Get those creative gears turning! We begin accepting submissions for the 2025 PBS KIDS Writers Contest on Jan. 1!
Nominate an exceptional West Virginia teacher today!
On Demand
On Demand
Watch locally produced documentaries & more.
On Demand
On Demand
West Virginia Morning
Inside Appalachia
West Virginia Week
Mountain Stage
Us & Them
The Legislature Today
Send us your comments and questions.
Stream our board meetings.
Check out the latest WVPB news.
Sign up for our newsletter and get weekly updates.
Meet the WVPB staff.
WV Educational Broadcasting Authority, the WVPB Foundation, and the Friends of WVPB.
Come work with us!
Sponsor impactful and engaging media and entertainment.
Use your IRA to make a gift to WVPB.
Become a member with your gift of $1,000 or more.
Poet Roy Lee Harmon died on April 7, 1981, at age 80. The founder of the West Virginia Poetry Society, Harmon was born in Boone County, grew up in Danville, and graduated from Scott District School. He attended Morris Harvey College, which is now the University of Charleston, before becoming a reporter and eventually city editor for the Raleigh Register newspaper in Beckley.
In 1937, Governor Homer Holt appointed Harmon poet laureate of West Virginia. He was succeeded in that role by James Lowell McPherson in 1943 but was reappointed by Governor Clarence Meadows in 1946. He held the post for the next 14 years, when he was replaced by Cabell County’s Vera Andrews Harvey, who served only one year. In 1961, Governor Wally Barron again named Harmon poet laureate. Harmon was given poet laureate emeritus status by Governor Jay Rockefeller in 1979. Overall, he served as the state’s poet laureate for 38 years under four governors.
He also served four intermittent terms in the state legislature. In addition to his writing and political career, Roy Lee Harmon was a television host in Oak Hill during the 1950s.
