmacy next door. When the supermarket closed its doors, all the shopping carts left, too. The drug store was kind enough to loan us one of its buggies for this impromptu photo shoot—which drew many curious looks from passing motorists. To better illustrate the theme of writer Katie Griffith’s story, designer Becky Moore added the farmers’ market sign in the window. It came together nicely, don’t you think?

CORRECTION Our May/June 2015 Dashboard on the seventh annual Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index mislabeled two states’ 2008-14 average rankings. For a corrected chart, see our digital edition at wvfocus.com, page 40. The larger point stands: West Virginia perennially ranks 50th.

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FOCUS ON 11

Power Lunch

Big Idea

Although it’s located in a former gas station, Blue Moon Café in Shepherdstown is much more than convenience store grub. 12

Who’s Stepping Up

More than 115 years after his death, Francis Pierpoint is finally getting his due appreciation as one of West Virginia’s founding fathers. 16

Legislature

Lawmakers must walk a fine line as they look to reform the state’s tax code. 18

Founders

From film school to a major construction company to a consulting service, David Pray never had a master plan—he just knew how to spot a good opportunity. 20

Turn This Town Around

A story of roadblocks, legal battles, and eventual triumph in Matewan.

Jim Browder is aiming to make Tamarack selfsufficient for the first time since it opened. 24

Centenarian

The 130-year-old Charles B. Jarrell General Store is still the center of local life in Dry Creek. 26

Who Knew?

Meet the man behind Marion County’s own little Jurassic world. 30

Noteworthy Launch

“Us & Them,” a new podcast from West Virginia Public Broadcasting and award-winning producer Trey Kay, doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations. In fact, they’re the point. 32

Connections

A look at the West Virginiamade wares available on the online marketplace Etsy. 36

Bottom Drawer

Antiquated alcohol laws cause headaches for law enforcement. 38

Innovation

Chemical Valley isn’t what it once was, but MATRIC is keeping innovation alive.

Focus July/August 2015

TOOLKIT 66

Roadblocks

Drone-based businesses are cropping up everywhere, but federal regulations keep them grounded. 68

Artpreneur

A West Virginia-born independent book publisher hustles his way to success. 72

Agripreneur

A new law expands the state’s definition of co-ops, creating new business opportunities. 74

Work-Life Balance

Sometimes spouses make the best business partners, but it takes some work, as Emily Porter explains. 76

Development

As small town populations shrink, communities should rely on proper planning to attract new residents. 42

Regrowing a Wasteland

As big grocery chains move out, communities are stepping up to feed their neighbors.

Economy

A strong dollar is bad news for West Virginia’s coal exports.

Editor’s Letter

Mind the Gap

Power Points

Employers and educators agree, many West Virginia workers lack work ethic. So what happened?

Dialogue 4 80

A Leaner, Meaner Student

As college expenses grow, families must make shrewd decisions to avoid crushing debt down the road.

Focus wvfocus.com

Focus July/August 2015

“AS A LEADER, THESE ATTRIBUTES—CONFIDENCE, PERSEVERANCE, WORK ETHIC, AND GOOD SENSE—ARE ALL THINGS I LOOK FOR IN PEOPLE”

A Field Guide to West Virginia Tomatoes

West Virginia just might be the land of the tomato plant. Every summer gardens from the Eastern Panhandle to the southern coalfields are dotted with splotches of red, green, orange, and yellow. And while most of the tomatoes grown here today are modern hybrids, West Virginia also has a heritage of heirloom tomatoes—those old-time strains dating back at least a few decades—that’s as vibrant as a ripe tomato on the vine. Here’s a look at some notable varieties, along with their creation stories. You might consider slicing into one of these some hot summer evening, just like generations of West Virginians have done before you. Look for them at your local farmers’ market.

1884

Legend has it this strain dates back to, well, to 1884, the year of The Great Flood. It snowed all January that year, and rained all of February, and by the time it was all over much of the Ohio River Valley had been ravaged by the water. But along the river bank in Friendly one little tomato plant survived, and it caught the eye of gardener James Lyde Williamson. He saved and cultivated that plant and in the 130 years since this dark pink tomato—often weighing in between one and two pounds—has become a favorite among growers across the country.

West Virginia Penitentiary

A big, pink slicing tomato that is famously low maintenance— it will make do even with poor soil, little sun, and the most basic of care. It’s said to have originated in West Virginia’s prison farms of the 1950s.

The Mortgage Lifter

This breed dates back to the 1940s when, as the story goes, a self-taught mechanic known as Radiator Charlie set up shop in Logan County, at the base of a mountain that was notorious for

killing radiators. With the Depression looming, Radiator Charlie decided to start tinkering with tomatoes. He chose four of the hardiest, biggest breeds he could find and crossed them all, and the result was this big, tasty heirloom tomato that grows reliably in West Virginia. Radiator Charlie sold seedlings and paid off his mortgage in six years.

West Virginia 63

This tomato was specially bred by WVU professor Mannon Gallegly to resist blight—that bane to any gardener that leaves tomatoes covered in lesions, brown patches, and white fungus. It was unveiled in 1963 for West Virginia’s centennial celebration and has been a staple in West Virginia gardens ever since.

Old German

A large and heavy variety, a single Old German fruit often weighs in at more than a pound and a half. Its flesh is meaty and succulent, the skin reddish with golden streaks. It dates back to the 1800s in the Shenandoah Valley of what was then Virginia, when it was cultivated by Mennonite farmers. Mennonites are careful to preserve every part of their heritage, and tomatoes are no exception—it’s no surprise the Old German has survived for more than a century.

Heather Bresch

Education

A special summer camp brings children—blind, deaf, and unimpaired— together for a celebration of the arts.

PG. 34

Hangouts

Paige Lavender, senior politics editor for The Huffington Post, shares her favorite Morgantown spots.

PG. 10

Health Care Insurance

nonprofit The Health Plan puts patients— not profits—first.

PG. 14

King for a Day

The royal edicts of Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association.

PG. 21

Environment

Landfill engineering and extra monitoring should protect Hurricane from MCHM.

PG. 29

Paige Lavender’s Tour of Morgantown HANGOUTS

WRITTEN BY MAIA BRUMAGE

Morgantown Brewing Company West Virginia’s oldest operating brewery holds a special place in Lavender’s heart. “The back porch of the brewpub is the best place to be when the weather’s nice,” she says. “I celebrated so many birthdays—and regular days—there while I was a student, and I love to go back for a meal any time I’m passing through.” The brewery offers eight craft brews as well as seasonal and small-batch special brews, which it releases weekly. In addition, Morgantown Brewing Company offers full-service dining, which Lavender cautions is not to be overlooked. “The beers at the brewpub are delicious, but don’t be fooled—the onion rings are the real reason to visit.”

Focus July/August 2015

Martin Hall

Valley View Avenue

“I couldn’t compile a list of favorite places without mentioning Martin Hall, which I’ll always call the ‘J-school,’ even though the Reed College of Media has a fancy new name these days,” she says. “I spent so many hours there as a student, and I’ve been lucky enough to make regular trips back.” As a member of the College of Media Visiting Committee, Lavender now advises journalism students enrolled in West Virginia Uncovered, a program devoted to promoting digital journalism in the state. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for the things I learned in Martin Hall, so it’ll always be a really special spot for me,” she says.

“I realize this might seem like a strange choice,” Lavender says. “This road is usually full of potholes, not the most fun to drive, and it’s definitely not as aesthetically pleasing as a place like Cooper’s Rock, but this is one of my favorite areas to be before, during, and after a WVU football game.” Valley View Avenue runs perpendicular to Milan Puskar Stadium, and since the stretch is lined with apartment complexes, college students make up much of the population. “I’ve had so many friends live along or near Valley View over the years, and I have many fond memories of tailgates, parties, and snoozes on friends’ couches in that area,” Lavender says.

ELIZABETH ROTH; COURTESY OF WVU

At only 25, Paige Lavender has a resume that stands shoulder to shoulder with those of people twice her age. She graduated from West Virginia University summa cum laude in 2011 and, after working with multiple media outlets, is currently the senior politics editor at The Huffington Post. Lavender hails from Chesapeake, a town just outside Charleston, but her time at WVU allowed her to become intimately familiar with Morgantown. Now Lavender shares three of her favorite places in the bustling college town.

THE POWER LUNCH

Lunar Inspiration

Keeping it Local Part of the Blue Moon Café’s appeal is that its produce, meat, and eggs are largely locally sourced. King says he tries to get everything “as local as we can get it. Sometimes we have to go into Maryland or Pennsylvania to get these local products, but we have a list on our menu of the local (farms) we do support.” Blue Moon also purchases all its desserts from local bakeries and creameries.

Building renovations threatened to permanently close the café’s doors before they ever opened. “I realized if we didn’t put a deadline, we’d never open up,” King says, so he settled on March 31, 1999, a day projected to have a blue moon. That fateful day also inspired the café’s name.

Stay for the Show

Respecting the Community

The Blue Moon Café hosts weekly open mic nights on Wednesdays at 9 p.m., where anyone is welcome to go up and perform. King says on a typical night about 10 performers sing, read poems, or do “whatever they want to do for their open mic experience.”

Although selling all kinds of alcohol was sure to be a hit with students at nearby Shepherd University, King decided early on “not to do anything stronger than beer and wine” to keep things quieter in the neighborhood.

THREE POPULAR CHOICES

Tuscan Bean Bruschetta $6

Blue Moo salad $9

Crabcake sandwich $10

“We had opened up a place once in Emmitsburg, Maryland and after that I said ‘I will never ever do this again,’” says Greg King. That was, of course, until King and his late wife, Charmaine, arrived in Shepherdstown looking for a home and saw an old gas station-turned-restaurant for sale. “It was an exciting space,” King says. “My wife and I both loved to cook, and she said, ‘Oh, let’s give it a try and do this.’” So the Blue Moon Café was born. The pair combined their culinary experience to create an extensive menu that spans a wide variety of tastes. “We have a number of vegetarian entrees and sandwiches,” says King. “And I think that makes us different from a lot of the other places.” Many of the menu options are also gluten-free. King prides himself on the location he chose. With a college in the vicinity, no major highway nearby, and Antietam National Battlefield not far away, King anticipated a mix of college students, locals, and tourists. “And that’s exactly what has happened,” he says.  Blue Moon Café, 200 E High St., Shepherdstown, WV 25443, 304.876.1920, bluemoonshepherdstown.com

WRITTEN BY MAIA BRUMAGE | PHOTOGRAPHED BY NIKKI BOWMAN AND ELIZABETH ROTH

WHO'S STEPPING UP

Standing up for West Virginia The father of West Virginia finally gets the appreciation he deserves. WRITTEN BY SHAY MAUNZ

Focus July/August 2015

COURTESY OF WEST VIRGINIA DIVISION OF CULTURE AND HISTORY

here’s a good chance that, even if you’re a West Virginian, you’ve never heard of Francis Pierpont. There’s also a good chance that, if not for Francis Pierpont, you wouldn’t be a West Virginian at all, because West Virginia wouldn’t be a state. Today Pierpont is sometimes called the father of West Virginia, but he’s actually one of the lesser-known figures in West Virginia’s rich history. Traveling around the state, you’re much more likely to see a statue of Stonewall Jackson, the famous Confederate commander, than the man who engineered the creation of the state. In fact, until recently there weren’t any statues of Pierpont in the state at all. In the 19th century Pierpont was a prominent attorney and entrepreneur in western Virginia, as well as an outspoken defender of the Union before and during the Civil War. When it became clear Virginia would secede from the United States, he vehemently opposed the idea. Of course, a lot of people in western Virginia didn’t like the idea of seceding from the Union with the rest of Virginia—they just couldn’t find any way around it. “Francis Pierpont was the man the with plan,” says Travis Henline, the manager of West Virginia Independence Hall, in Wheeling. One night, before the famous Wheeling Convention in 1861, Pierpont was at home in Fairmont. “And he’s reading through the Constitution,” Henline says. “He reads through a couple clauses that give him the idea and the plan for how they could do it, and when he goes to Wheeling he brings those ideas with him.” At the Wheeling Convention Pierpont argued that western Virginia should delay a vote to create the new state, which he believed was unconstitutional. Instead, delegates voted to create the Restored Government of Virginia—a new government over Virginia that was loyal to the Union. Pierpont became the governor of the Restored Government in 1861 and raised troops to fight for the Union in the war, trying to keep as much of Virginia as possible under Union control. He also pressed the United States Congress to form the new state of West Virginia, a request lawmakers finally approved two years

“

This is the father of West Virginia and the gentleman who was able to see through the legislative language to create the state.”

COURTESY OF WHEELING NATIONAL HERITAGE AREA

JEREMY MORRIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR WHEELING NATIONAL HERITAGE AREA

later, in 1863. “None of them, Pierpont or any of the other folks who formed this government, none of them knew if it would work out. None of them knew if the United States would recognize them. None of them knew if the Union was going to win the war,” Henline says. “That’s what made it so courageous.” By taking on that job, Pierpont made himself an enemy in the eyes of Confederacy, and was loathed by most people in Virginia. There was a raid on his home. There were plans to assassinate him. He once received a telegram that was the stuff of nightmares. “It says, ‘Governor Pierpont, did you see my carriage by your window earlier today? Because I saw you and I can get you easy,’” Henline says. “Who during those circumstances would want to take on those responsibilities? But he had courage and the faith—somebody had to do it and he took up the mantle.” Pierpont was a beloved figure in West Virginia for the rest of his life. “He was one of our darlings,” Henline says. “It was said that there was not a fair or festival or college commemoration that Francis Pierpont was not invited to speak at.” But after his death Pierpont somehow fell out of the public eye, even though his contributions were historic enough to remember for centuries. This summer, to remedy that offense, the Wheeling National Heritage Area unveiled

a new statue of Pierpont at Independence Hall. “This is the father of West Virginia and the gentleman who was able to see through the legislative language to create the state,” says Jeremy Morris, executive director of the Wheeling National Heritage Area. “It seemed fitting that we should honor him here.” The group put out a national call for proposals and slowly whittled the field of 20 applicants down to one from Gareth Curtiss, a sculptor from Montana.

The selection committee felt that his statue of Pierpont captured the essence of the man who dedicated his life to West Virginia. Curtiss’s rendering of Pierpont has him standing, addressing a crowd, clutching a rolled up document—it calls to mind the way Pierpont must have looked when he spoke to the delegates of Virginia about forming their new state. “He’s not just sitting there,” Henline says. “He’s doing something.” Focus wvfocus.com

HEALTH

Share Alike

The not-for-profit Health Plan offers a community-based approach to health insurance. WRITTEN BY ZACK HAROLD

f your company needs a place to keep its money and you want to put it somewhere small and locally controlled, you might consider joining a credit union. If you have the same criteria for health insurance plans, you might consider The Health Plan. “We’re not owned by a hospital system or a group of investors, or anything like that. We’re owned by the community,” says Health Plan President and CEO Jim Pennington. The insurance company is set up as a not-for-profit, 501(c)4 organization. That gives The Health Plan freedom most health insurance providers do not have. Instead of chasing profits, the company’s primary goal is to provide affordable, high-quality plans. “We’re not worried about beds being full at a hospital or a return on the dollar for a private equity firm,” Pennington says. For every dollar The Health Plan collects in premiums, 90 cents goes to pay claims by members. The rest is used to cover administrative costs. The company is able to do this because it works with health care providers and consumers to keep costs low. On the provider side, The Health Plan works with physicians and hospitals to make sure they are offering high-quality care at affordable rates. On the consumer side, the company holds flu shot and blood test clinics to head off costly medical conditions. It also works with new policyholders to make sure they have established medical homes and understand how benefits are structured, and it co-sponsors summer camps for children with asthma and diabetes to teach them how to manage their diseases. Health care is constantly getting more expensive, but Pennington says The Health Plan’s goal is to keep costs down so its member companies do not have to pass costs on to their employees. “They’re able to provide an affordable health care product to the employees. That’s the objective,” he says.

Focus July/August 2015

CHEERS & JEERS Inmates at West Virginia state prisons can make cheaper phone calls to family and friends now that the state Division of Corrections has lowered its call rates. Prisoners’ rights advocates are hoping the state’s regional jail authority will now follow suit. #ReduceIsolationReduceRecidivism

West Virginia too often institutionalizes children instead of offering the close-to-home mental health services they need, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation recently found. #ThereIsNoFutureWithoutHealthyKids #SupportMentalHealth

U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito is spearheading The Digital Learning Equity Act of 2015, a bill she hopes will increase students’ Internet access outside the classroom, particularly in low-income, minority, and rural areas. #InternetIsAUtilityNotALuxury #LackOfDigitalAccessHoldsUsBack

Fairmont State University failed to renew the employment contract of its student newspaper’s advisor, which the Society of Professional Journalists alleges is retaliation for articles about potentially dangerous mold growing in university housing. #FreedomOfThePressIsStillAThing #WeHope

The Mountain State’s tall tales, old customs, and general ways of life will soon have a state-level steward, thanks to a National Endowment for the Arts grant to hire a folklorist at the West Virginia Humanities Council. #MayOurLegendsLiveLong

The West Virginia Division of Highways is spending $1.6 million to replace signs along the state’s roads. In some areas new signs have gone up where old signs still to stand, making for a driver double-take, to say the least. #SeeingDouble #NoDrunkGogglesHere #FollowTheSignsButWhichOne #DoNotForgetThePotholesPlease

Focus wvfocus.com

Tax Tightrope LEGISLATURE

Republicans want to reform West Virginia’s tax structure, but must tread carefully.

WRITTEN BY ZACK HAROLD

he clock had barely run out on the West Virginia Legislature’s 2015 regular session when leaders in the newly Republican-controlled House and Senate started talking about their next move. This year marked the GOP’s first session in more than eight decades as the majority party, and lawmakers used that influence to push through legislation Democrats always killed. Republicans aren’t ready to let off the throttle. The caucus has set its sights on an issue that has eluded lawmakers for more than 15 years: comprehensive tax reform. In April, Speaker of the House Tim Armstead and Senate President Bill Cole announced the creation of the Joint Select Committee on Tax Reform. The group—which includes seven members from each chamber, plus Armstead and Cole as nonvoting members— has spent the last few months holding meet-

Focus July/August 2015

ings at the Capitol, hearing presentations from state officials, economists, and other experts on the state’s tax system. “We felt like there was a need to look at it from top to bottom,” Armstead says. While Armstead says the tax committee is going into the study with an open mind— “It’s all on the table”—the group is working from a common thesis. Republicans believe West Virginia’s tax system is discouraging economic growth and, therefore, needs drastic changes. One of their primary targets, politics watchers seem to agree, will be the state’s property taxes. Calvin Kent, former dean of Marshall University’s College of Business, says lawmakers will likely pay special attention to the state’s business inventory tax. “It hurts certain industries, keeps them out of the state,” says Kent, an admitted conservative. “We’re one of the few states left that taxes inventories.”

Kent served as co-vice chairman of Governor Cecil Underwood’s Fair Tax Commission in 1999 and also served on Governor Joe Manchin’s 2006 tax reform study. Both groups came to the same pair of conclusions: The state needs to kill the inventory tax, and that’s much easier said than done. The inventory tax is codified in West Virginia’s state constitution, so changing the tax would require approval by both the Legislature and voters. It’s not an easy process. And even if the repeal survived the difficult constitutional amendment process, the state would still have to figure out how to replace all that lost revenue. Property taxes like the inventory tax mostly benefit local governments. This is true of most places in the United States. Deputy Revenue Secretary Mark Muchow says nationally, 75 percent of local revenues come from property taxes. This is why Underwood and Manchin were unsuccessful in their attempts to get rid of the inventory tax. If the tax is removed, county governments and school systems will be left with huge holes in their budgets. “Nobody has been able to come to an agreement on how we could replace the inventory tax,” Kent says. At a meeting in early June, Patti Hamilton of the West Virginia Association of Counties said the inventory tax generates $68 million for county governments, with about 70 percent of that money going directly to school systems. “If it’s eliminated, what will replace it?” she asked lawmakers. Kent has a suggestion. He says the state should continue to collect the inventory tax but allow companies to deduct that amount from their state business taxes. “That’s the way to do it without hurting the local governments. That way, the local government loses no revenue,” he says. He admits there is an obvious downside to this plan, however. The state would lose a significant chunk of business tax revenue. For every hole that gets patched, another hole appears. It’s a problem lawmakers face anytime tax cuts are proposed. The Legislature could raise other taxes to make up the difference, although that scenario is unlikely under Republican control— especially in an election year.

FOUNDERS

Dave Pray FOUNDERS

FOU N DE R A N D PR I NCI PA L , PR AY WOR K S I N T E RV I E W E D BY SH AY M AU N Z

Dave Pray started Pray Construction in 1974 and, over the course of 25 years, grew it from a small residential construction company to a titan in regional commercial construction and a competitor on the national stage. In his years at Pray Construction he completed projects in 19 states totaling more than $500 million. He sold that company in 2005 and started on his second career: founder and principal at PrayWorks, a company that represents business owners as they work on complicated construction projects. We sat down with Pray recently to talk about what it means to do that kind of work and how he came to be doing it.

»» I was always commercially driven, meaning I was always

interested in taking care of myself. I worked as early as I was able to work—you had to get a work permit in New York state and I got someone to hedge that for me so I could get work when I was 14. So I worked every summer and I liked that.

»» I grew up in upstate New York and came to West Virginia

because my wife is a West Virginian. I was going to (New York University) film school in 1971 and was totally involved in that world, but then we had the opportunity to move to West Virginia and live on a farm for a year. So at the wise old age of 20, I thought, “You can’t make films if you don’t have any life experience,” and we came.

»» While I was here I had to earn money, so I went to work as a construction worker on a housing project. I was a New York kid, and there was this cultural difference—which was reflected by me opening my mouth a lot and saying, “Why are you doing it like that?” And whether because that behavior was found as humorous or whatever, the project superintendent continued to let me learn more things and apply that mindset. So I became an apprentice carpenter, carpenter, superintendent. And I just became intrigued with building things.

COURTESY OF DAVE PRAY

»» Entrepreneurs are so good at doing the “ready, fire, aim” thing, so I like to think we (at PrayWorks) provide a dose of reality. It’s not about slowing them down but while they’re busy doing their thing we add a little bit more context, so they don’t look back at the conclusion of a project saying, “If I’d known it was going to cost that much I wouldn’t have done it.”

»» There was zero grand plan. I know there are people who are cut like that, where they set these goals and do all the

work in order to get there, but I believe there’s a whole group of people like me who just get involved in interesting situations, realize when they’re in an interesting situation, and take advantage of it.

»» There’s a good dose of luck too. Some of these things

can go one way or the other, but who knows which one?

»» On these projects I work on, the trusted advisers traditionally come from the world of architecture or design builders. And certainly I work with architects and design builders and I respect them and like them and they do good work, but they all have a special interest which from time to time could be in conflict with the owner’s goals. »» I like getting involved in all these different organizations

and learning what they do. There’s a living vicariously component to it, when they’re doing some exciting project and you’re along for the ride. It’s not dull.

»» I definitely subscribe to a go-slow-to-go-fast method-

ology. I’d much rather be thoughtfully realistic with the project in advance of going into construction. Hopefully construction is an afterthought to a well-conceived planning process.

»» My life now, it’s not completely different from when I

was the owner of the other company, for sure. But there are some big differences. It used to be, at Pray Construction Company, that when I would get work I could say, “OK, do good work, go,” and I’d have the human resources to implement it. Now I’m looking at myself in the mirror saying, “You better go after it.” Focus wvfocus.com

and assembled a group of like-minded volunteers to get the old lockup restored to its original glory. Jones and company knew it would not be an easy endeavor. The century-old cut stone was crumbling, and they knew repairing the structure would require lots of work and money. But no one had any idea how difficult this project would become, even before the first swing of a hammer. It has been more than a year since Matewan became a Turn This Town Around community. Volunteers have launched many projects and some are already completed. But the jail sits unchanged. For all their initial enthusiasm, Jones and her team have been met by setbacks at every turn.

A Question of Access

Locked Up TTTA

Sometimes deeper issues have to be resolved on the way to turning a town around.

WRITTEN BY ZACK HAROLD | PHOTOGRAPHED BY NIKKI BOWMAN

hen the people of Matewan began crafting a wish list for their 2014-15 year with Turn This Town Around, one idea came up early and often: Restore the town’s historic jail. The whitestone jail, built in 1906, is not an imposing structure. But in many ways, it’s a focal point of the community. Although there are no historical records to prove it, local legend says members of the Hatfield and McCoy clans were held there during their famous feud. At one time the building served as Matewan’s town hall. It was also the town’s preeminent tourist stop. “You could actually go and stay the night,” says councilwoman Francine Jones. Locals still talk about the t-shirts sold there: “I spent the night in jail in Matewan.” But

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Jones says as other businesses in the area began offering lodging, money dried up at the jail. It closed its doors in the mid-1990s and has sat empty ever since. The tourists never stopped coming, however. Jones, who lives close to the property, says tourists still constantly stop by to see the place. “People want to see a part of history,” she says. So when Jones ran for city council in 2013, she made fixing up the jail one of the main focuses of her campaign. Not long after she won the seat, West Virginia Focus, the West Virginia Community Development Hub, and West Virginia Public Broadcasting named Matewan one of our 2014 inaugural Turn This Town Around communities. Realizing the campaign might lead to grant money, Jones and her aunt Patricia Brown brought the jail project to Turn This Town Around

The jail was property of the Matewan Development Center, an organization set up in the late 1980s to revitalize the town and its surrounding communities. The group had put padlocks on the doors, but Jones wanted to show off the jail when representatives from Turn This Town Around visited Matewan in early spring 2014. She wasn’t able to track down a key, however, until nearly two months later. When she finally was able to gain access, Jones was surprised by what she saw inside. “For the jail to have not been used for such a long time, I thought the drywall would have been messed up and the flooring would have been damaged,” she says. The windows and doors had almost rotted out, but other than some mold in the bathroom, the inside of the jail was mostly untouched by decay. There were other problems, however. The building was being used as a storage facility by Matewan Mayor Sheila Kessler, who serves on the development center’s board and had a key to the building. Jones and her team asked the mayor to move the items so they could work on the building, but volunteers were stalled for months. And by the time Kessler moved the items early this year, the project was facing other challenges.

Ownership to be Resolved

In March, the jail became the subject of a legal dispute between a local church and the Matewan Development Center.

and make an order declaring the jail as property of the church. Once the court has issued that order, Varney says it will be put on file at the Mingo County Clerk’s office with the original deed. Kessler still disputes the lawsuit’s claims. She says the town once stored maps, decorations, and other items in the space, but they were moved long ago. She also contends the Matewan Development Center still exists and, therefore, has rights to the building. She says the group still holds regular meetings, even though the Secretary of State’s office revoked its charter in 2007 after members did not file required annual reports. The group did not file the reports, Kessler says, because its tax number was revoked after a former director failed to pay real estate and payroll taxes. “It all works together. If you don’t have a tax number, then you can’t file the annual reports,” she says. She says the center made the final payment on its back taxes in April, just a month after Swafford filed his suit.

Change Requires Persistence

Now that the dispute is close to being settled, Jones says she feels confident the project is finally headed in the right direction. “We’re really going to try to push forward. Something’s going to happen,” she says. Her group of volunteers will work with the First Methodist Church of Matewan to restore the property. “We’re going to redo this thing and make it for the community, where everybody can enjoy it,” Swafford says. Kent Spellman, executive director of the West Virginia Community Development Hub, says the struggle over the Matewan jail offers a good lesson for anyone undertaking a community development project: Change rarely comes easy. “I think it’s a great example how community development depends on patience and persistence,” he says. “Francine and the team she was working with certainly went through a period where they were very discouraged with their project.” But in spite of the setbacks, they kept hammering away. “Those periods of frustration, with a little encouragement, can be overcome. You can find another way around that rock,” Spellman says.

KING for a

DAY After graduating from West Virginia University with a biology degree, Bluefield native Bill Raney went to work for the state Department of Natural Resources Division of Reclamation in 1970, rising through the ranks to become assistant chief before leaving for the West Virginia Mining and Reclamation Association in 1977. He became president of the West Virginia Coal Association in 1992, where he remains today.

If I were king of West Virginia for a day, I would Ensure every one of our coal mines are operating and all our coal miners, managers, and suppliers are working every day. Make sure all our children will have good jobs so they can remain in West Virginia to help secure our future. Have someone teach me to do a loud whistle. Force every service station to have a good, workable windshield cleaning tool. Require every West Virginian be proud of who they are and what they stand for. Focus wvfocus.com

COURTESY OF BILL RANEY

The development center purchased the jail property in 1991 with the help of a $19,000 donation from a local foundation. The foundation included a stipulation in the property’s deed, however, that if the development center ceased to exist or stopped using the property, the deed would transfer to the First United Methodist Church of Matewan. Ronnie Swafford, a trustee at the Methodist church, first learned about the deed about eight years ago. Since trustees are responsible for financial liabilities of the church, Swafford made it his business to learn about all the church’s holdings. “When I became a trustee, I became nosy,” he says. He watched for years as the jail sat unused. He also knew the development center was no longer active, and he became increasingly worried someone would swoop in, pay back taxes on the property, and take the jail away. Last fall, Swafford decided to take action. He approached Kessler, who serves on the development center’s board, to ask if the group would sign over the property. “We tried to do it that way first, to see if they would give it up easily. But no, they didn’t want to,” he says. So Swafford changed strategies. “I said, ‘Let’s just take it to a judge and let them decide who owns it and who doesn’t.’” Acting on the church’s behalf, Swafford filed a lawsuit on March 11 against the Matewan Development Center and Kessler. The suit outlined the legal status of the Matewan Development Center and the church’s rights to the building, and accused Kessler of using the jail as a storage space for personal items. The lawsuit did not seek any kind of punitive action, however—Swafford just wanted a judge to decide, once and for all, who owned the property. It seems the dispute will be an open-andshut case. Once development center board members learned of the case, they agreed to sign the deed over to Swafford’s church. “We’re not going to fight over a building. They can have it,” Kessler says. The church’s attorney, Cecil Varney, drew up the necessary paperwork. At press time, Varney was still waiting for Kessler’s attorney to return the signed deed. Once that arrives, he will ask the judge to dismiss Kessler from case

BIG IDEA

Turnaround Artist Newly appointed executive director Jim Browder is revitalizing Tamarack with big ideas and small changes.

WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY ZACK HAROLD

uring his decades-long career in the hotel industry, Jim Browder became known as the guy you called when a property needed to be turned around. He did it for struggling properties all over the country, from Seattle to Washington, D.C., Buffalo, New York to Orlando, Florida. He says there are three keys to success in any hotel: people, product, and location. “If I have two of those three things, I feel very comfortable I can make the situation work,” says Browder, who became the new executive director of Tamarack last October. He is now applying the strategies he learned from a career in hospitality to reenergize West Virginia’s 20-year-old artisan showcase. So how does Browder feel about Tamarack’s blend of people, product, and location? Very confident, actually. “This place has all three,” he says. That’s not to say Tamarack doesn’t

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have a few problems. The state always intended for Tamarack to be revenue-neutral but it has never reached that point. Last year, the artisan center generated around $9 million from its food and retail operations, but it had to rely on $1.2 million generated by interstate travel centers for the remainder of its budget. Browder’s working on it. His first goal as executive director is to get more shoppers through the doors. Visitors to Tamarack have dropped by 25 percent over the last five years, even while traffic on Interstate 64 has increased. “The people are going by, we’re just not getting them up the hill,” he says. He has a two-fold plan to fix this. Step one is an advertising overhaul. He has hired a new advertising agency to help, but Browder himself came up with a new series of interstate billboards to promote Tamarack. Each features a short, pithy review Browder personally culled from websites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Urbanspoon.

Second, Browder wants to make Tamarack look more appealing from the road. Lots has changed since the space first opened in 1996. Traffic is faster and new development surrounding Tamarack has partially hidden it from view. “I think we’ve lost a little bit of luster,” Browder says. He has brought in a new landscaping company and is looking for ideas to increase the building’s visibility from the interstate. In addition to bringing more visitors into Tamarack, Browder also wants to make sure they spend some money while inside. It starts with simple things, like the way aisles are laid out. Browder is constantly walking heelto-toe, marking off distances between objects in Tamarack’s retail space. “We have a four-foot rule. If something is within four feet of something else, we move it,” he says. This reduces the chance of what Browder calls “butt rub”—the awkward problem of bumping into something or someone while trying to navigate the aisles. Shoppers are less likely to go down an aisle if it looks too crowded or leads to a dead end. He has also reduced the number of items on display, putting a few products on the shelves and leaving the rest in the warehouse. Customers are more likely to purchase items if there appears to be a limited supply. Browder has big changes in mind, too. When he arrived, Tamarack’s collection of artisan goods was mixed in with less expensive items. Browder is reorganizing the retail space, separating handcrafted items from mass-produced souvenirs. He is also working to create a series of miniature galleries for selected artisans around the building's interior courtyard. Increasing the artworks’ visibility, he hopes, will also increase their sales. Tamarack is already seeing the benefits of Browder’s smaller tweaks. When he arrived last fall, the average shopper spent around $30 per visit. The average is now up to $35. Browder plans to continue building on that success. He hasn’t set any deadlines, but by his estimation Tamarack could be self-sufficient in four or five years. “It’s like turning a ship. It’s going to take a little bit of time,” he says.

Focus wvfocus.com

CENTENARIAN

The Life of Dry Creek

The Charles B. Jarrell General Store has served its community daily news and necessities since 1884.

WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY KATIE GRIFFITH

or more than 130 years the Charles B. Jarrell General Store, located 13 miles south of Whitesville on West Virginia Route 3, has been the hub of the wheel of life in Dry Creek. Its floor boards,

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hewn and laid decades ago, are warped from a century of foot traffic coming and going for groceries, mail, hardware needs, and conversation. Its neat shelves, some just as old, are packed with the necessities of life, while refrigerators bulge with fresh

produce, dairy products, meat, and frozen treats. Across from the store register is the Dry Creek Post Office—open 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. weekdays and for two hours Saturday morning—with its rows of bronze mailboxes aglow from light flooding through the store windows. Despite the store’s age, nothing is dusty. This isn’t a museum. It’s the living, breathing heart of Dry Creek, and likely the oldest store in Raleigh County. “It’s addictive,” says Carol Jarrell who, for 35 years, owned and ran the business with her husband, Charles, for whom the store is now named. “You felt like you should be here. You wanted to be here. We were one big family, and you’d see your customers every day.” Carol still comes every day—she lives next door—though she sold the store to her husband’s cousin six years ago. “People come to get their groceries, their mail, their gas. It’s a big part of the community. If it ever

shuts down, that’ll be the end of Dry Creek.” The general store was the beginning of it, too. The store opened in June 1884 as a post office. The town, if it could be called a town then, was Jupiter. Its name changed in October of that year, and Dry Creek was born. The general store was first owned by the Barrett family at a time when goods were hauled in via horse and wagon. By 1931 ownership had changed hands to the Jarrells—first to Carl and Ruth who ran the post office and the store for more than 40 years, then to Carol and her husband Charles, and most recently to Gary and his wife Margaret since 2009. “It was going to close, and we didn’t want it to close,” Gary says. And that’s essentially why the store continues today. It’s a busy little place. The door jingles the entry of customers every quarter hour or so. Laughter and jokes and news and

gossip are as much a reason to visit as a gallon of milk or a pack of Marlboros. The store boasts a dedicated clientele from all walks—miners on their way to work, folks from as close as next door to as far as Whitesville, the young and the old. But despite appearances, keeping the general store going is a labor of love. As mining dried up and the area lost residents, stores that once riddled Route 3 closed, and wholesalers lost customers. Keeping the shelves stocked with products has only become more difficult, but the Jarrells have their ordering down to a science. “It pays the bills, but it doesn’t pay us anything,” Gary says of the store. “My wife and I work for free. She’s a speech therapist in the schools and every now and then I’ll do a little job.” Gary, grey-haired and jovial, used to do contracting. He’s still putting those skills to use, and not

The Charles B. Jarrell just for his family’s General Store has spending cash. served its community for more than 130 years. One-hundredThe store is currently and-thirty-year-old owned by Gary Jarrell buildings don’t just and his wife, Margaret; stick around on their Gary and store Manager Valerie Blaylock (lower own. “It’s taken a lot right) run the day-to-day to keep this building operations. The store also houses the Dry up. No one has Creek Post Office. worked underneath it for years, so I’m having to go back to put beams underneath to try to get the floors leveled up,” Gary says. With the help of a store manager, Valerie Blaylock, who’s really more of an adopted family member, he’s cleaning up termite damage, opening walls to fit more coolers, and repainting, between the ongoing work of running a store—all in the name of community. “It’s been in the family,” he says. “It’s the only thing we’ve got in Dry Creek left.” Focus wvfocus.com

Prehistoric Planet supplies replica fossils to institutions and collectors worldwide while promoting West Virginia’s rich natural history here at home.

WRITTEN BY PAM KASEY

ot everyone who wants a dinosaur fossil can have the genuine article—there simply aren’t enough to go around. Enter Prehistoric Planet of Barrackville, a supplier of replica fossils to

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institutions and collectors everywhere. “We call ourselves ‘the museum where you can purchase every exhibit,’” says co-owner Ray Garton. A Webster County native, Garton worked earlier as a geologic consultant. But in the

mid-1990s, paleontologist Prehistoric Planet operates friends persuaded him he out of two could support his passion warehouses in for fossils by selling replicas. Marion County. “There are only a handful of semi-complete T. rex skeletons in the world,” Garton explains. “Even the Smithsonian, their T. rex, their Triceratops, those are fiberglass replicas.” And some research can be done just as well with less precious versions, he says. “Some paleontologists will get researchquality casts to measure and photograph. So replicas play a very important role in scientific research.” A stint as a preparator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh had given Garton the background to make molds. By 1999, he established Prehistoric

COURTESY OF PREHISTORIC PLANET

Fossil Peddler WHO KNEW?

Planet’s online store, Prehistoric Store, to sell his own fossil replicas.

COURTESY OF PREHISTORIC PLANET

The Replica Market

Fifteen years later, Prehistoric Planet offers more than 1,000 replicas online and can supply thousands of others on request. It’s a market dominated by three or four large companies, several of which make museum-quality pieces—a distinction that comes mostly in the painting. “They do superb work and they charge a lot of money,” Garton says. “We have a T. rex skeleton at $60,000—the next closest is probably over $100,000.” Some of Prehistoric Planet’s inventory is museum quality, but most is affordable casts made from original specimens by a dozen suppliers, often purchased unfinished and painted in-house.

Most popular? A replica megalodon shark tooth for $20. “That really becomes crazy during (Discovery Channel’s) Shark Week,” Garton says. Also popular are replica T. rex teeth, ranging up to a lifesize 15 inches that sells for $80. Casts of velociraptor claws, at $10, satisfy lots of customers. Most expensive: that $60,000 replica of a 30-foot juvenile T. rex. Prehistoric Planet fills 2,000 orders each year from two jam-packed Marion County warehouses. It’s a small team: just Garton, his wife, and one employee who paints replicas. In addition to the mail-order business, the tiny staff also participates in 12 trade shows nationwide each year. Among the company’s clients are the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington,

D.C., the Carnegie Museum Ray Garton and some of Natural History in prehistoric Pittsburgh, and the television merchandise. shows CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and The X-Files, along with museums, educational institutions, and individual customers in all 50 states and countries as far away as Australia, Chile, and Korea.

Pursuing His Passion

When the dinosaurs lived, the rocks that became West Virginia lay under a shallow sea. Since our rocks are older than the dinosaurs, they hold fossils of more ancient plants and creatures like trilobites, along with tracks of early amphibians. We also have more recent treasures because, after the seas retreated, woolly mammoths, Focus wvfocus.com

ginia’s contributions to paleontology, Garton drafted legislation that, in 2008, declared a giant ground sloth first discovered in modern day West Virginia— and misidentified by Thomas Jefferson— the official state fossil. In May this year he installed a complete eight-foot cast of what was eventually dubbed Megalonyx jeffersonii at the Cheat Lake museum. The original bones are at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Garton now curates a late-winter event at the Harrison County Parks and Recreation complex in Clarksburg. Along with hundreds of replica and real fossils, this year’s Ice Age-themed exhibit included a 13-foottall woolly mammoth skeleton. “We had 12,000 people come through within a twomonth period,” says Parks and Recreation Director Mike Book. “During weekdays, school groups come and we have lessons, and then we’re open in the evenings and weekends for families. We’ve had teachers tell us this was the best field trip they’ve been on, and people come from all over the state. It’s our biggest program of the year.” This skeleton impressed visitors to the spring 2015 exhibit at Harrison County Parks and Recreation.

saber-toothed cats, and other Ice Age beasts sometimes left their remains in caves. Garton likes working with others to bring the state’s prehistory to the surface. “Most of my research is in the Pleistocene, the last six million years or so, when the glaciers came. I research the Ice Age animals that lived in West Virginia, things like mastodons, giant ground sloths, little mammals. We go into the caves and find bone deposits.” To promote that heritage, Garton curates the Museum of Geology and Natural History at the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey facility at Cheat Lake. The museum showcases the only full, authentic dinosaur skeleton in the state: an Edmontosaurus, or duck-billed dinosaur, he helped collect in North Dakota. He likes

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to go on an expedition out West every few years, where the finds can be dramatic— and, he says, nothing draws visitors to a museum like a dinosaur. “But West Virginia has produced its own truly spectacular discoveries,” he says. “We’ve extended the known ranges of some things here. We once had vampire bats in West Virginia, for example. We once had armadillos.” The very first records of some creatures have been found here, too. “Some 300 million-year-old amphibian skeletons were found in Monongalia County, at Greer Limestone. They were a new species, even a new genus, extremely rare.” Garton is currently documenting a new type of brittle starfish found in Greenbrier County. In his quest to spotlight West Vir-

Garton laments the rarest West Virginia finds always end up out of state. Those Greer pieces, for example, are at the Smithsonian and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He hopes one day to establish a permanent natural history museum for the state's fossil treasures. Meanwhile, he’s planning the 2016 Harrison County exhibit, Prehistoric Seas and Skies. Amateur paleontologists are invited to contact Garton for help identifying their finds. “A family was delivered a pile of gravel and this kid playing in it found a chunk,” he recounts. “It ended up being one of the very best shark spines I’d ever seen, five by three inches, pretty blue bone. It’s on exhibit now at the Geological and Economic Survey. So it’s not necessarily the professionals who find the stuff. And people don’t just have to watch it on the Discovery Channel—it’s happening right here in West Virginia.” prehistoricplanet.com

COURTESY OF PREHISTORIC PLANET

A Home for the State’s Treasures

Trash Talk ENVIRONMENT

WRITTEN BY PAM KASEY

andfills are engineered these days to keep contents and environment separate. But operators and communities still clash, usually over material that isn’t officially “hazardous” but residents believe is—like crude MCHM. Soon after a contractor started hauling the coal cleaning solution from the site of the infamous January 2014 chemical spill in Charleston to DSI Landfill in nearby Hurricane, residents complained of the licorice odor. Landfill owner Waste Management voluntarily stopped deliveries, but Hurricane and Putnam County sued to make the companies remove all of it. MCHM isn’t considered hazardous under federal waste laws. But residents remembered the reports of headaches, rashes, vomiting, and diarrhea in the weeks following the spill and feared accidents. And local officials didn’t want wastewater treatment plant staff exposed to MCHMcontaminated leachate. The parties settled in April 2015. The waste remains in place, but the companies will monitor to make sure the MCHM isn’t getting out. Here’s how it all works.

The Modern Engineered Landfill (3a) Pre-treatment pond with aeration

(1) Waste cells (2) Daily cover Soil layer Granular drainage layer Textile mat Washed rock Plastic lining Compact clay

(1) Waste Cells Landfills compact trash into one-day cells. DSI received dilute MCHM vacuumed from the spill site and mixed with sawdust in February and March, 2014—some 40,000 gallons of solidified waste fluid. (2) Daily Cover Each day’s cell is covered with soil to discourage animals and minimize smells. Local TV news station WSAZ reported in mid-April that the MCHM had been covered by subsequent days’ waste and would be difficult to remove. (3) Leachate Collection and Pre-Treatment Landfills are designed to collect and remove interior drainage. DSI will test

(3b) Leachate collection pipe

(4) Ground water monitoring wells in surrounding soil

its leachate twice a year for five years. If MCHM exceeds 120 parts per billion, DSI will stop pre-treatment aeration, stop piping leachate to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, and notify the city. An attorney for the city and county told the Charleston Gazette he’d been advised it would take at least two years for MCHM to leach out, if it does.

(4) Groundwater Monitoring Wells The landfill’s contents are kept in place by a compacted clay lining, a layer of polyethylene with heat-bonded seams, and a geotextile mat that protects the plastic from the gravel above. But DSI has agreed to test samples from three groundwater wells surrounding the landfill for MCHM twice a year for five years. Focus wvfocus.com

A new podcast talks with people about the things that divide them.

WRITTEN BY SHAY MAUNZ

n the first moments of the first episode of Us & Them, a new podcast from West Virginia Public Broadcasting, host Trey Kay makes a phone call. We hear the phone ringing, and then a friendly sounding woman with a sing-songy Southern accent picks up and says hello. “That’s my friend Alice Moore,” Kay says. Moore was on the school board where Kay grew up, in Kanawha County, when he was a kid, in the 1970s. “I didn’t know her back then but I

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knew of her,” Kay says. “There were a lot of people in the valley who thought she was a saint, but the people on my side of the tracks thought she was a whackjob.” And with that, he’s outlined the premise of Us & Them. The show lives on the line between left and right, conservative and liberal, religious and secular—us and them. Kay calls that zone “the cultural divide” and he’s not shy about which side of that line he hails from. He’s a liberal guy who lives in New York City now. He voted for

COURTESY OF ELEANOR DAVIS

Let’s Talk NOTEWORTHY LAUNCH

Kay won a Obama. He doesn’t go to Peabody Award church much. Alice Moore is in 2009 for his documentary pretty much the opposite, a The Great Christian conservative who Textbook War. thinks President Obama is evil. She and Kay spar about their beliefs, but they get along—they’re even friends. With Us & Them Kay is trying to replicate that friendship. He doesn’t want to put aside ideological differences, exactly, but he wants to discuss them in an open, even-tempered way. “I feel like often if I or somebody else who is liberal or has a progressive point of view, when you hear us described by Rush Limbaugh or some other conservatives it’s as though we have a disease or some type of mental impairment—and that’s not true. And I turn around and go back to my progressive people in New York and I don’t like the way they talk about conservative people either,” he says. “So this podcast is me wanting to reject that.” Kay and Moore met when he was working on a radio documentary about a controversy that brought a lot of attention to West Virginia in the 1970s. In March of 1974, the Kanawha County School Board was asked to do something school boards do all the time: approve the textbooks that would be used in the county for the following year. A textbook committee suggested the books and normally the board would simply defer to the committee’s judgment and vote to approve. But on this day, at this meeting, Moore took issue with a passage in one about dialectology—the idea that African American English and Appalachian English are equally

“

When the thing had success I kind of thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ve tapped into something here.’”

COURTESY OF STEVE ALLEN ADAMS

TREY KAY, HOST OF US & THEM correct versions of the language. Over the next few weeks, as she looked at all of the county’s textbooks more closely, Moore would speak out about a lot more of the content. One book quoted Malcolm X calling Christians brainwashed. Another explained Freud’s theory about the Oedipus Complex, which says that as children all boys want to kill their fathers and marry their mothers. In all, she thought the books were dismissive of Christianity and taught children to question their parents’ beliefs. Moore thought secular liberals were trying to brainwash the country’s children—in a lot of ways, but also with these books. A lot of people in Kanawha County, especially in the rural areas outside of Charleston, agreed with her. But inside the city, especially in the affluent neighborhood called South Hills where Kay grew up, people thought she and her supporters were, as he puts it, whackjobs. Over several weeks, the controversy spiraled out of control: 4,500 of the county’s 9,000 students stayed home from school to boycott the books. Someone was shot. Bombs were placed at an elementary school and the school board building. The whole thing didn’t calm down until one protester was given a three-year jail sentence. Thirty-five years after all this, Kay was a radio producer living in New York City when he decided to revisit that controversy for a radio documentary. “When I made it in 2009 there was this thing popping up called the Tea Party, and that energy seemed a lot like what was happening in the Kanawha Valley in

1974,” Kay says. “And in a way I thought, well, maybe knowing something about what happened in ’74 at least gives us the anatomy of what a culture war situation is.” Kay wanted to look at the controversy with clear eyes, to try to understand what the dispute meant to people on both sides of the issue—and what it means for us today. The result was a documentary that treated the thoughts and opinions of all its subjects with equal weight. It won three of the major awards for radio journalism, including The Peabody Award. He called it The Great Textbook War. “When the thing had success I kind of thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ve tapped into something here,’” Kay says. “I’m not saying it was a more brilliant way to look at these issues, but I thought maybe it was attempting to do it a little differently.” He went on to do another documentary on the culture wars in Texas, but then he had another idea. “As I’m doing all this I’m going and interviewing these really interesting people—but how much of

that is going to get into a documentary?” Kay says. “I’m trying to tell these big epic stories, so I might have a fantastic interview that I did with somebody, and it’s really interesting, but it’s never going to see the light of day.” He thought maybe he could use a different format that would let him tell smaller stories. Podcasting was the obvious answer. West Virginia Public Broadcasting agreed to partner with Kay to produce the show. Us & Them launched on May 1 with an episode about Kay’s relationship with Moore. In later podcasts Kay talks through attitudes about gay people, panhandlers, and abortion—some of the most contentious stuff there is. In every episode, his tone is frank but understanding, his attitude both accepting and critical. “What I found in the textbook controversy is that there are good people on either side,” Kay says. “We probably aren’t going to agree, but this belittling, minimizing, and demonizing— it’s not helping. I’m trying to see if there’s a way we can have a different conversation.” Focus wvfocus.com

CONNECTIONS

Make, Upload, Sell, Repeat Think you know about all of West Virginia’s artisans? Think again. WRITTEN BY SHAY MAUNZ

Etsy is a behemoth in the world of makers. The online marketplace for artists and craftspeople has more than 30 million members. Think of it as Amazon’s funkier, more personable cousin. It’s the place you go to sell the stuff you make in your home studio in the mountains—or at your kitchen table in the suburbs—to an international audience. We all know West Virginia is home to a ton of great, talented artisans, but it’s more than just the people whose work you see at Tamarack. Turns out, there are plenty of artists in the state with thriving Etsy businesses, making hundreds of sales every year or even every month. Here’s just a sampling of what they have to offer.

From Burrito Princess In Morgantown burritoprincess.etsy.com Amber Kantes started crafting with Perler Beads, or “melty beads,” when she was in grade school—along with an entire generation of kids who grew up in the early 2000s. But unlike most of those kids, she rediscovered the beads a decade later when she was packing for college and found an old set in the closet. She started using the beads to make her own designs, inspired by retro video games. Four years later, Kantes has sold more than 2,700 of her creations on Etsy. “While there are so many aspects of the craft that I love, I think my favorite part is it makes me feel like a kid again and helps me relive my childhood every day,” she says.

From Violetfly In Charleston violetfly.etsy.com Although Katie Poore has worked in lots of mediums including painting, printmaking, and collage, it was a post-art school job at a bead store that had the most influence on her work. “I began what turned into a gigantic and never-ending collection of stones and beads and wires and techniques and kept going until I started Violetfly in 2009,” she says. Poore and her husband live on an old farm outside Charleston where they grow their own food and live off the land—albeit with Wi-Fi, electricity, and gas-powered machinery. She converted a room on top of the root cellar into a studio, and when she’s not working on the farm she toils away up there, making and designing modern, delicate pieces of jewelry with clean, pretty lines. Since she started selling her work on Etsy, brick-and-mortar stores from all over the world—think Paris, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, and Chicago—have found Poore’s work and started to carry it. “The main thing I have found is that if you have a cohesive and quality line that you present with beautiful pictures, it will speak for itself and find its way out into the vast world of the Internet,” she says.

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From Art by Weeze In Martinsburg artbyweeze.etsy.com Three years ago Sheila Mace started a series of bold, bright dog paintings, and she has found an audience for them on Etsy. Mace plans to paint 100 dog breeds in her signature style. She’s done 29 so far. “I’m an animal lover and enjoy giving my paintings expression and a spark of life,” she says.

From The Pretty Pickle In Fairmont prettypickle.etsy.com Each of Megan Brown’s pieces starts with a live flower. She presses each one, sets it in resin, and places it inside a bezel, creating a pendant with a floating piece of flora in the center. Brown was always crafty, but jewelry making became her favorite creative outlet when she learned it several years ago. She started her Etsy shop in 2010 so she could sell her pieces. It’s really taken off since her mother-in-law gave her a flower-pressing kit as a gift and she started her botanical line. “It does feel good to know that I’m bringing people joy while representing our state and myself with these little pieces of art,” Brown says.

From Life Sew Sweet In Morgantown lifesewsweet.etsy.com A few years ago Erin McClure wanted to sew a rag doll for her two-year-old daughter and went looking online for a pattern. A Google search led her to fellow crafters on Etsy, and she began making dolls with their patterns. “I got better at it and started making them for gifts and then it blossomed from there,” she says. “I really never considered myself crafty until I started sewing, and that sparked my interest in other things.” Now McClure, a stay-athome mom, sells dolls, purses, and jewelry in her shop.

From Planner Crush In Wheeling plannercrush.etsy.com “I’ve always used a planner—whether or not I actually needed it,” says Misty Oberlin. “And I’m never happy with anything until I put my own personal stamp on it, so decorating and accessorizing my planners was like second nature.” When she posted her designs in a Facebook group for planner enthusiasts, requests started rolling in, and she decided to start an Etsy shop. She works on it in her free time away from her day job in human resources. “It’s exhilarating,” she says. “Having my own small creative business is a dream come true.”

From Laurel's Fairy Doors In Naugatuck laurelsfairydoors.etsy.com Cathy Chany is an avid gardener and loves all things fantastical. A few years ago, she started to combine the two by making garden statues for fairy gardens, things like little doors only big enough for a fairy. “I like to walk along a garden path and come upon little fantasy pieces tucked here and there—a fairy door, a rabbit, or baby dragons,” she says. Chaney is recently retired and lives in a remote area. She wanted to put her creative impulses to use to make some extra money, but didn’t have any local outlets to sell her wares. Then she found Etsy. Since 2013, Chaney has made more than 1,000 sales. “Each item I create has to pass my inspection before shipping,” she says. “Each piece is special to me, so I want it to be special for the buyer, too.”

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Open Arts EDUCATION

An accidental partnership is bringing children together in the name of art.

WRITTEN BY MAIA BRUMAGE | PHOTOGRAPHED BY NIKKI BOWMAN

t began as a simple search for space. In the summer of 2013, the Hampshire County Arts Council was hosting its annual arts camp for children for the first time in years and needed a place to fit 32 campers and nine volunteers.

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Josh Liller, a former English teacher at the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and the Blind and member of the art council’s board of directors, had an idea. Why not host the camp in the empty classrooms of the school? So the arts council set up camp in Romney. Although the program was not

really geared toward hearing- or visionimpaired students, by chance two hearingimpaired children from the WVSDB signed up for camp that first summer. That’s when inspiration struck again. When WVSDB Superintendent Lynn Boyer saw the variety of art classes offered, she wondered if the schools and the arts council could combine their efforts to offer a summer arts camp for all children, impaired or not. The next year, the arts council and the schools agreed to split the number of campers evenly, with each organization sending 35 children. It went off without a hitch—aside from a registration error that led to 53 applicants from the WVSDB being signed up. “The camp was an overwhelming success and the interaction of the children was awesome,” says coordinator Joanne Snead.

The arts camp was originally intended for children and grandchildren of Hampshire and the surrounding counties but children now attend from all over the state. Demand was soon larger than originally anticipated, and the two organizations had to cap the camp’s maximum registration at 100 children. Officially called Adventures in the Arts, the camp boasts a variety of activities, such as pottery, community weaving, and numerous performance arts classes. Art instructors go to Romney from all over West Virginia as well as out of state. Liller now lives in Georgia but returns to West Virginia to teach drama at the camp. “They have a bunch of really interesting classes with different people teaching each year,” says Morgan Allen, an 8 year old who has attended the camp for two

years. “There is one teacher who has a really fun glass crafts class that I take every year.” “My very favorite part was the glass making and making glass pictures,” says Robbie Wolford, a 10-year-old student at the West Virginia School for the Deaf. “We did a drama about Harold and the Purple Crayon. I got to be the fisherman who plopped into the water and that was pretty hilarious. I got to make some friends and we had fun practicing our parts.” The camp was originally five halfdays of arts classes, but campers now have the option of staying well into the evening. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all included in the registration fees. The schools provide dinner as a part of WVSDB-sponsored evening activities like swimming and bowling.

All of the camp's art instructors and helpers are volunteers, and the registration costs for campers are only used to cover the cost of hosting the camp. Adventures in the Arts is open to children as young as 8 years old all the way up to high school seniors. There are also partial and full scholarships for children who might not otherwise be able to attend. Children from the WVSDB attend for free. “It is so heartwarming to watch the children assist each other without reservation,” says Snead. “Many of the non-impaired campers, as well as staff and myself included, are interested in learning American Sign Language and developing a greater appreciation for the challenges that face persons who do have these impairments.” Focus wvfocus.com

Prohibition-era laws meant to limit access to alcohol now cause headaches for law enforcement trying to crack down on underage drinking.

WRITTEN BY PAM KASEY

hen it came time at long last in 1934 to repeal Prohibition, our conscientious state lawmakers didn’t throw the baby out with the bathtub gin. They were measured. The Legislature would write laws to regulate the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, they wrote in their

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amendment to the state constitution. And any law authorizing the sale of such liquors “shall forbid and penalize the consumption … in a saloon or other public place.” West Virginians have been finessing the meaning of “public place” ever since. It could just stand as an amusing constitutional artifact of a different time and sensibility, except for one thing:

That finessing may, in a roundabout way, contribute to Morgantown’s—shall we say effervescent?—bar culture.

Knicker Twist

By the liberal 1960s, West Virginians felt they were ready to enjoy a drink in a public place. Lawmakers, ever loath to amend the constitution, invented a loophole for the occasion. If an establishment only admitted dues-paying members and their guests, it would not be considered a public place and so would pass constitutional muster. “The ‘private club’ legislation came into being in 1967, and it essentially allowed for spirits to be sold by the glass,” explains Gary “Gig” Robinson, spokesman for the state Alcohol Beverage Control Administration (ABCA). For half a century now, the state has licensed bars and restaurants that serve alcohol for on-premises consumption as private clubs with dues-paying members.

ELIZABETH ROTH

Old Fashioned BOTTOM DRAWER

that the law is obsolete. “I don’t want to go on record as saying the code is outdated. We are a regulatory agency that enforces rules or code on the books. The Legislature creates those rules.” Lines form around the block for some bars in downtown Morgantown, which advertise “18 to party, 21 to drink.” Do students line up to party sober?

Whiskey Sour

Some readers will remember such places maintaining membership rosters. But in 1991, the Legislature relented a little—not going so far as to amend the constitution or to remove “membership” from the definition of a private club, but relaxing the requirements for membership lists, membership cards, and guest books. These days, state code and the letter of ABCA rules notwithstanding, establishments licensed as private clubs make no pretense at privacy and serve alcohol by the glass to all comers. “The private club license is the only license for a place that serves spirits by the glass for onpremises consumption,” Robinson says. “It would not be feasible to have a membership to go to a Red Lobster or an Applebees, and the same license is given to them as to nightclubs. ‘Private club’ simply indicates there are spirits by the glass.” Robinson bluntly sidesteps the idea

One vestige of “privacy” does remain. The way the law has been interpreted, the ABCA commissioner's authority to enforce the private club law is the sole authority to enforce it. That means municipal police cannot enter establishments licensed as private clubs without invitation. It’s an interpretation that takes on significance in Morgantown, where nightclubs operating blocks from West Virginia University dormitories openly advertise, “18 to party, 21 to drink.” “That leads me to believe that they are consuming alcohol underage,” says Captain H. Sperringer of the Morgantown Police Department. The lines that form at the doors of these establishments seem to support that suspicion—do people really stand in line to party sober? But, he affirms, “City law enforcement are not allowed in private clubs without either a search warrant or the owner’s permission to come in. If individuals are caught exiting bars who are underage and have been drinking alcohol, then we can cite them and the citations are reported to the ABCA. But we can’t go in to check for underage drinking. Only the ABCA can do that.” A little underage serving might not be an issue if all were moderate and orderly downtown. But as anyone knows who’s been on High Street late, that’s not the case. Consider two incidents at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year: the fatal late-night stabbing of an incoming freshman outside a downtown bar just before the fall semester began, and an unruly crowd a couple weeks later that Morgantown police ended up dispersing with pepper spray. “The law does need updated,” Sperringer says, when asked what would help his department maintain the peace. “Legislation would have to permit municipal officers to work in conjunction with the ABCA but also,

West Virginia Constitution Article VI, Section 46 (1934) Manufacture and sale of liquor "The Legislature shall by appropriate legislation regulate the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors within the limits of this state, and any law authorizing the sale of such liquors shall forbid and penalize the consumption and the sale thereof for consumption in a saloon or other public place."

if they have reasonable grounds to believe that serving underage is occurring, we could enter the business and determine if it is.”

Bee’s Knees

“There are plenty of responsible bar owners,” says Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, who represents Morgantown’s district. “But for years we have heard of bars emptying the underage kids out the back door when (ABCA) people were around. People have asked us for years to do something about a culture that looks the other way when young kids who don’t know any better drink more than they can handle.” Passing a constitutional amendment is difficult, Fleischauer acknowledges. “Many of us have thought about it, since it is clearly the best fix, but it may not be the most important thing to do during a 60-day session.” Instead, Fleischauer and a bipartisan slate of co-sponsors introduced legislation in January 2015 aimed directly at the problem of bars serving underage patrons. The fact that the ABCA commissioner has authority to enforce the law, the proposed legislation reads, “does not limit or restrict the authority of state or local law-enforcement officers to enter any public area on or adjacent to any private club or undertaking other appropriate action or investigation to enforce the underage drinking laws.” The bill passed in the House and then narrowly missed passage in the Senate, but Fleischauer is hopeful. “I think the chances of it passing next year are good.” Focus wvfocus.com

Little by little, as its client base justifies it, MATRIC is using legacy infrastructure and talent to build a boutique, 21st century chemical industry service.

WRITTEN BY PAM KASEY

hemical engineer Rob Nunley’s earliest tasks at MATRIC weren’t mentioned in the posting for his job. “Literally one of the first things I did was, I had to tell a guy to clean the raccoon poop out of here,” the pilot plants program manager laughs, gesturing toward a corner in what was once Union Carbide’s Building 771 in South Charleston. Two years later, Building 771 houses the latest innovations in chemical engineering. It’s a turnaround that’s emblematic of the Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research & Innovation Center’s role in retooling the Kanawha Valley’s chemical industry.

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Filling a Vacuum

Through the 1980s and ’90s, natural gas— a key chemical feedstock that was once especially cheap in the Kanawha Valley— turned pricey. The industry adjusted, as industries do, with mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing. Among them was Dow Chemical’s purchase of Union Carbide and sloughing, over time, of many dozens of Ph.D.s who worked there. MATRIC formed in 2004 to put that idled talent to use in contract research and development services, and it quickly found its market. Dow eventually cut the South Charleston campus loose, granting Carbide’s storied R&D facilities to the state for what became

the West Virginia Regional Technology Park. MATRIC now operates at the tech park, where many of its senior staff began their careers. A tour of the campus with MATRIC leaders is punctuated by, “My office was in that building across the way,” and, “I wore a path between here and there back then.” By reinvesting its revenues, the nonprofit organization has grown over the past decade to 42,000 square feet of fully equipped laboratory, pilot, and office space, and it’s still expanding fast. MATRIC works in several realms, including software technologies at a Morgantown office, but most of its work is in chemicals.

Laboratory and Pilot Plants

Do a Google Images search for “chemical manufacturing facility” and you’ll see lots of pipes and tanks and, mainly, vertical metal columns. When a company manufactures a component for paints, pesticides, plastics, or any of the hundreds of thousands of other substances that make modern life possible, this is the kind of set-up it uses. But long before such a facility is built, there’s a laboratory phase where the inputs and processes are tested and tweaked at a small scale, which leads to a pilot phase where the equipment is assembled in miniature and proven. Few chemical companies can do all of that in-house. And

COURTESY OF MATRIC

Science with a Business Head INNOVATION

COURTESY OF MATRIC

that’s where MATRIC comes in. MATRIC can step in at any phase of development. “The multidisciplinary environment we have and the resources we have provide that critical mass that’s sometimes needed to solve a problem,” says Duane Dombeck, director of process and product R&D, another Carbide veteran who’s managed MATRIC’s labs from the beginning. A client might start with an idea for a molecule that could become a seat-cushion foam. Or the client might want to turn sugars into a new acrylic acid. What are the best raw inputs? What’s the best catalyst? What are the best conditions for an efficient reaction? MATRIC solves these questions on the fourth and fifth floors of Building 740. Laboratory after laboratory after laboratory—35 in total, with a couple dozen projects going at any one time—test reactions or run miniature pilot processes with pipes, tanks, valves, and gauges in custom-built set-ups. MATRIC leaders tout their scientists’ enthusiasm. Once, early on, a potential client had an idea for synthesizing a widely used compound from a renewable, domestic resource. The new process had a lot of promise. But the organization’s scientists hadn’t been able to make it work in large quantities. At a follow-up meeting several weeks later, before the client had even signed a contract, a MATRIC chemist

placed a container on the table. In the container was more of the material than the customer had been able to produce, ever. “Our guys love the problem so much they want to chew on it sometimes before (Chief Technology Officer Parvez Wadia) closes the deal,” says Chief Operating Officer Greg Clutter. A logical extension of MATRIC’s laboratory services is its more recent pilot plant capability, located in Carbide’s 1950s-vintage Building 771. When Jack Dever, director of process engineering and development, hired Nunley as pilot plants program manager in 2013—yes, both of them are also Carbide alums—771 was stacked high with desks, chairs, boxes, and wildlife, its special design going to waste. “This building was built with the intention to hold high-pressure processes,” Dever says. “The design was really focused on, How do we keep the men safe when they’re working on these processes?” Running down the center of the long building is a 15-inch-thick, steel-reinforced concrete wall. On the front side, operators and state-of-the-art control systems; at the back, the pilot plants, each within its own cell, and a lightweight exterior wall so any explosion would blow out the far side and leave staff unharmed. “We have a highly qualified technician pool here,” Dever says. “This is their handi-

craft. They build a pilot plant and then they run it so, when something goes wrong, they know how to fix it. They’re not just a pair of hands for operations, but really doing the whole process.” Building 771’s 22 cells house a continually shifting mix of shorter- and longer-term pilot projects—some under construction, some just getting started, some winding down. Construction is flexible to a project’s needs. “We took the roof off of the building and went up two more stories to house this reactor,” says Nunley of a pilot plant that takes up three cells. And while MATRIC had this pilot plant's unusual molten-salt reactor made by the same fabricators in Germany that will ultimately construct the commercial-scale plant, Nunley notes that the equipment used in the pilot plants is usually fabricated locally. In a pilot plant, what will eventually be a massive storage tank may be represented by just a slender tube. That makes it possible to identify improvements cheaply with huge cost-savings potential. In one recent example, Dever and his team were able to streamline a client’s own design. “It’s going to save them tens of thousands of dollars on the pilot plant,” Dever says. “It’s going to save millions of dollars on construction of a plant.” All of this could turn out to be the seeds of a reborn chemical industry in the Kanawha Valley. “A customer that is looking for where they’re going to build their technology when it’s all said and done, that’s something we can talk with them about,” Dever says. “You want to build a commercial plant? Let’s look out the window. There may be places to build.”

Market Mindset

There’s another story MATRIC leaders like to tell, about a client who came in with a process for bio-based transportation fuels. “We said, ‘Sure, you can make fuels—but the real value is in nutraceuticals,’” Wadia recounts. “The customer actually changed the name of the company because they felt that the earlier designation was a misnomer for their new value chain.” Clutter adds, proudly, “We like the fact that it was a West Coast venture capital-funded organization that came here to West Virginia to get the Focus wvfocus.com

Focus July/August 2015

and use results from the research to refine the economics—and the economics in turn guide the research. It sounds like good common sense but it’s not that common. And it’s what customers value.” Hedrick doesn’t like to put numbers on patents or start-ups that have come out of MATRIC. Pressed, he says he thinks MATRIC has spun off 15 companies. Some are names familiar within the state, including Liberty Hydro and Aither Chemicals. “We have minority ownership in the bulk of those companies and they have leadership teams that keep us informed,” he says. A handful of places do what MATRIC does. Hedrick mentions the Southwest Research Institute in Texas as one similar institution, noting that it’s much older and larger—it has a staff of 2,800, compared with MATRIC’s 100. But MATRIC’s value shows up in its client list. “The biggest company in the chemical space that you can think of, the biggest petrochemical players in the world—we are engaged with them,” Hedrick says. Dow, DuPont, and ExxonMobil appear on the organization’s website, along with U.S. federal agencies and chemical technology start-ups. That

reach has brought $75 million in revenues to West Virginia so far.

The Future

In Hedrick’s mind, one can make too much of MATRIC’s grounding in Union Carbide’s legacy. “Those were some really good days,” he says. “But there comes a time and place where that experience and those critical thinking skills need to be transferred to the next outcropping of Matricians that comes along. The great days are in front of us.” The staff look back fondly on their days at Union Carbide, but harbor no regrets—they’re having fun at MATRIC. Hedrick keeps a chunk of a walnut two-by-four on his desk, a symbol of the goal the company set for itself: to double in size in four years. He won’t say when that comes due—“that wouldn’t be fair to my team”—but the signs of growth are all around in spring 2015, with two new laboratory projects under construction and the pilot plant adding new cells and new capabilities. “We put that challenge in front of ourselves and we’re on the move towards it,” he says.

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uncommon expertise and infrastructure that’s here.” The point of the story is, MATRIC is a bunch of scientists and engineers and technical folks—but it’s also much more. “Matricians,” as President and CEO Steve Hedrick likes to call his staff, are just as tuned in to the market viability of their projects as to the science. Wadia holds both a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and an MBA, and says he was always on a business team at Carbide. Many MATRIC staff have histories in technology licensing. No matter how intriguing the science of a project might be, MATRIC isn’t interested if it will cost the customer more than the outcome will be worth. The team has stopped projects when early findings showed they were not financially worthwhile and more than once has advised customers against projects right up front. What does interest MATRIC is projects that are challenging to solve and have the potential to increase a customer’s bottom line. “Before we step into the lab we ask ourselves, ‘What’s it going to cost?’ and ‘What’s it worth?’” Wadia says. “We develop a preliminary economic model

West Virginiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s small towns find creative ways to grapple with a growing problem of food insecurity. Written and photographed by Katie Griffith

ifteen miles on an interstate is a lot different from 15 miles in the middle of Clay or Boone county. A 10-minute drive in larger towns takes you past amenities that require a 30-minute drive out of smaller ones. In 10 minutes, ice cream softens but doesn’t melt. In 10 minutes, frozen chicken forms ice crystals but doesn’t thaw. In 30 minutes, ice cream is a swampy mess and meat gives way at the press of a finger like the flesh of a parent’s arm pulled by a hungry child anxious for lunch. When a grocer is 10 minutes away, you huff at the inconvenience of running back to the store mid-week for the much-needed green beans your spouse forgot to purchase during the weekend shopping trip. When the grocer is 30 minutes away, you do without. In West Virginia—rural, green, growing West Virginia—more and more people are doing without. The stories fill newspapers. In 2014 Bridgeport lost its last grocery store; Kroger stores in Kanawha and Lewis counties closed; Alderson lost its last store; the Richwood Foodland closed its doors for the last time; and the Whitesville Save A Lot, the only grocery store serving the community for 15 miles, also shuttered. The trend has continued in 2015. In April St. Marys in Pleasants County lost a food store to a fire. In May Clay County’s last grocer, a Piggly Wiggly, pulled out of the area. But growing in place of these grocers, in small towns with small populations, are innovative social enterprises dependent on big community. Bridging the gap between relatively high-end local food movements like farmers’ markets and lower-end income-based food pantries and services, these organizations are pioneering an effort to feed the state. It’s an effort that’s more about people than about profit.

Growth of a Nutritional Wasteland

When Clay County’s Piggly Wiggly closed, it left the community reeling. Few understood why the only store in an entire county would shutter. The nearest option now is in Flatwoods, 46 miles one way. “There were always a lot of my patients who had the ability and resources to drive the 45 minutes to an hour to a bigger store in a surrounding county, but a significant portion didn’t and aren’t doing that,” says Kimberly Becher, a family medicine physician working at Community Care of West Virginia in Clay. “A lot of my patients walk wherever they need to go, which means now, instead of a grocery store, they buy food at GoMart.” Or at the Family Dollar downtown.

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A bottle of cheese product sits alone on the empty shelves of the former Whitesville Save A Lot.

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The Whitesville Save A Lot closed a year ago, but no business has come in to re-stock the store shelves.

Imagine a cookout provisioned by food purchased at a GoMart or Family Dollar. The staples of a summer barbeque—corn on the cob and watermelon, or burgers topped with juicy ripe tomatoes and crisp lettuce—are nowhere to be found. “My patients complain that not only are their choices significantly limited, but shelves are sometimes empty because the bulk of the town and county are shopping in stores not intended to supply a community with three meals a day,” Becher says. In Whitesville, where the community lost its Save A Lot nearly a year ago, the story is much the same. “At one time we probably had three or four grocery stores,” says Sue Pauley, an outreach coordinator for the Whitesville food pantry run by Catholic Charities in town. “Everybody just shopped everywhere—go here, go there, follow the sales.” By Pauley’s estimates the town’s stock of stores dwindled to just a Foodland a decade ago, which later became the Save A Lot. Most say it wasn’t a quality store, but it was something. “It had milk, it had bread, cheese—staples that people need,” Pauley says. “It has hurt us, not having grocery stores.” Seniors like those living at the Mountain Terrace senior apartment building in Whitesville are especially vulnerable. “They would shop at the Family Dollar, but we lost our Family Dollar. Now there’s a bus that comes through once a week and it takes them to Walmart.” A Dollar General sitting just outside town is all that’s left now. Signs on the door often read “No milk,” “No bread,” or “No water.” There’s a term for places like these: food deserts—loosely defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as urban neighborhoods and

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rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. “It’s a question of deprivation caused by lack of access to nutritious foods or the money to purchase nutritious foods,” says Bradley Wilson, director of West Virginia University’s FOODLINK, a program studying sustainable, community-based food systems across the state. “Food-insecure families are everywhere,” he says. “And food insecurity—hunger—has a particular face in rural areas that it doesn’t have in urban areas.” National statistics compiled by the USDA show that more than 23 million Americans live in both urban and rural places officially designated food deserts. In these areas, issues like obesity and diabetes are only exacerbated by limited access to healthy, fresh food and easier access to pre-packaged, sodium- and sugar-heavy products like those that line gas station shelves. Food deserts are even found in areas traditionally considered wealthy. “Monongalia County is seen as the shining star of West Virginia,” Wilson says. “It has all these excellent employment opportunities. There’s economic growth. There’s 5 percent unemployment, even during the period of the financial crisis. But there’s still a Census estimate of 22 percent of the population living below the poverty line, and there’s roughly 14,000 people a month who are served by food assistantship agencies—and that’s a low estimate.” Twenty-six percent of the population in Monongalia County has low access to a grocery store, according to 2010 USDA figures, the latest available. Nearly 10 percent are affected by both low access and low income. Well-off or poor, urban or rural, families adapt or they

Commerical Food Landscape of West Virginia Retailer and Produce Distribution

once a week, filling an extra freezer in the basement, and planning meals a month in advance. At worst, for families and senior citizens that haven’t the means or ability to drive to the store, it means depending on neighbors for a ride or simply going without. “Families are looking at their entire economic puzzle, and they’re like, ‘This month I can put these together, but there’s a hole.’ And food does end up being the hole very often,” Wilson says.

Desertification

suffer. Hollie Smarr, a pharmacist in Whitesville who recently welcomed her first child, says her family does a lot of weekly meal planning to limit travel for shopping. “When we go to our church in Teays Valley we might go to Kroger in Charleston,” she says. “We plan ahead. If we have some place to stop, any family to visit while in Charleston, we normally take coolers. But it’s just the convenience of a local grocer that we really, really miss. I don’t think you realize until it’s gone how much you’ll miss it.” At best, that struggle means an hour's drive to and from Kroger

The explanations for the grocer closings are almost always the same. “It comes down to bare business,” says Chon Thomlin, corporate spokesperson for Save A Lot, a discount grocery chain owned by Supervalu. In May Save A Lot opened a new store in Elkins, months after closing its Milton distribution warehouse that employed dozens of people. “We don’t pull out of a market without making sure a store can perform or is performing the way it should,” Thomlin says. But Wilson would argue the roots of food insecurity go much deeper than that. “It’s important to think about the evolution of food deserts in a historical context of how people got access to food, period,” he says. “Whether it was through gardening for themselves, through farming, through grocery stores that developed in particular areas, or government subsidies and provisioning of food in particular times and places. I don’t think that food deserts are something new at all. Hunger has always been a big issue in the United States.” Our current food desert problem—one that on the USDA food environment map has nearly two-thirds of the United States highlighted in orange and red—Wilson says is linked to the growth of a nationwide food system around since the 1950s. “It’s retail consolidation that’s happened,” he says. The Whitesville of 50 years ago, like many West Virginia towns, isn’t the Whitesville people know today. The three or four independent local grocers Sue Pauley remembers were stocked by independent wholesalers who aggregated product from around the country—fruit from California, corn from the Great Plains, meat from Chicago or Cincinnati, cloth from the Carolinas, the list goes on. “Those regional suppliers are increasingly linked up into retail consolidation,” Wilson says. “The brokers who are purchasing large volumes, who then distribute to local grocers, are also competing within a vertically integrated supply chain— from farm to you in the supermarket—that’s managed by Kroger or through a Giant Eagle or through a Wegmans or a Whole Foods.” Over the past few decades, large supermarket chains have increasingly outcompeted the local grocers, to the point smaller stores can no longer stay in business. Sales by the nation’s 20 largest food retailers—led by Walmart and Kroger—totaled $449 billion in 2013 and accounted for 64 percent of U.S. grocery sales, according to the USDA. In 1993 those 20 big names accounted for 40 percent of U.S. grocery sales. “The disappearance of local grocery stores is not because local grocery stores are just throwing in the towel,” Wilson says. They are unable to compete with the Krogers, with the Walmarts, and with those last-standing Family Dollars and Dollar Generals upon which rural West Virginia increasingly relies. According to FOODLINK research, small- and big-box retailers like Walmart and dollar stores outnumber grocers in West Virginia two to one. “A grocery store can’t just be vegetables,” Wilson says, adding that dry goods like toilet paper and paper towels are integral to a grocer’s inventory. “They have to sell all this stuff to make up Focus wvfocus.com

their overhead, and when they’re competing against the smallbox retailer that rolls into town, like a Dollar General, they are competing against their toilet paper prices. And when people go to them for their toilet paper price, the grocery store disappears.” The disappearance of small-town grocers is depressing for local townscapes left empty at their retreat and for townsfolk who fondly remember the good old days. But the disappearance becomes disastrous when the box stores later pull out on their own accord, leaving people with nothing. Walmarts have given way to Walmart Supercenters and Kmarts to “big” and “super” versions, and Krogers to even fancier, more decadent stores. Kroger claims it invested $32 million in West Virginia for improving 12 stores from 2010 to 2014. During that time it has also closed at least two stores in the state, one in Weston and one in Quincy. “Kroger has limited opportunities to build new stores in West Virginia because the state’s population is not growing,” says spokeswoman Allison McGee. “The size of today’s Kroger stores is larger, making it more difficult to justify building in smaller communities.“ The company’s focus instead, she says, has been on improving existing stores. Meanwhile in Weston, where 3,000 people joined a “Save the Weston Kroger” Facebook page and where the former Kroger has sat empty for more than a year, folks are driving to another county just to buy bread.

Where New Seeds Are Being Planted

In the wake of these closings, however, new enterprises are taking root. These stores are a mix of ingenuity, necessity, and altruism, opening to fill the nutritional void of communities left without traditional grocers. Some are accompanied by headlines heralding their success, and others are chugging along in relative anonymity, known only by the communities they serve. In Alderson, a town whose identity revolves around summer and the seasonal influx of visitors coming to camp on the Greenbrier River, the loss of the locally owned IGA store in 2014 was a big blow. “The fact that we could no longer say we have a grocery store in our community—but ‘Come visit us!’—was a big deal. As soon as IGA announced they were closing, people had to respond immediately, because they need food,” says Kevin Johnson, board president of the Alderson Community Food Hub. “The general sense was, ‘Is this a bellwether for the future of the town?’” Johnson says residents were increasingly reliant on nearby centers like Lewisburg and Beckley for jobs and shopping. But when IGA closed, the town rallied. “People love their town. I love Alderson, and there’s a hope that by keeping the bone structure of Alderson alive there will be a future.” The food hub, which had already started as a community market in 2010, had grown to include an educational program, a community garden, and a co-op. “But I would be lying if I had told you that opening a full grocery store was in anyone’s mind before a year ago,” Johnson says. Yet that’s just what the town did. Alderson raised more than $30,000, volunteers spent hours painting and prepping the space, and the Alderson Green Grocer launched in April, just months after the IGA closed. On the first day of business, the store was jam-packed. “It was amazing to see all the pent-up demand,” Johnson says. Opening day had been rushed. The group finished its fundraising campaign only weeks before. Volunteers were still painting. “We were not full, by any means, with our inventory. But we were slammed the first day with people coming in and looking around. I think

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Months after Alderson lost its locally owned IGA store, the community banded together to open the Alderson Green Grocer.

NIKKI BOWMAN

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Focus July/August 2015

profits help cover the costs of running the market. “The 20 percent doesn’t cover all our costs, but we feel this has been a service for the community for many years,” says executive director Brenda Hunt. There are now only two retail grocery stores in Barbour County, Shop ’n Saves in Belington and Philippi. “Other than that, folks have to go to mom-andpop corner shops. Most people have to travel to Elkins or Buckhannon.” Either town is a half-hour drive one way. In Philippi the Community Garden Market isn’t just a nutritional opportunity, it’s an economic and social one as well. “Not only are we in a food desert, but there aren’t a lot of employment opportunities either. We’ve had participant growers say they use that money to supplement heating costs,” Hunt says. The market began accepting SNAP benefits years ago, but its customer range is

NIKKI BOWMAN

we did $1,700 that day.” The point of the Alderson Green Grocer isn’t to make money, although the store does have goals to meet its costs. The point is to fill a need. “Earlier in the year it had come up that there were four places in town that sold pet food and six that sold motor oil. But there were no places to buy a potato or an apple or anything like that. I think people understand that’s a fundamental need here,” Johnson says. Alderson isn’t an isolated phenomenon. In Philippi, Heart and Hand House is celebrating 23 years of its Barbour County Community Garden Market—a place where professional and nonprofessional growers can consign excess garden produce, baked goods, and even jams and honey. Growers receive 80 percent of sales and leftover food goes to stock the Heart and Hand House food pantry, while the remaining 20 percent of

Today business is growing at the Alderson Green Grocer, which offers fresh local meats, eggs, and produce, dry goods, and canned products, as well as a café and community corner.

offerings. Even the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources is pitching in to sustain life in the Mountain State with its Hunters for the Hungry program, supplying deer meat to food assistance agencies around the state. “We’re doing this authentically, and not self-consciously, which is what makes it particularly compelling,” Wilson says. “I don’t think West Virginians fully embrace the fact that they have interesting ways of provisioning food.”

Reimagining West Virginia’s Food Economy

broad, spanning college students, the local workforce, and curious travelers who take an opportunity for a rest stop. “It’s always been a gathering place that people love. We see it on several fronts being a benefit to the community.” The Heart and Hand House Community Garden Market was one of the first consignment model markets in the state. Recently, it’s been joined by the Wild Ramp in Huntington, an organization largely run by more than 200 volunteers sourcing food from 170 food producers and artisans. Also in Huntington, local kids are learning to garden and sell their produce to local businesses and restaurants with the SCRATCH Project. Five Loaves & Two Fishes Food in McDowell County is a food bank supplied by hydroponics gardens. In its long-term plan, the organization is looking to add a produce stand and café to its

Models like the Alderson Green Grocer and the Heart and Hand House Community Garden Market may very well be the future of food in the state, bridging the gaps between charity, community, and capitalism. “The idea of social enterprise, of meeting basic needs in rural West Virginia, is very possible,” Kevin Johnson says. “People care. People want to shop at a place that fits with their sense of selves and community.” In places like Whitesville and Weston, where the buildings that formerly housed large supermarket chains continue to sit vacant, it’s unlikely another corporate chain will come in. Whitesville community leaders have reached out to multiple chains from Piggly Wiggly to Dollar General. “They’re looking in more populated areas,” Hollie Smarr says. She and fellow community organizer Adam Pauley, both leaders with the Turn This Town Around program in Whitesville, go back and forth with regional corporations for weeks, and just as it seems they might be getting somewhere, discussions dissolve. “When they really take a look at the population, it’s out of their distribution area and there just aren’t enough people,” Smarr says. “I think right now a co-op or a community-owned grocery store is probably our best chance. It’s going to take a lot of support from the community, but I think it absolutely can be done.” West Virginia’s communities working together—it’s not a new concept. Survival has been the name of the game since homesteaders first populated the mountains, since miners’ wives started vast gardens to battle the coal company store, since that first group of families pitched in to buy a cow and have it slaughtered. These are food desert strategies that aren’t discussed enough, Wilson says. “Yes, it’s all about community, but it’s also about survival. We always had to have some strategies in mind about how families would have access to good food, and that becomes part of the culture.” He recalls a favorite childhood book, Blueberries for Sal, written in 1948 by Robert McCloskey. It’s the story of a little girl named Sal, her mother, and their trip into the country to pick blueberries for winter. Caplink, caplank, caplunk, sound blueberries dropped into an empty bucket. As soon as one falls, Sal scoops it up to eat, and her mother chastises her for eating the berries they need to can for the winter. “Why are there so many gardens in West Virginia? Well, Grandma always had a garden. Why did Grandma always have a garden? Because she had to make up the difference between what her family earned and what her family needed to put good food on the table,” Wilson says. “That’s a mentality that’s persisted in West Virginia—working to make up the difference. You have to put in a lot of extra work that is unpaid, that is unaccounted for, that is about building community and about love for people and all those other kinds of things that make people go above and beyond. We need to tap into that part of the story of West Virginia to rebuild a food economy.” Focus wvfocus.com

Mind the Gap Employers worry a flagging work ethic in West Virginia will hamper future growth. Written and photographed by Zack Harold

he great virtue of West Virginia workers was never that they were the smartest in the world—although they have proven to be plenty smart. West Virginia workers also never claimed to possess superior strength, although their backs were always strong enough to complete the task at hand. No, this state’s badge of honor has always been our commitment to hard work. West Virginians will take the jobs nobody else wants, stay late, come in on weekends, put in as many hours as necessary until the work is done. There may be others just as smart or just as strong, but nobody works harder than the West Virginian. Or so we’d like to believe. When Rebecca Randolph became the president of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association in 2013, she spent some time visiting member companies, educating herself on issues facing industry. She learned companies often have difficulty filling open positions. But the problem wasn’t the number of applications. Rather, it was the quality of the applicants. Employers often receive a glut of responses after posting an opening, but only a fraction of the applicants meet even the basic requirements for employment. “They will have to look at 150 candidates and pare that down to 75, just to get 35,” Randolph says. Focus wvfocus.com

Although there is a shortage of “hard skills”—Randolph says companies have a difficult time getting applicants with solid math, reading, and problem-solving skills—they are more troubled by the lack of “soft skills” like showing up to work on time, putting in a full shift, and being able to pass a drug test. Joe Eddy is the president and CEO of Eagle Manufacturing in Wellsburg. His company makes more than 1,000 industrial safety and hazardous material handling products. The plant employs 185 people. When a job opens up, applications flood in. Eddy has 600 to 800 resumes on file at any given time and interviews about 10 people for every job. It's always difficult to find machinists and welders, as well as higher-skilled employees like engineers. But even when applicants have all the necessary skills, Eddy says they still might not work out. A worker can possess all kinds of knowledge and skills, but Eddy says that’s not worth much if he doesn’t show up on time and pull his weight. “Employers care also about you having responsibility, reliability, accountability, and adaptability,” he says. Randolph says workforce availability is one of the top concerns of businesses looking to move into the state. West Virginia Secretary of Commerce Keith Burdette agrees. He says years ago, companies looking to set up shop in the Mountain State asked questions about the state’s taxes and worker’s compensation system. Not anymore. Nowadays they are worried about finding enough quality employees.

Worries About Tomorrow’s Worker

In February, Procter & Gamble announced it would build a $500 million plant in Berkeley County. Burdette says as state leaders courted the multinational consumer goods manufacturer, company executives had one major concern. “They liked our location, they like our property, they like our government. They were concerned they could not find and develop a workforce,” he says. Burdette disagrees with Randolph that West Virginia is currently facing a worker shortage. “I don’t have any problem going to a company and saying ‘Come to West Virginia and we’ll find you a workforce.’” The state won the P&G factory, after all. What Burdette is more concerned about—and says potential employers are, too—is the workforce of tomorrow and whether it will be up to the job. Baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, are retiring in droves, leaving in their wake an unprecedented number of job vacancies. It’s an issue all industries are grappling with, from education to healthcare to manufacturing. And while that seems like good news for younger generations, employers are worried the new batch of workers won’t have the skills necessary to fill their predecessors’ shoes. According to a study by the ManPowerGroup, which included 37,000 employers in 42 countries and territories, companies said 19 percent of positions remained vacant because applicants did not possess adequate soft skills. So, what happened to our soft skills? Nobody seems to know. Of all the government, education, and industry sources interviewed for this story, no one could even hazard a guess. It just seems that, at some point, children knew hard work was expected. And then, at some later point, children lost that seemingly inborn knowledge. We could probably blame the Internet, or reality television shows, or smartphones, or gluten-free diets. But if we’re honest, nothing is

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“

Employers care also about you having responsibility, reliability, accountability, and adaptability.” Joe Eddy, president and CEO of Eagle Manufacturing

to blame, because everything is to blame. “We probably took a lot of things for granted over the years,” Burdette says. There is one thing of which we can be certain, however. If West Virginians are no longer born with work ethic, we have to find a way to get it to them. “It’s going to be difficult to diversify any part of the state if we do not have a skilled workforce to match it,” Burdette says. And here’s the good news: We already have people working to solve this problem.

Learning to Work

Kathy D’Antoni has racked up more than 112,000 miles on her three-year-old Acura, mostly from driving to career and technical schools around the state. “We’ve got some fantastic career and technical schools, and we have some that need help.” And D’Antoni, the West Virginia Department of Education’s Chief Career and Technical Education Officer, is here to help. Career and technical schools—what used to be called “vocational” or “vo-tech” schools—have traditionally focused on teaching students trades. You learn to weld in welding class. If you take auto repair, you learn to work on cars. But as D’Antoni talked with industry officials over the years, she learned companies were looking for something more than just a set of skills. “They were absolutely screaming, ‘Have them show up on time, drug free, and give me a full day’s work, and we’ll train them,’” she says. So D’Antoni began to develop a program that would teach West Virginia’s students not just how to do a job, but also how to work. The result is a program called “Simulated Workplace.” D’Antoni invited West Virginia Focus to Mingo Central High School to see it in action. When students arrive in the morning, they slide their

thumbs over a fingerprint scanner to “clock in.” Classes are not called “classes.” Rather, students work for “companies,” each with an official-sounding name chosen by the “employees.” At Mingo Central, students dubbed the carpentry class “King Coal Construction.” Engineering students call their class “Appalachian Engineering.” Welding students named their company “Mountaintop Metal.” Each company also has its own uniform, which the school purchased with money from the state education department. Students in the graphic design class—named “smART Design”— wear black shirts with lime green suspenders and bowties. In the auto shop, called “Mountaintop Repair Shop,” students wear twotone mechanic shirts with the company logo embroidered on the lapel. Welding students wear green overalls. Simulated Workplace is more than just a game of dress-up, however. It is changing the way technical education is delivered in West Virginia. Instead of formal lessons, classes are based around projects. Students learn by doing, and the progress of the class largely relies on students’ motivation. But, just like in the real world, there are consequences for missing work, slacking off, or acting up. Students can’t be fired—but their grades will suffer. Marcella Charles, Mingo Central’s career and technical education administrator, says both attendance and student behavior have improved dramatically since Simulated Workforce came to the school three years ago. “It’s working. It really is,” she says. “I just see more ownership in the students.” D’Antoni admits the program can be difficult for longtime educators. Teachers have to cede some control in the classroom. Instead of functioning like micromanaging bosses, they become professional development coordinators, teaching students the

skills they need to accomplish the task at hand. Engineering teacher Tom Bane says he was initially skeptical about the program. Sure, he reasoned, Simulated Workplace might be important for welding or HVAC students, but his pupils were headed to four-year engineering programs after high school. It didn’t take long before Bane became a believer, however. “Even engineers need those soft skills. We think just because they’re college-bound, we don’t need to teach them those skills,” he says. Simulated Workplace started in 30 technical school classrooms across the state in 2012. It grew to 220 classrooms the next year, and there were 570 Simulated Workplace programs in operation during the 2014-15 school year. Starting this fall, it’s going statewide. “There will not be a career-technical classroom in West Virginia that’s not Simulated Workplace,” D’Antoni says. The program is gaining attention far outside West Virginia, too. Educators from eight states have visited to see Simulated Workplace in action, and Australia is currently running three pilot programs based on Simulated Workplace, with plans to go nationwide. A group of teachers from North Carolina visited Mingo Central the same day West Virginia Focus took a tour of the school. Herman Locklear, career and technical education director for Robeson County Schools in North Carolina, says his district was already developing a program similar to Simulated Workplace. “Every industry tells the same story, ‘We need people who can come to work and be willing to work,’” he says. But last year, some teachers from Locklear’s district heard D’Antoni at a conference in Alabama. They called him right away. ‘They said ‘This is what we need,’” he says. The school system plans to launch a Simulated Workplace program in the fall. Focus wvfocus.com

Train Them If You’ve Got Them

Once students attain the necessary soft skills, employers are often ready to help them get the “hard skills” they need. Companies, especially those in the manufacturing sector, are increasingly willing to train people for jobs as long as the employees demonstrate a willingness to work. Dennis Dunbar, a skilled team leader at Toyota’s engine and transmission plant in Buffalo, says the company experimented with hiring out-of-state workers when it could not find enough highly skilled workers in West Virginia. The plan backfired, however. Despite offering signing bonuses and covering relocation costs, the plant found most of the workers didn’t stick around long. “It was a culture shock to some people to move to West Virginia. Buffalo, West Virginia is not Detroit, Michigan,” he says. “That was a big expense with no long-term gain.” So Toyota focused instead on recruiting and training a group of people who love living in West Virginia—native West Virginians. In 2012, the Toyota factory launched a new program with BridgeValley Community and Technical College to train students for highly technical manufacturing jobs. Students in the Advanced Manufacturing Technician program spend two days per week in the classroom and three days a week on the factory floor at Toyota. By the end of the program, students will have earned an associate’s degree—and more than $40,000. Toyota has high standards for the students. They are required to maintain a C average in every class, keep near-perfect attendance, and work at the plant for 24 hours each week. By the end of the program’s first semester, the original pool of 17 candidates was down to just nine people. But Toyota has good reason to weed out the less-motivated students. That initial class recently graduated, and four of the students now have full-time jobs at the automotive plant. “They show up to work every day, they’re well motivated, they work well with others. You can’t get that in an hour interview with someone,” Dunbar says. “It’s much easier to offer a job to a known quantity.” Buffalo was the second Toyota plant to begin an on-the-job training program—the original started in Georgetown, Kentucky two years earlier. By the end of this summer, the company will have similar programs at 12 of its manufacturing facilities in North America. The car manufacturer hopes to eventually fill all its job openings with graduates of the program. “Just from the comfort of knowing the attitude, attendance, and ethics of a person,” Dunbar says. Dunbar says he would like to see other companies adopt similar training programs. “It’s working for us. I feel sure it will work for other manufacturers,” he says. “Look what you get out of it. You get highly skilled graduates. You’ve molded that product. You’ve instilled proper thinking. I’m totally sold on it.” The train-your-own-workers philosophy can work for small companies, too. When Josh Dodd and his business partner Megan Bullock started their graphic design and web development company MESH in October 2009, they made what seemed like a logical hiring decision: They hired computer programmers to program computers. It turned out to be a bad choice, for a few reasons. First, Dodd says university computer science programs are more focused on backend programming—the behind-the-scenes operations of computer systems. Students don’t get much training to handle front-end

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programming tasks like website development. Programmers might understand the code, but that doesn’t mean they know how to create a pleasing user experience. “With web, you have to understand usability,” Dodd says. But worse than that, the coders Bullock and Dodd hired did not play nicely with others—an essential skill when collaborating with multiple people on a project. So over time, the pair decided to approach hiring in a different way. Now when the company goes looking for a developer, Dodd says he’s not too concerned about candidates’ work histories or educational backgrounds. They need to know how to code, obviously, but it’s also important they are smart, willing to learn, and work well with others. “You can be a really good web developer without having a computer science degree. It’s not always about the skillset,” Dodd says. “We can provide the training. It’s about the attitude.” Joe Eddy at Eagle Manufacturing says his company is also relying more on in-house training. He has the same problem Toyota did. When he has been able to convince out-of-state workers to move to West Virginia for jobs, it was seldom a longterm arrangement. “I haven’t been able to keep people here.”

Now Eddy is taking employees with proven work ethic and training them to fill empty positions. “We can train you, and you can do a job and work here forever,” he says. About 10 years ago, he hired two brothers, Billy and Matt Matteson, to work in his plant’s plastics processing division. At the time, it might have seemed like an odd choice. Both brothers were Bethany College graduates and neither had any experience in manufacturing work. Billy earned his degree in education. Matt had studied accounting. But despite their lack of factory experience, Eddy recognized something in the Mattesons. They were hard workers and eager to learn. Eagle Manufacturing trained the brothers, and over time both worked their way into management. Matt is now the corporate comptroller, while Billy is the production and inventory manager. “If you’ve got the right work ethic and you have these soft skills, you’ll have the ability to move up in any job,” Eddy says.

Our Children’s Children

As we have seen, there is a tremendous effort now directed toward solving West Virginia’s workforce issues. But we also must

be realistic. There is no immediate solution to West Virginians’ shortfall of work ethic—or soft skills, or grit, or whatever you would call that intangible mix of personality traits today’s workers are lacking. That doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless, however. Change isn’t impossible, it will just take time. Rebecca Randolph at the state manufacturer’s association says no one should expect to see the fruits of their labor anytime soon. “Frankly it’s not just the generation of students we’re working with now. It’s about their children,” she says. Fixing the workforce will require a fundamental shift in the state’s culture, and that cannot happen overnight. It won’t happen until our children’s children grow up like our parents' parents did, in homes where a hard day’s work is not just expected, but valued. “Until we get that cultural shift, we’re going to suffer economically,” she says. “Are we going to be the direct beneficiaries? No.” Randolph is glad, however, that state leaders are trying so hard now to fix state’s workforce problems. “That’s a legacy people like Kathy D’Antoni can be proud of. They know they’re improving industry in West Virginia. That will have historic impact,” she says. “One thing that cannot be said is West Virginia is not trying to address this issue.” Focus wvfocus.com

A Leaner, Meaner $tudent A college degree is still worth it. But families have to be savvy. written by pam kasey

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hen Dave and Stephanie Martin decided last year to pay off his culinary school debt, they got a shock. Surely a decade of monthly $650 payments had gotten them close, the North Central West Virginia entrepreneurs figured. It was only an associate’s degree, after all, and he no longer even worked in the field. It felt like ancient history. Dave originally consolidated about $60,000 in student loans. The couple had sent their payments in faithfully, in spite of getting no loan statements from the bank, rounding up a little from the minimum payment. “So when we called, we were sickened to find out it had gone up—to $74,000,” Stephanie says. “Like a credit card, the minimum payment will never pay it off.” Intent on getting out from under Dave’s debt, the Martins—not their real name—took a radical step: They moved in with her mom, sold their house, and used the equity to just about pay it off. The Martins, both first-generation college-goers, should have gotten their statements, and Stephanie acknowledges they made mistakes. But they’re not alone. College-bound teenagers rely on the common wisdom that their future good jobs will pay for their educations. But tuition costs have risen faster than salaries, and students’ money management skills are being challenged. Families and students have to be savvy these days to capitalize on the promise of higher education. Those who take it casually face long repayment periods, sometimes forcing them to put off major life steps like buying homes, having children, and furthering their educations. Or, worse, the borrowers ruin their credit forever. This is not a narrow problem. It affects families with some money and families with little money, because everyone hopes for upward mobility and job satisfaction. Ultimately, it affects all of us. If young adults are too indebted to make the big investments that ground adult life and to take the business risks that will create future prosperity, West Virginia’s economy and its residents’ wellbeing will continue to suffer. The education professionals we talked with for this story remind us that higher education is still well worth the cost. A person with a bachelor’s degree earns, on average, $800,000 dollars more than a high school graduate over his or her lifetime and is far less likely to face unemployment or underemployment. But everyone acknowledges kids going to college these days have a harder time than those who went before.

» Out of Balance

Tuition is up again in 2015. Most West Virginia public fouryear colleges are increasing tuition by 5 percent. West Virginia University is going up 10 percent. Other colleges across the state and nation announced increases this spring, too—all following on years of steep increases. The reasons, and the reasonableness, fuel hot debate. “I’m just aghast, appalled, amazed, that we keep raising tuition on our students and families,” bristles Cabinet Secretary for Education and the Arts Kay Goodwin. As a member of the

“

Like a credit card, the minimum payment will never pay it off.” West Virginia’s public four-year institutions ranked ninth most affordable, as a whole, for tuition and fees in 2014-15. West Virginia University was the eighth most affordable among flagship universities. Source: The College Board Nationwide, 31 percent of Millennials have postponed either marriage or having children, and one-quarter have moved back in with their parents after living on their own. Source: McGraw Hill Financial; Pew Research Center 2012

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Student Debt Rising Faster than Salaries Average U.S. bachelor’s degree salary, ages 25-34 Average West Virginia bachelor’s degree loan debt

$50,000

$40,000

$30,000

$20,000

$10,000

Sources: National Center for Education Statistics, West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission

state Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC), she agitates often against tuition increases and for austerity measures at colleges. “We’re very busy at building buildings and adding administrators. It’s all very expensive.” West Virginia’s public colleges are still among the most affordable in the nation, counters HEPC Chancellor Paul Hill. “And our scholarship and financial aid programs are higher than the national average.” And without updating facilities and programs, others ask, how will we attract the best faculty and the out-of-state students that keep in-state tuition down? Still, Goodwin argues, there’s a breaking point. WVU’s 2014 graduates had, on average, $38,000 in outstanding student loan debt. “You can’t be a teacher in this state or a social worker or a caregiver with that kind of debt,” she says. “That kind of debt” is the fundamental issue. Student debt has been rising faster than salaries. A lot faster. Students who earned bachelor’s degrees at West Virginia’s public colleges in 2002 entered work life with debt averaging about 40 percent of the salaries of bachelor’s-educated young adults nationwide. A decade later, West Virginia students graduated with debt at 70 percent of salaries. Some might dismiss Goodwin as an alarmist. Debt is up, but one could argue that doesn’t mean it’s not manageable. But consider this: West Virginians are falling behind on student loan repayment at higher rates than anyone. That’s a sure sign something—tuition, borrowing, salaries, or at the very least the skill to juggle it all—is out of balance.

» Gut-Wrenching Choices

It’s time for an uplifting story. Isaac Warden, Capital High School’s 2015 salutatorian, loves linguistics. He applied to a slate of really tough schools including American University, the University of Chicago, Georgetown University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale, along with WVU. “Most of the schools we applied to are $60,000-plus a year,” says Isaac’s dad James, who has been saving for Isaac’s and his younger sister’s educations for about five years. “Georgetown’s $67,500 a year. I cannot afford that.” What James didn’t know going into the process is that, while

Focus July/August 2015

2002

2013

the elite schools give nothing for merit—all their students would qualify—they give generously based on need. At WVU, Isaac qualified for the PROMISE scholarship and the Presidential Scholarship, a very nice aid package. But given what amounts to $232,000 in aid, “it’s cheaper for me to send him to Georgetown,” James says. Stories like Isaac’s are too rare these days. A smart kid studies hard, aims high, and gets an incredible leg up. It’s the American dream, that each generation does better than the one before. But that dream may not be available to everyone in this generation. “The cost of college is breaking the backs of normal American families,” says Charleston-based Certified Educational Planner Jamie Dickenson. She worked with the Wardens and two families we will meet later in this story. “Families are putting their whole financial futures at risk just for undergrad,” Dickenson says. Some families don’t need to worry. If they are under a certain level of income and assets, she says, they can get need-based aid. Or if families are particularly wealthy, they can just pay for college out of pocket. “But the people in the middle, the ones that make between $100,000 and $150,000, have a couple kids—they make too much to qualify for need-based aid but don’t make enough to pay for college,” she says. “They’re the ones that live with knots in their stomachs.” Laura Boggess describes choosing a college for her elder son Teddy as “a numbers game.” Valedictorian at Hurricane High School this year and a National Merit finalist, Teddy got into every one of the dozen schools he applied to, including Ivy League Brown University. Brown would have come to more than $40,000 per year after the financial aid package Teddy was offered. Kenyon College in Ohio, also a top-rated school, cost a similar amount but gave a little more aid. West Virginia Wesleyan would have cost about $15,000 per year after aid—more along the lines of what the Boggesses, both educated in West Virginia and successful as adults—had saved in a 529 college savings account. “But you don’t anticipate an exceptional child when you start those funds,” Laura says. Stack all that up alongside the University of Kentucky’s offer of a free ride—an appealing financial option for a family that has another

child entering college in a few years, but a difficult learning environment, the family felt, for quiet, studious Teddy. In the end, he chose Kenyon. “With Brown it was going to end up being about $160,000 of debt for four years and Kenyon would be about $100,000,” Laura says. Not so long ago, that kind of debt was only associated with medical school. “He had his heart set on Brown. But we would have had to take out a loan that was more than the one we did to buy our house. It’s been gut-wrenching. It’s just surprising how the expectation is that you will go into significant debt.” It’s interesting to note that colleges’ investments in updated programs do sometimes keep our brightest at home—like Huntington High School 2015 graduate Noah LeGrand. His parents have saved for college “in theory” since their only child was about 5 years old, says mom Cindy. Noah has been into politics since elementary school so he applied to some exclusive Washington, D.C.-area colleges, along with WVU, and he was accepted widely. “We thought, based on our income, we’d get some assistance,” Cindy says, but it turned out some inherited money changed the math. Georgetown was going to cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. Still, they decided to take it on. Then, in April, Noah found out he’d been awarded the Bucklew Scholarship at WVU. And then he competed for and won the school's Foundation Scholarship, a free ride. The family was impressed with the new John D. Rockefeller IV School of Policy and Politics at WVU and he chose that. “He won’t be living in D.C. but the networking through WVU is great,” Cindy says. “Noah’s already talked to kids that have had awesome internships. He’s looking forward to the experience at WVU and all they have to offer and thinks it will help him get into a really great grad school.” Money has to be a central part of the college decision these days for almost everyone. Smart families don’t necessarily choose the most prestigious school. “They go where they can get the best education for the least amount of money,” Dickenson says.

» Molding a Leaner, Meaner Student “There are a lot of choices a student needs to make—public versus private, in-state versus out-of-state—that have an impact on the cost of attending school,” says Sandra Bennett, executive director of Financial Aid and Scholarships at WVU. She’s seen changes in her two decades in financial aid, at Fairmont State and Shepherd University before WVU. “Families are looking at saving more, budgeting better, taking advantage of financial aid opportunities such as state grant programs and scholarships and even things like payment plans that schools offer, before turning to loans.” And yet, they’re borrowing more. Students who graduated from a West Virginia public college in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree had, on average, less than $20,000 in student debt. That average has climbed to more than $30,000 ten years later—and more than $38,000 at WVU, as Goodwin mentioned. A typical undergraduate student is currently limited to $31,500 in federal student loans toward a bachelor’s degree, Bennett says. Private loans above that carry less favorable terms. Students, especially first-generation college-goers like Dave and Stephanie Martin, don’t always realize how much debt they’re getting into over time, so West Virginia’s public colleges have improved their loan counseling to make them aware. At

“

Families are putting their whole financial futures at risk just for undergrad.” Jamie Dickenson Certified Educational Planner

Every college puts an intangible stamp on its students. But the Brookings Institution wondered, how does that translate to alumni earnings? The think tank teased out the tangibles—test scores and other attributes of students, for example, and cost of living at colleges’ locations— to calculate each college’s “value added.” Among West Virginia’s public four-year colleges, West Virginia University added 9 percent to its students’ median mid-career earnings, for a midcareer salary of $78,600. Marshall University added 4 percent, for $65,600. Others schools included in the study had negative value-added ratings: median mid-career earnings were below those predicted. Source: Beyond College Rankings, www.brookings.edu

WVU, the financial aid office works to keep students’ debt topof-mind. “Before we tell students what they’re eligible for the following year, we send out a letter summarizing what they’ve borrowed to-date so they’re conscious of that,” Bennett says. “We don’t want them to wait until graduation to see the total they’ve borrowed.” The office talks with students about their debt in relation to the earning power of the academic paths they’ve chosen. In the 2014-15 academic year, the financial aid office even suggested students return some of their borrowed money if they didn’t need it all. “Some of them did bring it back in,” Bennett says. “We were proud of them.” The university also offers exit counseling, helping graduates understand how to set up and change income-based repayment options. Focus wvfocus.com

Student Debt and the State’s Economy WV Student Debt Surpassed Credit Cards, May Soon Surpass Auto Loans, Too $5,000

Auto

$4,000

Student Loan

$3,000

Credit Card

$2,000 $1,000

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

West Virginia’s student loan debt tripled over the past decade from about $2 billion in aggregate to about $6 billion, while other types of debt stayed relatively flat or declined. It’s not an automatic red flag, says Mark Muchow, deputy cabinet secretary at the state Department of Revenue. “You have to compare that debt with the increased earning power of folks that earn degrees. Increased earning capacity is good news for the state.” It’s true the state’s public colleges are awarding more associate’s and bachelor’s degrees than a decade ago, and that’s sorely needed. West Virginia still had the lowest share of residents ages 25 and up with bachelor’s degrees in 2013. At the same time, though, national-level data raises concerns about whether a generation of heavily indebted young adults will hold the economy back. Millennials, adults up to about age 35, “are the most educated generation in American history, but it has come at a cost,” reads an April 2015 report from McGraw Hill Financial. The report says “the historic student debt loads Millennials carry” are a major determinant of current and future spending ability. While 30-year-old student borrowers were more likely to hold mortgages before the Great Recession, in one example, mortgage borrowing has since fallen for all 30-year-olds and has fallen more for student borrowers. High student debt could have skewing effects on the state’s economy. “When students are more affected by debt, they’re less able to take unpaid internships during or after college, and internships are such an important part of an education these days,” says Natalie Roper, executive director of Generation West Virginia, an organization aimed at attracting and retaining young people in the state. “Nonprofits, for example, are unlikely to offer paid internships. So I think the debt has the possibility of limiting the industries students are able to go into.” She also wonders about the effect of young adult debt on business formation. “Small business is such an important part of the state’s and the nation’s economies. If graduates are limited in their ability to put capital toward businesses, we could be in trouble.” Muchow imagines an endpoint. “At some point some colleges may price themselves out of the market,” he says. “Colleges and universities are going to have to compete harder for students and that will result eventually in a slackening off of tuition increases.”

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But the single best way to borrow less, in the HEPC’s view, is to graduate faster. “We’re putting a high emphasis on completion. That goes a long way to addressing debt,” Chancellor Hill says. The commission’s “15 to Finish” campaign, launched during the 2014-15 academic year, encourages students to enroll in 15 credit hours per semester to earn their associate’s degrees in two years or bachelor’s degrees in four. “Twelve hours is the minimum requirement to receive a federal Pell grant, so students have fallen into this idea that it’s all they have to take,” Hill says. “But if they complete sooner obviously they’ll not have debt for those additional years.” All of West Virginia’s public colleges and universities are participating in the campaign, and WVU is even establishing a dean of Completion. Other new programs try to patch everfiner cracks students can trip over on the way to graduation. Students receive remedial assistance alongside, rather than before, their credit courses, which helps speed up graduation times—an especial help to adults returning to college, Hill says. Colleges also offer help for students who start at two-year colleges, transfer to four-year colleges, and complete the right mix of 60 credits; reverse credit transfer awards those students associate’s degrees from their original institutions. And new technology helps students choose courses that keep them on track to finish. The HEPC expects success to show up in lower borrowing by the end of the decade.

» Already in Default

Unfortunately, all of these efforts are too late for many students. They have already borrowed too much. West Virginia has been number one in student loan delinquency since 2012. And more than 18 percent of students from West Virginia colleges who entered repayment in 2011 have defaulted— failed to pay for 270 days—by 2014. Worst of all, these delinquent borrowers probably aren’t graduates, if other states’ experiences apply. “There were students that came in for one or two years during the peak of the recession and borrowed money,” says Neal Holly, HEPC Vice Chancellor for Policy and Planning. “After the recession declined they went back to work and didn’t finish their degrees.” That left them with debt, but none of the increased earning power to repay it. “That’s what’s driving those higher default rates,” Holly says. Defaulting, of course, ruins a student’s

Defaults are Up

Tips for parents » Save early, save often: Start 529 college savings accounts when your children are young and add to them regularly.

» Encourage your children to get the grades. That can translate to real money later.

35,000

» Do a practice Free Application for Federal Student Aid early on so you’re not surprised by the aid packages colleges offer you.

30,000

» If you borrow, start paying during the deferment period,

25,000

while your children are still in school, to save significantly on interest.

20,000 15,000

Tips for students and graduates

10,000

» Take AP classes and consider dual enrollment to earn college credit before high school graduation. » Work part-time in college. » Don’t borrow more than you need. Borrow no more than

5,000

you expect to make in your first year out of school.

2012

2013

2014

Number of students entering repayment three years earlier, from all WV colleges Number of students defaulting within three years Sources: The Institute for College Access and Success; U.S. Department of Education

credit. “The loan gets sent to a collection agency, which can boost the cost of the loan by 30 percent,” says Brian Weingart, senior director of Financial Aid for the HEPC. “They can have your wages garnished. They can have your tax refunds withheld. Once you retire, they can take your Social Security benefits. Some states will actually revoke your professional license when you default on your student loan.” And the loans can’t be dodged through bankruptcy. When the HEPC noticed the default rate was going up in 2013, Weingart says the agency brought in the U.S. Department of Education to train college financial aid offices in counseling students. It also contracted with two default management companies, EdFinancial Services and Inceptia, to track down loandelinquent students and let them know their options: to get on deferment, to go on income-based repayment plans that fit their incomes or, the best-case scenario for dropouts, to re-enroll. “Some preliminary numbers show the default rates starting to come down,” Weingart says. “We’ll see in September when rates are announced.”

» Lean, Mean, and in Debt Anyway

Helping students borrow mindfully and graduate fast are good ideas for minimizing their debt and supporting their money management skills. But Goodwin’s point stands: Rising tuitions create hardships. Take Mariana Matthews—naturally lean and mean, the kind of resident the state surely wants to retain. She was

» Consider a payment plan, if your college offers it, to minimize borrowing.

» Finish in two or four years. » If you can’t, finish as soon as you can to benefit from the increased earning power of the education your borrowed for.

» Learn about income-based loan repayment plans. » Ask your college’s financial aid office any time you have questions.

raised in Morgantown, followed older siblings to WVU in 2006, and worked 20 to 30 hours per week in addition to her classes. In spite of having a child while in school, she managed to graduate in 2011. She didn’t live in the dormitories or have a meal plan, yet she finished with about $30,000 in student loan debt. Partly on the strength of recruitment materials suggesting a graduate could expect to make $75,000, Matthews went straight on to get a master’s degree in public administration with a certificate in health care administration—and worked more than full-time to pay off about $10,000 of her undergraduate loans while she did it. “I was scared to death I was going to finish school and be in the position I’m in now anyway,” she says. That position is this: The year she finished, 2013, was what Matthews calls an “awkward time” for her field, with budget cuts and health care reform under way. She submitted 2,000 job applications—she kept track of every one—but received fewer than 20 responses. She got as far as a third interview only a couple times. Matthews works today at an entry-level position at WVU for just $27,000 a year. She still has $24,000 in student debt and makes payments of $276 a month—more than 10 percent of her take-home pay. She says she is proud to have earned her degrees from WVU, but adds, “Everyone said, ‘Get a degree.’ Then it was, ‘Get a master’s.’ You do those paths thinking you’re setting yourself up for success, and the student loan part of it just destroys you because you can’t get ahead.” Focus wvfocus.com

Focus July/August 2015

Five Things

Pitfalls

Robert Zuliani offers tips on using volunteer labor at a forprofit company.

Warning signs to watch when the resumes start coming in.

PG. 70

PG. 73

Smash the Buzzwords It’s time to skip the jargon and just say what you mean.

Every industry has its own language, and for good reason. Jargon is an easy way to save time in conversation with colleagues, and a good way to identify fellow members of your profession. Like a secret code. It’s not surprising the business world has its own language, too. But businesspeople need to be especially careful when using jargon, since they often communicate with non-business folks. In those cases, insider lingo can seem showy, confusing, or, worst of all, boring. We’ve compiled some of the most commonly used business buzzwords with suggestions to help avoid them. If this list helps you, please circle back around and touch base. Your feedback will be most impactful, and will help us grow our assets.

Ask (ASSK) (noun) No, you’re not going to your client with “an ask.” You’re going with “a question.”

Core competency (KOR KOM-puh-tin-see) (noun) Yes, it sounds fancy. But when you talk about your company’s “core competencies,” you really mean, “the things we are good at doing.” That doesn’t sound as elegant, but at least everyone will know what you’re talking about.

Disruptive (dis-RUHP-tiv) (adj.) Tech companies love this one. Unfortunately, most people still think being disruptive is

a bad thing. Just leave this word out. If your product and pitch are good enough, the audience will understand how it will change their lives.

Game-changing (GAYM CHAYN-jyng) (adj.) Avoid this phrase unless sports are involved. See “disruptive.”

Incentivize (in-SEN-tuh-vyz) (verb) There’s not really an alternative for this one. Just find a way around it.

Monetize (MON-eh-tyz) (verb) Let’s be honest. Businesses exist for one primary

reason—making money. Don’t hide behind wonky phrases like “monetize our assets” when “make money from the things we produce” is a much more honest phrase. Your audience will appreciate the candor.

Price point (PRYS POYNT) (noun) Just say “price.”

Skill set (SKIL SEHT) (noun) “Skills.”

Stakeholders* (STAYK-hol-durs) (noun) There are situations where this word is perfectly acceptable. For instance, a band of villagers intent on killing Dracula could accurately be described as “stakeholders.” Otherwise, call people what they really are: “customers,” “business partners,” or, you know, “people.”

Synergy (SIN-er-gee) (noun) This is the big one. Although it has become extremely popular in corporate language over last few decades, the word “synergy” has been around since the mid-1800s. But that doesn’t make it OK. Instead, try refreshingly simple words like “mutual advantage” or “cooperation.”

Utilize (YOO-tuh-lyz) (verb) How about “use,” hotshot? *Not to be confused with guests at a backyard barbecue, who should be described as “steak holders.”

Roadblocks

GROUNDED Outdated federal regulations are clipping the wings of fledgling drone businesses.

he parking lot behind the University of Charleston School of Pharmacy isn’t the prettiest place for a photo shoot, especially in the harsh light of the midday sun. There’s no view except for the backs of some buildings, a few large trees and shrubs, and lots of gray asphalt. But George Bragg isn’t using an ordinary camera. He produces a large black case—the kind of thing a movie villain would use to store a secret weapon—from the back of his truck. Bragg pops the latches and pulls out a white, X-shaped device with four tiny propellers and four legs on the

Focus July/August 2015

bottom. It’s a DJI Phantom 2, a consumergrade unmanned aerial vehicle. You’d probably call it a “drone.” Bragg walks across the parking lot, finding a spot in the middle away from cars. He pushes a button and the quadrocopter beeps to life with a short musical phrase. He places it on the ground in front of him and connects his iPhone to a private Wi-Fi network created by the aircraft. He will use a control pad to pilot the drone, but the iPhone will monitor its position and record photos and video from the on-board fisheye camera. Bragg nudges a joystick forward with his thumb. The drone shoots straight up into the air. In just a few seconds, the

iPhone shows the craft is 131 feet in the air and 21 lateral feet away. He flicks another joystick, the drone begins to rotate counterclockwise, and a familiar sight fills the smartphone’s screen. The gold dome of the West Virginia Capitol might be the single most photographed thing in the whole Mountain State, but there’s something refreshingly different about the image coming through the lens of Bragg’s drone camera. Because the vantage point is higher than usual, you can appreciate the bigness of the Capitol compared to everything around it. It gives the beautiful old building a new kind of majesty. It’s a photo you could not get from the ground. A former coal miner, Bragg became a professional photographer 25 years ago. He bought his first drone two years ago. “I thought, ‘That’s so neat. There’s so many places I’d love to shoot,’” he says. But although Bragg’s earthbound photos can be seen all around West Virginia, he’s never sold a photo taken with a drone. He isn’t allowed. Although the devices are little more than toy airplanes fitted with high-definition cameras and hobbyists are generally free to use them however they please, the federal government requires anyone using drones for commercial purposes to obtain permission from the Federal Aviation Administration. There are a few ways to get authorized. The FAA has a “certificate of authorization” process, but that’s only available to government entities. There is also a “special airworthiness certificate,” but that is limited to aircraft development and training. The only way for most businesses to legally use drones is to obtain an exemption from FAA rules. It’s not an easy process. Instead of a list of set requirements, each applicant must go through the regulations and request specific exemptions from each rule preventing legal operation of a drone, since the regulations were written for aircraft that haul humans, not tiny, unmanned battery-powered craft. The FAA also asks petitioners to include information about their plans for the drone—including anticipated speed, altitude, visibility, and potential dangers— and how they would handle pre-flight inspections, maintenance, and repairs,

COURTESY OF GEORGE BRAGG

WRITTEN AND PHTOGRAPHED BY

as well as information about the designated drone operator. The “pilot in charge” is required to have some kind of pilot’s license, and the FAA also wants to know the pilot’s total flight time and how much time the person has spent piloting a drone. Chavela Simmons and Shane Walker recently started West Virginia Drone Pros out of the backroom of Simmons’ pawnshop in Charleston and are in the process of applying for an exemption with the FAA. The duo plans to eventually offer drone building, repair, and customization services. “That’s going to be our job, to help people create what they want to create,” Simmons says. But first, she and Walker are poring over FAA regulations, figuring out which regulations they need to request exemptions from. The paperwork is around 40 pages long and growing. Getting an exemption isn’t impossible, however. Pete Dailey, a research associate with the Rahall Appalachian Transportation Institute, says the process isn’t ideal but is not an outright ban on drone businesses. He has friends in other states who have already received exemptions from the FAA, and Dailey recently filed for his own exemption The petition clocked in at just over 10 pages.

Dailey also says businesses shouldn’t be squeamish about breaking the rules. While the FAA once levied fines against rogue drones, an administrative judge ruled last year the agency has no authority to penalize drone operators who violate its regulations. “Those that don’t want to break the law … they hold themselves in check,” he says. But Gordon Lane, who owns the Charleston-based Advantage Aerial Solutions with his business partner, Christopher Sattes, thinks a formalized application process is the only way businesses will ever feel comfortable investing in drone technology—and the sooner the FAA figures that out the better. He says the European Union has already passed drone regulations, giving European companies a leg up on drone development. “My concern is, the federal government’s hesitation is going to cause us to lose an innovative edge in the marketplace,” he says. Advantage Aerial Solutions is in the process of applying for an exemption and hopes to be the first company in West Virginia to get one. Until then, Lane and Sattes have focused their business on areas of the industry that do not run afoul of the FAA regulations, like drone training and consultation

ZACK HAROLD

George Bragg shot services. They plan this photo of the West to eventually expand Virginia State Fair with their services, his DJI Phantom 2, a consumer-grade drone. however. Lane says most civilian drone operations are currently focused on photography, but the technology will eventually be co-opted for other uses, too. He imagines a not-toodistant future where unmanned aircraft will be used for mapping, surveying, and other currently earthbound tasks. Farmers could use drones to track livestock or monitor crop health. Utility companies could use aircraft with special sensors to detect pipeline leaks. “It seems to me the industry is so new, the market hasn’t even begun to think up all the ways this technology can be utilized,” Lane says. There is some hope the federal government will make the approval process easier. The FAA currently has a set of potential drone regulations out for public comment. The as-yet-unapproved document would create a standard set of requirements for both aircraft and their operators. It’s unclear when those suggestions might be made official, but until they are the drone business will likely remain right where it currently sits: firmly planted on the ground. Focus wvfocus.com

STORYBOOK ENDING An independent book publisher gets a breakout success.

few years back, Giancarlo DiTrapano was ready to write off the book business. After bouncing through Colorado, New Orleans, and Italy, the Charleston native moved to New York City in 2002 for a job in the publishing industry. He worked for a major book

Focus July/August 2015

publisher, then set up his own independent publishing house, New York Tyrant Books. But by 2013, the books weren’t selling and DiTrapano was running out of money. “Things weren’t looking too hot,” he says. He began sniffing around for a job. Playboy magazine hired him to profile Matthew Johnson, founder of the

Mississippi-based independent blues label Fat Possum Records. The story didn’t pan out but Johnson and DiTrapano hit it off. “He knew what position I was in with my business, he liked what I did, and he invested in my company. He saved it.” Johnson and DiTrapano agreed DiTrapano would continue doing what he did best—finding authors, editing their work, putting together the finished book package— while Fat Possum would handle the financial side of things. “I had some money to go looking for some books,” DiTrapano says. The first person he contacted was novelist Atticus Lish. DiTrapano had done business with Lish in 2012, when Tyrant published a book of the author’s drawings, Life is with People. But what DiTrapano really wanted was to publish some of Lish’s prose. He kept asking, but Lish kept turning him down. “He would say ‘No, I’m not writing anything.’” Once Fat Possum’s investment put Tyrant on solid footing, he reached out to Lish again. “I said ‘Do you have a novel?’ As soon as he answered the phone he said ‘I do.’” Lish sent a PDF of the book, called Preparation for the Next Life. DiTrapano devoured all 400 pages in a weekend, reading the words from his smartphone. “As soon as I read the last line on my phone, I closed the email app I was reading it in ... and dialed Atticus immediately,” he says. Tyrant’s largest print run up until then was 2,000 books, but DiTrapano wanted to print 3,500 copies of Preparation for the Next Life. He had a good feeling about this one. “A book like that comes around like every 20 years,” he says. “It’s so good you almost feel like it’s all downhill from there.” Tyrant released the book in late October 2014. Just a few weeks later, the New York Times published a glowing review of the novel—written, as chance would have it, by book critic and fellow West Virginia native Dwight Garner. Garner’s review stirred up tremendous interest in New York’s literary scene, and reviews and articles about the novel began appearing in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Review of Books. Readers quickly snatched up that initial run of 3,500 books, so DiTrapano scrambled and ordered another 30,000 copies. The success of Preparation has paved the way for Tyrant’s next book, Bad Sex by Clancy Martin, which comes

COURTESY OF NEW YORK TYRANT BOOKS

Artpreneur

WRITTEN BY

ZACK HAROLD

Tips from New York Tyrant Books Surround yourself with talented people While DiTrapano is always on the lookout for talented writers, talent comes in many forms. He credits his publicist, Lauren Cerand, with much of the success of Preparation for the Next Life, since she helped get the books into the hands of the right people. “That is key. It’s something that took me a while to learn.”

Do things, even if they suck Artsy people might not always be great with numbers, but DiTrapano says anyone who wants to make a living from their art should know how to do their own books. “It may suck, but something always sucks, so just do it.”

Work without a net “Don’t have any backup plans. No plan B. Nothing to fall back on. Paint yourself into the corner.”

The golden rules “Be kind to others, over drinks.”

And, finally

COURTESY OF NEW YORK TYRANT BOOKS

“Hustle,” DiTrapano says.

out in September. DiTrapano wanted to publish Martin’s book and had been in touch with the author’s agent, but nothing was happening. Then he sent Martin a copy of Lish’s book. “He was like OK, I want to publish with you.” Bad Sex will be Tyrant’s first hardcover book, with an initial run of 10,000 copies and a paperback edition to follow later. DiTrapano says writers want to work with publishing houses releasing good work, and Lish’s novel has elevated Tyrant’s profile. “They want to be in good company, I think,” he says. “I’m fighting off books at the moment.” The financial success of Preparation has been great for Tyrant, but DiTrapano says he most enjoys the connection readers have forged with Lish’s work. “There’s a very strong kind of love in that book. To see that spread and see people catch it and feel it—it’s fantastic,” he says. “It’s been the best time of my life.” He does not plan to ramp up Tyrant’s production schedule anytime soon, however. DiTrapano wants to remain a one-man operation and continue publishing only a few books each year. He’s picky about the authors he chooses to work with. It all goes back to the reason he founded Tyrant in the first place—to highlight writers not getting proper attention from the mainstream publishing world. “I’m attached to all these books in a big way. I really care for every one. If I don’t have that feeling for it, it’s not coming through.” Focus wvfocus.com

5 Things

WRITTEN BY

PAM KASEY

Blue-shirted nonprofit volunteers serve up Zul’s frozen lemonade at events across the state for a cut of sales that ranges from 20 to 40 percent, depending on the company’s and the group’s costs.

Thinking of using volunteers?

Consider these tips. Identify Reliable Contacts.

Zul’s makes and delivers its frozen lemonade treat, nonprofit volunteers scoop and sell it, and everyone wins.

hen it comes to harnessing volunteer verve, Robert Zuliani has most entrepreneurs beat. His company, Zul’s, serves up its refreshing frozen lemonade to hordes of fans at some 80 outdoor warm-weather events statewide and a number of major venues year-round—all with a core staff of just eight part-timers. “Literally thousands of volunteers scoop a cup of Zul’s each year,” says Zuliani of his unusual business model. “It’s a great way to work. It just takes some trial and error.” When the Connecticut native gave up his pizzeria in 1994 and moved over the mountains to Buckhannon to be near his future bride, he brought an ice cream machine with him. Zuliani quickly got started making frozen lemonade, a treat he’d seen draw long lines of beachgoers in Rhode Island. Although it’s now sold everywhere across the state, he still makes all of his product in Buckhannon, both for quality control and to minimize equipment costs. His challenge has been getting an intensely perishable product from there to thirsty event-goers all over, and making a little money doing it. His solution lets him centralize production and minimize payroll—while also supporting nonprofits’ good works.

Focus July/August 2015

The framework is simple. Zuliani coordinates upcoming events with nonprofit groups that need volunteer fundraising activities. Zul’s employees make the lemonade in Buckhannon and deliver it to events, with a quick volunteer training on scooping, cleaning, and how much to charge: $3 at high school events, $5 at college and civic venues. The local organizers keep volunteers on task, the company keeps the groups supplied, and each group gets a nice percentage at the end. Around now you’re thinking, “This can’t work. Volunteers are notoriously unreliable.” But it does work, because nonprofits always need to raise good money, fast. By selling Zul’s, they can make anywhere from a couple hundred to a few thousand dollars at a single event. It works on other levels, too. “When people see that a percentage goes to a local group, they’re more apt to give their money to that organization than to another out-ofcounty vendor.” It even gains Zul’s entrée to events that only take local vendors. Zuliani’s business model allowed him to be home when his children were young and, at the same time, grow his business and feel great about it. “It’s instant gratification. The groups’ eyes light up when they get their checks and they made a lot more money than all the bake sales and car washes they could do. It’s a ball.”

Communication is Key. “I’m on the phone most of the day and until all hours of the night tying it all together because, during events, groups will call me at any time for deliveries.”

Trust, but Prepare. “When a great person in charge of an organization moves on and the wrong person comes in, it can ruin an event. They may not be able to anticipate the busiest part of an event or when they’re going to need more product, and I can start counting the money I’m going to lose. I can usually see that coming, so I try to have more of a presence at an event or call more often to check in.”

Let Groups Prove Themselves. Is a nonprofit you’re starting up with a fringe group, or is it well established? “You can kind of gauge. But you’re always taking a chance, starting out. I never use a new group at a big event if I can avoid it—I tend to have my own people work the huge-dollar events.”

Good Contacts Make Great Employees. “A lot of our teachers work for booster clubs and DECA clubs, for example. They know the public, they’re great with volunteers, they already know how we work, and some retire and want to work parttime. I like to hire them. And then they inform me of other events that I might not know about.”

ROBERT ZULIANI

TAPPING VOLUNTEER ENERGY W

“As anyone that’s worked with a nonprofit or booster club knows, even if the group has hundreds of members, it’s five people that do everything,” Zuliani says.

WRITTEN BY

HEY EVERYBODY, LET’S COOPERATE W Want to form a co-op in West Virginia? You don’t have to be a food producer anymore. hen we talk about cooperatives in this story, we’re talking about a business’s legal structure. When you’re forming a business you might make it a partnership, or a sole proprietorship, or a corporation, or you might make it a co-op. To understand what a cooperative is, it might be helpful to understand business law and tax code, but that’s not really necessary. If you know the definition of the word “cooperate” you’re most of the way there. “A cooperative exists for its members and is controlled by its members,” says Elizabeth Spellman, the executive director of the West Virginia Food & Farm Coalition. “Members have a share in it and a stake and a say.”

Focus July/August 2015

When you think of a co-op you probably think of food—of that little neighborhood market with the really fresh produce and great granola, or of farmers pooling their resources to buy a big expensive piece of equipment they will all use. And until recently that was pretty accurate, at least in West Virginia, because state law only allowed for cooperatives formed between food growers. So a bunch of farmers could get together to form a co-op, but other types of businesses couldn’t form cooperatives at all. A lot of businesses around the state you probably think of as a co-ops—Mountain People’s Co-op in Morgantown, the Wild Ramp in Huntington, the Alderson Community Food Hub—actually aren’t.

SHAY MAUNZ

They want to be able to include people who aren’t food producers, so they’re legally organized as nonprofits or corporations, but they like cooperatives and what they stand for so they use a co-op’s guiding principles. They’re democratically controlled by their members, have voluntary and open membership, and are generally concerned with bettering their communities. “An enterprise like ours that is meeting a local need that really isn’t met through the local market economy needs to be broadbased and community-based because otherwise it won’t be very successful or won’t meet community needs,” says Kevin Johnson, president of the Alderson Community Food Hub. “It needs to function like a co-op, in a way.” Basically, these organizations have been operating as cooperatives for years without being able to reap the tax benefits given to actual, legal co-ops. To solve this problem, the Food & Farm Coalition began a campaign to pass a law during the 2015 legislative session to expand the types of businesses that could form co-ops. Support rolled in from a surprisingly diverse group of people. The left-leaning West Virginia Citizen Action group was interested in co-ops as a solution to the state’s recycling challenges. The conservative state Chamber of Commerce was also interested. The bill passed, greatly expanding co-ops to include a grab bag of industries. Now, all businesses that relate to foods and beverages, arts and crafts, woodworking, recycling, composting, and repurposing of materials can form co-ops. “We wanted to include all the producers,” Spellman says, “whether what they produce is food- or art- or craft- or farm-related.” The next step is to get legislators to consider an even broader bill, one that would expand the law to let businesses in industries like healthcare form co-ops—so look for even more co-op legislation in 2016. Co-op evangelists think cooperative principles could be a boon to all kinds of businesses. “It’s a community empowerment tool. It puts the power in the community’s hands, and the money stays in the community … as opposed to the traditional LLC that seeks to maximize profit or the nonprofit that is fettered to its mission to be charitable,” Spellman says. “The co-op is sort of the best of both worlds.”

ELIZABETH ROTH

Agripreneur

Pitfalls

RESUME RED FLAGS What to avoid on the road to a new hire.

uppose you own a business, and you have a job opening. You write up a job description, post it, watch the wave of applications trickle in, and before you know it you’re sitting at your desk, staring at a stack of resumes six inches thick. “I need to identify as quickly as I can whether each candidate is a potential match for the job,” says Bernie Deem, principal at Align Human Resources. “If I get a stack of resumes, each resume is going to get about a 30-second review.” But how are you supposed to analyze a person’s education, work history, soft skills, and compatibility with your company in just a half a minute, based on a one-page list of accomplishments? It’s not easy, but it’s also not complicated. Deem has evaluated thousands of resumes in her career and says that initial sift comes down to a rough appraisal of whether or not the candidate and the open job could be a decent match. That means she’s looking for basic information—“If I know I want three years’ experience and a degree in human resources, I’m looking for that,” Deem says— but also weeding out some candidates because of little things that signal they might not be the best hire. Here, we boil it down to a list of red flags to keep an eye out for if you’re looking to make a new hire. If you’re looking for a job, consider it a list of things to avoid.

WRITTEN BY

SHAY MAUNZ

CAUTION

BAD RESUMES AHEAD

Too many jobs, too little time

The fact is, if you’ve had six jobs in two years, it might mean you’re tough to work with. That said, Deem encourages employers to be a little more understanding when they see this pattern. “I see it as somebody who has an ability to get job after job and has a breadth of experience,” she says. “I find that people who have only worked for one employer all the time only see the world one way.” You should be able to understand why the person jumped from one job to another—ideally, it was because of ambition and a thirst for new responsibilities. “If you went from lifeguard at one pool to lifeguard at another pool I might not be impressed,” Deem says. “It depends on what the growth pattern is.”

A generic job objective

If a job candidate isn’t using the job objective line on their resume to say exactly how her ambitions line up with your organization’s needs, it probably means the applicant didn’t take the time

to think about whether or not it’s a good fit. It might even mean that the resume you’re looking at is one of hundreds sent out in a big push for a new job. And nobody likes that. Also, job seekers, be sure to use that job objective to outline your objectives in a way that benefits the company you want to work at. Nobody cares that you hope to have a fulfilling career someday. Join the club.

Colored ink

Just don’t do it. You might think it makes you look hip and fun, but really you just look like an amateur. “It’s a huge no-no,” Deem says. You can claim an exception if you work in a creative field like graphic design, but the rest of us should leave the fancy stuff to the soon-to-be professionals.

A silly email address

If an applicant wants to be contacted at iluvhotbabes1987@aol.com—don’t. You want a new employee who will take himself more seriously than that. Focus wvfocus.com

Work-Life Balance

EVERY DAY’S

A DATE How to work with your spouse and stay married.

hen Bobby and I met in an office nearly nine years ago, I never would have imagined we’d end up married and running a photography business together. We were working at a small startup company in Charleston, and we’d both recently graduated from

Focus July/August 2015

college. My background is in visual communications—I was the “creative director.” Bobby’s background is marketing and business management. He was the “marketing director.” We shared a small room for 40 hours a week and worked on projects together. We’ve always agreed the best part of that job was working together as a team—and

going to lunch together to talk about music and shared interests. We only worked together for six months before I was offered a job in Blacksburg, Virginia. While living there I started my portrait and wedding photography business, Emily Porter Photography. By May 2010 I’d moved back to West Virginia and Bobby and I were officially a couple. He joined me at our friends’ wedding, and I gave him my backup camera to pass the time. He’s shot every wedding with me since. People often remark they could never work with their significant others. “We’d kill each other,” people say. I think our success as a married couple running a small business has everything to do with our complementary backgrounds and personalities and the natural evolution of operating a business. Most of the lessons we’ve learned along the way are things we would have learned simply by managing a business, married or otherwise.

WRITTEN BY

EMILY PORTER PHOTOGRAPHED BY REBECCA KIGER

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Share the load We began as a team while shooting, but it didn’t take long for our team effort to spill into the administrative side of the business. Even during our busiest months of the year, only 10 to 20 percent of this job involves holding a camera. Bobby’s background in business management quickly became just as important as his skills as an award-winning photographer. So as Bobby became more of a co-shooter and co-inbox manager, our roles started to balance out. People started calling us the “Oberports,” a combination of both of our last names, Bobby OBERlander and Emily PORTer. It took a few years to talk Bobby into making the moniker official, but I got tired of taking all of the credit for only doing half of the work. It only made sense for the business’s name to reflect our partnership.

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Open dialogue is important We both have grown as creatives by being very open to critiques from each other. Our creative process has a lot of accountability built into it—we both go over every photo and album design before sending them to clients, and we occasionally even double-check each other’s emails. When my photos are especially crooked, Bobby calls me out on it. When his emails are too dry and business-y, I call him out on it. Being open to critiques has been important not only in a creative capacity but also as business partners and as a married couple.

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Don’t forget to enjoy life Working together gives us more accountability to make sure we don’t book too much and get overwhelmed by a daunting travel/ shooting schedule. Even during our busiest stretches of the year, we make sure to sprinkle in a few days out of the office. It’s cheesy, but we joke with each other that every day is a date. We genuinely love working together. It helps that we love the job. Documenting people during the happiest moments of their lives is incredibly rewarding. It’s the kind of job that makes you more appreciative of all of the relationships in your life, not just the one with your significant other.

Emily Porter and Bobby Oberlander (The Oberports) are a married photography team based in Charleston. During the last seven years they’ve photographed more than 180 weddings together and have both won international wedding photography awards. When they aren’t working, they enjoy cooking, spoiling their two cats, and going to baseball games.

Focus wvfocus.com

Development

Populations are shifting, making proper planning more essential than ever.

inding the right strategy to spur revitalization in a rural community is often a daunting task, requiring a blend of architecture, urban planning, economics, and finance. It is essential communities grapple with this challenge, however. West Virginia is made up primarily of rural communities. The two largest cities in the state are currently Charleston and Huntington, with populations of 51,018 and 49,160 respectively. But 91 percent of the towns in the state have populations under 6,000, with the majority of those having fewer than 1,000 people. It appears populations will only continue to decline. A report from the Brookings Institute shows that, among the 3,100 counties in the United States that fall entirely outside of metropolitan areas, nearly twothirds have registered population losses since 2006. In West Virginia, there have been a few success stories in the north-central part of the state as communities have managed

Focus July/August 2015

to modestly capitalize on the Marcellus Shale drilling activity, but most towns in the southern part of the state remain stagnant due to a depressed coal industry. Millennials are urban creatures, and don't seem content to live in their small hometowns. Communities should consider targeting baby boomers, who have more disposable income and are not necessarily looking for jobs. Rural communities should leverage assets such as a less costly housing stock to attract this demographic back into their towns. Beauty is Only Skin Deep No matter who your town is trying to attract, the most important tool for communities is to adopt an overall revitalization strategy. Regardless of size, successful communities and urban spaces share common traits that should be characterized by a select set of development principles. Creativity in the planning and design process can lead to vibrant downtown spaces that can accommodate a variety of community or civic

Streets are Key Since the middle of the 20th century, we have been obsessed with increasing roadway capacities and reducing traffic congestion at the expense of the pedestrian experience. This approach is antithetical to downtown revitalization and actually encourages people to get out of town more quickly. This is not good for business. The street network makes up a significant part of a community’s public realm and should be treated as part of the overall network of open space deserving of sound, intelligent design solutions. It just makes common sense to make our small downtowns more pedestrian-centric. The alternative is continued population loss and further stagnation. Fortunately, the early part of the 21st century has seen new thinking take hold as designers and transportation engineers have started to adopt a “complete streets” mentality in their designs. Here are a few ways community planners can make their downtowns more pedestrian friendly.

• Utilize a “complete streets” approach

that promotes safe pedestrian circulation, bicyclists, motorists, and transit riders of all ages and abilities to move safely along and across all streets.

• Where possible, convert dangerous

one way streets into two way streets in an effort to slow traffic and improve downtown business districts and neighborhoods.

• Provide accessible sidewalks and well- defined crosswalks that meet or exceed the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.

COURTESY OF DAVID GILMORE

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME

functions, all adding valuable contributions to an area’s identity. Compatible and simplified design solutions are usually the most successful concepts. Beautification projects such as streetscapes and parks are popular. While they are important, these projects rarely lead to the revitalization on their own. To accomplish this, communities need much broader strategies that examine their demographics, density, urban form, infrastructure, local economy, business mix, connectivity, accessibility, structure of governance, current land use, and zoning—or in many cases, lack thereof.

WRITTEN BY

DAVID GILMORE

• Implement a hierarchy of pavement materials and widths

that draws attention to focal areas and accommodates and supports programmed community events.

• Balance and link development with open space opportunities. • Design a place that is safe and secure day and night. Creative Financing to Pay for It Of course, nothing happens for free. In addition to deciding how they want to develop, communities must figure out how to pay for it. This becomes increasingly difficult as population continue to shrink in rural areas. Depending on the project, leaders need to customize a mix of appropriate financing tools to ensure success. Below is a list of tools that communities can explore to help finance their revitalization efforts.

• Make a concerted effort to increase population density in the downtown area.

• Establish a Main Street program. • Explore public/private partnerships. • Create revenue by establishing special assessment districts such as business improvement districts, tax increment financing districts, special improvement districts, and municipal service districts • Use tax incentive programs to jumpstart development in depressed areas of town. • Create an urban/rural alliance. • Take advantage of historic preservation and low-income tax credits.

As planners and landscape architects, it is imperative we remember each town is unique and has its own specific set of natural, economic, environmental, historical, and cultural criteria. These influences should be protected and enhanced through thoughtful active and passive recreation opportunities, land management and facility design. While no two towns are the same, establishing a strong revitalization strategy that examines a town’s strengths and weaknesses is critical to the success of the effort and will provide a community with a roadmap to follow as it begins its journey back to prosperity.

David Gilmore, PLA, MBA, is director of landscape architecture for the Community Solutions Group of GAI Consultants. In this role, he coordinates projects and marketing activities for all of GAI’s offices throughout the Northeast and Midwest regions. He is a past president of the West Virginia chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects and has won multiple design awards from the ASLA for his work. Focus wvfocus.com

Economy

MOUNTAIN STATE BUSINESS INDEX

Focus July/August 2015

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production, and the yield curve all fell a little. And three indicators saw significant negative changes from April: statewide coal production, unemployment insurance claims, and, especially, the state’s tradeweighted dollar, which made the largest negative contribution to the index for the third consecutive month. The trade-weighted dollar component of the index compares the value of the U.S. dollar against the currencies of countries West Virginia companies export to, and weights that by the percentage of the state’s exports that are sent to each country. Calculated each month for each state by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, this component recognizes that each state is affected differently by currency movements based on what it exports, how much it exports, and where it exports it to. The sharp increase in the value of the dollar in late 2014 and through the first few months of this year has been increasingly problematic for manufacturers and commodity producers across the U.S., because a stronger dollar makes U.S. goods more expensive for international buyers. Nationally, the total value of exports declined more than 5 percent year over year during the first quarter of 2015. But the rally in the value of the dollar has been particularly challenging for West Virginia’s economy. After remaining in a relatively narrow range over the course of 2012 and 2013, the real trade-weighted dollar

n a map of the United States on the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’s website, West Virginia is nothing but a black hole. The map shows the change in the trade-weighted value of the U.S. dollar as it varies state by state. Over the last six months, most states have seen that value change by eight to ten percent or less. Not West Virginia—we have seen an almost 11 percent increase in the trade-weighted dollar. That’s bad for coal exports, and bad for the Mountain State Business Index. The MSBI fell for the fourth month in a row during May 2015, dropping 0.4 percent from its April reading. The index has experienced four consecutive monthly declines for the first time since mid-2009, pointing to increasingly weaker prospects for West Virginia’s economy during the third quarter of this year. After registering only two slightly negative readings in more than two years, the MSBI has seen six-month annualized declines during each of the last two months. The rate of decline accelerated to 1.7 percent in May, representing the steepest drop since September 2009. Ultimately, this presages weakening economic activity over the near term. One of the MSBI’s components, stock prices for the state’s largest employers, gave the index a small boost in May. But all of the other six components dragged the index down. Building permits for new single-family homes, natural gas

A West Virginia economic look-ahead

MAY 2015

111.2, -0.4% m /m for West Virginia jumped 16 percent year over year in early 2015. The state’s tradeweighted dollar has appreciated especially quickly in recent months, surging more than 29 percent on an annualized basis over its six most recent months. Strong upward movement in the dollar has made several types of goods and commodities produced in the state relatively more expensive in local currencies and thus less competitive on international markets. Coal—a commodity produced in West Virginia and exported in large amounts—has been hit quite hard by the dollar’s surge. While this is likely not the sole cause, coal exports from

WRITTEN BY

JOHN DESKINS AND BRIAN LEGO

West Virginia’s Real Trade-Weighted Dollar Index, Jan 2000 = 100

120 115 110 105 100 95 90 85 80

20 15

20 14

20 13

20 12

20 11

20 10

09 20

08 20

06 20

05 20

04 20

03 20

02 20

01 20

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

West Virginia during the first quarter of 2015 registered an estimated 30 percent decline compared to the same period a year ago. The strong dollar has posed a significant problem for the state’s southern coal mines in particular. Given declining domestic use of coal from southern West Virginia in recent years, exports account for a growing share of demand for both the metallurgical and thermal coal produced in the region. But southern West Virginia coal typically faces higher production costs per ton than other U.S. coal basins and many major exporters abroad, such as Australia, Colombia, Indonesia, and Russia. The region also incurs high inland transportation costs due to bottlenecks in eastern U.S. rail lines. So since coal produced in southern West Virginia already faces a distinct cost premium on global markets, the surging value of the dollar in the past six months has only exacerbated this competitive disadvantage. Fortunately, the value of the dollar has receded somewhat since March, which should alleviate this disadvantage in coming months for coal and other goods and commodities produced for export in West Virginia.

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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Michael Martirano POWER POINTS

West Virginia’s new state superintendent has bold goals for education. WRITTEN BY SHAY MAUNZ

MICHAEL MARTIRANO CAME TO WEST VIRGINIA IN 2014 to take a job at the helm of the state’s public school system. But before that he served as the superintendent of St. Mary’s County Public Schools in Leonardtown, Maryland. During his tenure there, the graduation rate increased from the low 80s to 93.5 percent. His first act as West Virginia’s state superintendent was to unveil his vision plan for the state school system. It’s full of lofty aspirations, has an ambitious timeline, and is filled with a surprising number of specific goals. For example, Martirano wants to raise the state’s four-year graduation rate—which was 81 percent in 2013—to at least 90 percent. “This is about setting a vision,” Martirano says. “When you do that everybody is galvanized around the goal to achieve it.” So what is Martirano’s vision for West Virginia’s schools?

» Every child must be in school every day and must graduate. I really am focusing in on that with a laser-like intensity. I’m very insistent that we must hold every child to 180 days of instruction. » The graduation rate is more than a number—it defines that whole aspect of student readiness. It’s also about economic prosperity. The more people who graduate in West Virginia the more prosperous the state can be. When a person drops out there’s a higher level of drug abuse, delinquency—every negative associated with life’s woes, the rate increases if you drop out of high school. » Early interventions are also very important. We have to concentrate on early childhood and focus on pre-K for all young people in our state. The more we front-load, the better we’re going to be able to keep them in school. » We need to increase our efforts as a state to provide revenue streams to increase teacher salaries, because we are so behind in that arena.

» I view education as the great equalizer, particularly as we have changed as a society. There’s still a great need for a lot of jobs in the career and technical arena, but every child has to have that high school diploma to get them. Jobs just aren’t abundant and plentiful for high school dropouts, and if you’re trying to break that cycle of poverty it’s about providing educational opportunities so people can get jobs.

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COURTESY OF WVDE

» You can’t look at education as being in a silo. It has broad tentacles reaching into the state. If you do the math, we only have children in school nine percent of their time, so 91 percent of their time is spent other places. I’m very interested in churches doing their part, communities doing their part, families doing their part. Education is in the center but we also have to leverage all the social service levels to provide services to children outside of school.