West Virginia Focus - March/April 2015 by West Virginia Focus

March/April 2015

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. John F. Kennedy

elephant in the house (and Senate, too)

A behind-the-scenes look at how Republicans gained control of the Legislature for the first time in 83 years.

Wealthmakers Inventorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ideas become businesses

The Legacy of Upper Big Branch Will it Happen Again?

volume 2 | issue 2

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

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Focus March/April 2015

Editor’s Letter

recently had the privilege to spend the day with the cofounder of Heritage Farm Museum and Village, my dear friend Mike Perry. Those of you who knew Mike probably know that, on February 25, 2015, he passed away after valiantly battling cancer. I will forever be grateful for my day with him. He gave me a tour of his new Doll and Carriage Museum. We spent time in the Artisan Center, walked around the Barn Retreat Center, and toured the new restaurant. Although he was in failing health, his eyes sparkled with excitement as he shared his vision for additions to the village. He spoke about the mission of Heritage Farm Museum and Village. He said, “Our ancestors were entrepreneurs. You are carrying on an Appalachian tradition. And that’s what we need to be teaching our children—that they have a rich heritage of entrepreneurship.” I had never really thought about our Appalachian heritage of entrepreneurship. As Mike pointed out while touring one of his museums, the difference between yesterday and today is that when our ancestors needed to fix something, they invented it. Today, if something breaks, we run out to the store and buy it. We don’t teach our children to think creatively or to think about how to improve products. We don’t teach them to have an entrepreneurial mindset. After my visit, I spent some time reflecting on my own family history. My Grandpa Braley owned a sawmill. He was a major employer at one time in Clay County. I so wish I had the opportunity to talk to him about being a small business owner. What were his challenges? Why did he do it? On my maternal side, my Grandpa Acree was a tinkerer. When I think of him, he was always fiddling with something, welding some contraption, or underneath the hood of a car repairing it. In fact, he built the first elevator in Clay County and then worked for Goodyear improving their machinery and products. How I wish I had spent more time tinkering with him, learning how to fix and create things myself. In this issue Mike Perry shares his thoughts on entrepreneurship (page 69), and as I read Pam Kasey’s article (page 56) on West Virginia patent holders, his sentiments resonated with me. Pam writes, “West Virginians come up with original ideas all the time.” The sheer number of patents coming out of our state amazes me. When asked where the drive to invent comes from, Joseph Zupanick of Pineville, the holder of 83 U.S. patents, speculates that it might come from a creative gene, or a contrarian streak. Brian Joseph, the holder of 14 patents, points out that West Virginians are natural inventors. That’s what Heritage Farm Museum and Village is all about—showcasing the ingenuity that has gotten us to where we are today with hopes that it will inspire future generations.

Last month I had the great fortune to spend the day with my dear friend and mentor Mike Perry, cofounder of Heritage Farm Museum and Village. Mike passed away as we were going to print on this magazine. This issue is dedicated to his memory.

I was delighted. I had wished for this moment and yet dreaded it for fear that you would not approve with that artistic eye of yours, which you capture with your beautiful photography. To get your Nikki Seal of Approval is awesome. More impressive than the Smithsonian. Thanks for your leadership and your entrepreneurial spirit. I’m proud of you and the difference you have made and are making in the lives and dreams of so many people. We will work hard to be a part of your efforts. I may have over extended myself and have had to rest today but I would do it again without hesitation. Top 10 day. You are a precious and dear friend. Thanks again. That note is more important to me than any award I’ve received. To have the Mike Perry Seal of Approval is better than the Smithsonian, indeed. It was a “Top 10 day.” This issue is dedicated to you, my dear friend and mentor. Thank you for being a caretaker of our Appalachian heritage and an inspiration to so many. Focus on the future,

After my day with Mike, I received the following note from him: Yesterday was a special day. It was a thrilling day to be in a room with so much creative energy and then to be able to spend time with you, the most entrepreneurial man or woman I know, was the icing on the cake. I so appreciate you coming to see the Doll and Carriage Museum. I knew that when you saw it, it would immediately be known to me whether I had oversold and under delivered. Your eyes and expressions told me I had not.

nikki bowman Publisher & Editor Follow us on... facebook.com/westvirginiafocus twitter.com/WVfocus

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Dialogue Feedback

Featured Contributors

“I just finished reading the January/February edition of WV Focus and enjoyed it, especially the Extreme Escape article. In fact, I have a call in to Jim Sturgeon to talk with him about his Mt. Kilimanjaro climbing experience.” Jeff F. Bishop

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.

“I enjoy your publication and look forward to each issue. I find the information the most helpful by providing ideas I can re-tool for our city.” Dick Callaway

Mike green Mike Green is an adviser, investor, and board member for several privately held technology companies. He serves as vice president of the state Board of Education and chairman of West Virginia Growth Investment, which provides mentorship and capital to worthy entrepreneurs and early-stage business.

“I just received an issue of your magazine. I don’t think I am a subscriber, so I assume it’s a prospect offer. All I can say is, I’ll take it. You seem to be probusiness, pro-community, and pro-environment, all at the same time. Kudos. I will be subscribing. Keep up the good work—and keep a little edge. West Virginia needs jobs, and it also needs mountains, rivers, wildlife, and clean water—and communities. Any other choice is a false one.” Sam Ackerman “I received my copy of WV Focus and wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the Power Points. Somehow, you made me sound a lot more articulate than I felt when we spoke! I also wanted to let you know I really enjoyed your story on Huntington and the work that the mayor and police are doing to spruce up the city and its reputation. I went to undergrad at Marshall and still have a lot of friends there. It was very well done.” Joanna I. Tabit

Focus March/April 2015

Roger Hanshaw Roger Hanshaw is an attorney with Bowles Rice LLP. He is one of fewer than 50 parliamentarians in the nation to hold both the designation of Professional Registered Parliamentarian from the National Association of Parliamentarians and Certified Professional Parliamentarian from the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He is a member of the state House of Delegates.

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.

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Contents FOCUS ON 10

Engagement

Founders

Connections

Youth Leadership Academy is a summer camp for tomorrow’s leaders. 11

Power Lunch

Black Sheep Burritos serves world flavors wrapped in a tortilla. 12

Agenda

A life-saving antidote for heroin overdoses clears legal hurdles. 16

Who’s Stepping Up

A WVU professor expands inmates’ worlds with free books. 18

Noteworthy Launch

Young scientists go head-tohead at the state’s inaugural Science Olympiad. 20

Philanthropy

A community group raises money to preserve one of the state’s hidden treasures.

KeyLogic President and CEO Jon Hammock on respecting your employees, your customers, and yourself. 24

Artpreneur

Greenbrier resident artist Alex Brand makes a solid career out of glass. 28

Leadership

For 24 years, Leadership West Virginia has connected the state’s changemakers. 30

Turn This Town Around

Sisters make a big change to their business and are now helping their town do the same. 32

Technology

WVU computer security start-up gets angel funding from a WV expat. 33

Energy

Local governments use natural gas money to fill budget gaps. 34

Education

The state’s Farm-to-School program brings fresh foods to students while supporting local agriculture.

Focus March/April 2015

How well do you know the West Virginia Legislature’s Class of 2015? 38

Innovation

The National White Collar Crime Center in Fairmont trains the nation’s cyber crime fighters. 40

Big Idea

Taking a look at one of the most powerful bodies in state government, the West Virginia Board of Education.

Focus [ March/April 2015]

TOOLKIT 64

Lessons Learned

Businesses share their experiences of navigating complicated paperwork. 66

How We Did It

Morgantownâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Davis-Lynch Glass Company survives in a tough industry by making smart business decisions. 69

5 Things

Mike Perry wanted to make West Virginians proud of our shared heritage. 70

Leadership

Roger Hanshaw demystifies parliamentary procedure. 72

Finance

Nontraditional lenders help businesses get cash, fast. 74

Pitfalls 42

The Legacy of Upper Big Branch Five years after the Upper Big Branch mining disaster, mines are safer but challenges remain. 48

The Flip

After more than 80 years in the minority, West Virginia Republicans made a big comeback last November.

Freelancers give tips on managing time, negotiating pay, and networking. 76

Economy

Modest increase in coal production contributes to an uptick in the Mountain State Business Index. 78

Entrepreneurship

Mike Green details how West Virginia can support more entrepreneurs.

Wealthmakers

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Letter

West Virginia inventors are turning ideas into dollars.

Dialogue 4 Power Points

Focus wvfocus.com

Focus March/April 2015

“Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.”

Gov. Arch Moore, 1923-2015 Complex, conflicted, history-making governor dies at 91.

Ronald Reagan

Artpreneur

Greenbrier resident artist Alex Brand makes a solid career out of glass. pg. 24

Written by Zack Harold

There’s so much to say about former West Virginia Governor Arch Moore. A complex character who simultaneously was the state’s biggest champion and its most high-profile criminal, Moore left his mark on this state in more ways than one. And for all of his shortcomings, he remained one of the best-loved West Virginia politicians of our time. In 2013 the West Virginia Poll, a non-partisan study conducted for the Charleston Daily Mail by R.L. Repass & Partners, found he was the third most popular governor in recent history. Here’s a quick look at Moore’s long, full, and often controversial life.

Engagement

A summer camp for tomorrow’s leaders. pg. 10

King for a Day Mike Flynn of Frontier Communications assumes the crown. pg. 10

Who’s Stepping Up

April 16, 1923

August 1969

1976

Arch Moore is born.

Moore uses the phrase “wild and wonderful” in a speech at The Greenbrier. The new slogan would become widely used during his administration before being officially adopted in 1975.

One of Moore’s pet projects, the West Virginia Culture Center, opens to the public.

November 1944 Moore earns a Purple Heart after being injured in a firefight that would kill 33 of the 36 men in his Army platoon. He is shot in the face by a machine gun, which breaks his jaw and nearly severs his tongue, requiring multiple surgeries. He spends the next year relearning how to talk.

1952 Moore is elected to represent Marshall County in the House of Delegates. He will leave after one term, following an unsuccessful run for Congress in 1954.

1972 Thanks to a constitutional amendment ratified by voters two years earlier, Moore becomes the first West Virginia governor to serve a second consecutive term in 100 years. He defeats political newcomer Jay Rockefeller with 54 percent of the vote.

1977 Just before leaving office, Moore accepts a $1 million settlement in a $100 million lawsuit against the Pittston Coal Company, responsible for 1972’s deadly Buffalo Creek disaster.

1984 He again runs for governor, this time beating Democrat Clyde See. He becomes the only West Virginia governor to serve three four-year terms.

1973

1986

1956

Construction begins on the New River Gorge Bridge.

Moore is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he will serve until 1969.

1975

Moore helps end a prison riot at the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville, negotiating in person with inmates to release 43 hostages.

1968 Moore is elected Governor.

Moore is indicted on extortion charges. He testifies in his own defense and is acquitted the following year.

1986 Moore begins a project to re-

gild the dome, after an initial attempt was halted in 1977 after Rockefeller took office. The project would not be completed until 1990, under Governor Gaston Caperton’s administration.

1990 Moore is found guilty on federal charges of mail and tax fraud, extortion, and obstruction of justice. He pays a $750,000 settlement and serves three years in federal prison.

2014 Moore dies at 91, one day after his daughter is sworn into the U.S. Senate. Sources: The Associated Press, the Times West Virginian, the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, the West Virginia Encyclopedia, Arch: The Life of Governor Arch A. Moore, Jr. by Brad Crouser, A History of the West Virginia Capitol: The House of State by Jim Wallace

A WVU professor expands inmates’ worlds with free books. pg. 16

Big Idea

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

Hometown

Charleston’s Anna Sale takes us to her favorite spots. pg. 26

Connections How well do you know the West Virginia Legislature’s Class of 2015? pg. 36

Focus wvfocus.com

Engagement

Teaching Engagement Youth Leadership Association summer camps help today’s teens become tomorrow’s citizens. written by pam kasey

Focus March/April 2015

304.478.2481 yla-youthleadership.org/horseshoe

2015 Camps Teen Entrepreneurship, June 7-13 Senior Teen Leadership, June 14-20 Junior Teen Leadership, June 21-27

King for a

DAY

Michael C. Flynn was named Frontier Communications’ Area President for the Mid-Atlantic Region in September 2014. Before coming to the company in 1989, Flynn served as an officer in the U.S. Navy before joining the Naval Reserves, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander. If I were king of West Virginia for a day, I would want: Continued emphasis in public schools (perhaps through a partnership with higher education) on students’ science, technology, engineering and math skills; Widespread understanding of our Constitution and how government and the economy work; Continued focus on and promotion of West Virginia’s great assets— from culture to tourism to our growing economic opportunities; The Food Channel to produce a show on the annual Feast of the Ramson in Richwood in April because ramps are delicious.

Courtesy of YOUTH LEADERSHIP ACADEMY; Courtesy of FRONTIER COMMUNICATIONS

ormer astronaut and senator John Glenn is one. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell is one. West Virginia Delegate Saira Blair, the recently elected youngest lawmaker in the nation, is one, too. They’re all alumni of the summer leadership summits at Horseshoe Camp in Tucker County. “People who’ve served in politics, people who’ve been involved in business— it’s quite the recognizable group,” says Tom Starr, executive director of the Ohio-West Virginia Youth Leadership Association that runs the camps. Established in 1867 as a West Virginia YMCA, the YLA just might be the oldest organization in the state. Its four decades of leadership camps have prepared generations of teens for community engagement of all kinds. Service and leadership are the foundation of weeklong camps for high school and middle school students. The camps work as training grounds for YLA’s spring Youth in Government and Model U.N. programs, but students uninvolved in those activities are just as welcome. “There’s a strong emphasis on community service—activities you can be involved with where you live to be a more engaged young person,” Starr

says. A separate camp week covers entrepreneurship. “We do focused entrepreneurship training with eighth graders and up,” Starr says. “They meet with business leaders and take field trips to see the inner workings of local businesses.” Horseshoe is a 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps facility far from a city. “There’s no cell phone service,” Starr says. “We encourage interpersonal communication—we want the kids to share and visit and talk with each other and to listen to our staff.” The prominence of some past campers hints at the organization’s deeper value, he says. “We try at the very core to build something in these young people that helps them go back to Logan or Fayette or McDowell county, far from the spotlight that others might have found, and become grown-ups involved in their local school board or city council or church, or be good parents—all the things you want to encourage in kids.” Camps are open to middle and high school students from Ohio and West Virginia. “If they are an engaged teen, somebody who wants to learn more about their state and nation and their community service opportunities, then we want them,” Starr says. Applications, available online, may be submitted through the end of the school year.

the power lunch

Why Black Sheep?

Lunchtime Libations

“We started out trying to do things a little differently from the rest of the flock,” co-creator and Executive Chef Jeremiah Bowen says of Black Sheep Burrito and Brews’ vision. “We separated ourselves from the rest of the dining crowd in Huntington.”

While both locations feature menus full of options for all tastes and preferences, those looking for a lunchtime drink would be remiss to pass up the bar. The Huntington spot features local and hard-to-find brewers, while Charleston’s Black Sheep has a close partnership with Charleston Brewing Company.

A Choice for Everyone Vegetarian options are available, including a falafel and hummus burrito, a vegan burrito, and a portabella mushroom taco. Adventurous eaters have the option of a Flock of Tacos—choose any three from the menu.

Seating options Pick a spot at the bar or at a table in the Huntington location. The main room is livelier, but the side room is quieter. Window seats make for a great spot to people-watch with a friend.

Three Popular choices

Flock of Tacos $9.95

Brisket Burrito $8.50

Chips & Salsa $2.95

Black Sheep Burrito & Brews opened its doors in Huntington in 2011 with the intention of giving the city a little something different to munch on. “We wanted to open the city up to unusual flavors Huntington wasn’t accustomed to,” says Executive Chef Jeremiah Bowen. Why burritos? “We use burritos as a delivery system for a lot of world flavors you can’t find outside of an independent restaurant. If you want Jamaican you have to go to a Jamaican place. Same with Thai food. We consolidated and made it easier for everyone to access these flavors in one place.” It worked. The place is packed for lunch and dinner, and Black Sheep opened a Charleston location in 2014. Bowen says he’s pleased at the restaurants’ reception. “The communities have responded exceedingly well,” he says. “People are taking note of what we’re doing and applying that ethos to their own restaurants. We’re kind of setting the standard right now. That feels good.”  1555 3rd Avenue, Huntington, WV 25701, 304.523.1555; 702 Quarrier Street, Charleston, WV 25301, 304.343.2739; blacksheepwv.com

written by Katie Griffith | photographed by Elizabeth Roth

Agenda

Shot at a Second Chance Lawmakers expand the availability of a life-saving overdose antidote drug. Written by Zack Harold

n late October 2011, storm winds brought down trees all around James Ball’s home near Danville, making the road to his home impassable. It was a terrible time to have a drug overdose. Ball’s cousin, Delegate Josh Nelson, recently took to the floor of the House of Delegates to recount what happened next. Someone called 911 once it was clear Ball needed medical attention, but paramedics could not make it up the 10-mile-long hollow where he lived. Nelson and his family members tried to cut the trees out of the

Focus March/April 2015

roadway with chainsaws. They tried to drag the trees out of the way with all-terrain vehicles. But despite their work, the ambulance only made it halfway to Ball’s house. Desperate, they switched strategies and loaded Ball onto a stretcher, strapped the stretcher to an ATV, and hauled him to the ambulance. “Unfortunately we did not get it there in time and he passed on,” Nelson told his fellow lawmakers. “It was too late.” Ball battled his addiction to prescription painkillers for years, Nelson says. More than once he started attending church, trying to live right, only to have his demons

drag him back to the bottom. “He would kind of get better and do it again,” Nelson says. Ball had overdosed before but was lucky enough to get to a hospital in time for doctors to resuscitate him. On October 28, 2011, his time ran out. Nelson says Ball probably would still be alive, however, if his family members had access to Naloxone, an “opioid antagonist” medication that oftentimes can save the life of someone suffering from a heroin or painkiller overdose. The medication, sometimes known by its brand name Narcan, has been on the market for more than 30 years but, until recently, only medical professionals had access to it. During his State of the State address in January, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin vowed to put Naloxone in the hands of both emergency responders and addicts’ loved ones. “By expanding access to this life-saving drug, we can prevent overdose deaths and give those suffering from substance abuse the opportunity to seek help, overcome their addiction, and return to their families, workplaces, and communities,” Tomblin said in the speech. West Virginia leads the nation in drug overdose deaths, according to a 2013 report by Trust for America’s Health. In 2010 there were 28.9 fatalities per 100,000 people in the state, the highest per-capita rate in the nation. That is also a 605 percent increase over 1999, when the state had just 4.1 overdose deaths per 100,000 residents. Gary Mendell, CEO of the anti-drug lobbying group Shatterproof, says many of those lives could have been saved if Naloxone were more readily available. Members of the state Senate passed a bill to deregulate the overdose antidote during the 2014 regular session, but the measure failed to gain traction in the House of Delegates. Governor Tomblin’s proposed legislation did not meet the same fate, however. It passed the Senate with a unanimous vote in early February. A little more than a week later, following Nelson’s heartfelt floor speech, it received another unanimous vote in the House of Delegates. That means, as long as Tomblin signs the bill, doctors will soon be able to prescribe Naloxone to drug addicts’ family, friends, and caregivers, as well as

“By expanding access to this

life-saving drug, we can prevent overdose deaths and give those suffering from substance abuse the opportunity to seek help, overcome their addiction, and return to their families, workplaces, and communities.” Governor Earl Ray Tomblin

police and firefighters. The medicine can be given through a single-use shot, like an EpiPen, or a nasal spray. And while the law also created a limited liability statute for those administering Naloxone, the medicine carries little risk. It’s not even dangerous if given to someone who is not experiencing an overdose. “There’s no negative effects. It’s not addictive. There’s no abuse potential,” Mendell says. Naloxone works by blocking the receptors in the brain affected by opioids, a category of drugs that includes heroin, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, and methadone. By blocking the receptors, the medicine temporarily stalls the opioids’ effects on the body. The results usually are immediate. Most overdose victims in respiratory distress begin breathing regularly within minutes of receiving a dose. The medicine is not without risks, however. It does not work on non-opioid drug overdoses—meaning it would be useless on cocaine or methamphetamine addicts, for instance—and overdose patients still must seek medical attention even if they feel fine after receiving Naloxone. Dr. David Seidler, chairman of Charleston Area Medical Center’s emergency medicine residency program and medical director for the Kanawha County Ambulance Authority, says overdose patients often

refuse medical treatment after being revived with Naloxone. “They refuse to go to the hospital because they wake up and they’re feeling fine, or they wake up and they’re pissed off,” he says. And Naloxone does not always last as long as the opioids it neutralizes. The medication can wear off while the other drugs are still coursing through an addict’s veins. “There’s a risk they’ll become unconscious again and potentially could die,” Seidler says. “Thirty or 40 minutes later, if they had a big enough overdose, they’ll be unconscious again.” If that happens, medical treatment at a hospital is an overdose victim’s best chance at survival. Rodney Miller, president of the West Virginia Sheriff’s Association, says he’s glad officers will now be allowed to use Naloxone. Police often arrive at the scene of overdoses long before ambulance crews, but since state law limited the medication to medical professionals, “we couldn’t, by law, have Narcan in our possession, let alone administer it,” Miller says. He says expanding Naloxone’s availability will not solve West Virginia’s rampant drug abuse problems. But, he admits, that’s not the point. “The spirit of this legislation is, if you’ve got a person that’s an accidental overdose, it can save their life and give them a second chance.” It will be up to the addict to decide what to make of his second chance.

CHEERS & JEERS West Virginia is the most miserable state in America for the sixth straight year, reports the 2014 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. #WeAreSickOfWritingThat

Alderson residents are banding together to open a grocery store after the town’s only grocery option closed in 2014. Alderson Community Food Hub pushed forward a plan already more than a year in the works to open a nonprofit greengrocer for the town—complete with community painting parties. #StavingOffTheFoodDeserts

Lawmakers introduced a bill that would make it a misdemeanor for teachers to teach world history before students have American history. Lead sponsor Delegate John Overington, R-Berkeley, told The Charleston Gazette he didn’t realize the bill contained punitive measures. #KnowledgeIsPower #PleaseReadTheBillFirst

Grammy-winning West Virginia native Tim O’Brien releases a song spoofing 2014’s chemical leak in Charleston. Proceeds from the track, titled “Brush My Teeth With Coca-Cola,” will benefit the West Virginia organization Artists Working In Alliance to Restore the Environment. #NotTooSoon #Right? #MakingTheBestOfThings

The CSX train loaded with crude oil that derailed in Fayette County in February leaving fires smoldering for days could be just one of many, according to a Department of Transportation analysis. The Associated Press reported accidents could occur as often as 10 times a year for the next decade. #TimeForAnUpgrade Focus wvfocus.com

results. Since the beginning of the Appalachian Prison Book Project (APBP) in 2004, the group has mailed more than 15,000 books. Ryan came to WVU in 2000, after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Before that she was doing outreach work in Boston with kids who were convicted of violent crimes and were transitioning back to life outside the penal system. “It was very sort of frontline work with young people who were facing insurmountable odds in many cases. It really made me aware of the forces arrayed against young people in certain parts of our cities,” Ryan says. But she felt it was Who’s Stepping Up a problem too big to solve. Her love of reading encouraged her to pursue a doctorate in English. Now she’s integrating her academic life with efforts toward educational justice. It all started with an American Prison Literature class in the fall of 2004. “The books that we were reading, which were largely autobiographical, were testifying to the transformative power of reading and writing,” Ryan says. “So I mentioned to the students that as far as I knew there were no organizations (in the region) that were sending free books to Written and photographed by Elizabeth Roth people that were incarcerated. It n an age of constant stimulation, it’s really was an opportunity for us to expand our academic studies into the larger world.” hard to imagine a world devoid of Ryan, her colleagues, and her students spent smart phones, televisions, and the Internet. It’s harder still to imagine two years fundraising, gathering books, and finding a space to put them—at one point a world with only a small degree operating out of a student’s apartment in of human connection and a lack of expodowntown Morgantown. After the generous sure to anything beyond your bedroom. donation of an office from The Friends Yet approximately 2.3 million Americans of the Morgantown Public Library, APBP live this reality every day—in prison. For sent a few postcards to the West Virginia these men and women, gateways to the Department of Corrections. Within three outside world are few and far between. weeks, they were receiving letters from Enter Katy Ryan. Ryan and her West Virginia University students and colleagues Texas, Arizona, Florida, and New Mexico. “The requests are—I think—the most send books to prisoners in West Virginia, telling and important part of our project,” Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Ryan says. Requests range from books on Maryland. It’s a simple act with profound

Reading Between the Bars

A WVU professor takes on social injustice by sending books to prisoners.

I 16

Focus March/April 2015

health topics like diabetes to science fiction novels, history books to manuals on playing the mandolin. But the most-requested book by far is the dictionary. In addition to being an important insight into the life of someone behind bars, the letters APBP receives often express immense gratitude for the project. “I think that the prison book project depends upon in some ways the voices of those inside, assuring us that these are transformative resources, and needed intellectual and creative exercises—and more than exercises. I mean it’s reading,” Ryan says. “I don’t know how you describe what happens when we read, but there is something powerful about it and that’s why these letters are so important to us.” In addition to mailing books, the Appalachian Prison Book Project now has its own book club at the federal prison in Hazelton. “We read our first novel, it was Kindred by Octavia Butler, and the conversation was hands-down one of the best discussions of literature I’ve ever witnessed, easily,” Ryan says. “When we left— after these two hours that were just totally exhilarating, and funny, and inspiring—we walked out with the correctional officer who’s helping us organize the group, and he turned to us and said, ‘Wow.’” It’s this type of experience Ryan hopes to cultivate more of. “There’s no question, I think, for anyone who were to witness that room, how important it is,” she says. “What we’re trying to do is to lift all of us up and achieve a stronger realization of these human and civil rights that are essential.” Ryan’s achievements beyond APBP include the publication of essays in numerous literary journals and Demands of the Dead: Executions, Storytelling, and Activism in the United States, a collection she edited of creative and critical writing on the death penalty. In April 2014 she organized the first-ever educational justice and Appalachian prisons symposium at WVU. For Ryan, disturbing as it may be to have almost 3 percent of U.S. adults behind bars, what’s more disturbing is the fact that children of those incarcerated are much more likely to end up in prison themselves. “We can’t have a future that’s predicated on certain people going to prison,” she says. “We have to stop it.”

Noteworthy Launch

Kid Scientist A new competition is giving West Virginia’s kids a way to get interested in science.

here’s a lot going on at most high schools, and Tolsia High School, in Wayne County, is no different. At Tolsia there’s a robust roster of athletic teams. There’s JROTC. There’s a choir, marching band, and dance line, plus an art club, Bible club, Spanish club, Beta Club, and a club for Future Business Leaders of America. And then there are all the academic offerings, like honors classes and Advanced Placement classes. Still, Roger Spry, who teaches biology and physics at Tolsia, thinks there’s a gap at the school. “We don’t have anything that’s like a team for academics,” he says. “We’re looking for an exciting academic thing that we can make into an all-year kind of club.” That’s why, in December, Spry was delighted when he got an email from Marshall University about a new academic competition for middle and high school students. “Everybody needs a place to belong,” he says. “And it wouldn’t be bad to have a good time while you’re at it.” He spent the next few months pulling together a team of students and preparing for West Virginia’s very first Science Olympiad. It was held in February 2015 at Marshall. West Virginia’s new Science Olympiad is part of a larger network of similar competitions that is much older than this fledgling event. The national Science Olympiad is a prominent academic competition that has been around since 1984. Last year 7,000 teams nationwide competed in regional and state competitions, and at this time last year

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there were Olympiad teams in 48 states— with the addition of West Virginia it’s now at 49. “It was designed so that students can, early on, experience the excitement of science,” says John Winfrey, an assistant professor of physics at Marshall University. Marshall is sponsoring West Virginia’s Science Olympiad, and Winfrey is organizing the event. Before coming to Marshall, Winfrey helped build two new Olympiad teams in rural Texas, catering to underserved students with a knack for science. The Olympiad is a competitive, handson event—the idea is to give academics the same rowdy, rapturous treatment that most middle and high schools give to athletic events. This theme comes up

again and again when discussing the Science Olympiad. The teams’ preparation process is similar to what a basketball team does to prepare for competition. The countrywide network of Olympiad teams is similar to a national soccer league. The format for competition is like a track meet. “During the awards ceremony there is exactly the same cheering and enthusiasm that occurs at a football game,” Winfrey says. Here’s how it works: Schools form teams of at least 15 students and practice all year long for their first big event. In West Virginia there’s just February’s state competition for now, though many states also have regional competitions. Olympiads consist of a series

Courtesy of Hanna Kopach, Science Olympiad

Written by Shay Maunz

Courtesy of Bob BuCkley, Hanna Kopach, Science Olympiad

of events that cover the broad spectrum of the sciences—everything from genetics to chemistry to mechanical engineering. “They’re doing things like making a compressed air powered aircraft, robot fighting, protein modeling,” Winfrey says. “It’s all these things that are very, very active and very catchy.” Teams work together in the weeks and months leading up to the tournament to prepare, and then a few students represent the whole team during the actual competition. In one event called The Wright Stuff, for example, students are charged with the task of building a single-wing airplane out of balsa wood and making it fly with nothing more than a rubber band. Teams

work together at home to build their airplanes ahead of the event, test driving them and perfecting their launch techniques. In competition everyone gathers in the gym to watch as a few kids launch their teams’ planes. Whichever plane stays in the air longest wins. “So they get to see the fun of doing instead of just the drudgery of studying,” Winfrey says. He is enthusiastic about Science Olympiad because he’s seen the wonders a program like this can perform on young kids. “Every scientist in this building, they have what I call anchor events that occurred in their lives,” he says from his office in Marshall University’s science building. “We’ve all had a special tournament, or

a special teacher, or this or that to hang onto. I know many people who are much better at science than I, but they didn’t make it. They’re not doing what I do now, because they didn’t have anchors like I did.” Thanks to Science Olympiad, Winfrey thinks that a new generation of West Virginia’s budding scientists may have a better chance at a career in the sciences, because they’ll see how much fun science can be and work harder in school as a result. And the fact that the competition will be held on Marshall’s campus doesn’t hurt. “I claim that college campuses are addictive,” Winfrey says. “Once you walk on one it implants a whole new idea in your head, and you start to see yourself there.” Focus wvfocus.com

Philanthropy

Saving the Blue

Blue Sulphur Springs was once one of the region’s top destinations. Now the community is working to save it from ruin.

Written by Shay Maunz | Photographed by Nikki Bowman

e West Virginians tend to tell ourselves the same story about our past. We’re descended from hardscrabble mountain folk, we think—pioneers who settled here despite the rough terrain and hard winters. This place was a hinterlands, where no one else in the country would dare go, let alone live.

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Margaret Hambric, president for the board of the Greenbrier Historical Society, thinks this is important, because the stories we tell ourselves about the past make a difference today, for better or for worse. We carry ourselves differently because of them— size ourselves up using a different measure. That's why Hambric takes issue with that common appraisal of West Virginia. “People in our neck of the woods think that we’ve

always been a backwater, that there was nothing here,” she says. “But in the 1830s that just wasn’t the case.” Consider, for instance, Blue Sulphur Springs. You could think of it as a cousin to The Greenbrier, in nearby White Sulphur Springs, or Berkeley Springs in Morgan County. In the 1830s Blue Sulphur Springs was home to a mineral spa that was known throughout the East for its fresh mountain air and curative water. Wealthy families would leave behind disease-ridden cities to vacation in resort towns like this one— presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren stayed in Blue Sulphur Springs, as did Senator Henry Clay and General Robert E. Lee. At one point, Blue Sulphur Springs had a large three-story hotel with a veranda, a smattering of small cottages, and a sprawling, manicured lawn. But unlike the fates of those betterknown resorts, most of the main buildings at Blue Sulphur Springs were destroyed in a fire in the second half of the 19th century, leaving behind only a Greekstyle pavilion covering the freshwater spring itself. Instead of growing into a 20th century tourist destination, Blue Sulphur Springs faded into obscurity. For more than a century the property has been used as little more than a cow pasture and a scenic spot for family picnics, and the springhouse has deteriorated with each passing year. A Historic Emergency Michael Mills is scrolling through some photos on his laptop, looking for images that will help him describe the condition of the springhouse at Blue Sulphur Springs. He stops at two photos of the historic structure, a square, Greek Revival-style building with 12 columns and a peaked roof that covers the well of spring water beneath it. One photo shows the pavilion as it looked when it was built in 1834, the other as it is today—a muddy floor surrounded by an unstable foundation, crumbling roof held aloft by massive pillars. “Here’s one where you can see where the columns have fallen in,” Mills says. “That’s six inches off from where it should be.” He points to the screen and you can see what he means: 150 years ago the columns bordering the pavilion

stood straight and tall, but now some of them are slumping inward at the top. The building’s roof looks like it is in danger of collapsing. Mills is the founder of the Mills Group and lead preservation architect on a project to restore this historic structure at Blue Sulphur Springs. He was hired by the Greenbrier Historical Society in 2013, when the property’s owner, Rebecca Fleshman Lineberry, gifted the pavilion and the two acres surrounding it to the preservation group. The society created a new group to focus on the restoration of the historic structure—they’re calling it Friends of the Blue. The first thing Friends of the Blue did was make emergency repairs to the structure. “There are very few historic emergencies, but this was,” Hambric says. Wood cribbing was installed to stabilize the crumbling foundation and wires were used to support the leaning columns. The idea is to keep

the structure in one piece until it’s time for a second round of more extensive repairs, probably sometime in the summer of 2015. “It’s not by any means done and safe yet, and that’s what we’re working toward next,” Hambrick says. “When we finish the next phase we should have a good foundation under it and the columns mostly restored.” Once the second round of repairs is finished, Friends of the Blue hopes to move on to a more comprehensive restoration project. The organization wants to make Blue Sulphur Springs a place that is suitable for tourists, history buffs, and local families out for a weekend drive. Befriending the Blue This is where you come in. Friends of the Blue has scrounged up enough money, with public funding and some private donors, for basic repairs at Blue Sulphur Springs, but the comprehensive restoration project has yet to be funded. The restoration phase

of this project is important—while repairs will keep the pavilion’s roof from falling in, it’s the restoration work that will really transform it from ruins to community asset. But that restoration phase is almost as expensive as it is important, so Friends of the Blue is turning to the community for help. On March 1, 2015 the group launched a fundraising campaign on the online fundraising platform Kickstarter. It hopes to raise $25,000 that way. “We’re being cautiously optimistic with that figure,” Hambric says. Already, though, the members of Friends of the Blue have been overwhelmed by the surge of support they’ve seen in the community. “There are just so many people who find it absolutely heartwarming that this Greek pavilion is built out in the middle of a pasture field and that it’s been there for 200 years,” she says. “It is simply near and dear to the hearts of a lot of people.” Focus wvfocus.com

Founders

â&#x20AC;&#x153;You have folks coming to

work every day knowing what they do is making a difference. That really adds to job satisfaction. That undoubtedly creates an atmosphere of excitement and energy. It changes how people walk through the hallways. You can feel it.â&#x20AC;?

Jon Hammock Founders

Preside n t a n d CE O, K ey L ogic | I n terv iewed by M ike n na P ierotti Photographed by E li z abeth Roth

In 1999 Jon Hammock launched KeyLogic, an IT solutions and management consulting company that works with both government and commercial clients. This growing business has offices in West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania and works with federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Army. KeyLogic has seen growth every year since its inception and has received numerous awards and recognitions, including seven appearances in Inc. magazine’s annual “500|5000,” an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest growing private companies.KeyLogic has successfully helped the U.S. Department of Energy manage billions of dollars of research and development projects across a broad spectrum of energy technologies, including coal, gas, renewable energy, smart grid, and emerging technologies. The company has also played a critical role in many NASA space missions, supported the Army through the planning and implementation of advanced technologies, and helped the IRS identify more than $5 billion in tax avoidance. We snagged an interview with Hammock and got a briefing on his struggle to find the right job in West Virginia, his inspiration for starting the business, and his philosophy on workplace culture.

»» I’m a native West Virginian. I attended West Virginia University. But when I was getting ready to graduate (in 1988) I couldn’t find a job here. I had 10 or 12 interviews but almost none were for West Virginia jobs. So I moved. »» I’d worked for large and small businesses, and they each had their own good points and challenges. I wanted to create the sort of environment I’d always wanted to work in. I wanted this to be a business other people would love to work for, with meaningful and challenging projects that really make a difference. »» I wanted my company to attract smart people who

love to work in a collaborative way. It’s hard to find an environment where people really work together. I took those fundamental ideas that many businesses overlook and built on them. That’s how it got started.

»» With customers, it’s about that trusted partnership. We call it “anticipatory service.” You want them to share. It’s when you think deeply about the customer’s needs, wants, fears, hopes, and desires—the things that keep them awake at night. When you understand their business that well, you can anticipate their needs often before they do. It’s our mantra and it drives our culture. »» Never forget who the customer is. You have to

be willing to form deep, meaningful relationships with your clients. That means being the person your clients call on their best days and being the person your clients call on their worst days.

»» You have to dare to believe in yourself. You have to dare to think big and take those calculated risks. And you have to have great partners. Great things happen through teamwork, so pick the right people to surround yourself with. Focus wvfocus.com

Artpreneur

A Heart for Glass After years making glass Alex Brand has settled into a comfortable artist’s life in West Virginia.

Written by Shay Maunz | Photographed by Nikki Bowman

lex Brand never even considered making his career in anything other than art. Sure, it took him a little while to pick the medium— he made pottery as a teenager and studied jewelry making in college before he finally settled on blowing glass. “I didn’t see myself sitting at a bench making smallscale things, so I liked the scale of glass,” he says. “And I liked playing with fire.” But

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even when he was still a high school kid in Pennsylvania, Brand knew that he’d make his living with his art. “There was a really conscious decision that this was what I was going to do and that there was not going to be a Plan B,” he says. “It really made me happy to make art and be creative and that’s all what I wanted to do.” Brand sells his hand-blown glass—everything from simple tumblers to elaborate bowls and vases—at the gallery he owns

with his wife at the Artists Colony at The Greenbrier. That shop, Virtu, is in a cozy little cottage on The Greenbrier’s grounds, in a row of shops that all belong to an exclusive group of West Virginia artisans. Brand and his wife, jewelry maker Susan Chapman Thomas, have been making and selling their work there since 2010. Brand’s glass studio is in a building behind the gallery, and he does live demonstrations for The Greenbrier’s guests a few times a week. “I can’t really imagine a better way to work,” he says. “It’s a pretty idyllic setting to come to every day.” It took Brand years to come into such an ideal arrangement, though. When he graduated from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, in Philadelphia, Brand started working for small glass shop in Massachusetts. After just a few years he decided to break out on his own. “In the early ’80s, when I got into it, the movement

of artists doing glass on a smaller scale in a glass studio was still pretty new,” Brand says. “It was easier to break into.” He went to one wholesale craft show in Baltimore, secured just enough orders to get started, and put together a “ragtag glass studio.” Looking back, Brand acknowledges it was a risky move—but he doesn’t really seem phased by the boldness of the venture. For him, starting his own studio was the natural thing to do—he didn’t have a Plan B. After a few years he relocated to upstate New York to take advantage of a low-interest loan from a local arts council, opened his second studio, and stayed there for 25 years, making and selling glass. During most of those years in New York he couldn’t support himself solely with sales in his gallery. To make ends meet, he spent a few years doing glass blowing demonstrations at a local museum, and

twice took jobs on cruise ships, doing demonstrations on the top deck. He also spent a lot of time traveling to craft shows all over the country looking for more customers who were interested in his work. That wasn’t all bad—he got to travel to a lot of interesting places, plus he and his wife met at one of those shows—but it got old. “It gets to be pretty tedious to travel with the glass,” Brand says. “It was a lot easier for my wife. She could put all of her jewelry in a pouch and go. I’d have a huge van filled with a lot of bubble wrap and glass.” By 2009 he was ready for a change. When a fire destroyed their home in New York, Brand and Thomas decided not to rebuild and instead moved to West Virginia. Thomas grew up in Bluefield and Brand had always loved the state—plus there was an opening in the Art Colony at The Greenbrier. “We figured we might as well try it,” Brand says. Business has been swift at Virtu since it

opened in 2010. The Alex Brand makes colorful glass pieces Greenbrier brings in in his studio at The a lot of people who Greenbrier, often in front of an audience, and are interested in then sells them in his fine West Virginiashop there. Often, after watching glass-blowing made products, demonstrations, visitors and many people are inspired to buy. who watch Brand’s glassblowing demonstrations are inspired to buy pieces. In the last few years Brand has been able to stop traveling to so many craft shows. It took some time, but after all those years criss-crossing the country with a van full of glass, Brand has finally settled into a comfortable routine doing what he loves— blowing glass. “It’s been difficult at times, it definitely has. I don’t have a set paycheck every week,” he says. “But I think this is really something I’m supposed to be doing, and I was blessed to have some talent at it. I really had no choice.” Focus wvfocus.com

Anna Sale’s Tour of Charleston Hometown

Written by Shay Maunz | Photographed by ZACK HAROLD AND Nikki Bowman

These days, Anna Sale is the host and managing editor of WNYC’s Death, Sex & Money, one of the most listened-to podcasts on the Internet. She’s a public radio darling, known for her honest, thoughtful conversations with celebrities and regular people alike. But before all that, she was a kid growing up in Charleston. Here, Sale tells us about some of her favorite spots in her hometown.

Kanawha State Forest

“Specifically, the place where the blacktop ends and you keep driving on the gravel up the hill, surrounded by trees,” Sale says. Kanawha State Forest is 9,300 acres of protected wilderness just seven miles from the state Capitol building—you’re bound to stumble onto something that charms you as much as that scene does Sale. The forest is known for its hiking, biking, and crosscountry skiing trails, and its diverse bird population—birders come from all over the country to look for some of the 19 species of wood warblers that nest there.

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Taylor Books

This combination bookstore, coffee shop, and art gallery might be one of the most beloved institutions in Charleston. It’s a place to settle in—on a comfortable chair, with a good book, in the heart of downtown. Sale got her first job at Taylor Books while she was still in high school, and returned for the summer when she was in college. “I learned so much about books and art and life there—not to mention how to perfectly foam milk,” she says. “When I stop by, I like to walk right over to the café to spy which old friend is sitting there that I can catch up with. There’s always at least one.”

Skateland of Campbell’s Creek This is an indoor skating rink, opened in 2002 in a former elementary school. “I love that what could have been an abandoned building is regularly packed with families and kids’ birthday parties,” Sale says. She discovered Skateland when she moved back to Charleston after college, but part of its charm is in the way it reminds her of the skating rink she went to as a kid. “That’s where I learned to shoot the duck, dance-skate to the ‘Ghostbusters’ theme, and how to summon the courage to let go of the wall and try my luck at staying upright.”

Focus wvfocus.com

Leadership

Leading Leaders More than 1,000 of West Virginia’s top business leaders, entrepreneurs, and politicos all have one thing in common.

Written by Shay Maunz | Photographed by Nikki Bowman

hey’re everywhere—in every corner of the state and every field imaginable, from manufacturing to law to arts education. They sit on boards, write books, run fundraisers, and start businesses. They could be your boss, your doctor, your accountant, or the owner of your favorite restaurant in town. And they all have one thing in common: Leadership West Virginia. The group has been grooming West Virginia’s leaders for 24 years now. More than 1,000 people have worked their way through its yearlong program, and

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alumni include some of West Virginia’s most prominent figures in all kinds of fields. “The idea behind Leadership West Virginia is to offer people stepping into leadership roles the skills they need to go forward,” says Pam Farris, the organization’s executive director. Leadership West Virginia was born in 1991, a program of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce. The idea was to put together a formal system that could groom West Virginia’s next generation of leaders, and continue to do so for years to come— instead of one event about leadership, why not an entire course on it? “We know that

the faces of leadership continue to change,” Farris says. “And we need to be able to change with them.” Every year dozens of West Virginians are nominated for the program. Administrators then weed through a huge pool of applications to select the next Leadership West Virginia class. As you’d hope for the application for a program that will groom your state’s newest leaders, even the basic qualifications are demanding. Applicants are expected to be somewhat experienced in their fields already, and to have demonstrated some forward movement along their career paths. They need to show that they’ve been involved in their communities, and that they have sincere concern for West Virginia. “The most important thing on the application probably is where we ask the individual to give us their vision for where we need to go with the state,” Farris says. “If you don’t have anything to say, you’re not ready for the class.” Nominations are accepted all year, and Farris encourages people to nominate themselves. Applications are due in November and the new class is announced around February.

More than 1,000 people have worked their way through the Leadership West Virginia program. Now officials are trying to mobilize that vast network of alumni.

Around 50 people are chosen for each yearlong session. They come together for two days every month in different parts of the state, for sessions on a broad range of topics. It’s a smorgasbord of things meant to promote leadership and teach these professionals about the state. This year they’re going to Logan County to learn about the coal industry, Fayette County to talk tourism, and Morgantown to discuss legal issues. “And we’re interacting with experts on the topic, we’re doing activities,” Farris says. “The best way to learn is to be interactive and to be involved and to be making it happen.” In the session about economic development, for example, the class plays a game developed by Pat Kelly, the CEO of the West Virginia Healthcare Association and a Leadership West Virginia alumnus. The class is split in half, with people on one side playing the role of a state. “In other words, you might have all the characteristics of a great state to bring in economic development, or you may be not such a great state in terms of bringing in economic development,” Farris says. The other people

represent companies that are looking to locate in one of those states—it’s the states’ job to woo those businesses, while the businesses try to negotiate the best deals they can. “At the end the companies announce where they’re going and what enticed them,” Farris says. “And we get to see what it would be like to be in the economic development field. It’s a great way to try something you may never have tried otherwise.” The program starts in March with a session in which participants talk about leadership in the broader sense, and about themselves. “We talk about selfexamination,” says Henry Clayman, who administers that session every year. “We might not all be charge-down-the-hill leaders, but we all are stewards of the state. We look at ourselves and what we have to offer.” Clayman is the founder of Clayman & Associates, a Charleston clinical and forensic psychology company, and a 1998 Leadership West Virginia alumnus. He also sits on Leadership West Virginia’s Board of Directors. Clayman has been a board member at a lot of organizations around the state, but says Leadership’s board is unique.

“It’s the only board I’ve ever been on where nobody wants to leave—we’re all angling for how we can stay on,” he says. “It’s apolitical, there’s no intrigue. We’re all just there to make the program better.” He also says his overall experience with Leadership West Virginia has been one of the very best things he’s done as a professional in the state. “I know it sounds like we’ve all drunk the Kool-Aid, but it’s because we really have,” he says. “Have you ever been in a room with 50 Type A personalities? It’s great because it kind of equalizes everybody, and it’s so amazing to be around people who motivate you like that.” In the last few years the program’s administrators have started working on organizing and mobilizing Leadership’s vast network of alumni—a network that includes people at the top of practically every industry in West Virginia. Alumni have always been connected in some way. There’s a newsletter, and for a few years now there’s been a conference, plus all the informal ways alumni interact. “I’ve never had a call to a Leadership person not returned when I say I’m a Leadership West Virginia alum,” Clayman says. Now the plan is to formalize those connections to make them more powerful and more efficient. To do that, Leadership is creating a network of alumni chapters, so alumni can engage with one another on the regional level as well as the state level. It’s a simple thing that administrators think could be really powerful. “The big thing for us in the future is to maintain the high quality and the integrity of the program, but also to find ways to encourage and enhance the involvement of alumni,” Clayman says. “We want to go beyond just getting together to have social time.” Focus wvfocus.com

Turn This Town Around

Last Chance to Change A last-minute gamble saves a struggling Whitesville business. Written and photographed by

Zack Harold

ate last year sisters Jenny Elswick and Tammy Gordon were ready to close Farmer’s Daughters, their small primitives shop in Whitesville. Business was great when they opened the doors five years earlier, but sales had slowed to a trickle. Days sometimes passed without a single customer. They went two years without paying themselves. “We were making enough to pay

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our bills and that was it,” Elswick says. They set a deadline: They would close up shop if things didn’t turn around by the end of December. But as the new year drew closer, Elswick realized she could not bear the thought of giving up. She and Gordon decided they would pray about it. It was then Elswick received what she believes was divine inspiration. “It was like—wham: Clothes!” she says. Instead of selling down-home furnishings, Farmer’s Daughters would become a chic women’s boutique. They enlisted the help of Elswick’s 25-year-old son Cody, who had spent years working at trendy clothing shops in Charleston. “Cody could sell a dead horse," Gordon says. The sisters invested $1,000 each and placed an order with some clothing wholesalers for shirts, leggings, camisoles, purses, and scarves. While they waited for their first shipment, Elswick and Gordon put in two weeks of 12-hour days revamping their space. They repurposed some of their oldtimey décor, repainting a vintage table to give it a modern look and stacking some old crates into a hip-looking centerpiece. They

purchased metal piping to build clothing racks. They visited Good Samaritans, a local thrift store, where they scored a few full-size mirrors, a freestanding clothing rack, and a bunch of vintage suitcases. Elswick and Gordon also began promoting their new boutique on Facebook. News spread fast, as it does in small towns. By the time The Farmer’s Daughters Gifts and Boutique re-opened on January 6, customers couldn’t even wait for the sisters to unpack their inventory. “There were people here waiting when we opened the boxes,” Gordon says. Women bought shirts before she could put them on the racks. That first shipment was completely sold out on the first day, and business has remained strong. Plans are already under way to expand the business and add shoes and children’s clothes to the shelves. Around the time Gordon and Elswick were making their big gamble, Whitesville also was taking steps toward its own dramatic transformation. Tired of the stagnant economy, boarded-up storefronts, and ramshackle structures plaguing their home, residents rallied around the selection process for this year’s Turn This Town Around community improvement program, drumming up more than 23,000 online votes to beat out closest competitor Alderson, a town with twice as many citizens. For the next year, Whitesville will work with West Virginia Focus, the West Virginia Community Development Hub, and West Virginia Public Broadcasting to try to bring new life to the struggling Boone County community. Whitesville citizens have many goals for the next year, most of which depend on attracting new businesses to their community. They can learn a lot from Farmer’s Daughters. “If it’s not working, change,” Gordon says. “We took a chance, and we did it. It’s amazing.” As business owners and lifelong Whitesville residents, few people want to see the town succeed as much as these enterprising sisters. “I think if we can do it, anybody can do it,” Elswick says.

Look for a story about Ripley, our other Turn This Town Around community, in our May/ June issue.

Technology

Show Us Your Best Side The first West Virginia start-up to come out of biometrics research at West Virginia University sees your face as the next generation of mobile security.

Written by Pam Kasey

ithin a week of its September 2013 introduction, some techies hacked the iPhone 5S’s Touch ID fingerprint security feature. They easily faked a fingerprint that fooled the phone’s sensor, to widespread media derision. Enter SecureSelfies, a technology developed in Morgantown that’s based on the user’s facial image—and checks for “liveness.” SecureSelfies got its start in May 2014. West Virginia University professor Thirimachos Bourlai invited three students working on identification technologies in his Multispectral Imagery Lab—Steven Amerman, Alex Dunn, and Walter Ferrell— to develop a way to use a selfie for authentication. They had a prototype in a week and, in a few months, something nearly marketable. Morgantown biometrics firm Confirmix, of which Bourlai is a co-founder, approached WVU to license the technology. Tech-interested West Virginians know the north central part of the state has

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cultivated an advantage in biometrics—the use of traits like fingerprints, face geometry, and gait to identify people—ever since the FBI moved its famed criminal fingerprint repository to Clarksburg in 1995. WVU enjoys international stature in the field, and its innovations have been licensed to entities outside the state. But Confirmix is the first in-state firm created to commercialize WVU’s biometrics innovations. Confirmix brought the students on as co-owners and launched a Kickstarter campaign. After downloading the SecureSelfies app, the team explained in its pitch, users will take reference selfies and apply them to files they want to protect. “Those selfies that you uploaded are matched against the face of the person trying to access your device,” they wrote. “Even better, the SecureSelfies system detects whether the ‘you’ that it sees is really the living you or simply a photo or video of you.” Detecting the living you. That’s the trick Touch ID was missing, the trick that makes SecureSelfies a next-generation security

app. It won’t be revealed here. Asked how liveness detection works—Does it analyze reflections from the eyes? Does it recognize three-dimensionality?—company representatives say only that they’re working to protect that intellectual property. The Kickstarter campaign hit about $13,000 of a $50,000 goal when the team got a better offer. West Virginia native and Chicago businessman Terry Upton was impressed with the Confirmix team which, in addition to Bourlai and his students, includes Morgantown entrepreneur Patrick Esposito and Zenovy Wowczuk, who has connections with the defense community. Upton was excited about Confirmix’s commercial and defense opportunities. Wowczuk explains. “If we could find technology that could help increase security for mobile banking applications, there could be a nice market there,” he says. And the company’s technology may meet a need for remote screening of air travelers for viral hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola. “We’ve put in a couple proposals around that,” he says. Upton was so impressed, he put up $1.25 million. The company cancelled its Kickstarter campaign. Confirmix has licensed a number of WVU e-fraud protection innovations for future development, and plans to launch SecureSelfies in the spring of 2015. The technology promises to have broad appeal: It was a CNBC Tech Crowd Leader of the Week in October 2014. Consumer use would jump-start future applications, Wowczuk says. “If people are using it in their personal lives, it’ll help it be accepted for a banking application.“ The first product out of the first WVU biometrics spin-off may be expected to generate high hopes within the state. Upton plans to fulfill those hopes. “We could knock a home run,” he says. “We could have a big building there in Morgantown some day soon with ‘Confirmix’ on it.”

Courtesy of Samuel Speciale

WVU undergraduates, roommates, and software developers Walter Ferrell, Steven Amerman, and Jacob Dunn are equity holders in Confirmix, LLC, the first West Virginia biometrics spin-off out of West Virginia University. Confirmix is preparing to launch its SecureSelfies security app in the spring.

The city of Wheeling will pay to demolish this house with natural gas royalty funds.

Energy

Royalty Treatment

gas-producing counties has been a boon, raising its budget from $3.4 million in the 2010 budget year to $5.6 million in 2015. Much of that is due to the natural gas severance tax: 5 percent producers pay the state on sales, a portion of which goes to producing counties. Doddridge County received more than $500,000 in severance taxes for the 2013 budget year and almost $1.3 million for 2014, a windfall that supports myriad good things. “The county was making monthly payments on a loan to form the Doddridge County Ambulance Authority. We paid that off. There was also a need for a four-wheel-drive ambulance and we funded around $90,000 of that,” says County Commission President Gregory Robinson with glee. County seat West Union’s sewer system, a bridge connecting two parts of the Doddridge County Park across Middle Island Creek, a future solution to courthouse crowding— all benefit. “These things are vital to the well-being of the county,” Robinson says. “And we put, I believe, about $400,000 into the county rainy day fund.” That’s just the severance tax. The county also leased mineral rights to Antero Resources. The company drilled six natural gas wells, and the county has raked in more than $600,000 in royalties since last fall. Robinson hopes to split that revenue stream between courthouse development and the rainy day fund. And another thing: Property valuations have risen, increasing property tax revenues from $1.6 million in the 2010 budget year to $3.5 million just five years later. “It’s amazing,” he says of the turnaround. “You go from wishing for a courthouse annex to realizing it might be possible to build it and pay it off.” Another top gas producer, Wetzel County, enjoys growth unmatched anywhere in the state, much of it gas-related:

Cash-strapped jurisdictions extract a lot of good from shale gas-related revenues.

Written by Pam Kasey Photographed by CARla Witt Ford

heeling has found a fat new source of funds for razing dilapidated buildings: natural gas royalties. The city has relied in the past on federal block grants to pay for demolitions, with much red tape. But now, the $20,000-a-month royalty Chesapeake Energy pays the city on gas it extracts from under Oglebay Park affords some newfound independence. “This will be the first year that we’ve been able to fund demolitions using local funds,” City Manager Robert Herron told The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register in January 2015. For all its ups and downs, the shale gas industry does inject cash into some jurisdictions that can sorely use it. Take Doddridge County. It has long struggled, as one of the state’s least populated counties, to provide residents with basic services, let alone amenities. Its recent status among top shale

Its budget tripled from $4.4 million in 2010 to over $13 million in the current budget year. “It’s gratifying,” says Commissioner Don Mason. “Five, six years ago Wetzel County was classified as a depressed county. Since the oil and gas exploration has come in, we’re able to provide services that no way we could do in the past.” Severance tax revenues have increased dramatically, Mason says, totaling $1.4 million in the 2014 budget year. The county wants to put much of that toward a $2 million rehabilitation of the courthouse’s electrical and sprinkler systems. Wetzel County leased mineral rights to Stone Energy, and gas royalties now flow in at about $180,000 a year. “We’ve increased our budgets to the libraries, we’ve helped out some municipalities with their park systems, we’ve given money to the food pantries,” Mason says. The Wetzel County Hospital got equipment, and a new contract provides air ambulance service to every county resident. And beyond that, a several-million-dollar surge in property tax revenues over five years adds to the county’s general fund. “It’s not all a bed of roses,” Robinson acknowledges. Counties struggle with the deterioration of roads that weren’t built for industrial traffic. And while Mason says Wetzel County contractors, restaurants, and other businesses benefit, it has to be acknowledged that the county’s 9.5 percent unemployment in December 2014 was one of the highest in the state. This cash cow is fickle. With natural gas prices down recently, Marcellus producers have announced cutbacks. Still, a commissioner can dream. Robinson hopes to help the Doddridge County Public Library move to a location with parking. And while U.S. Route 50 connects the county efficiently with points east and west, he says Middle Island Creek isn’t a sufficient water source to serve a highway-side industrial park or similar development. He’d like to see the creation of a reservoir. Asked about Wetzel County’s hopes for the future, Mason keeps it simple. “We’re not buying police cruisers or raising any salaries. The commitment of the Wetzel County Commission is that we’ll put that money back for the citizens.” Focus wvfocus.com

Local farmer Bill Hughes regularly delivers fresh produce right to the cafeteria door. West Virginia University Extension Agent Rodney Wallbrown delivers a watermelon to a school in Mason County.

Room to Grow Education

Schools increase farm-fresh lunch offerings and need more farmers to help meet the demand.

Written by Zack Harold

hen Cristi Rulen, food service director for Mason County Schools, began purchasing food from local farmers three years ago, she came to a jarring realization—why hadn’t she already been doing this? On any given school day, Mason County serves about 2,500 hot lunches to students in 10 schools. That’s 450,000 meals in a typical school year, paid for with a $2 million annual food budget.

Focus March/April 2015

Rulen was sending most of that money to U.S. Foods, a national supplier that brings tractor-trailer loads of fresh, frozen, and canned foods right to her cafeterias’ back doors. But she realized buying food from local growers allowed her to stock school pantries while also pumping money back into the local economy. “It’s amazing that we haven’t thought about this earlier. We could keep all the money here,” she says. “I was sending money to who-knows-where to buy this stuff, when we have producers

right here. Why not support our farmers?” And it wasn’t just a goodwill gesture. The school system was gaining something, too: fresh, healthy, affordable, good-tasting food students enjoyed eating. Three years later, Mason County Schools is buying more local produce than ever. The county spent more than $77,000 on food from local growers during the 2013-14 school year, and that number probably will be even bigger by the end of the current school year. “It keeps getting bigger every year because the farmers know, if I say I’m going to buy it, I’m going to buy it,” Rulen says. “They see that it’s working. They see that it’s not going to go away. It’s not a one-time shot and it’s done.” The program is not without growing pains. While Mason County Schools is purchasing lots of food from local growers, Rulen still buys most of the school system’s groceries from U.S. Foods. “There’s not enough farmers. They cannot grow enough stuff to keep the school

Courtesy of Cristi Rulen

Mason County Schools regularly serves its students fruits and vegetables from local growers, like these cherry tomatoes, broccoli, and cauliflower.

“It keeps getting bigger every year

because the farmers know, if I say I’m going to buy it, I’m going to buy it. They see that it’s working. They see that it’s not going to go away. It’s not a one-time shot and it’s done.” Cristi Rulen, Mason County Schools Food Service Director

operating.” In August Rulen bought six steer at the Mason County Fair. The meat was raised, slaughtered, and processed right in Mason County. Rulen and some maintenance workers drove from school to school, delivering hundreds of pounds of fresh ground beef and beef roast. “It was enough for one meal,” she says. Large-scale farming—the kind you see in states like California, Iowa, Nebraska, or Texas—has never really occurred in West Virginia, for one simple reason. There is not enough flat land. So even though Mason County is one of the state’s top agricultural areas, producers are only able to supply a small fraction of the school system’s demand. Rulen said it’s even worse for her counterparts in school systems with fewer farms and more children, like Kanawha and Putnam counties. “They want to do this, too, but they can’t because there’s no farmers. You can imagine, if I can’t get enough produce, in Kanawha County there’d be no way.” Thirty-eight of West Virginia’s 55 school systems are participating in the state’s three-year-old Farm to School program, although some are more devoted to the cause than others. Mollie Wood, assistant director of the state Department of Education’s Office of Child Nutrition, said the program still has two major hurdles to clear: making it as easy as possible for county food service directors to purchase local foods, and finding enough farmers

to make the food in the first place. There might be a way to fix both issues at once. The education department, the state Department of Agriculture, and the West Virginia University Extension Service are working to develop “food hubs” throughout the state, with help from a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Local farmers who band together to sell their goods, acting like miniature food distributors. Tom McConnell, program leader for the West Virginia University Extension Service Small Farm Center, said each hub will operate differently but will follow the same basic plan. Hub members will meet with school systems to find out what kinds of food they want and how much they need. Farmers will then decide how much of the school system’s needs they can meet and distribute that workload among hub members. With a food hub, county food service directors would not have to call several different farmers to find enough fresh tomatoes for the school salad bars. Instead they would just place orders with their local hubs. McConnell said working as cooperatives also would allow farmers to purchase specialty equipment they could not otherwise afford. Members could pool their money and purchase a potato digger, for example, to be shared among the hub members. Once the hubs get going, McConnell says some groups might also

build common storage buildings or processing facilities for their products. The arrangement is not without its downsides, however. In addition to giving up a little of their independence, hub members will not be able to sell their crops at farmers’ market prices. School systems could not afford that. But in return for selling their crops at lower prices, the farmers will gain steady customers. “We just can’t buy ground beef at twice the price because it’s local. That’s not what we’re talking about. We can’t buy at farmers’ market prices, but at the same time we are going to buy more,” Wood says. McConnell says it might be difficult at first to convince growers to join their local hubs. Farmers are an independent bunch, after all. He’s certain the program will take off once growers recognize the opportunities it presents, however, since the model could eventually be expanded to include other large institutions like hospitals and prisons. If all goes according to plan, the possibilities for growth are nearly endless. “Farm-to-school is the perfect place for all this to start. You’ve got to work as a group, make decisions as a group and enjoy the prosperity. Farmers haven’t tried it, but I think once they do, they’ll find it’s easier than they first thought. It’ll take several years, but this could be the salvation of West Virginia’s rural economy. Maybe its economy in general,” he says. Wood says the farm-to-school program is intended to work the other way around, too: sending students from their classrooms into careers in farming. Rulen is doing her part. Of the $77,000 Mason County spent on local produce last year, more than $24,000 of that money went to students in Future Farmers of America and 4-H programs. And remember those six beef cattle Rulen purchased at the county fair? Each was raised by a Mason County Schools student. Wood says encouraging student farmers is essential for the program to continue. The average West Virginia farmer is 59 years old, so the state needs to train a new generation of growers to take the older generation’s place. “We’ve got to have farmers,” she says. “We want them to think about farming as a career.” Focus wvfocus.com

Guess Who? Connections

A civics lesson inspired by a certain 1980s board game Written by Zack Harold

here are lots of new faces under the state Capitol’s big gold dome this year. Voters sent 32 new members to the House of Delegates this year, while the West Virginia State Senate picked up 11 new members. Most of the new lawmakers were Republicans, giving the GOP control of both chambers for the first time in more than 80 years. These new members come from all over the state, from a wide variety of professions, with many different backstories. West Virginia Focus is here to help you learn more about these fresh-faced freshmen with a little matching game. The rules are simple: Just match the lawmaker’s mugshot with the fact you think best describes him or her. Answers are at the bottom. No cheating.

A. Owns a life-size replica of the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard

n Terr y Waxma

Ryan Weld

B. The youngest lawmaker in state history C. Day job is driving a taxi D. Part-time law student, former Air Force intelligence officer E. Born in Australia F. Got rid of goats before running for office

Mick Bates

G. Nickname is “Bubblegum” H. Mayor of Ravenswood

Mark Zatezalo

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C. Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha D. Del. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke E. Del. Mick Bates, D-Raleigh

Ryan Fe

Focus wvfocus.com

ANSWERS: A. Sen. Mark Maynard, R-Wayne B. Del. Saira Blair, R-Berkeley

F. Sen. Kent Leonhardt, R-Monongalia G. Sen. Jeff Mullins, R-Raleigh H. Del. Michael Ihle, R-Jackson

Larr y Row e

rns Erikka Storch

Kent Leon hardt Sean Hornbu

ckle

Robert Ka rnes

Mark Maynard Mike Pushkin

Jeff Mullins Jordan Hill

Michael Ihle

Saira Blair

Innovation

Solving Digital Crimes, One Course at a Time The National White Collar Crime Center in Fairmont is training digital crime solvers nationwide.

Written and Photographed by Katie Griffith

registered sex offender makes off with a 13-year-old girl he contacted via social media. He drives her from Arkansas to Texas before authorities are alerted. But based on the abductor’s cell phone signal, the two are tracked to a small town and found near the home of his family. “If you’ve read any reports of a person being arrested because of things found on their computer or phone, it’s likely we taught the cops how to do the digital investigations,” says Scott Pancoast, an instructor with the

Focus March/April 2015

National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) in Fairmont. From phone records to social media searches to hard drive imaging, the center provides law enforcement agencies nationwide with the instruction and tools for investigating modern criminal activity. “You don’t see any criminal activity these days that doesn’t have a computer element to it,” says Jim Foley, manager of curriculum development at the crime center. “Either social media or cell phones, there’s evidence or indicators in the cyber world for all types of crimes.” To forge a

check 100 years ago, a criminal needed a pretty good artist, a signature forger, and someone with an upper lip stiff enough to brave the bank guards. Just 10 years ago he still might need a talented forger, but printing the fake check was possible with a computer. Today you don’t need to print a forged check. You don’t even need to take the check into the bank. “My local bank has a phone app to let me automatically deposit a check. The bank never sees it. So where will law enforcement go to find the forged checks? That phone,” Pancoast says. “Whether you sign someone’s name or submit a bogus check, or maybe you’ve just altered some numbers, it would be on the phone. Crimes are moving from the brick and mortar world to the digital world. And that brings all sorts of problems.” Technology has, in many ways, made it easier to commit crimes. But it also has made crimes easier to solve—with the right training. The crime center’s mission is to instruct state and local law enforcement how to investigate and prosecute these kinds of crimes. “Our goal is to keep the

“You don’t see any

criminal activity these days that doesn’t have a computer element to it. Either social media or cell phones, there’s evidence or indicators in the cyber world for all types of crimes.” Jim Foley, Manager of Curriculum Development

state and local investigators up to speed to keep up with the criminals,” Foley says. To do that investigators have to get ongoing updates on the computer crime world, different types of frauds, and technologies to detect them. At the Fairmont center, law enforcement personnel with years of criminal investigative experience sit with technology experts, lawyers, and educators to create training programs for federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement. It’s not interrogation techniques or best practices for fingerprint dusting—it’s everything digital. Funded primarily by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the organization teaches nearly 200 classes per year to agencies from Rockville, Maryland, to Florida to Hawaii. “We provide that training at no charge to the officer or the agency,” says training instructor Robert Matheny. A police chief himself, Matheny says he wishes he had made use of the NW3C during his time patrolling the streets. “The cell phone recovery and the computer recovery courses are things that a patrol officer out in the field can do … whether it be a homicide or a series of

break-ins,” he says. “These are the things that would have helped me do my job a lot better when I was out investigating.” Courses range from securing law enforcement networks to imaging hard drives. Each is geared to suit individual agencies’ needs and available technology. Pancoast recently developed a course on retrieving images and data from Android devices. “A lot of research and investigative tools are looking at phones and tablets,” he says. Pictures, text messages, web history, calendars—all of that is resdiscoverable even if it’s been deleted from a phone. The potential for discovery using phone records and deleted evidence is so significant to the prosecution of criminal cases that it has required judicial intervention. A federal judge recently ruled that law enforcement needs a warrant to search a cell phone, even after a person has been arrested. “Phones used to be innocuous and now they’re your life,” Pancoast says. But getting information from the phones is still problematic. “With some Androids you have to break into the phone and connect it up with electrodes to pull the data off. It’s tough to do. It’s highend stuff that needs specialized software.” In the computer crimes division alone, 20 instructors travel throughout the country with trunks of computers and equipment to educate investigative agencies. “We train them on how to do a forensic on a hard drive, on a desktop, a laptop, or even cell phones,” says Tom Macauley, manager of the center’s computer crimes division. “We’re looking at how a computer stores information and how a detective can view a hard drive in order to extract that information for evidential purposes.” It’s not just a matter of hacking into a computer and dumping the files on a portable drive. Prosecutors need to show juries and judges the information was legally pulled from the hard drive and, by taking the information, investigators did not leave any digital DNA of their own that could contaminate the evidence. Some of the tools needed for this job are free on the Internet, others have been developed by software companies, and still others were developed in-house by the NW3C. “One we developed is called TUX—a software write blocker,” Macauley says. “You can go into someone’s house using a thumb drive

and boot up the computer in TUX. It allows you to view the hard drive without writing to the hard drive.” If an investigator finds anything incriminating—child pornography, for example—he can take the hard drive back to a lab for a complete analysis. Investigators then take an exact replica of the hard drive, called an “image,” to work on without damaging the original. “We put the original away into evidence. Then you can sit for hours and view what’s on the hard drive.” The crime center provides training and support to some of the most specialized law enforcement units in operation. The Internet Crimes Against Children task force, for example, is a major player using the center’s resources. With at least one unit in each state, the task force helps state and local law enforcement respond to cyber enticement, child pornography, and related crimes by providing training, victim services, community education, and forensic and investigative assistance. “We coordinate with ICAC and provide training on not just computer forensics, but real-time investigation of cybercrimes. We actually show them how to view things on websites or social media,” Macauley says. The Regional Computer Forensic Laboratories run by the FBI also receive training from the NW3C. The laboratories have 15 units throughout the country— Orange County, California, to Philadelphia and New York—to aid law enforcement in obtaining digital evidence of crimes spanning terrorism, child pornography, and trade secret theft. Macauley and his team do both training and technical support. “We have had incidents where we’ve worked with agencies to locate a missing child through phone records. We can look at someone’s phone and put that information into a software to map someone’s location,” he says. “In Texas they located a woman’s body because they followed her phone records.” In that case, two Texas rangers had just learned location techniques at a NW3C class and were able to team up with the local law enforcement and experts at the crime center. “You can do this location work manually but it would take months,” Macauley says. “These programs allow you to do it in minutes. As long as you have your phone on, you can be located.” Focus wvfocus.com

Big Idea

The ‘Fourth Branch’ The West Virginia Board of Education doesn’t get much attention, but its members are some of the most influential people in state government. Written AND PHOTOGRAPHED by Zack Harold

he West Virginia Board of Education drew national criticism in December after members voted to adopt new science education standards that intentionally cast doubt on humaninfluenced global climate change. The Charleston Gazettebroke the news, detailing how board member Wade Linger—an admitted climate change skeptic—requested the original draft of standards be changed to match his views. News outlets nationwide picked up the story, leading to an outcry from national and local education groups, who chided the board for ignoring the wealth of scientific evidence supporting global warming.

Focus March/April 2015

West Virginia Board Board members of Education member eventually bowed to Wade Linger requested public pressure and changes to education standards on climate removed Linger’s change, leading to requested changes. outcry from national and state education But they didn’t have to. Although changing groups. the standards was controversial, the move was well within the state board’s prescribed powers. The board has influence over nearly every aspect of West Virginia’s education system, from the 249-employee state Department of Education all the way down to classrooms of our 55 county school systems. “The board is the chief (education) policy maker for the state. Whatever policy passes

has the effect of law, unless the Legislature changes it,” says Lowell Johnson, who served on the board from 2004 until 2012. “You have to abide by the law, but there are so many policy-making decisions that are not in law. That’s what the state board does. It has that authority.” The board is responsible for setting education standards for the state, as well as teacher training standards. It sets policies on everything from school nutrition to standardized testing and oversees state juvenile detention centers and the West Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind. Members are charged with managing a $2 billion yearly budget, along with nearly a half-billion in federal education dollars. The state board also is in charge of hiring—and sometimes firing—the state superintendent. When these top-down policy decisions aren’t enough, the board also can take a more direct approach. Through its Office of Education Performance Audits, members regularly review the academic and financial well-being of county school districts. “They basically control the school systems. They’re the ones that determine whether school systems are adequate or inadequate,” Johnson says. When a district is found lacking, the board has authority to seize control of the school system, installing its own administrators and rendering the county board of education powerless. Former state board members say they had little idea before taking the job how much influence they would possess. Priscilla Haden made a career as a teacher and school counselor before serving on the Kanawha County Board of Education. But despite her decades of experience, she still did not know what to expect when Governor Bob Wise appointed her to the West Virginia Board of Education in 2003. “I don’t think anybody has any understanding of what the state board (does), quite frankly,” she says. “I didn’t realize the long reaching (nature) of the policies. I thought it was all student achievement, but we worked with so many other areas.” Governor Joe Manchin appointed Jenny Phillips to the board in 2005, but she resigned with Haden in 2012 to protest the board’s firing of state Superintendent Jorea Marple. Phillips says she was amazed

at the amount of work that goes into the position. “It was close to a full-time job. You spend a lot of time reading and getting prepared for meetings,” she says. Johnson says he fully recognized the importance of the state Board of Education when Wise appointed him to the job in 2004. Johnson served as president of the West Virginia Education Association teacher’s union in the 1980s. Realizing how many important decisions occurred at state board meetings, he began sending staffers to each one. Long after his departure, a union employee still is present every time the board meets. So how does one wind up on such a powerful, if little noticed, government body? There’s not much to it, besides gaining the favor of a sitting governor. Members serve nine-year terms, with one term expiring each year. The governor gets to decide who replaces that outgoing member. It is up to the state Senate to approve these appointments, but lawmakers seldom put up a fight. The governor and legislators' authority over the board mostly ends with this selection process. Johnson says it is not uncommon for governors to try to pressure board members to support certain policies—but board members do not have to listen. “They don’t have to pay that much attention to what the governor says.” The state constitution is structured to give the state board a large amount of autonomy, on the same level as the secretary of state, attorney general, and other constitutional officers. The only difference is, members are not selected by the voting public. There have been numerous attempts over the years to change this structure. In 1989, Governor Gaston Caperton, a Democrat, tried to bring the Board of Education under the control of the executive branch using a constitutional amendment. Voters rejected the proposal in a special election, however, with nearly 90 percent voting against the amendment. Governor Joe Manchin, another Democrat, briefly discussed a constitutional amendment in 2010 to shorten board members’ terms from nine to four years, although the idea did not gain traction among lawmakers. Three years later Democrat state Senator John Unger tried

to establish nonpartisan elections for state Board of Education seats. Unger’s proposed constitutional amendment did not generate any momentum in the Legislature, either, and never made it to the polls. This year state Senator Donna Boley, the new Republican vice-chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, resurrected Unger’s idea with a nearly identical proposed constitutional amendment. Boley says the Legislature and court system have granted the state board so much power they have become a “fourth branch of government.” The veteran lawmaker has served for years on the Legislative Oversight Committee on Education Achievement, but Boley says committee members aren’t given enough time or information to thoroughly study the issues and make good decisions. “We just rubber-stamp whatever the board gives us,” she says. Making the board an elected body, Boley believes, would allow the voting public to hold members accountable for their decisions. “I feel this Board of Education is just trying to get more and more control of education,” she says. “They’re out of control.” It appeared at press time that her amendment would not pass this session, but the issue is sure to come up again. The idea has its supporters, including the conservative West Virginia Farm Bureau— which drafted Boley’s amendment—and the West Virginia School Board Association. Association President Jim Crawford, who also is a member of the Kanawha County Board of Education, says holding nonpartisan elections for state board members makes sense. After all, he points out, that is how counties pick their school board members. “Every four years a board member has to go to the public and ask to be reelected. If you’re not doing the job, they’re not going to reelect you,” he says. “We’re all held accountable but the state board members are not held accountable for what they do.” Plenty of people, of course, believe the state board is fine just the way it is. State Board President Gayle Manchin—who was appointed to the board by her husband in 2006—is a member of that camp. In addition to serving as West Virginia’s school board president, Manchin also is the former president of the National Association of

“The board is the

chief (education) policy maker for the state. Whatever policy passes has the effect of law, unless the Legislature changes it.” Lowell Johnson, former Board Member

State Boards of Education. That position allows her to work with boards across the country and observe how they operate. According to the association, 36 state school boards in the United States are appointed, while seven are elected. Four states employ a blended model, where some members are elected and others are appointed. Three states do not have state boards at all. Manchin says she recognizes there are benefits and disadvantages to each model, but electing board members has its problems. She says accepting money from campaign donors sometimes comes with baggage. “You have people who are elected to office who are accused of being bought off by special interest groups. So what would be different about elected state board members?” She has noticed something else about state school boards. No matter which model a state employs, there are people who want to try something different. “States that have elected (boards) look and say, ‘I think it would be better if we were appointed,’” she says. “The irony is that whatever a state is doing they always look at another state and think, boy, it would be better if we did it that way.” Focus wvfocus.com

The Legacy of Upper Big Branch Five years after the 2010 disaster, are our mines any safer? It may be too early to tell.

Written and photographed by Katie Griffith

n March 23, 2010, a group of safety experts and industry leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., congratulating themselves on another calm year for coal and the 40th anniversary of the Federal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. The yearly death toll had dropped from more than 200 fatalities the year the act was signed to just 18 fatalities in 2009. It had been four years since the Sago explosion killed 12 underground coal miners in West Virginia, and the focus of mine safety, many thought, could finally turn from gas leaks and explosions to hygiene and black lung. A new era in mine safety had come at last. The fires and sparks that too often took the lives of the country’s coal miners were relegated to history books. Then, two weeks later, history repeated itself. Mid-afternoon on April 5, 2010, the tiny mine community of Montcoal in Raleigh County was rocked—literally—by an explosion that would kill 29 men. It would be the deadliest mine accident on U.S. soil in 40 years. “I remember when September 11 happened, and if you’re down in this area it’s the same thing. You could feel it. You could just feel the ground shake,” says Michelle Allen of nearby Whitesville. Methane gas, set off by the

sparking of coal dust, ignited the Upper Big Branch mine owned by Massey Energy with a series of explosions that twisted metal and turned safety signs into rocketing projectiles. In the months that followed, three investigations by the coal workers’ union, federal inspectors, and an independent panel commissioned by the governor concluded a culture of profit before safety, a disengaged government, and a failed inspection system were to blame. Five years later the findings of those investigations continue to play out visibly in federal court. But are our mines any safer?

A Culture of Profit

“I don’t want to say we weren’t smart enough before, but maybe we had the attitude that it wouldn’t happen here or to me,” says Boone County miner Joe McCormick. McCormick works on a longwall mine as a shear operator where, with a crew, he operates one of the most expensive and profitable underground mining techniques. The longwall refers to a long strip of coal, a wall, where the coal is continuously mined using a large shear and conveyor belts. In larger operations the wall stretches miles. At Upper Big Branch, it’s where the explosion was ignited. Inadequate ventilation systems

to clear explosive methane from the shear, inadequate rock dusting to control the amount of flammable coal dust in the air, and inadequate gas metering to warn miners of potential dangers all played a part in the explosion, according to investigation reports. “If your bits are dull they cause sparks, if your sprays aren’t spraying that can cause trouble,” McCormick says. At the time of the Upper Big Branch explosion Massey was a top national coal producer pulling 40 million tons a year from mines across Appalachia. Don Blankenship had come on as chief executive officer in 1992, having worked his way up the Massey chain with a reputation as a shrewd businessman and union breaker. By 2010 Massey Energy had the worst fatality record of any coal operator in the country, according to an American University study of federal inspection records. The study found that between 2000 and 2010 Massey had been cited for nearly 63,000 violations, racking up $50 million in federal fines, millions more than any other company. The Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel commissioned by then-Governor Joe Manchin following the Upper Big Branch explosion concluded: “Massey Energy engaged in a process of ‘normalization of deviance’ that, in the push to produce coal, made allowances for a faulty ventilation system, inadequate rock dusting, and poorly maintained equipment.” McCormick says he knew many of the miners who died and that their loss has changed mining culture around the state. “The mines are completely different,” he says. “Now I can tell you where I work the attitude of the men and the management is that we’re going to do what’s right. We’re not going to take any chances.” Rock dusting, the spraying of limestone and similar materials on coal surfaces to minimize the threat of coal dust, was once an afterthought. “Before Upper Big Branch you never thought about rock dusting on a longwall. You knew you had to have it but it was in the back of your mind,” McCormick says. “Now we rock dust every day.” But mistakes and accidents, intentional or not, still happen. Miners who aren’t following the rules may be pressured by company culture. It might be the threat of job loss in a dwindling industry that has laid off hundreds in recent years and accounts for less than four percent of the state’s total employment. Or they might just be making thoughtless mistakes, says Eugene White, director of the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety & Training (MHS&T). Miners have been crushed under equipment and rock after removing safety precautions. They speak anonymously of being run ragged, called in for double shifts or more, of standing knee-deep in water while running equipment, of failing to hang curtains to prevent dangerous drafts, or ignoring rock dust. “You can’t see nothing but white teeth and white eyeballs,” one retired miner says of his nephew who still works underground. “If somebody is that black, you know you don’t have no water, you don’t have no air.” White says there is no need for miners to work in these conditions. “There’s no reason for anybody to work in dust,” he says. “The equipment and ventilation is there. If guys are coming out of the coal mines that black and dirty, there’s something wrong. They’re not following the rules. We have rules to protect them.” Miners are safeguarded from being fired for reporting safety violations. After Upper Big Branch the state installed a tip line allowing miners to report violations anonymously. At the same time, rock dust regulations were strengthened. White says he’s not aware of any miners working in these conditions now. “Coal mines in my opinion are whiter today than they’ve ever been,” he says.

Focus March/April 2015

Federal Inspection Reforms

Following the Sago disaster in 2006 the late U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd pushed to give the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration emergency funding to hire 170 inspectors. The 2006 MINER—Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response— Act gave the organization additional enforcement tools, such as the authority to issue “flagrant” violations accompanied by hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. In fiscal year 2010 the organization’s federal appropriation was just over $357 million, having increased by tens of millions each year since Sago. Yet that wasn’t enough to prevent the 29 deaths at Upper Big Branch, and MSHA went through the wringer during Congressional hearings into what went wrong. The independent governor’s investigation called out the agency’s shortcomings, too. “Despite MSHA’s considerable authority and resources, its collective knowledge and experience, the disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine is proof positive that the agency failed its duty as the watchdog for coal miners,” reads the independent report. In particular, MSHA failed to use its pattern of violations (POV) notice, authorized in 1977. One of the agency’s strongest enforcement tools, a POV notice is reserved for the country’s most dangerous mines— ones that show ongoing disregard for safety and health laws and

rack up numerous violations. When a mine is designated POV any major violation that follows can trigger inspector “withdraw” orders from areas of the mine, halting production until the violations are corrected. Prior to Upper Big Branch no mine had ever been listed as a pattern violator, though some operators had been given notices of potential POV status. Upper Big Branch got that notice in 2007. A computer glitch kept the mine off the potential POV list a second time two years later. According to the Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel report: “MSHA maintained that, but for a computer program error, Upper Big Branch would have been placed into ‘potential pattern of violation status’ in October 2009 because of the significant and substantial violations assessed to it in 2008 and 2009.” One year following the Upper Big Branch explosion the first pattern violators, a mine in Princeton, West Virginia, and another in Kentucky, were put on the list. “In 2010, when we retooled the pattern policy and started to implement a serious threat of closure order, we identified 51 mines in the United States,” says Joe Main, assistant secretary of labor for Mine Safety and Health. Those mines were subjected to increased review to determine if violations were egregious enough to be placed on POV. “And each year we saw improvements to reduce the number

of chronic violators. This year we had 12 mines identified,” Main says. Those numbers are for all mines in the United States, including non-coal mines, but the real drop was in coal, going from 42 identified mines in 2010 to six in 2014. “In mines that were identified and went through the program we saw a significant improvement in their performance afterwards,” Main says. “Mine operators were forced to clean up their act and, for the most part, they did that.” As of January 2015 seven mines have been placed on POV, including four in West Virginia, resulting in stiffer penalties and increased inspection presence at those mines. But, as strong as the pattern of violations tool is, current appeals threaten its power. The question is one of constitutionality. “Industry has always fought against pattern of violations,” says mine safety and health law reporter Ellen Smith. Following Upper Big Branch the retooling of the POV removed a warning step and allowed MSHA to count citations undergoing appeal in a mine’s violation history. But one of West Virginia’s pattern violators, Brody Mine #1 in Mount Hope owned by Patriot Coal, continues to argue against it. “The judge ruled in December that he had some real problems with POV because MSHA has this moving target on what constitutes a repeat violation,” Smith says. “Is it two? Is it 20? Do the circumstances have to be the same?” Moving target or not, it’s clear there were problems at the Focus wvfocus.com

“It is odd that the worst mine disaster in 40 years triggered no significant legislative response to try to improve mine health and safety.” Despite a number of federal and state regulatory changes suggested in the Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel report, no major legislation passed Congress. Legislators drafted a bill in 2010 targeting problem safety violators for shutdown, increasing safety violation penalties, and offering protections for industry whistle-blowers, but the measure was deemed premature by Republicans and died in the House of Representatives. Following Byrd’s death a year later, U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller tried to gather support for a similar bill, called the Robert C. Byrd Mine and Workplace Safety and Health West Virginia fatalities Fatalities in other states Act and backed by Senator Joe www.msha.gov/stats/charts/coalbystates.pdf Manchin, but it also failed. One issue addressed in the Byrd Bill that has recently gained widespread notoriety is an apparent Brody mine. After being placed on POV in 2013, according to lack of enforcement for federal violation fines. An investigation reports, federal regulators evacuated sections of the mine more than 60 times for continued safety violations while investigations by National Public Radio and Ellen Smith’s Mine Safety and Health News found that hundreds of mine operators across the country found cases of numerous accidents that had gone unreported. have failed to pay safety penalties and continue to operate mines Then, as Patriot was contesting the POV designation in 2014, two that violate health standards—with injury rates 50 percent higher Brody miners died. than mines that do pay their fines, according to the report. Main says it’s the operator’s right to appeal decisions, but MSHA is not specifically authorized to shut them down. “You stands by Congress’s 1977 decision to authorize the pattern can withdraw miners if there are dangerous conditions, but if notice as an enforcement tool. “As long as you have mines out of a mine keeps violating a law and these penalties keep racking compliance you can’t say you’ll never have a UBB again,” Smith up, it’s difficult for MSHA to do anything about it,” Smith says. says. “You have to be vigilant and, as long as mine operators are Several West Virginia mine operators made NPR’s list of top 10 willing to let safety slide, you have the potential for disaster. delinquents, including billionaire Jim Justice, who began to pay There’s a reason for every one of these standards and regulations his delinquent fines after the report came out. and every single one is literally written in blood.” Manchin says he will reintroduce the bill again this Injury numbers have dropped and fatalities are down across Congressional session. “A strong mining industry begins with a the country’s coal mines and in West Virginia, Main says. The strong commitment to our miners, which is why I am committed year Upper Big Branch occurred, there were 48 mine fatalities to reintroducing in the 114th Congress the Robert C. Byrd Mine nationwide. In 2013 there were 20. In 2014 there were 16. “This Safety Act,” he says. last year was the safest year in mining history,” he says, but getting to this point hasn’t been easy.

U.S. Coal Mine Fatalities

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Historically all major mine safety legislation has followed significant loss of life in the mines. The Monongah disaster that killed 362 men and boys in 1907 resulted in a toughening of mine laws. The Farmington disaster of 1968 that killed 78 men resulted in the Federal Coal Mine and Safety Act of 1969. Following more disasters, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 created MSHA. After Sago in 2006, Congress passed the MINER Act requiring emergency response plans in every underground coal mine and adding new mine rescue and accident response regulations. “Not much has been done legislatively regarding coal mine health and safety since the Upper Big Branch disaster in 2010,” says Patrick McGinley, West Virginia University law professor, and member of the Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel for Upper Big Branch.

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Federal Legislation Changes

State Level Changes

In West Virginia legislation didn’t make it to the governor to sign until two years after Upper Big Branch, in March of 2012. Some experts argue that the bill, House Bill 4351, made few significant changes to the laws governing mine safety, simply mirroring laws already established in MSHA policy, and actually distracted from the issues of Upper Big Branch. Among other measures, the legislation focused on drug testing in coal mines, increased state-level rock dusting regulations, and formalized a mine safety tip hotline established by governor’s order in 2010. The first of those, drug and alcohol abuse, was not found to be a contributing factor at Upper Big Branch. Most mine operators already have a zero tolerance drug policy and regularly test their miners, White says. Despite the pressures placed on his organization with

drug testing, White says staffing his agency isn’t the issue it was before Upper Big Branch. Like MSHA, the state office’s culpability for the Upper Big Branch disaster was addressed in the Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel report. Unlike MSHA, which the report found had failed to exercise its full strength, the state mine safety office was found to be understaffed, underfunded, and under supported with only 78 inspectors to carry out four annual inspections of 285 mines. Those inspectors often had to rely on visual cues instead of scientific measurements to assess whether, for example, the mines were properly rock dusting. Today, the state office of MHS&T has 91 inspectors to complete quarterly inspections of 259 mines, and has a lab in Charleston where it sends samples of rock dust surveys for inspection. “We’re completing all of our mandatory inspections under the code and we’re going back and double-checking,” White says. Having worked his way up the ladder from underground miner to state inspector and, for the last two years, director of the state mine safety agency, White says he’s seen a huge change in inspector presence, though there’s more to do. “When I first started back in 1973, I never did see inspectors,” he says. “I worked hoot owl—third shift—because I was a young kid. I don’t remember seeing inspectors. I don’t remember anyone telling me don’t do that, or don’t do that.” Today he encourages each of his inspectors to talk not only to the foremen sitting in the office, but to the miners underground who will point you in the right direction if something isn’t right—if they trust you. “That’s what I think is one of our downfalls in the industry today,” he says. “We’re not communicating enough with the coal miners.” Inspecting is a delicate balance. On one hand, you’re seen as a safety man. But with mining jobs dwindling, an inspector is also seen as the guy who shuts things down. For that reason White says inspectors have to be shrewd when doling out citations. He calls it common sense. And without it? “They’ll hate you. And once they hate you, you’re not going to accomplish nothing at that coal mine. You’ve got to work with the coal miners and gain their trust. That’s not ‘not do your job’—that’s just ‘use good common sense.’” Miners corroborate that tension. “Everybody hates to see the inspector,” one section foreman says. “You could do your job right 100 percent of the time, but you can’t do it perfect. The inspector walks up and he finds something I missed, it makes me look bad, like I’m not doing my job, and it costs the company money.” He says he’s worked in two Patriot mines in the last several years. At one, the inspector wrote up every violation. At another, the inspector simply pointed to non-serious violations and nudged the miners to fix them. He says he prefers the latter. White says inspectors have the right to go back to a mine as often as they choose to make sure violations are fixed. “There’s companies now that still won’t show respect to the inspector,” the miner says, “and inspectors can make it rough on you. A company should build better relationships, try to work with them—not against them.”

Moving Forward

“I’ve seen a million-to-one difference from when I started in the mines to now,” coal miner McCormick says. “The tracking devices you have now that you didn’t have, that’s a good thing. The safety shutters now, that’s a good thing.” The improvements to safety equipment go on and on—fire hose kits to life lines to proximity detectors and cameras to prevent crushing.

“

You have to be vigilant and, as long as mine operators are willing to let safety slide, you have the potential for disaster. There’s a reason for every one of these standards and regulations and every single one is literally written in blood.” Ellen Smith, owner and managing editor of Mine Safety and Health News But it’s still too early to say something like Upper Big Branch could never happen again. Though fatality rates have dropped, West Virginia mines have always carried some of the highest accident and fatality rates of coal mines in the country and continue to do so. An MSHA study concluded 28 percent of all U.S. mining fatalities in 1996 occurred in West Virginia, while it produced only 16 percent of the country’s coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And it continues to account for 30 percent of fatalities year after year, even as its share of production drops. “Whether the current state Legislature and Congress believe coal mine health and safety is a priority will be seen in the level they fund MSHA and the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety & Training,” McGinley says. “If they say they care, we can look and see what they’re doing about it.” The most recent legislation, a 2015 state mine safety bill dubbed the Coal Jobs and Safety Act, is supported by the West Virginia Coal Association and touted by supporters as a way to cut costs and increase employment in the flagging coal industry. Detractors claim it unnecessarily reduces safety standards. During a February 5 House committee hearing on the proposed legislation, United Mine Workers of America safety and health director Dennis O’Dell blasted language in the bill extending the maximum distance allowed between underground work areas and rail track from 500 feet to 1,500 feet. In the event of a fire or injury, it would only increase the distance miners would have to walk to reach rail transportation out of the mine. “Putting the track back 1,500 feet—that’s your life line,” McCormick says, adding that the additional distance could mean another 20 minutes to safety—a matter of life or death. The bill had passed the state Senate and was making the rounds in the House by press time of this magazine. Ultimately improving safety is a matter of vigilance. “Will we keep making improvements? That’s the question,” says Main, of MSHA. “If we have a culture that retains what we’ve learned and continues to do what has gotten us this far, we will be OK. But if you start slipping back, look away for a moment, you can go back to having problems again.” Focus wvfocus.com

Courtesy of Tom Hindman, Charleston Daily Mail

Bill Cole, left, and Tim Armstead talk in the corridors of the state Capitol.

The

Flip After more than eight decades as the minority party, state Republicans successfully recaptured the West Virginia Legislature. West Virginia Focus takes a look behind the scenes to see what made this possible. written by Zack Harold Focus wvfocus.com

alking with Bill Cole, you get the sense he doesn’t use phrases like “over the moon” very often. But that’s how the baritone-voiced, serious-faced Senate President describes his frame of mind on election night 2014. Although he was not up for reelection, Cole was the chairman for state Senator Evan Jenkins’ campaign for U.S. House of Representatives. He started off election night at a party for Jenkins in Huntington before hopping in his car and speeding down Interstate 64 toward Embassy Suites in Charleston, where Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito and members of the state GOP were watching election returns for her U.S. Senate race. When he was about 10 miles outside the capital city, his cell phone rang with some big news. Jenkins had successfully unseated 38-year incumbent Congressman Nick Rahall. Cole kept the hammer down. “About the time I hit city limits, my phone started blowing up,” he says. It was more big news. The Republican Party, long relegated to a nearly powerless minority status in West Virginia politics, had taken control of the state House of Delegates. By the end of the night, the GOP also would succeed in tying the formerly Democrat-controlled state Senate. The national Republican “wave,” as it was being called on cable news networks, had come crashing ashore in the landlocked Mountain State. “I was over the moon,” Cole says. “It was a phenomenal night.” The victory celebrations did not last long, however. By the next morning Cole was at the state Capitol, huddling with fellow Republican senators, trying to figure out how a 17-17 tie in the state Senate might work. Then the phone rang again, with a solution to their problem. Daniel Hall, the 40-year-old Democratic state senator from Wyoming County, had an interesting election night as well. He spent much of 2014 working on the reelection campaign of his friend Raleigh County state Senator Mike Green, who was running against Republican challenger Jeff “Bubblegum” Mullins. Shortly before the polls closed at 7:30 p.m., Hall sent Mullins a text message to congratulate him for a well-fought campaign. “I was fully confident Mike Green was going to win,” he says. Not long after, the first election returns were released. Green was trailing behind Mullins, but Hall remained optimistic. “I’ve been around politics long enough to know not to panic,” he says. The tide never turned, however. As each batch of poll results came through, Mullins remained in the lead. Hall noticed something else happening, too. All around the state, Republicans were beating their Democrat opponents. He watched as the Associated Press called the 3rd Congressional District race for Jenkins. He watched as Raleigh County Delegate Clyde McKnight lost to Republican challenger Lynne Arvon. In Kanawha County, Delegate Doug Skaff—who was running for a seat in the state Senate—lost to political newcomer Tom Takubo. By the end of the night, Mullins would beat Green with nearly 57 percent of the vote. “All around the state, you’re talking about a complete swing,” Hall says. “I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.” Soon, Hall got a text from Republican Senator Dave Sypolt, of Preston County. “He said, ‘You always said if it ever got close, you’d consider switching. I think 17-17 is pretty close.’” Sypolt was right; Hall had said that. In 2006 Hall ran for the House of Delegates in Raleigh County as a Republican, only to lose in the primaries. He

Focus March/April 2015

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All around the state, you’re talking about a complete swing. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.” Senator Daniel Hall, Wyoming County

thought he was finished with politics, got married and moved to Wyoming County, where he registered as a Democrat. “I changed parties just so I could vote,” he says. Like many places in the West Virginia coalfields, Democrats had such tight control of Wyoming County, the outcome of many local races was decided in primary elections. In general elections, Democrats either ran unopposed or faced very weak challengers. Of course, Hall's political career was far from over. In 2008 the newly minted Democrat ran for, and won, a seat in the House. After serving two terms in the lower chamber, he made a successful bid for the state Senate in 2012. From that time on, Hall says Republicans tried to court him back. “I said, ‘Guys, why would I join the minority party?’” Now things had changed. Hall tapped out a two-word message to Sypolt: “Let’s talk.” The morning after the election, Hall had to be in Huntington for his day job with Frontier Communications. At some point that morning he found out Cole, soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael, and several other Senate Republicans had already convened at the Capitol. So as he was driving back to Charleston, following the same route Cole had taken the night before, Hall called up Carmichael to begin negotiating the terms of his defection. Hall stopped at the Capitol that afternoon for face-to-face meetings with Cole and Carmichael. “I did make one demand that was turned down,” he says. Hall wanted to be the Senate Finance Committee chairman, but was informed former Senate Minority Leader Mike Hall, of Putnam County, was taking that job. The leadership team instead offered Daniel Hall the position of Senate Majority Whip. He accepted. “Let’s be honest, we’re playing poker,” he says. That afternoon Hall walked to the Secretary of State’s office on the Capitol’s first floor and switched his party affiliation. “We were going to wait until the next morning, and they said, ‘Let’s just go do it now.’ Some of them were nervous I would back out,” Hall says. “I said, ‘Fine, lets go.’” He waited until almost 5 p.m., hoping he could sneak in and do the paperwork without anyone

Courtesy of Martin Valent, WV Legislative Photography

State Senate President Bill Cole was only elected to the Legislature two years ago, but has already risen to the chamber’s top office.

noticing. “Somebody in the office tweeted it out and within a little bit it was viral,” he says. Reporters jumped on the story and, within the hour, the news was all over the state: The GOP had successfully taken control of both houses of the West Virginia Legislature for the first time in more than 80 years. He wrote a post on his Facebook page to explain the decision. “Political climates change, and I made a decision today to keep Raleigh, Wyoming, and McDowell counties at the table in the West Virginia Senate,” he wrote. “I have always picked our people over party ... and did today as well. This decision will upset some, but had to be made for our district to be relevant.” His constituents largely did not mind the switch—“If I can deliver, they’re not going to care,” Hall says—but his decision did upset some members of his former caucus. “Overall it’s been great. A few of them will never get over it.” It’s easy to understand why. With one swipe of a pen, Hall cast Democrats into a role they had never played under the current Capitol building’s big gold dome. Suddenly, historically, they were the minority party.

The Wave

The change in leadership at the statehouse has been described as a “Republican wave,” but the phenomenon is more akin to a volcanic eruption than a tsunami. The signs were there if you paid attention. For instance, West Virginia has been trending red in national elections for some time. The state has not supported a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996. Voters in the state’s 1st congressional district elected Representative David McKinley in 2010, making him the first Republican to serve that district since Arch Moore left the seat to become governor in 1969. Moore’s daughter, Shelley Moore Capito, remained vastly popular in the 2nd congressional district since she was elected to the House of Representatives in 2000. And while Rahall was able to keep his seat through several fiercely contested races, in recent years his margin of victory over Republican challengers shrank with every election. As Republicans made inroads on the federal level, voters began electing more Republicans in state races, too. The GOP has steadily gained seats in the House of Delegates since 2006. Focus wvfocus.com

In 2012 voters picked Republican candidate Patrick Morrisey over longtime Attorney General Darrell McGraw. This rising swell of Republican support joined with several other factors in 2014 to pave the way for a leadership change in the statehouse. First, President Barack Obama is deeply unpopular in West Virginia, which turned many voters against state Democrats, too. Republican voters also were motivated to get out to the polls, thanks to several high-profile races at the top of the general election ballot: Capito was running for retiring Senator Jay Rockefeller’s seat, Jenkins was running against Rahall, Alex Mooney was vying for Capito’s old House of Representatives seat, and McKinley was up for reelection. Jason Crowder, a Cole staffer who first moved to West Virginia to help run his boss’s 2012 state Senate campaign, says Republicans also managed to out-campaign Democrats. Crowder says the GOP worked hard to recruit a slate of top-notch candidates, then used data on voter registration and voter turnout trends to target areas where their message would be most effective. “Like anything, it’s planning and execution,” he says. Although there was some sense the House of Delegates might flip in the 2014 election, not many people believed the state Senate would follow suit. But about two weeks before Election Day, Crowder began handicapping Democrat and Republican campaigns. It became clear the GOP had a real shot at taking control of both chambers. “If you look at it district by district, it tells a different story,” he says. Take, for instance, the sixth state Senate district. State Senator Truman Chafin had represented the district since 1982, so no one expected much when political newcomer Mark Maynard signed up to face him in November’s election. Maynard didn’t even raise money for his campaign. According to the Associated Press, he just spent some money out of his pocket to have pamphlets printed, and someone donated $350 in yard signs to his campaign. Yet, to the shock of many, Maynard eked out a victory over Chafin, taking the seat by fewer than 400 votes. Crowder wasn’t surprised, however. He says Chafin’s district was redrawn in 2011 to include new sections of Mercer County, where voters did not have a strong historical connection to the longtime lawmaker. Maynard also had a geographical advantage because he lived in Wayne County. “So many people vote addresses in West Virginia,” Crowder says. Maynard also had another advantage Chafin did not—the “R” beside his name on the ballot. Crowder says Chafin, like many Democrats across the state, did not think Republicans would put up such a strong fight. They dismissed their opponents, at their own peril. “They didn’t expect it. It’s easier to do when people think it’s impossible,” he says. Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler agrees. He says his party did not see the Republican wave coming—although he’s not sure Republicans did, either. “Politics are volatile. Nobody’s backside is welded to any of these seats,” he says. Kessler admits Democrats are partly to blame for their losses, however. Instead of touting their accomplishments—like repealing the state’s food and business franchise taxes, privatizing worker’s compensation, tackling the state’s mounting pension debts, and expanding Medicaid to more than 150,000 previously uninsured state residents—Democrats chose instead to let their challengers

Focus March/April 2015

“Politics are volatile. Nobody’s backside is welded to any of these seats.” Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler

control the conversation. “We were so unwilling to call ourselves Democrats because of the association with federal Democrats we stood back, kept our mouths shut, wrung our hands and hoped our two-to-one (voter registration) average played out,” he says. “We did a terrible job of giving the electorate a reason to rehire us.”

Playing Defense

While he’s not happy with the outcome of the election, Kessler says Democrats still have an important role to play in the Legislature. They no longer have the privilege of setting the Legislature’s agenda, but they still can work to influence the agenda set by Republicans. That’s probably easier done in the Senate, however, where the majority hangs on one vote. Democrats in the House of Delegates have a bit more working against them. “It’s much harder to play defense when one team has a lot more people on the field,” says Kanawha County Delegate Mike Pushkin. Pushkin was one of the few first-time Democrat lawmakers elected last year, so he has no idea what it was like to serve in the majority party. But he says many Democrat lawmakers have found the change in leadership frustrating. “There’s a lot of people who have served for a long time, and they’ve won every battle they’ve fought for years. That’s not happening now,” he says. House Minority Leader Tim Miley’s frustration is palpable. “We have … very little, if any, influence on what gets on agendas,” he says. Democrats have managed to amend some bills, but nothing that diverts too dramatically from the Republican leadership’s original intentions. “The working relationship has been very cordial, but that doesn’t mean there’s been a whole lot of compromise,” he says. “I believe it was different in the past … but that’s politics. When you have a new majority with a new ideology, they don’t have to compromise.” Miley, who served as speaker of the House during the Democrats’ last session as the majority party, says he is concerned the Legislature will make lots of concessions for corporate interests, but do little to help average citizens. “There’s very little that’s going to be done to help individual families in West Virginia,” he says.

Courtesy of Perry Bennett, WV Legislative Photography

Tim Miley served as Speaker of the House of Delegates for one session before Republicans took control of the chamber. He is now House Minority Leader.

Newly elected House Speaker Tim Armstead, a Republican from Kanawha County, does not share his predecessor’s sentiments. “I really believe the voters have called for change, and we’re giving them change,” he says. “So many of the things we’ve tried to do for years, we’re finally able to get them on the agenda.” The party wasted no time getting to work. Within days of the new session’s start, the Republicans were running bills to ban abortions after 20 weeks of gestation, establish charter schools, abolish straightticket voting, create alternative certification requirements for teachers, establish nonpartisan elections for judges, repeal prevailing wage requirements for state construction projects, audit the state Department of Highways, and reinstate a section of code protecting private property owners from lawsuits if dangers on their property are “open and obvious,” among other things. Democrats, for the most part, only succeeded in making piecemeal changes to legislation. But the party was not without its victories. Senate Democrats convinced two of their Republican colleagues—Hall and Sen. Chris Walters—to side with the minority

and defeat a bill that would limit cash awards in civil lawsuits. Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee also were able to convince their GOP colleagues to table a bill requiring photo identification at voting booths. Delegate Isaac Sponaugle, a Democrat from Pendleton County, successfully amended a revenue bill to divert about $1.5 million annually from the state lottery fund for “veteran-related projects.” Democrats have also joined their Republican colleagues to support many pieces of legislation, including a repeal of the Alternative and Renewable Energy Portfolio Act. The law, originally passed in 2009, would have required state power plants to begin using more alternative fuels, including clean coal technologies. Republicans decried the legislation as a “cap and trade” law, saying it would hurt the state’s coal industry and raise families’ utility bills. Some Democrats argued the bill wouldn’t do anything at all, except maybe give the impression West Virginia is not interested in alternative energies. Republican lawmakers pushed the bill forward, however, and it eventually Focus wvfocus.com

passed the House on a 95-4 vote and the Senate with a unanimous vote. It was the first bill to land on the governor’s desk in the 2015 legislative session. “There’s an energy here you’ve never seen before,” Armstead says. “Our goal was to be running legislation in the first week. There is a natural procrastination to the legislative process. Our view is, we have 60 days to make significant changes and we don’t want to waste any of those days.” During his 16 years in the minority party, Armstead says the 60-day session seemed to stretch on forever. It seems to go much faster now that his caucus is running the show. Armstead is the first Republican Speaker of the House to serve in the marbled halls of the current West Virginia Capitol

Focus March/April 2015

building. Cass Gilbert’s grand statehouse did not open its doors until June 1932, just six months after Republicans ceded control of the Legislature. Armstead says he tries not to think about his place in West Virginia history, but it sometimes creeps up on him. It usually happens when he’s standing behind his podium at the front of the House chamber. He remembers, early in the session, watching as members debated nonpartisan elections for judges. Republicans have supported the idea for years but never had any success getting it through the legislative process. “It just hit me—we are on the floors of this house, discussing this issue,” Armstead says. “I want the people of West Virginia to look back at 2015 and say, ‘That’s when we changed the direction of our state.’”

“

Our goal was to be running legislation in the first week. There is a natural procrastination to the legislative process. Our view is, we have 60 days to make significant changes and we don’t want to waste any of those days.”

Courtesy of Martin Valent, WV Legislative Photography

House Speaker Tim Armstead

Too Soon to Tell

Despite those 83 years wandering in the wilderness of political obscurity, Republicans once had a long, successful run in West Virginia politics. According to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, Republicans dominated the West Virginia Legislature for the first eight years of the state’s existence. And though Democrats would gain control in the early 1870s, the GOP again rose to prominence following the election of 1896. “We were a progressive state, as progressive as any around us,” says West Virginia State University history professor Billy Joe Peyton. The demand for coal was growing by leaps and bounds, especially after competition from European coal markets

dwindled after World War I. That boded well for West Virginia’s economy, as well as Republicans’ pro-business policies. “We became the world’s number one industrial nation, and coal was powering that industry,” Peyton says. But toward the mid-1920s, European economies began to rebound. It was good news for the global economy, but bad for West Virginia coal mines. “Our production dropped because demand decreased. The price of coal went down, wages went down, miners went out of work,” Peyton says. Although the Great Depression was still years away, the state’s economy began to slip—taking with it Republicans’ foothold in the statehouse. “It’s the party in charge that gets the blame, even if they’re not responsible,” Peyton says. “The Republican Party was the face of the collapse.” The West Virginia House of Delegates flipped to Democratic control after the election of 1930, when voters added 37 Democrats to the lower chamber, giving the party a 68-26 majority. The transformation was complete in 1932. Voters nationwide went looking for change and found it in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s promise of a “New Deal.” The Democrats’ sweep in Washington was matched in West Virginia with the election of 22 more Democratic lawmakers, giving the party a 24-6 majority in the state Senate and a 79-15 majority in the House. Voters also elected Governor Herman Kump, the second Democratic chief executive in 40 years. It would be more than 80 years before the floodwaters would recede. At times, Republican numbers in the House of Delegates got so small the entire caucus could fit in a family sedan. The parallels are evident. Just like the 1930s, we have the combination of a flagging coal market, voter dissatisfaction with the ruling party, and a contentious national political climate creating a surge that carried the minority party into power. What remains to be seen, Peyton says, is whether it will last this time. “As a historian, it’s years before you can assess change. It’s too early to tell right now,” he says. “Everybody’s talking about change, but until we see what the results are, you might as well just throw up a coin and see how it lands.” Focus wvfocus.com

Brian Persinger WVU Universi y Re lations

West Virginia University is working with its Center for Neuroscience to identify intellectual property that has commercial potential. Possible commercial applications include virtual reality set-ups for surgical training or for diagnosing disease.

Wealth makers West Virginians are turning ideas into profits every day—and the corps of innovator-entrepreneurs promises to grow. written by Pam Kasey

he typical poll worker is your grandma, if your grandma is civic-minded, organized, and maybe a little frail. That worked out just fine when we used flimsy paper ballots—not so great since the switch in the last decade to heavy electronic voting machines. “You ask them to lift a 60-pound piece of equipment and set it up at 5 a.m.,” says Joseph Wilson. “Logistically it’s impossible. County clerks were asking us to help.” Wilson is vice president of Casto & Harris in Spencer, an election services company so accommodating, its custom precinct-by-precinct election kit includes everything down to the needle and thread poll workers use to string together signed poll slips. In that tradition of service, Wilson got an idea: Scale the kit up to a cart that will hold everything plus the voting machine, and can be rolled comfortably by the typical poll worker. He teamed up with a Maryland manufacturer, and their patented AutoKart is now in states from New York to New Mexico. West Virginians come up with original ideas all the time. Just look at patents. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s online database, West Virginia inventors have earned patents at the rate of more than one a week for the past 40 years. The inventions range from homespun to high-tech. Recent creations include a fish lure breakaway system, something called an anti-piracy nozzle, an apparatus for reducing pollutants in engine exhaust, a process for generating electrical power from wastewater, even single-session interactive ultra-short duration super-high biological dose rate radiation therapy and radiosurgery. Patents are impressive. But turning those patented ideas into wealth—that takes entrepreneurial savvy. “The invention process is not the bottleneck,” says Brian Joseph, president and co-founder of Touchstone Research Laboratory in Triadelphia, a student of the process and himself an inventor. Gary Morris of West Virginia University’s Office of Technology Transfer agrees. “Protecting the intellectual property is the easy part,” says Morris, also an inventor in his own right. “The tough part is commercialization." Inventors across West Virginia are taking that tough part on.

Joseph Wilson

Turning Ideas into Wealth

There are lots of ways to go about this. Many inventors come up with single great ideas for their companies and then refine or embellish them. Some invent with the intention of starting businesses, while others start businesses that allow them to invent. The innovator-entrepreneurs we talked with are behind many U.S. patents, sometimes alone, sometimes with others. Many have patents pending and international patents as well.

Kenneth Thompson

8 U.S. patents since 2007 Ken Thompson tackled a problem that had puzzled the natural gas industry for years. To put a price on the natural gas they extract from the ground, producers need to know its energy content: More British thermal units means more oomph and commands a higher price. But the very act of taking a little from the pipeline sets off a transition that makes measurements inaccurate. “When you reduce the pressure or change the temperature of it, you cause the hydrocarbon molecules to break apart,” says Thompson, president of Mustang Sampling and sister companies Valtronics Sales and Valtronics Solutions, in Ravenswood. “You may think you have 1040 Btu gas when you actually have 1050 Btu gas. The industry has known that for 80 years, but nobody was trying to solve the problem anymore because many companies had tried and were unable to do it.”

“When we develop new products, we look at it from the standpoint of, is it an analytically accurate device? Our products perform a function you can’t do any other way.” Kenneth Thompson Thompson, his wife Brenda, and his former business partner Walter Gerhold did it. Thompson and Gerhold hold a 2007 patent for the concept behind the company's Mustang P53 sample conditioning system. Thompson’s name also appears, with partners, on follow-on patents for natural gas liquids, liquefied natural gas, and enhancements. Mustang Sampling now has 5,000 of its natural gas units in the field and, with the potential for tens of thousands more, its staff of 65 continues to grow. “In the past 90 days we’ve hired four engineers and we have about six more positions we’re looking to fill,” Thompson said in January 2015 from his company’s new satellite office in Houston, Texas.

Focus March/April 2015

12 U.S. patents since 2008 Casto & Harris’s Wilson— remember the AutoKart— shares 12 patents with his Maryland co-inventor, Gary Abel. Wilson wanted to pair up with a good manufacturer for the AutoKart. Word of mouth took him to Abel, president and CEO of C.R. Daniels fabricators in Ellicott City, Maryland. It’s become a partnership Wilson cherishes. “I never would have thought I would have been able to walk in to the president of a $50 million-a-year company and have a conversation on our expectations for the people we align ourselves with,” he says. “We just hit every chord.”

“The bottom line is, we run a perfect election. We’ve been able to pick the brains of county officials, maintenance people, transportation people, and poll workers and massage our product to meet their needs.” Joseph Wilson To accommodate equipment in the election industry nationwide, the duo followed the AutoKart, patented in 2008, with a series of cart designs. They now have 20 products and more in development. Interactions at national sales expos have made Wilson aware of Casto & Harris’s advantage over catalogbased competitors. “We’re familiar with the whole process— from the warehouse, to people casting their votes, to getting it back to the warehouse, to the canvassing process where a week later they re-count certain precincts to verify the accuracy of the vote,” he says. He estimates the new lines have so far created or retained seven jobs in his company of 20, and only sees this part of the business growing.

Mark Bates

29 U.S. patents since 2001 Mark Bates started pondering improvements to medical technologies as a med student in the early 1980s. Later, practicing medicine in Charleston, he saw solutions to problems in his own specialty of cardiology and in other specialties. In the mid-’90s, for example, Bates was among the first surgeons putting stents in the carotid artery. “At that time most of it was done through surgery, an incision in the neck, and we were going in with a catheter through the artery in the leg. That

“I’m ready for the renaissance to happen in West Virginia and to see all the creativity here come to fruition. The more we cultivate this kind of mindset the better off we’ll be as West Virginians.” Mark Bates was very new, and there were risks of material breaking loose and going up and causing a stroke.” One of his own patients had a stroke and recovered, but Bates kept thinking about how it could have been prevented. “I developed a little filter device that you would put up past the artery blockage to keep the material from breaking loose and going to the brain. That device was acquired by a large company, and now about 60 percent of all the carotid stents done in the world are done using that concept of the filter device. Strokes have gone from 9 percent or so to less than 3 percent.” Bates launched Nexeon MedSystems in Charleston in 2004 to solve some of the other problems he saw in medicine. “The initial concept was to take ideas that could be disruptive or game-changing and accelerate them in development,” he says. “Those ideas covered a broad spectrum of medical conditions, so I had to put together a really innovative team.” He opened a second Nexeon lab in Carlsbad, California, and quickly generated patents. He was ready to take the company public in 2008 when the economy collapsed. Undeterred, Bates kept working, eventually gleaning 17 patents attributed to Nexeon, and sold off several patent portfolios. “Basically, all of Nexeon’s products have found homes and now I’m looking at the next project,” he says. “There are still a lot of things I’m interested in doing.” He encourages West Virginia inventors. “I’ve worked all over the world and some of the brightest people with the strongest character are those I’ve worked with in West Virginia. If someone has ideas, they need to believe in themselves and push those ideas forward to make a difference.”

J.H. Fletcher & Co.

at least 32 U.S. patents since 1939 Sometimes an inventive founder leaves a company legacy of innovation. Dating to 1937, J.H. Fletcher designs, manufactures, sells, and supports ground control equipment for coal and other underground mines. “We’re trying to control the ground or the roof in underground mining,” says Research and Development Manager Bill Kendall. “We build the safest, most reliable ground control equipment in the world. If you go into a U.S. coal mine and they have a roof bolter, it will be a J.H. Fletcher roof bolter.” The company has about 200 employees in Huntington and more than 300 employees worldwide. J.H. Fletcher stands out in supporting a dedicated R&D department that currently employs five. “Three major customers came in last year and all told us the same thing,” Kendall says. “‘We meet with all the mining equipment manufacturers in the U.S., and here’s this tiny company of 300-some that spends more on R&D than all the other U.S. mining equipment manufacturers

combined.’” Not surprisingly, this can be traced to an inventive founder. “James H. Fletcher began his company intent on developing technology that would greatly improve mine productivity and reduce personnel risk,” reads the company’s website. He had patents even before he earned his degree in electrical engineering. Seventy-five years later, his company has at least 32 U.S. patents dating back to 1939 and many international patents. Kendall describes a company history of innovations that improve safety for miners securing roof and wall. Most ideas come from the field, he says, through customer requests. “Two of our big competitors internationally, Atlas Copco and Sandvik, have 30,000 employees each. They mass produce, while we custom build. We’re very good at listening to our customers.” It’s a common observation that R&D has become too expensive for small companies—and one might assume companies that commit to it tighten their belts in other ways, possibly to employees’ detriment. Yet it appears successful innovation actually supports largesse. “We have excellent benefits,” says Thompson at Mustang Sampling. “Our staff has been with us for a long, long time.” Similarly, average tenure at Casto & Harris is 40 years. Among J.H. Fletcher’s benefits are profit sharing and a fully funded retirement fund that’s vested from day one. “And every child of every employee gets the equivalent of a free education at Marshall University,” Kendall says.

Brian Joseph

14 U.S. patents since 1996

Brian Joseph of Touchstone Research Laboratory put his company together in the mid-1980s expressly to solve problems. Early on, it did a lot of industrial failure analyses— why a paint wouldn’t stick to a car bumper, or why bolts broke and caused an industrial accident. Later, the lab grew its capabilities for innovation.

“Probably 90 percent of our business has been R&D. By the end of this year we’ll probably be 30 percent to 40 percent R&D and the rest manufacturing that we’ve spun out from that process.” Brian Joseph Joseph thinks a lot about the process of invention, and he counters the idea that R&D is too expensive for a small operation. A company can buy used equipment from research universities, he says, and can then take on other companies’ research and development. “That lets you build your facility, which gives you more capability to do the things you want to do.” Partner with a large company that has similar research interests, he says—that helps later on with commercialization, too. Or participate in the federal government’s Small Business Innovation Research and Focus wvfocus.com

Small Business Technology Transfer programs. The funding is targeted to real-world problems, and the company keeps the intellectual property. Using these approaches, Touchstone Research Laboratory has brought in 51 U.S. patents in the company’s name since 1994; Joseph himself holds 14. Due to the success of the company’s patented CFOAM—a coal-based carbon foam that, among many uses, is in demand for making molds for carbon fiber composite parts for airplanes—Joseph recently decided to take on commercialization. He’s spinning off two companies in West Virginia: one to manufacture CFOAM and another to manufacture molds from it. “The problem isn’t good ideas—the problem is having an understanding of the market that’s very detailed and a clear path forward. If you have that, you can generally find money,” he says. The Ohio River valley, with skillsets rooted in a history of heavy industry, is ideal for manufacturing research, Joseph says. Touchstone’s pace of filing a patent application a month has slowed during this spin-off phase, but he expects to get back to it.

Joseph Zupanick

83 U.S. patents since 2001 Where does this drive to invent come from? Wilson says it comes from a commitment to solving customers’ problems. Bates cites an unwillingness to settle for “pretty good,” along with expertise in one’s chosen field. The state’s most prolific inventor, Joe Zupanick, is modest on the subject. “A co-worker once said the difference between us was, when he needs some device or part, he goes and finds somebody he can buy it from, whereas I figure out how to make it. I think it’s just a quirk.” Zupanick works in the oil and gas industry and is named inventor on 83 U.S. patents.

“I think some people have a creative gene, but I’m also a contrarian, naturally driven to do things differently than the masses.” Joseph Zupanick “Before I worked for CDX Gas and Vitruvian Exploration, I worked at U.S. Steel Mining Company’s Wyoming County underground coal mine,” he recounts. “We were draining coalbed methane from inside the mine ahead of mining, but it was expensive and dangerous and time-consuming. We also wanted to move mining operations into virgin area where underground pre-drainage wasn’t feasible. So the mine management asked me to find a way to do it from the surface.” The industry standard method of using vertical fractured wells was too slow for the company’s needs. Zupanick saw that horizontal drilling would remove the gas quickly, but he had to solve the problem of pumping produced water from the horizontal

Focus March/April 2015

wells. He developed a dual-well system in which the horizontal well intercepts a vertical well for pumping the water. His method was patented in 2001. Zupanick developed many patented innovations for CDX. When he started his company Radius Energy in 2008, he wanted to continue to develop coalbed methane. “So I improved upon my old patents, still using horizontal drilling, but at a lower cost.” Asked how his innovations have helped West Virginia’s economy, Zupanick estimated that, in 2012, 19 percent of coalbed methane wells in the state used technology he developed—and they produced 40 percent of the coalbed methane. “That’s an illustration of the value of the technology.”

Making Wealthmakers

It’s reasonable to expect our universities to churn out wealthmakers—universities are, after all, about ideas. Yet we have seen only a few West Virginia start-ups come out of our academic communities. Protea Biosciences out of WVU comes to mind, and Ecer Technologies out of Marshall University, and a small number of lower-profile companies. Commercialization is the bottleneck, and that has a lot of parts. For one thing, to become the wealthmaker factories we want our universities to be, schools have to help faculty protect marketable intellectual property. They’re doing that: WVU garnered 40 patents from 2009 through 2014, and Marshall earned five. WVU files maybe 25 provisional patent applications a year, according to the Office of Technology Transfer’s Morris. Those are quick and dirty filings that protect an idea for a year. The university files about half that many full patent applications. Universities also have to foster within their ranks an entrepreneurial culture so, when a great idea arises, someone in or around the university community can’t help but seize the opportunity. The statewide collegiate business plan competition, now a decade old, and related activities are promoting that mindset. But it turns out there’s even more to it than that. People working in technology transfer often talk about it as an ecosystem, a complex network of interconnected parts. WVU has been nurturing that ecosystem through the above-named activities and through its successful several-year-old LIINC program—Linking Innovation, Industry, and Commercialization. LIINC promotes faculty-studentindustry-agency connections at annual showcase events in the three commercialization-ripe areas of bioscience and biomedicine, energy and environment, and security and intelligence. A start-up may be the holy grail. But when the university brings industry, faculty, and investors together, creative alliances of all kinds show the ecosystem is thriving, Morris says. “A company might say, ‘We don’t think your technology is good for us yet, but we’ll give WVU $500,000, and we’d like right of first refusal on any technology advanced out of this,’” he says. Or the university might partner with a company in a research proposal to the government. Or a student internship may develop. All of that plugs the university into real-world problems, creating the conditions for future commercialization. The university saw some payoff of this effort with the 2014 startup Confirmix, the first West Virginia company to come out of WVU’s internationally renowned work in biometrics (page 32). Co-founder and WVU assistant professor in engineering Thirimachos Bourlai says he thought he might someday be an entrepreneur. He got assistance outside the university from TechConnectWV and, within the university, attended LIINC events and sought help with intellectual

top West Virginia Career Patent Earners

Source: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, uspto.gov Note: These totals and rankings represent patent earners in recent years and are West Virginia Focus’s best effort at an analysis the USPTO online database is not designed for.

property protection. “I haven’t done this before and the university helped me a lot,” he says. “It’s up to us to ask for help, but when we do they will help us through the process.” To advance commercialization in bioscience and biomedicine, WVU created a new position last fall—associate director of venture development—and hired Richard Giersch into it. A West Virginia native returned home, Giersch has all the right background: intellectual property protection, technology transfer, and bioscience startup launch, within and outside university settings in North Carolina and New Jersey. He’s located in WVU’s health sciences center. Conscious of the proper care and feeding of an ecosystem, Giersch is nurturing all of its aspects. One aspect is IP protection. Another is education, including a seminar series on commercialization that, in 2016, will become a course for grad students and faculty. “Research teams will be able to learn the steps needed to take an idea from the team and commercialize it,” he says. Giersch is working the industry outreach aspect through LIINC. For this April’s bioscience and biomedicine showcase, he’s partnered with the Bioscience Association of West Virginia to bring in life science innovators from across the state. And in 2016 he’s adding an industry day that will welcome corporate tech scouts directly into laboratories. “Scouts like to be able to put out a call and say, ‘Hey, we have an interest in research around metabolic disease and we know John Smith does that— let’s give him $100,000,’” he says. “Getting them into the labs is a first step in developing those relationships.” An education effort will prepare those researchers for their close-ups. The venture development aspect is mostly too secret to talk about. Speaking in January, Giersch would only say he’s working with five research teams aimed at launching start-ups and one eyeing a public-private partnership. But he did describe one exciting project. “I got an email from the director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Ruby Hospital, Greg Barretto, saying, ‘I have an idea but I’m not sure what to do with it.’” Reaching into premature infants’ incubators to monitor them, Barretto explained—to check belly rigidity to assess hunger, for example— causes them stress. But a “smart incubator” rigged with technology could do the monitoring non-intrusively. “We identified a team of engineers and physiologists that are figuring out ways to use imaging technology to record and quantify how much movement the infant has from day to day or hour to hour, or to figure out if the belly is full,” Giersch says. “You can quantify pain using the facial imaging work they do in biometrics—a creased brow is a classic sign of pain. And many other things. Less stress on the infant means faster development, less infection, better growth.” The new wealth of data on preemies will also benefit research. “I’m expecting this is going to generate some really decent intellectual property—it will be a great, licensable thing.” University start-ups are long-term projects, Giersch says, but he sees years of groundwork just about to bear fruit. “In five years there will be multiple start-ups per year coming out of WVU,” he predicts—not counting student start-ups that have already taken on significant momentum through the business plan competitions. “What’s going to capture everyone’s attention is the first home-run hit,” he says. “It’s coming. I’ve worked with great academic institutions, and the type of work and innovation going on at WVU isn’t that different from the work and innovation going on at other great institutions. We as a state don’t quite have the ecosystem to support all that. Building that is what we’re working on.”

Focus wvfocus.com

Lessons Learned

Pitfalls

Freelancer tips on time, pay, and networking.

Navigating complicated paperwork.

PG. 74

PG. 64

Lady Liberty, is that you? “This job is fun for me. It’s something I do in my spare time.” “I usually work 6 days a week. Each of my shifts is 5 hours.”

You know it’s Christmastime when you spot Santa Claus at the shopping mall. You know it’s tax season when Lady Liberty is waving at you from the street corner during your morning commute. We talked with Liberty Mutual employee George Ray to learn how he braves the cold while dressed as America’s favorite colossus. interviewed by Tessa Bonnstetter

“In the winter I usually wear a few layers to keep warm; it depends on how cold it is. I’ll wear a pair of coveralls and a jacket, with long sleeves underneath. In the summer I wear a lot less layers: just a regular pair of pants and a shirt. Today (January 28) it’s 25 out, so I’m wearing the most layers I ever do.”

“I don’t always listen to music when I’m working. But when I do it’s the local radio station.”

“My favorite part of this job is waving to people in their cars. I love it when I’m the reason they come into the office.”

Carla witt ford

“People usually have pretty good reactions to me in the Liberty costume. They’re friendly and wave back.”

2014 federal tax returns are due on Wednesday, April 15.

Lessons Learned

Registration Wrangle

Business owners say getting the papers in place for a new business is confusing, but ultimately worth it.

Woodburn Shanks, Morgantown Morgantown barbecue joint Woodburn Shanks was originally conceived as a food truck. Owner Derrick Shanks says he started figuring out the paperwork in August 2012. He was incorporated as a West Virginia LLC in November 2012, but there was much more to do. “First off, in order to have a food truck you need to have a commissary where you can make the food, get clean water, clean the food truck,” Shanks says. “So you’ve got two separate sets of insurance and permitting.” Monongalia County requires a 15-page “plan review” for each kitchen. “You have to include your menu and how it’s going to be served, and it has to come with an overhead diagram of the space you’re working in with all of the respective pieces of equipment outlined in it.”

Focus March/April 2015

istock

e all love a good food truck. In an ideal world, they’d be easy to set up and we’d have lots of them. Same with day spas and brewpubs and all the other little enterprises that make our towns great places to live. Setting up a new business starts out easy. Each West Virginia business needs to choose a business structure—like sole proprietorship or limited liability company—and register with the West Virginia Secretary of State’s (SOS) office. And each one needs a federal Taxpayer Identification Number. But from there, anything can happen. The SOS website provides a partial list of registrations, licenses, and permits a business might need depending on its activities, and there are many. An agriculture operation, for example, might need any of 53 approvals. One operating in health care might need any of 104. We talked with three small business owners about their recent permitting adventures.

written by

Completing the county’s two-day food establishment manager’s training gave Shanks a food worker’s card good for three years. And once the kitchens passed county health department inspection, he was able to get a city restaurant license for the restaurant and a hawker-peddler license for the food truck, and then get a fire marshal’s inspection and certificate of occupancy. Just after Shanks got open in August 2013, Morgantown tightened its food truck regulations. A food truck has to pay $14 a day to use a designated parking spot only from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.—and it cannot be located in the busiest block of downtown nightlife. “To take the food truck out at night isn’t as good a business as what we would do during the day,” Shanks says. “Now we’re thinking of shedding the food truck.” The permitting had to be done in a specific order, Shanks says, and he didn’t know from one step to the next what else would follow. Yet, his restaurant business is growing and he minimizes that initial hassle. “Looking back, it’s a minor part of how difficult it is to start a business as a whole,” he says. “The Entrepreneurship Clinic through the West Virginia University College of Law is a really good resource, and the West Virginia Small Business Development Center, too.”

Bioti Medical Spa, South Charleston Bioti (“bee-ody”) opened in November 2013 to offer salon and spa services in addition to medical procedures that can be affiliated with a spa—things like hair removal and cellulite reductions. Dr. Kristi Hensley had previously incorporated through the SOS as a Professional Limited Liability Company for her medical practice, so that was straightforward for her. In addition to the medical license she already had, she got a license for the spa from the state Board of Barbers and Cosmetologists. “They came in to make sure we had appropriate sinks in the right locations for the hair salon, and where we would mix hair color had to be a certain location—that kind of thing.” Hensley took a couple of continuing medical education classes in Florida for injectables and laser procedures and submitted those certificates to her malpractice insurance agency and her medical licensing board. She also needed a business license with the city of South

Pam Kasey

Yes, you need a license for that Will you be feeding garbage to swine in the course of your business? You need a Garbage Feeding License from the state Department of Agriculture Need to construct a public swimming pool? You need a Public Swimming Pool Construction License from the state Department of Health and Human Resources Want to act as an agent for a jockey? You need a Jockey Agent License from the state Department of Tax and Revenue

Charleston, as well as a building permit from the city for her site renovation. “In general it’s not all that difficult,” Hensley says of the entire process. “But it was sort of a cycle. When I registered with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State needed information from the American Board of Family Medicine that certifies me, so it wasn’t like step one, step two, step three; it was more like step one, step two, back to step one.” Still, it all took less than six months and she doesn’t remember it negatively. “I couldn’t tell you how it could have been made easier.” A year-and-a-half in, business is great. “In one year we were breaking even and now we’re quickly becoming profitable, so I feel very fortunate.”

Wheeling Brewing Company, Wheeling The order of the paperwork dominated Wheeling Brewing Company’s process. CEO Chad Hill says it took the company’s five partners almost three years. The company incorporated as a West Virginia LLC in January 2012. From there, things got complicated. “Opening up a place that, one, sells alcohol, but two, produces it, I needed five different licenses,” Hill says. He needed federal licenses to operate a brewery and a brewpub. With the national explosion of craft brewing, those took many months to be processed. From the state, the company needed a resident brewer license and a retail license for alcohol. And once all that was in place, it could get its city license to sell alcohol. Let Hill talk a little longer and it becomes clear it wasn’t even that straightforward.

The partners couldn’t simply pursue the brewing licensure process and, separately, a restaurant process—the kitchen had to be in place before the state would grant its license to retail the beer. “Alcohol in West Virginia has to be served with food,” Hill explains. “To get the state license, we had to have the health permit for the kitchen—and to get that, we had to have hot water running, refrigerators at the right temperature, all of that.” So Hill and his wife bought a property and the partners did the renovation themselves. “We had to get a building permit from the city, and then needed electrical, plumbing, and building inspections,” Hill says. Also in order to get the state retail license, the five partners had to be fingerprinted and background-checked. The lack of clarity about the order everything had to be done in is why it took three years, Hill says. “I wish I’d known— we could have been open a year earlier if all that had been laid out up front.” Hill adds that Wheeling Brewing got a Small Business Administrationguaranteed loan of $55,000 through BB&T and invaluable business plan help from WVU’s Center for Entrepreneurship. The business opened the day in December 2014 its city license was granted, and Hill says it has exceeded expectations. In spite of the convoluted permitting process, he encourages other entrepreneurs. “West Virginia’s the perfect place to start a small business. Don’t be deterred,” he says. “If you plan on producing any form of alcohol, whether it’s whiskey, wine, or beer, just plan way in advance and don’t be in a rush.” Focus wvfocus.com

How We Did It

The Last One

Standing

Davis-Lynch Glass Company in Morgantown is one of the last survivors in West Virginia’s glass industry.

t should be hard to hide a multithousand-square-foot blue factory in the middle of Morgantown. Bright blue doesn’t really blend into the green of the city’s hillsides in the summer, or the browns and whites of winter. Yet tucked into a corner of the Star City industrial district, unknown to much of the surrounding metropolitan area,

Focus March/April 2015

Davis-Lynch Glass Company continues to quietly manufacture hand-blown lamp parts to ship across the United States, as it has for more than 70 years. There a couple dozen union workers, some of them just out of high school and others well into their golden years, work molten glass into brilliant globes large and small. As far as secondgeneration owners Robert and John Lynch

know, Davis-Lynch is the last large-scale glass producer in the United States that still hand-blows all its pieces. It is certainly the last one in Morgantown, a city that was once home to half a dozen major manufacturers. It began in 1943 when Merwin Davis, a glass worker, partnered with Emmett Lynch to start the Davis-Lynch Glass Company, hand-blowing glass lamp parts in a facility where the current Star City Volunteer Fire Department stands. The future of glass sparkled bright. “It was an exciting industry,” Robert Lynch says. “At the time we started it was pretty robust. There was a lot of activity, and a lot of customers.” He and his brother John started working for their father in the 1960s after college. The original plant had nearly doubled in size, adding locations and growing to 12 glass “shops”— that’s industry lingo for the stations where crews work the white-hot glass. In 1967 Emmett Lynch purchased the Davis family’s interest in the business, and Davis-Lynch became a single-family operation. It grew. In 1971 the factory moved to its current location and eventually boasted 16 shops. Dozens of other factories around the country did the same type of work, but

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there was plenty of business to go around. “I started in 1952. I’ve been here a while,” jokes Fred Powell, a factory foreman. Powell is nothing if not spry, even after more than 60 years working in hot metal—that’s the molten glass blowing department—finishing, decorating, packaging, and shipping at Davis-Lynch. “At one time we had more than 300 employees, but now we’re down around 50,” he says. “At one time there were seven glass factories in this area, but we’re the only factory left.” While many of America’s glass factories closed their doors with the opening of foreign trade and an uptick in natural gas prices, Davis-Lynch stayed open and continues to manufacture lamp parts. “Being one of the last remaining factories, we’re getting our share of the business,” Robert Lynch says, but getting to this point wasn’t easy. “In the glass industry you think you can have a problem solved and the next day you have something else. You need to be on your toes. Anything can go wrong.” That sense of caution has been key to keeping the doors open. “We’ve been cautious, but we’re not afraid to go in, either,” Robert Lynch says. “You have

to make sure what you’re doing, or what you’re putting your money into, is going to come back and help you. If something looks good to us to spend money on, we’ll do that, but you have to look ahead to see that you’re not too far extended. You still have to pay your bills.” In the 1980s, as West Virginia’s glass giants fell to imports and skyrocketing gas prices, Davis-Lynch picked up more efficient equipment to cut fuel costs. Annealing lehrs—temperature-controlled kilns that allow glass to gradually cool, or reheat and cool—are major pieces of equipment, and pricey. When glass changes temperature too quickly, the stress can cause fractures. “With the old lehrs you had to keep the temperature up 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Robert Lynch says. “The new lehrs are well-insulated. Once the glass goes through the firebox you can turn them off. In the blow-room we turn them on two to three hours before the crew comes in to work the glass. It uses much less gas. We’ll spend if we can see a big savings, and that was the case.” The family has kept the business alive by controlling costs and debt, John Lynch

Katie Griffith

photographed by

Elizabeth roth

agrees, but success is found in the little things, too. Every material that can be recycled is recycled. For two weeks every summer the factory closes for vacation. Employees get two weeks off, and production lines aren’t disrupted by skilled workers coming and going all summer. Longtime employees stay loyal when skilled glass workers are only becoming harder to find. A third generation of Lynches is ready to take the helm, learning the trade alongside employees new and old. “If it wasn’t for the Lynch family I don’t think this place would survive,” Powell says. “They’re dedicated to keeping it going and they know what they’re doing.” Davis-Lynch’s production line is a beautiful thing to see in action. In the hot metal department teams of men pull molten glass from hot ovens and evenly blow the glass into molds. In finishing, workers grind, sand, and smooth jagged edges. A foreman hand-inspects huge glass orbs destined for the lighting fixtures of the nation’s biggest shopping centers. In the decorating department, ladies sit with their brushes and bottles painting delicate flower designs with remarkable skill on rows of special orders, each piece identical to the first. At its peak in the 1970s, Davis-Lynch would ship six tractor-trailers full of glass to New York every week. Now the company is shipping about one container weekly, but business is steady and could even be growing. Several good customers are looking to expand. “We’re seeing a lot of the old-style lighting going back into play,” Robert Lynch says. The company is taking that growth one step at a time, however. “A couple of years ago we were in this position. We ramped up production and within a year those orders went back down,” he says. “You can’t ramp up too quickly because then you’re hiring another eight to 10 people. If you’re up only for a short period you have to lay them off. I don’t like to do that type of work.” The brothers feel a responsibility for their employees, many of whom have stayed with them for decades, and they recognize getting new skilled glass workers isn’t as easy as it once was. “We’re here for the employees and we’re trying to keep them busy,” Robert Lynch says. “We have an obligation to keep the factory going and, as long as we can, we will.” Focus wvfocus.com

Focus March/April 2015

5 Things

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A life of entrepreneurship and service 1

Entrepreneurs are responsible for the economic prosperity of our nation in the past and its hope for its future. Many people dream of becoming one, but few are willing to try because the risks of failure are large. We need more entrepreneurs to stimulate our economy, create jobs, create wealth, pay taxes, and make charitable contributions, and it is important we attempt to create more of them.

For an entrepreneur to be successful requires a total commitment of all of his or her time, energy, resources, and blood, sweat, and tears. To be an entrepreneur, one must be creative. An entrepreneur must be self-confident and willing to take calculated and carefully identified risks. An entrepreneur must be able to communicate the dream to other people and gain their confidence and support to make it a reality. An entrepreneur must be disciplined and willing to often make sacrifices and adjust priorities in life to achieve success. Progress is exciting. You must embrace change and never yield to the disastrous temptation to fight it or, worse still, ignore it.

Respect the past but embrace the future. Too often we forget what it took for us to have today’s quality of life. Worse than that, we take it for granted. But if we study the past, we gain an appreciation of the present and can plan and dream about a wonderful future, not only for ourselves, but also for those who follow us. At Heritage Farm Museum and Village, we showcase inventors and companies that changed the world, but we also emphasize the worker and his skills and determination.

You have to outwork your opponent. He may have more money, be smarter than you, have more connections, but he should never be able to outwork you. That is the one thing in your control.

How do we create more entrepreneurs? I believe it must start with encouraging our children to be creative and self-confident. At Heritage Farm Museum and Village, we believe it is important to make sure the children of Appalachia gain a more positive selfimage. However, it is hard to develop

MIKE PERRY

A. Michael (Mike) Perry, a key leader in the state’s business community, died on February 25 at the age of 78. As former chairman and CEO of Key Centurion Bancshares, West Virginia’s first billiondollar banking organization, Perry helped guide the organization through a number of transitions in its growth toward becoming Banc One West Virginia Corporation, and later Chase Bank. He and his wife, Henriella Perry, created Heritage Farm Museum and Village in Huntington. Perry spoke with West Virginia Focus a few days before his death, reflecting on the importance of entrepreneurship. To read more about Perry’s vision for Heritage Farm Museum and Village, purchase Faith, Family, Friends & Farm at heritagefarmmuseum.com.

self-confidence if you lack self-esteem. Too many people have told and described these children and their parents in such uncomplimentary and even derogatory terms that many have come to believe it. In fact, if these children knew more about their proud Appalachian heritage and culture, they would realize how self-confident and determined their ancestors were when they came across the mountains. This is one of the driving forces behind the creation of Heritage Farm: to instill in Appalachian school children a better appreciation of their heritage and of the remarkable people, their ancestors, who have given us this marvelous quality of life we often take for granted today. Hopefully, when they realize what their ancestors accomplished through hard work and perseverance, they will likewise dream big dreams and be willing to work harder to make those dreams a reality. Maybe when they realize it was their ancestors who started the country stores, the sawmills and grist mills, and later the coal and timber companies and even railroads, they will learn to aspire to bigger things and accomplishments themselves. Focus wvfocus.com

Leadership

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Roger Hanshaw

Urban Legends

of Parliamentary Procedure A professional parliamentarian explains how to make the most of your meetings.

rom local garden clubs to business and professional societies, the average American belongs to more than five voluntary organizations—but has only one hour each month to dedicate to them. People are busy and time is at a premium. As a result, those who lead organizations must work hard to ensure meetings are productive, efficient, and worthwhile. To most members of voluntary organizations, the term “parliamentary procedure” conjures up visions of formal procedures for voting like one might see on C-SPAN. Others associate it with voting and making motions. In reality, it takes in aspects of both images. Most broadly, parliamentary procedure simply describes the rules and procedures for running a deliberative assembly. When used properly, the rules of parliamentary procedure can make business meetings run faster and more efficiently, making it easier for the presiding officer to maintain order, while empowering members to fully participate. When properly applied, the rules protect the minority and allow those members to speak their minds, while still allowing the majority to achieve its desired outcome. Unfortunately, there are far too many cases where a seemingly knowledgeable person asserts an understanding of parliamentary procedure to dominate a meeting, regardless of the extent—or accuracy— of his or her understanding of the rules. Such a situation puts all the other members at a disadvantage. For those who wish to have meaningful roles in their oganizations' business meetings, few things can be more valuable than a thorough understanding of the rules of parliamentary procedure. These are some of the more common “urban legends” of parliamentary procedure: those so-called rules thrown up by a

Focus March/April 2015

dominating member who simply seeks to have his or her way. Urban Legend #1 : The president sets the agenda for the meeting. Perhaps the most fundamental feature of any deliberative assembly is that members determine for themselves what they will and will not consider. However, in far too many organizations, the president claims the power to determine the agenda and select the topics that will be considered at meetings. Such an abuse of power by the presiding officer should never be tolerated. In voluntary organizations, the president has only the power granted by the organization itself. Under normal circumstances, the members would determine the agenda for meetings and decide what topics the meeting will cover and what decisions will be made. The president may only refuse to allow a proposal to be considered if the organization has specifically delegated that authority to the president. In organizations where such a delegation is made, it normally is found in the organization’s bylaws or a special rule of order. Absent such a rule, the president has no authority to dictate the agenda for meetings. Urban Legend #2 : Since the motion was never seconded, our vote to adopt it was invalid. In many meetings, debate on a motion will sometimes begin in earnest before some of the typical formalities of parliamentary procedure can be completed. An example of such a formality is the requirement that all motions be seconded before they are debated and a vote is taken. According to Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised, the purpose of a second is to make sure at least two members wish to consider the motion. If debate begins before the motion is seconded, the lack of a second becomes immaterial.

Roger Hanshaw is an attorney with Bowles Rice LLP. He is one of fewer than 50 parliamentarians in the nation to hold both the designation of Professional Registered Parliamentarian from the National Association of Parliamentarians and Certified Professional Parliamentarian from the American Institute of Parliamentarians. He is a member of the state House of Delegates.

The validity of a motion cannot be challenged after the fact if it is adopted without having been seconded. The time for making such a challenge has expired. Urban Legend #3 : The chairperson can stop debate on a motion after all the major points have been made. As with controlling the agenda, unless the assembly has granted the chairperson the power to unilaterally stop debate on a motion, he or she has no such authority. The right to debate proposals is a fundamental right of every member, and only the assembly can take it away. If the assembly wants to place limits on debate, members can adopt a motion to “limit debate.” Similarly, if the assembly wishes to end debate on a motion and move directly to a vote, members can adopt a motion for the “previous question.” The right to control debate rests with the assembly, not with the chair. The tools of parliamentary procedure are equal parts sword and shield. It is critical for active, participatory members of voluntary organizations to understand their rights as members and to know how to use parliamentary procedures to accomplish their goals. As General Henry M. Robert, the original author of Robert’s Rules of Order, wrote in 1876, “parliamentary law should be the servant, not the master, of the assembly.”

Finance

Bankable? The nontraditional lending community in West Virginia gets small businesses across the gap to bankability.

hen the waters receded after the southern West Virginia flood of 2001, flood-ravaged businesses needed cash fast—to clean up, to replace equipment and inventory, and to stay current on bills while they did it.

Focus March/April 2015

Traditional banks wouldn’t meet the need in time to prevent a rash of bankruptcies. The Wyoming County Economic Development Authority got busy. “The West Virginia Small Business Development Center granted us funding to do loans of $15,000 at 1 percent interest, paid back over six years,” recalls Christy Laxton, the

authority’s executive director. “That got us started in small business lending.” Small businesses operate at a financial edge—yet responsive financing is a challenge. A primary reason for that is personified by Mr. Potter, the profit-driven banker in the film It’s a Wonderful Life. “Some banks here in the Parkersburg area used to make their loan decisions locally— now they’re made in Wheeling or even Pittsburgh,” says Carol Jackson, executive director of the Mid-Ohio Valley Regional Council. “Even if the local loan officer knows a business’s situation, the people making the decisions maybe look more at the numbers.”

Courtesy of First microloan of West Virginia

Not Quite

First Microloan of West Virginia helped Shana (left) and Shahram Shafii open their Donut Connection store in Fairmont in 2012. “They were referred from another lender,” says Loan Officer Tim James. “Literally everythig you see in the backround is stuff we helped them finance.”

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“Bank customers can get lost in the shuffle. We don’t just give our companies a check— we want to graduate them.” Tim James, First Microloan loan officer

Those numbers are things like collateral value and credit score, and they can hurt Appalachian proprietors in particular, says Marten Jenkins, president of the Shepherdstown-based nonprofit Natural Capital Investment Fund. An Appalachian business owner may be less likely to have accumulated the personal assets to back a loan, or may have had a day job in an upand-down natural resource industry that eroded personal credit. The Great Recession made it worse still: Jenkins references an Appalachian Regional Commission finding that small business lending across its region declined by almost half from 2007 to 2010. Banks are familiar. They have a standard model and boast big downtown storefronts. Nontraditional lenders—not so familiar. They’re economic development authorities and nonprofit agencies off the main drag, and they operate under a wide range of models and missions. It’s worth being aware of them, though, because they’ll take on a business that looks iffy to a bank but has a great heart and carry it over to bankability.

A Brief Sampling

When we think of small businesses loans, the U.S. Small Business Administration springs to mind. While the administration doesn’t make loans directly, it guaranteed more than $42 million in loans to West Virginia businesses in 2014. Much of that was through traditional channels, with Huntington Bank number one in dollars lent. But some of that money was routed through alternative lenders, and First Microloan of West Virginia tops that list. Operating in 21 counties, First Microloan provides financing up to $50,000 for startup and expansion. Looking at three Cs of lending—credit, collateral, and character— loan officer Tim James says banks focus on credit and collateral. The numbers.

“Microloan applicants can have credit and collateral issues, but they have to have a strong character base. We work a lot with start-ups. Banks often want 18 months to two years of cash flow. A microloan can get them to where a bank will take over.” Like many nontraditional loans, these come with technical assistance to minimizing problems—James has seen just one of his 40-plus loans go into default. “Bank customers can get lost in the shuffle. We don’t just give our companies a check—we want to graduate them.” Jenkins’ Natural Capital Investment Fund is a major nontraditional lender in the state. It makes loans up to $500,000, or up to $2.5 million in special circumstances. As a U.S. Treasury Departmentcertified Community Development Financial Institution, the fund is required to target 60 percent of its capital to lowand moderate-income areas, Jenkins says. And the Treasury Department encourages traditional lenders to collaborate. “Banks get extra credit if they partner with us on loans and investments or if their staff serve on our board.” The fund has $10 million in active loans. A lender with roots in state government is the eight-county Mid-Ohio Valley Regional Council. It was an early entrant in nontraditional lending back in the 1980s. And at the county government level are organizations like the Wyoming County Economic Development Authority. Over time, these two organizations have gotten money to lend from various sources—the West Virginia Development Office and the U.S. Department of Commerce, among others. Since funders have differing requirements with regard to purpose, collateral, and repayment, having diverse sources helps the organizations match borrowers with terms that meet their needs.

Pam Kasey

Cutting Through It Small businesses looking to borrow can cut through all this by making the West Virginia Small Business Development Center their first stop. Business coaches at the center know every aspect of this complex lending landscape.

One Success of Many Every nontraditional lender has proud success stories. Christy Laxton at the Wyoming County Economic Development Authority picks out Tumbletown gymnastics center in Oceana. Wyoming County Economic Development Authority helped the first owner, who had worked with an Olympic trainer, open the center in 2008. It helped her expand in 2010, and a third time when she decided to sell. “My children went to Tumbletown,” says Laxton, who herself had no place to do gymnastics as a child. “It’s hard to drive an hour to Raleigh County for gymnastics, so this gives the local people an opportunity they wouldn’t have otherwise.”

One other lender nearly everyone mentions is the West Virginia Capital Access Program. Created in 2011 by the federal State Small Business Credit Initiative, the program received $13.2 million to invest and lend, with each dollar expected to generate $10 in new private lending within five years. A handful of groups—the Natural Capital Investment Fund and Wyoming County Economic Development Authority among them—worked quickly. By early 2015, 33 companies across the state had received investments or loans and each dollar had so far leveraged $5.29. This is just a sampling of the state’s mission-driven lenders. The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is working with a pilot group of nontraditional West Virginia lenders to better understand their reach. “They’re doing a lot at the grassroots level,” Regional Community Development Manager Jennifer Giovannitti says of what’s been learned so far. “Supporting and understanding their impact is in everybody’s best interest.” Focus wvfocus.com

Pitfalls

This Gun’s

for Hire Freelancers share tips on picking projects, setting your price, and networking.

Wes Wilson is a Williamson-based freelance photographer.

Kara Moore of Charleston is a freelance writer.

t takes guts to start a career as a freelancer. You are your own boss, which is nice, but you are giving up the security of a steady paycheck. You also have to deal with all the things most businesses hire people to worry about: withholding money for taxes, shopping for health insurance, saving for retirement, ordering copy paper and ink toner. We collected some advice from a few accomplished freelancers to help you avoid their early mistakes.

Focus March/April 2015

Beckley web designer Patrick Godbey started working as a freelancer when he was still in high school.

treated him. If he worked really cheap, they treated him cheaply. “You run into scenarios where a client might get aggravated you’re not working day and night over a couple hundred bucks,” he says. “The whole thing was demoralizing.” He learned to be picky about which projects he accepted and wait for the good-paying gigs.

He also has learned to embrace his downtime. Now, instead of freaking out, he uses time between projects to learn new skills, study new trends in his industry, and improve his home office. Since he spends so much time working at a desk, Godbey thinks a lot about the ergonomics of his chair, the appropriate height of his work surface,

Craig Cunningham; The Oberports; Courtesy of Patrick Godbey

Choose Wisely

Patrick Godbey, a website developer in Beckley, started freelancing when he was in high school. When he was 16, he and some Internet friends started an Internet hosting company. “I guess that’s when the entrepreneurial bug bit me. Since then I’ve wanted to be in charge of my own thing,” he says. Godbey learned some valuable lessons during those early days. They came the way most valuable lessons do: after a big screwup. “The biggest one that set me back the most was not charging enough money,” he says. Back then, Godbey would freak out when his schedule started clearing up. In his mind, a slow workday meant losing money. Desperation would creep in and he would snatch up the first job that came along, no matter how poorly it paid. “I would take anything I could get my hands on, and justified it to myself that I needed to build up my experience. When you need something to do, you’ll sell yourself short,” he says. That caused a few problems for Godbey. First, he wasn’t making as much money as he should have. Second, he found the rate he charged clients affected how they

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and the color of his light bulbs. “Stuff that I interact with for hours a day plays a huge part in how productive I am,” he says. “You can make little changes to improve your workspace and help you get in the zone.” Godbey also makes sure to network with other freelancers. Besides referrals from past clients, fellow freelancers are his second-best resource for getting new jobs. “Just because you have downtime doesn’t mean everyone else does,” he says. His colleagues often get buried with work and are willing to pay Godbey to take some of their load.

Negotiating Pay

Kara Moore is a journalist in Charleston. She formerly worked for a newspaper but began freelancing after she had her first daughter. She says negotiating her pay hasn’t been difficult when working with newspapers and magazines. “I am fortunate to freelance for a newspaper that understands how to pay for writing so there’s no quibbling over what I should charge,” she says. She has worked for other clients, however, who do not have much experience paying for creative work. Experience has taught Moore it’s better to charge by the project, not by the hour. That gives clients a firm price—which everybody likes—and sets her expectations for the job. “Writing work is unlike other types of contract work in that it’s notoriously fickle. It wouldn’t be fair to my clients for me to start running a clock while I’m writing when I know full well the second I hit a block I’ll be jumping up for coffee or getting on Facebook or whatever,” she says. And even when you do not charge by the hour, Moore says it is important to think about your hourly rate. When Moore was offered $150 for a piece, she decided she would spend five hours working on it. That’s $30 an hour. “I didn’t set a timer, it just helps me think about how much time I should put into a project,” Moore says. It helps keep her on track. “You have to be your own editor and enforcer,” she says. “If I spend 10 hours on a $150 job, that’s on me.” Just don’t forget: Uncle Sam wants his cut, too. That intimidates lots of budding freelancers, but Moore says it’s not that complicated. “I just have to remember that my checks are before taxes and save appropriately,” she says. For her, the most difficult part is getting reimbursed for expenses. The Internal Revenue Service

wants freelancers to track mileage, provide receipts for business-related expenses, and estimate how much they use things like their cars, computers, and phones for freelancing. “You should track your mileage, computer use, phone time, office supply expenses, etc. Save receipts so you can itemize your deductions,” she says. Also, while lots of people wait until April to file their income taxes, many freelancers do not have that option. Any selfemployed person who owes the Internal Revenue Service more than $1,000 per year must pay their income taxes in quarterly installments or face a penalty. You can sort this stuff out with the help of a computer program like TurboTax or, even better, a real live accountant.

Connect

Williamson-based photographer Wes Wilson was in fifth grade when he got his first freelance gig. His middle school’s coaches knew he had a Nikon camera—borrowed from his father’s optometry office—and asked him to shoot some games. The pay wasn’t great. “They said, ‘We’ll give you a free ride on the bus,’” Wilson, now 20, says. He has continued photographing sporting events but, beginning around his senior year of high school, he began branching out into portrait photography. Family friends started asking Wilson to take senior pictures for their children—who often were Wilson’s classmates. He broke into news photography in April 2013, after Mingo Sheriff Eugene Crum was shot dead in his police cruiser in downtown Williamson. As media outlets from around the state descended on Mingo County, Wilson also headed to the scene. He stuck around to cover a candlelight vigil held the night of Crum’s murder, and the photos ended up in publications around the country. Now he was getting compensated for his work. “It got to a point where people said, ‘You’re grown up now, we’ll pay you for this,’” he says. He now works as a regular freelance photographer for two newspapers, the Williamson Daily News and the new Mingo Messenger, and does occasional work for other newspapers like the Charleston Daily Mail. He has continued to shoot senior portraits and recently opened up his schedule to infant and family portraits, as well as weddings. It keeps him busy, but the hustle

Zack Harold

Why “freelancers?” The word “freelance” seems to have its origins in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe. The book was published in 1820 but set in the Middle Ages, when England was ruled by feudal lords. These mini-kingdoms often went to war against one another and, if they found their military forces a bit lacking, would hire mercenary soldiers to fill their ranks. Scott coined the phrase “Free Lances” to describe these mercenaries. They were free men, soldiers for hire, with lances. Get it? The word “freelance,” smashed together in noun form, first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary around the turn of the 20th century. It soon began morphing in a variety of ways, so eventually a person who does freelance work became known as a “freelancer.” is essential for a photographer in a small town like Williamson. “There’s not a lot of money moving around,” he says. “At one point I had three weeks, seven days a week, a shoot every day.” Wilson said the biggest mistake he made in his budding career was not connecting with other photographers. Early on, he felt intimidated. “You get in the usual thing, and you get scared of stepping out of your comfort zone. If I could go back, it would be to get out of my comfort zone a little sooner. Open up to new things,” he says. He now has a network of photographer friends who are helping him learn the craft and stay up-to-date with the latest technologies. They see each other pretty regularly—again, Williamson is a small town, so they often end up photographing the same events. A few years ago, Wilson wanted to shoot the Winter X Games, an annual extreme sports competition held in Aspen, Colorado. One of his Mingo County photographer friends happened to know a public relations specialist at ESPN, who scored Wilson a press pass. His connections paid off. “Had it not been for that one dude, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do that. And you talk about an awesome trip? That was awesome,” he says. Focus wvfocus.com

Economy

Mountain State Business Index

A West Virginia economic look-ahead 114

Index, 2000=100

Mountain State Business Index

112

t o v n

Jan. 2015

106

112.8, +0.2% m /m

104

102

100

Note: Shaded region corresponds to U.S. recession as determined by the NBER

fter a two-month pause, the Mountain State Business Index (MSBI) made a slight gain in January, driven largely by an uptick in West Virginia’s energy sector. That includes a modest increase in coal production— although that growth is focused in the state’s northern coal markets, not the beleagured southern coalfields. The MSBI increased 0.2 percent during January. Despite the sluggish close to 2014, the index has shown a steady upward trajectory for much of the past year, gaining

108

110

Focus March/April 2015

2.2 percent on a year-over-year basis and 2.4 percent on an annualized basis over the last six months. This suggests the state’s economy as a whole should remain on a path of solid economic progress into the first half of this year. Although the index as a whole increased in January, a majority of the index’s components made negative contributions. However, only the real trade-weighted dollar and yield curve made impacts sufficiently large enough to weigh on the index compared with December 2014. Stock prices for the state’s largest employers provided the

largest positive contribution to the index. And, as mentioned above, the state’s two major energy-producing industries, coal and natural gas, boosted the MSBI in January. This merits a closer look. While coal production did generate a modest positive boost during part of 2014, this does not suggest that a reversal to the multiyear declines in West Virginia coal mine output is likely or that this component will continue to make substantive positive contributions to the MSBI. Indeed, a portion of last year’s growth in coal production was driven not by growth but by electric utilities replenishing coal stockpiles depleted by the excessively strong seasonal demand of the previous year’s colder-than-normal winter. A significant trend in recent years for West Virginia’s coal industry has been the diverging pattern of mine production between the northern and southern portions of the state, caused by a combination of geological, market, and regulatory-related factors. The modest improvement in statewide coal production recorded last year was

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John Deskins and Brian Lego

West Virginia Coal Production: Northern and Southern 130

Southern WV, Millions of short tons, annualized

Northern WV, Millions of short tons, annualized

50 48

120 46 110

44 42

100

40 90

38 36

34 70 32

14 20

13 20

12 20

11 20

10 20

09 20

08 20

07 20

06 20

05 20

04 20

03 20

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration driven entirely by new or expanded mining operations in several northern West Virginia counties. Marion, Marshall, Ohio, and Taylor counties each recorded increases of approximately 2 million tons in mined coal during 2014. Overall, coal production in the state’s northern coalfields increased 17 percent last year and has climbed 20 percent on a cumulative basis since 2012. In fact, Marshall County has ranked as the highest coal-producing county in the state in each of the last two years, with mines in the county producing nearly 17 million short tons of coal during 2014. By contrast, West Virginia’s southern coalfields have seen production decline sharply over the past several years. As recently as 2011 mine output from West Virginia’s southern coal-producing counties accounted for roughly two thirds of the state’s overall coal tonnage. However, the region’s production has plunged by

more than 31 percent since then and now accounts for just 54 percent of total statewide coal mine output. Boone County, which not long ago ranked as the top coal-producing county in West Virginia, has seen production decline by nearly 40 percent since 2011. The diverging performances of West Virginia’s northern and southern coal-producing regions will continue, albeit at a slower pace. Many of the state’s southern underground and surface operations will continue to face significant geological and regulatory hurdles as well as sluggish domestic and international demand in the metallurgical and thermal markets. Overall coal demand is expected to weaken over the next several years due to a combination of utilities increasingly shifting to natural gas or other fuels for electricity generation as well as regulatory changes that are expected to lead to the retirement of coal-fired power plants.

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.

Focus wvfocus.com

Entrepreneurship

Investment

Needed to Advance Innovation Economy

Targeted investment would leverage the state’s new foundation in entrepreneurship education and support into productive businesses and good jobs.

vast number of West Virginians are interested in and aggressively pursuing entrepreneurship. We hear and read every day about the creativity of our citizens who are willing and eager to take chances, push the envelope, pursue their dreams and create new and exciting products and services. We truly are going through a metamorphosis to a new and exciting innovation/technology-based economy. A new economy starts with education, and good things are happening there. Many of our elementary school children are participating in programs like Lemonade Days, in which kids learn how much it costs to start a business, determine how many cups of lemonade they need to sell, how to price it, and how to make a profit. In addition, entrepreneurship curricula are rapidly being introduced at the middle and high school levels. Our state Department of Education has a program called Simulated Workplaces, part of our Career and Technology Education initiative, which engages students in running real businesses. Our colleges and universities all have entrepreneur programs that encourage a new attitude toward taking chances. For just one example, at the LaunchLab startup resource

Focus March/April 2015

center at West Virginia University one can develop a business plan, conduct market research, protect intellectual property, find technical development expertise, recruit team members from the university community and private sector, gain introductions to industry-specific experts and mentors, develop an investor presentation, and gain access to initial customers. There is no question that we have the people and the intellectual capacity to actively participate in this innovation/technology-based economy. But to accomplish our goal here requires a new, concerted effort and an aggressive investment of time, effort, and energy by both the public and private sectors. “Stuff” does not happen on its own and without investment. Investment in two broad areas would move the needle. The private sector must participate by Influencing school curricula. Executives who hire locally could provide local school teachers or administrators real examples of how math and science are applied in the production of specific products. Students are much more likely to embrace and understand those principles if they can see the direct application of the academics.

Talking to kids in our schools, especially in our career and technical schools. Great jobs are out there for our kids. They just need to see with their own eyes how the “stuff” they are learning in school is applicable to their career path. They will also see that regular folks like them can become executives in corporate America. Our businesses also need to invest in their local schools and create internships for worthy students. When we talk about investment, we naturally get to financial investment— the need for capital. Our legislature must provide sufficient funding for this endeavor. Our neighboring states all provide funding and programs for entrepreneurs and early stage companies. Innovation Works in southwest Pennsylvania (I was a board member for six years) invested more than $60 million in more than 200 technology start-ups. Those companies created thousands of new jobs and attracted follow-on capital of over $1.6 billion since their seed fund began in 1999. Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky have all recognized the need for investing

written by

Mike Green

Mike Green is an adviser, investor, and board member for several privately held technology companies. He serves as vice president of the state Board of Education and chairman of West Virginia Growth Investment, which provides mentorship and capital to worthy entrepreneurs and earlystage business.

capital and creating programs to spur entrepreneurship. These states have active angel organizations as well as venture capital investors. In West Virginia we have an ad hoc collaborative effort between TechConnect West Virginia, the INNOVA Commercialization Group, the West Virginia Jobs Investment Trust, the West Virginia Small Business Development Center, and several other organizations, public and private. Past funding has come from federal and state government organizations, but never enough sustained funding. We need the legislature to provide more funding in order for these groups to grow and continue to provide mentorship. Education needs funding, too. Our own governor was selected to lead the nationwide Council of State Governments, turning its focus on workforce development needs, particularly in the area of STEM (Science, Technology, Education, Math). The council he created last year in West Virginia came back with specific recommendations, including funding recommendations, as to how STEM programs can prepare our citizens for the jobs that will be needed over the next decade. Programs like this require leadership and organization, but they also require substantial funding. It has been proven over and over that state funding does work and that profits from funded companies are routinely reinvested to provide new opportunities. If the state leads, there is no doubt that financial institutions, the private sector, angels, angel groups, venture capitalists, and other private equity entities will join in and provide additional funding to perpetuate and sustain growing businesses.

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Judy Wellington POWER POINTS

Outgoing Clay Center CEO speaks on seizing opportunities, wherever they lead. Written by Katie Griffith

» An appreciation for arts education is a very difficult argument for people to make but it is clearly an important argument. There is no question that art education, particularly music, has an important impact on brain development and affects all sorts of educational performance across the board. The integration of art and science is also really important. It’s important that we educate the child as a whole, not just focus on education in parts. The world doesn’t work in chunks. How you work and think and what you do every day—it doesn’t come in neat packets. We try to categorize things too much. I think the state is moving there, slowly, but we are moving in the right direction. » There isn’t much difference between

very good and perfect. You can waste a lot of time trying to be perfect. And usually very good is good enough. Sometimes getting things done is the most important thing. One of the biggest mistakes new senior managers make is to fall into what I call a “strategy pit” and that is to just over-strategize things—over-think

Focus March/April 2015

things—but you’ll never get anything done. You just have to make a decision and move on, and usually, even if the decision isn’t quite right, you have time down the line to make it better.

» I haven’t looked for a job since 1976. People have come to me and offered me opportunities and, if they seemed like they’d be interesting and a little different,

I grabbed on. I think a lot of people are afraid of new opportunities. They’re often afraid that they’re not qualified for things if they haven’t worked their way up from the bottom. I’ve always taken the attitude of, “If they think I can do it, I can do it.”

» Make sure you’re having fun in life, because you spend a lot of time at work. If you’re not having fun, go do something else.

Courtesy of Katheryne Hawkins

Judy Wellington grew up playing the piano, dreaming of becoming a concert pianist. She practiced for hours a day, every day, until she was 13 and discovered boys and science. Her mother convinced her piano was a hobby she would always be able to enjoy, and Wellington eventually went on to Harvard for a Ph.D. in organic chemistry. After that, a social interaction led to a leadership stint at the Philadelphia Zoo and the New Jersey State Aquarium, before a headhunter brought Wellington to West Virginia. Her varied background has allowed Wellington to, since 2006, lead the Clay Center for the Arts and Science in its mission to educate West Virginians young and old. Wellington steps down as president and CEO this year after establishing herself as an energetic trailblazer with the flexibility to manage an organization dedicated to science, art, and the ways they intersect.