Dave Mistich, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Gov. Justice Taps Barnhart For 7th House District Vacancy

Gov. Jim Justice announced today [Tuesday] that he has appointed Trenton C. Barnhart to the House of Delegates to represent the 7th District.

Barnhart fills the vacancy created by the resignation of Del. Jason Harshbarger, who resigned from the seat last month.

The 7th House District is made up of the entirety of Ritchie County and a large portion of Pleasants County.

Harshbarger, a twice-elected Republican from Ritchie County, left the House to pursue a lobbying position with his longtime employer, Dominion Energy.

According to a news release from the governor’s office, Barnhart is a lifelong resident of Pleasants County and currently lives in St. Mary’s. He currently works as a compliance auditor for the state.

A Republican committee had also offered former Del. Woody Ireland of Pullman and Don Boley of St. Mary’s as possible appointees.

Republican Army Vet Announces Run For Mercer County House Seat

A southern district that includes a controversial House delegate will have another GOP candidate in next year’s primary election. The 27th House District currently includes Del. Eric Porterfield, who made anti-gay comments during the 2019 legislative session.

Retired Army veteran Doug Smith is running for the House of Delegates 27th District. Republican Delegate Josh Higginbotham, of Putnam County, sent a news release to West Virginia Public Broadcasting regarding Smith’s campaign.

Smith’s website states he is pro-life and pro-Second Amendment.

Republicans hold all three seats in the 27th House District. Education Chairman Joe Ellington, Judiciary Chairman John Shott and Porterfield are the incumbents.

Porterfield sparked controversy earlier this year when he likened LGBTQ rights groups to the Klu Klux Klan. Democrat Tina Russell filed pre-candidacy paperwork shortly after Porterfield made his comments.

According to the Secretary of State’s website, Republican and former Del. Marty Gearheart has also filed to run for a 27th House District seat in 2020.

Hi, How Are You: Remembering Musician, Artist Daniel Johnston

West Virginia-raised musician and artist Daniel Johnston died this week at the age of 58. Known best for his earnest and harrowing lo-fi pop songs, Johnston remained an underground hero for most of his life. His influence, though, continues to stretch across musical and artistic genres — and around the world.

Whether you’ve heard of Daniel Johnston or not, here’s a quick warning: There’s really no way to fully condense his life and work into a few minutes worth of radio or a short written article.

There are full-length documentaries for that — films that show a brilliant, yet tortured person. There are flashes of genius interspersed with dark stories about psychotic episodes, bad hallucinogenic trips, and unrequited love.

In the backdrop, of course, are songs that have inspired countless people.

I had the pleasure of speaking to Johnston by phone once, in 2011, for a piece I was writing for the West Virginia-focused alternative magazine Graffiti.

He told me about growing up in New Cumberland, in Hancock County, and — even as a teenager — he felt a struggle to find acceptance while being himself.

“When I was young, there was no bands that didn’t play top 40 music,” Johnston said. “There weren’t any new music, original music bands. I had bought a synthesizer and I had an organ and an electric piano, trying to get into one of those bands. I knew ‘Free Bird.’ But I didn’t quite make it into these bands all the time.”

But that early rejection didn’t stop Johnston from dedicating himself to the craft of songwriting. He obsessively recorded nearly every idea he had.

“If I met anybody or somebody was interested, I’d go home and make up a tape for them. And that’s what I did forever,” Johnston said. “I really felt like I was a star for some reason, because my friends liked the tapes so much. And we would always have a party and pretend that we were on David Letterman and interviewing each other. We were a bunch of crazy people.”

Johnston made those recordings at his parents’ home. In 1981, he released his first proper album, Songs of Pain — a cacophony of found sounds, piano and Johnston’s voice emitting a wavering, yet calculated, stream of consciousness.

His impact stretches far and wide — countless musicians have cited him as an inspiration. To be sure, some of Johnston’s work rubbed off on those who grew up in West Virginia — including one-man folk-punk dynamo J. Marinelli, originally from Morgantown.

“For me, I think that he was really the first musician that I ever got into that kind of showed me that — at the end of the day — it’s the song and just the delivery of the song matters infinitely more than how the song is produced or whether or not it is done in the ‘right way,’” Marinelli said.

Marinelli got the chance to meet Johnston when they performed on the same billing at a music festival in Louisville, Kentucky in 2008. When Johnston left behind an empty bottle of Mountain Dew, Marinelli quickly grabbed it as a souvenir. The Mountain Dew bottle was ultimately gifted to another West Virginia musician, Tyler Grady of the Morgantown pop-rock outfit Goodwolf.

(Johnston wrote a song about Mountain Dew while being treated for mental health disorders at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia.)

Local folklore aside, Marinelli points to the song “Wild West Virginia” as being a key connection between Johnston, his home state and genius-level songwriting.

“It should be associated with the state of West Virginia as much as that damn John Denver song — which is also great, don’t get me wrong,” Marinelli said with a laugh. “But, the first time I ever heard [“Wild West Virginia”] I was just like, ‘Wow! You really got it’ — ‘Crooked politicians, crater bomb roads,’ you know, all that stuff.”

When I spoke to Johnston eight years ago, he told me his fantasy was to attain the same level of fame as The Beatles. He acknowledged his passionate fans who applauded wildly when he would take the stage or finish a song. Even so, he was always aiming for something bigger.

“I’m famous, but I’m still not on the cover of Rolling Stone yet,” Johnston told me. “I mean, I’m not that popular as far as like big time. But that’s what I want to try.”

Johnston’s face never did make it on the cover of Rolling Stone while he was alive. The magazine did report on him from time to time and did offer an obituary upon news of his passing.

More importantly, Johnston did have legions of fans — millions of people who saw the beauty in the simplicity of his songs.

A lot has been written about Johnston’s struggles with mental illness. It’s impossible to find a story that doesn’t mention that part of his life.

But what made Daniel Johnston so great — at least in my mind — had nothing to do with mental illness. In fact, Johnston’s greatness was in spite of it.

He was earnest and warm. Awkward and unpolished, but ultimately sincere.

Daniel Johnston saw the world for what it truly was — people just wanting to feel loved and accepted.

West Virginia-Raised Musician, Artist Daniel Johnston Dead at 58

Musician and artist Daniel Johnston was known for eccentric and sometimes harrowing pop songs colored by childlike innocence and romantic longing. His life and work have been seen as an inspiration to many artists and musicians.

Johnston was found dead at home Wednesday morning at the age of 58. According to a statement from his family, he died of natural causes.

Born in Sacramento, California and raised in New Cumberland, West Virginia, Johnston was attracted early on to the pop sounds of groups like The Beatles. In high school, he began making lo-fi recordings using a piano, a chord organ and microphones running through a boombox.

Johnston briefly attended school at a christian college in Texas before enrolling in an art program at the East Liverpool, Ohio branch of Kent State University.

With a first LP, Songs of Pain, released in 1981, Johnston went on to record and release at least 17 more full-length solo albums — in addition to numerous side projects and collaborations with other artists. His 1983 release, Hi, How Are You? gained worlwide attention when Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was photographed wearing a t-shirt of the album cover.

After some success, Johnston would eventually land full time back in Texas.

His music career and mental health struggles were the subject of the 2006 feature-length documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston. A 2016 graphic novel, The Incantations of Daniel Johnston — written by West Virginia native Scott McClanahan and illustrated by Spanish artist Ricardo Cavolo — outlined a similar narrative.

Johnston’s visual artwork included an iconic frog-like creature known as “Jeremiah the Innocent” and adaptations of comic book characters like Captain America.

A 2004 tribute album featured artists such as Beck, Flaming Lips and Tom Waits.

An extended version of this story is available here.

Families of VA Hospital Homicides Await Answers, Feds Say Investigation at 'Beginning of the End'

Two deaths have been ruled homicides at a Veteran’s Affairs hospital in Clarksburg and an ongoing investigation is leaving families of the victims desperate for answers.

Federal prosecutors say they are in the “beginning of the end” of their work. But the VA and Office of Inspector General have provided few details on how many veterans may have been killed at the facility or what has been done to ensure it won’t happen again. Most of the information that has been made public has come from the families of the victims.

The first confirmed homicide was Army Sgt. Felix McDermott, a Vietnam veteran from Ellenboro, West Virginia.

His family says he happily used the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center facilities about 40 minutes away in Clarksburg. But while being treated for aspiration pneumonia in April of 2018, McDermott died in the VA hospital at the age of 82.

His daughter, Melanie Proctor, said he wasn’t in perfect health but she had expected him to be released back to the nursing home.

“Somebody gave him a shot of insulin — even though he’s not a diabetic, which caused him to pass,” Proctor said. “We thought he had died of natural causes. Only to find out in late August last year when the FBI showed up at my house, that he didn’t. And we have been waiting for answers ever since.”

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin told reporters last week a third body was in the process of being exhumed to determine a cause of death.

Officials at the VA medical center in Clarksburg did not agree to an interview, but did say a person of interest is not a current employee. The facility says it is cooperating with investigators and the Office of Inspector General.

Local Veterans Stunned at Confirmed Homicides

Just a few miles down the road, local veterans were gathered Tuesday night at the VFW Post 573 in downtown Clarksburg. Many there noted that the Louis A. Johnson has a reputation for providing quality care to veterans.

“I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, we’re not safe anywhere.’ You go to the hospital expecting to be helped — not to be killed,” said 68-year-old Vietnam veteran David Barker of Clarksburg.

Barker says he’s there mostly for outpatient treatment and, overall, he says the care there is pretty good. Still, he’s alarmed by what he’s heard.

“It makes me think twice about letting anyone give me a shot of anything,” he said. Unless I know what it is and who it is that’s giving it to me.”

Federal Prosecutor Says Investigation Reaching the ‘Beginning of the End’

U.S. Attorney William Powell says the investigation has been ongoing for “some months” and that he and other officials have been working diligently to wrap up the case.

“If you’re going to categorize it, I would say it’s the beginning of the end as opposed to the beginning of the beginning,” Powell said.

Powell and others can’t say exactly when an indictment might come, but they, too, have acknowledged a person of interest.

For family members of confirmed victims — like Felix McDermott’s daughter Melanie Proctor — she’s calling out a warning to anyone who goes there for treatment.

“I would be asking a lot of questions before I left a loved one there,” Proctor said. “I’d want to know ‘How did you fix this?’ — which I still don’t even know. They say they got safety measures in place. But I don’t know what they are now, even — and I’m involved in it.”

An attorney for McDermott’s family says relatives m of at least five others who died at the Clarksburg VA have contacted him about the suspicious nature of a veteran’s death.

But the Office of Inspector General declined to provide a number of deaths at the facility that are being investigated as potential homicides.

Questions Remain Over Reported Morgantown ICE Operations

Last week, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency conducted operations in the Morgantown area — and possibly elsewhere in the state.

As of now, the details of those operations remain mostly unknown.

During this week’s regular Morgantown City Council meeting, Police Chief Ed Preston briefly outlined how his department was alerted ICE operations were about to take place.

“They gave us notification to local law enforcement as a courtesy only — not just to us, but to West Virginia University, the sheriff’s office and the surrounding areas as well as the Emergency Management Office,” Preston said.

Although city and county law enforcement agencies were notified ahead of the operations, Preston said those agencies did not assist in the operations.

“No personnel from the police department or from any municipal or county law enforcement agency participated in any of their operations as far as I know of — but I know for a fact that nobody from the Morgantown Police Department assisted in any way and no one was present,” Preston said. “The department does not know where they were, nor why they were in any particular areas.”

While questions remain about the specifics of where these operations took place and what charges will be brought against those who were detained, many in the Morgantown area have spoken out against the activity.

Morgantown resident Alissa Ponzurick attended Tuesday’s city council meeting hoping to spur action from local officials.

“They’re being ripped out of their beds at night. These people are kicking in their doors. What are we going to do about it? And I want an answer,” Ponzurick said. “Because if we’re going to stand by idly here as our fellow neighbors are ripped out of their beds at night, and go on as if life just is normal — then I have a real problem living here.”

Officials from ICE have not responded to repeated requests for interviews and have denied permission to interview those detained. In emails with West Virginia Public Broadcasting, they called last week’s activity in the area “routine targeted enforcement operations” but have provided no details on how, when, where or why these operations took place.

But we do know a few details about who was detained and where they’ve been sent. According to information provided by the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, 15 people — most of whom are originally from Mexico — were booked last week on ICE-related charges. We don’t know why they were arrested or where those arrests occurred.

ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System showed on Tuesday that many of them were transferred to a federal detention center in Cambria County, Pennsylvania. By Thursday, that system showed no information on any of those we’ve identified as a detainee.

Joseph Cohen is the director of the ACLU of West Virginia. He and his organization have been following ICE’s recent activity. He expressed some frustration about the lack of information.

“We’re still learning about what happened last week. We’ve been in contact with folks who are in contact with people who’ve been detained by ICE,” Cohen said. “There’s still a lot to learn. I have a lot of questions about what happened last week. But this is an ongoing problem. It’s not just what happened in West Virginia in the last few days.”

But Cohen said that the recent flurry of ICE activity is part of a larger trend here, where “clusters” of operations and arrests occur from time to time.

“ICE operates in West Virginia all the time. All the time. There aren’t great numbers on state-by-state arrest data by ICE. But by the best numbers we can find, West Virginia appears to be — given the tiny population of the state per capita — the place where the highest number of ICE arrests happen in the United States,” Cohen explained.

Cohen says the ACLU of West Virginia ascertained that fact by taking data collected by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and cross-referencing it with an analysis from the Pew Research Center. That analysis shows West Virginia’s undocumented immigrant population is less than 5,000.

With so few undocumented immigrants and ICE operating sercretively and not providing details on the arrests — the reaction to such activity in West Virginia often causes a panic.

Allison Peck is the director of the WVU College of Law’s Immigration Clinic. She said her office has gotten calls about ICE’s recent activity.

“I have also been hearing a lot of concerned members of the community. Some have contacted us, some we’ve heard from by word of mouth,” Preck said. “As a member of the community and as a citizen, I feel concerned that people aren’t confident that they know what their rights, aren’t confident that they know what’s coming.”

Peck says anyone approached by ICE agents does not have to answer questions and can exercise their right to remain silent. She says anyone detained who is afraid of returning to their home country can ask for an asylum review process.

Those who have been in the United States continuously for two years can show documents to an ICE officer to avoid being potentially subject to expedited removal.