Chris Schulz, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

VA Recommends Reducing W.Va. Services

West Virginia leaders are concerned plans to modernize the Veterans Affairs medical system will significantly reduce treatment options in the state.

In March, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) presented recommendations to the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission to modernize services and address aging buildings within the VA health care system over the next decade.

Within those recommendations, three VA Medical Centers in West Virginia – The Beckley VA Medical Center, the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, and the Hershel “Woody” Williams VAMC in Huntington – would see a reduction in services.

In a press release Thursday, Ted Diaz, secretary of the West Virginia Department of Veterans Assistance said, “I do not believe veterans should have to choose between living in communities they love and having reasonable access to health care.”

Diaz and his staff have called on West Virginia’s federal elected leaders in D.C. to oppose the recommendations.

Clarksburg and Huntington would have their emergency departments converted to urgent care centers. All three locations would no longer offer in-patient medical and surgical services. The VA says veterans can turn to other medical providers in their area for these services.

The VA will instead focus on community living centers for an aging regional veteran population.

The recommendations include building a new VAMC in Beckley to replace the current facility that dates to 1950, but upon reopening its focus would be on out-patient treatment.

The VA cited projected decreases in enrolled veterans through 2029 of between 12.5 percent and 15 percent in all three of the medical centers’ markets as justification for these recommendations.

Morgantown Police Maintains ‘Soft Interview Room’ For Trauma Survivors

Soft interview spaces are set up in law enforcement facilities to document victims’ stories.

Del. Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, presented the Morgantown Police Department (MPD) and the Rape & Domestic Violence Information Center (RDVIC) Tuesday with $2000 for continuing maintenance of the Judy King soft interview room.

Soft interview spaces are set up in law enforcement facilities to document victims’ stories. According to Texas-based Project Beloved, a nonprofit that helps police departments install soft interview rooms, a space that is comfortable rather than stark allows the participant to feel physically and emotionally safe and can have a significant impact on the interview process.

The Judy King Soft Interview Room first opened five years ago to the day on April 5, 2017.

RDVIC Executive Director Alexia Jennings said it gives “a safe space to survivors to tell their stories and to ensure that as a community we are providing trauma informed victim centered services to survivors in Mon County.”

According to Tuesday’s presentation, Morgantown’s soft interview room is the first of its kind in West Virginia.

Update: WVU Coach Bob Huggins To Be Inducted Into Hall Of Fame

West Virginia University men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins will be inducted into the sport’s hall of fame this year.

Updated on Monday, April 4, 2022 at 11:30 a.m.

West Virginia University men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins will be inducted into the sport’s hall of fame this year.

Huggins was amongst the 13 honorees in the The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2022 announced Saturday, April 2 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Enshrinement event will take place September 9-10 in Springfield, Massachusetts.

National sports reporter for The Athletic Shams Charania broke the story Thursday night that Huggins would be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in September.

Fellow 2022 inductees include National Basketball Association (NBA) players Tim Hardaway and Manu Ginobili, Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) star Swin Cash, and NBA coach George Karl.

WVPB reached out to the Hall of Fame and WVU Communications to confirm, but they did not immediately respond.

A Morgantown native, Huggins was named head men’s basketball coach at WVU in 2007. During his tenure, he led the team to 326 victories and 10 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament appearances.

With 916 wins throughout his collegiate coaching career, Huggins has the eighth-most wins of any basketball coach in NCAA history.

Huggins was announced as a North American committee finalist for the Hall of Fame in February. He will join fellow West Virginians Jerry West and Hal Greer in receiving hall of fame honors.

*Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect Huggins’ official naming to the Hall of Fame on Saturday, April 2.

Sternwheel Regatta Schedule Announced

The schedule for the Sternwheel Regatta in Charleston this summer has been released, with five days of concerts, food and fun.

Mayor Amy Goodwin, alongside members of the Charleston Regatta Commission, announced the 2022 Charleston Sternwheel Regatta schedule during a press conference at Haddad Riverfront Park on Thursday.

Running from June 30 through July 4, the schedule features a beer festival, a carnival, basketball tournaments and much more.

Music will span an array of genres and include performances from Everclear to Martina McBride, and the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra

The namesake Sternwheel Boat Races will take place Sunday, July 3 at 1 p.m.

The regatta began in 1971 and grew into a 10-day festival that featured boats on the river, sternwheeler racing and plenty of music featuring national artists.

Thousands of people ventured to Charleston’s levee on the Kanawha River to celebrate its tradition and the historic boats that were a part of its history.

The regatta last took place in 2009.

For a full schedule of events, visit the Charleston Sternwheel Regatta Facebook page, facebook.com/charlestonsternwheelregatta .

New Scholarship Sends W.Va. Students To Space Camp

Space Camp is the stuff of childhood legend, and two West Virginia students will have the opportunity to attend this summer thanks to a new scholarship.

The program, hosted at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama gives more than 40,000 students a year, from around the world, unique opportunities to explore science and engineering hands-on.

But when rocket center board member, and West Virginia native, Homer Hickam looked around, he noticed something was missing from the camp.

“I was very disappointed to see that there were very, very few West Virginia students taking advantage of Space Camp,” Hickam said. “I saw less than 100 West Virginia students coming to space camp this past summer.”

Hickam is best known for his first memoir, “The Rocket Boys,” and its subsequent film adaptation “October Sky.” As a once-burgeoning rocket engineer from the coal fields of southern West Virginia, he has a unique understanding of the opportunity Space Camp represents to students in the state.

“If there had been a Space Camp, and I would have been able to attend it, I can’t even even imagine how wonderful that would have been,” Hickam said. “Space Camp is a great opportunity not only for the education that you get, but for the people that you meet. It really broadens the horizons of students meeting their peers from around the country and around the world.”

Given how close West Virginia is to Huntsville relative to the rest of the country, Hickam was distressed so few students were taking advantage of the program. With the release of his latest memoir titled “Don’t Blow Yourself Up” this past fall, Hickam saw an opportunity to remedy the issue. He partnered for a reading tour with the West Virginia-based and family-owned Adams Hallmark chain of stores

Using proceeds from the sales of the book in Adams Hallmark’s seven locations, Hickam and the Adams family set up a scholarship to send West Virginia students to Space Camp.

It’s a project that Andrea Underwood says perfectly honors the legacy of her father and company founder Mike Adams who passed away in October.

“Dad was a coal camp kid,” she said. “Dad would be just excited that his legacy is letting other kids who are from West Virginia have this opportunity to expand their horizons and, and go see new things and do things that he never had the opportunity to do.”

It’s an opportunity 12-year-old scholarship recipient Xander Dennison of Exchange, WV has been looking forward to for a while.

“I’m wanting to go because I’ve always had an interest in aviation and aerospace ever since I was maybe three and I’ve tried to keep that dream ever since and this just made that dream even better,” he said.

Dennison is one of two recipients of the inaugural scholarship, the first exclusively to help West Virginia students attend Space Camp.

“I was reading it, and I saw that it said I gotten the scholarship and honestly I kind of danced because I was always happy and surprised,” he said.

Dennison’s mother, Amber, said the $1500 scholarship to cover the camp’s cost will make a big difference.

“It’s so hard to give him the opportunities because we just don’t have a lot of that stuff around and then the cost that you know accumulates,” she said. “So not having to have that stress of worrying about the camp now we can focus on getting him there letting him enjoy camp to his fullest potential.”

As far as summer camps go, Space Camp is one of the most exciting and coveted experiences. But Hickam hopes it encourages young West Virginians to join the ranks of mountaineers that came before them in the field of aerospace.

“West Virginia has a long history of folks from the Mountain State working in the aerospace industry, not only me, but folks like Chuck Yeager,” he said. “The first CEO of Space Camp was Ed Buckbee, who was a Shepherdstown, West Virginia native.”

Hickam and the Adams family hope this scholarship inspires another generation of Mountaineers to reach for the stars.

Officials: West Virginia Likely To See Another COVID Surge

Coronavirus czar Dr. Clay Marsh warned that the state should be bracing for another wave, this time from the omicron-BA.2 variant.

All 55 counties are still green on the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, but if international trends are anything to go by, that could soon change.

At Gov. Jim Justice’s regular COVID-19 press briefing, coronavirus czar Dr. Clay Marsh warned that, based on case data from Europe and the United Kingdom in particular, the state should be bracing for another wave, this time from the omicron-BA.2 variant.

“They also, through the middle and part of February, were seeing the same reduction as we’re seeing now in West Virginia,” Marsh said. “Then at the beginning of March, the BA.2 variant really picked up for them, and ended up increasing not only the number of cases, but also the number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths in the United Kingdom.”

BA.2 is now the dominant strain of COVID-19 in the United States. West Virginia has confirmed 12 cases of the BA.2 variant, but the state’s case numbers often lag two to four weeks behind larger population centers. Marsh said it is only a matter of time before the strain is dominant in the state as well.

Both Marsh and Justice renewed calls for vaccination after the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of a second COVID boosters for some older and immunocompromised people earlier Tuesday. The booster still requires approval from the Centers for Disease Control before public release.