Roxy Todd, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

New Housing Complex Aims To Bring More Teachers To McDowell: Is It Working?

As part of an effort to encourage more teachers to live in McDowell County, a nonprofit called Reconnecting McDowell began envisioning a housing project in downtown Welch in 2011. The Renaissance Village is now officially complete, with 20 apartments in a 4-story building in downtown Welch. Six of 20 apartments are still available. So far, no teachers have moved in.

Renee Bolden’s mother is one of the apartment’s new tenants. Her mom, a retired nurse who’s spent most of her life in a remote community in another part of this county, was looking for a place where she wouldn’t have to do any maintenance because she’s getting older. “She’s here in the center of everything that pretty much happens in McDowell County,” Bolden said.

Other renters in the building work as an ambulance driver, a coal miner, and a Mormon missionary leader.

Kitchen inside one of the apartments at Renassaince Village.

The apartments cost $675 for a one bedroom, $825 for a two bedroom. For context, here in McDowell, you can easily buy a house for $50,000.

Still, apartments in the Renaissance Village are low maintenance, and come with appliances like a washer and dryer. “All of the units come with the utilities, dishwasher, stove, oven, [and] refrigerator. The kitchen [is] ready to roll when you when you come in,” explained Mark Kemp, a grants manager for Reconnecting McDowell. He also lives here, and he said one of the conveniences of living in Renaissance Village is being right in the heart of downtown Welch, nestled up beside the local movie theater.

Down the street from the building, there’s an ATV shop, and a giant and unused parking garage – a symbol of times gone by, when in the 1950s and 60s, Welch was a bustling city. People here talk nostalgically of the days when you could shop in Welch. Today, most of the old stores are gone, as are big chain stores like Walmart.

Without those amenities, it can be tough to attract workers to live here, including teachers.

“One of the issues in McDowell County is more than half the teachers live somewhere else outside of this county,” said Bob Brown, an organizer with the American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, and directs the union’s nonprofit, Reconnecting McDowell.

“And it’s really important, we think, ideally, for teachers to live in the communities where they work,” he said.

Brown said he believes Renaissance Village will attract teachers and businesses. A coffee shop, a gift store, and a Brazilian restaurant on the building’s first floor are planned for the first floor.

Bob Brown is an organizer with the American Federation of Teachers and directs the union’s nonprofit, Reconnecting McDowell. He’s leading a tour of the Renaissance Village in downtown Welch and is standing inside the building’s meeting room.

The idea for Renaissance Village started back in 2011 when Gayle Manchin was the president of the West Virginia Board of Education. She talked AFT president Randi Weingarten into partnering, and together they formed Reconnecting McDowell. Brown admits that they didn’t realize it would take so long to build Renaissance Village.

“I don’t know that we’d have done anything any differently. It just took a lot longer than we had hoped,” he said.

The first delays hit after they bought a building in downtown Welch, and realized there were extensive issues with lead paint, asbestos and mold. The basement was also damaged from past floods. They decided it would cost less to simply tear the building down. Rebuilding ended up costing $9 million.

They got federal and state grants. AFT chipped in $2 million. People from all over the country donated money to the project, many of them members of various unions. Finally, in 2018, seven years after Reconnecting McDowell was created, they started breaking ground on the Renaissance Village.

Brown said he’ll never forget a sight in the first days as they began construction, when several elderly people brought lawn chairs to watch the building. “This is the first multi-story new building in Welch in over 50 years,” Brown said. “So it brought a sense of excitement.”

They finished half the building in 2020, and tenants began moving in. They finished the final apartments this past December. They have had interest from several teachers, and hope that by summer or fall of this year, they will have teachers move in.

“I guarantee you could go walk the streets today and you’ll find some people who are skeptical of our work and see us as outsiders,” Brown said. “That’s okay. We know that we made a difference. And we will continue to make a difference.”

Downtown Welch, in McDowell County, where a new 4-story apartment complex was recently built by Reconnecting McDowell, as part of an ongoing effort to attract more teachers to live in the county.

Back out in the parking lot, Renee Bolden carried an armful of boxes for her mother’s apartment. Her middle school-aged daughter was excited to be able to stay with her grandmother in downtown Welch, because she’ll be closer to her school, and might be able to do more extra curricular activities.

Like many people in McDowell, Bolden remembers when this city was packed with people.

“I want that for our home again, I want that for my child,” she said. “I want that for all of our children here to, you know, to love home and not feel like they have to leave.”

One housing project can’t fix all McDowell County’s problems. But maybe, it can help more people feel like a part of the community. And, if more people stay, maybe teachers will stay too.

Crystal Good On Returning Home To Launch the Publication ‘Black By God’

The first time Crystal Good left West Virginia—like, really left—she was 13. Up until then, apart from trips to Myrtle Beach for vacations, she really hadn’t spent time outside of her small town in Kanawha County.

“Growing up in St. Albans was a safe place,” Good said.

But the only markers she had for success and beauty were the homecoming queens, the blonde, blue-eyed beauties. She wasn’t that; she’s Black, and said she felt different from most of the other teenagers.

Then, Good won a modeling contest, and that took her to New York City to sign with an agency. At age 13, she worked as a model with Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein

She says the trip opened her eyes to a totally different world, and a new perception of herself.

“What happened to me in that experience was that my idea of beauty shifted,” Good said. “I recognized that beauty was not just my homecoming queen.” Good concluded “that I was a pretty girl too.”

That experience in New York gave Good a new sense of a world, bigger than her hometown.

“I think St Albans gave me a way to look at the world, and then recognize that it was a very small perspective. It was a valid perspective, but a very small perspective. And I think that’s the beauty of hometowns. Is that once you sort of experience a bigger world, you can cherish the things that were special and different.”

Good returned from that modeling trip in New York, with big dreams. She wanted to continue her modeling career and also become a writer. As a teenager, she even considered trying to raise money to purchase the last Black newspaper in West Virginia, The Beacon Digest, which went out of business in the mid-1990s.

But it took leaving again, three decades later at age 45, to set her back on a path to fulfilling that dream of running a Black paper.

This time, she left for California. She moved to Los Angeles in December 2019. Good said her time there was affirming.

“I was in a space where people believed in creativity and creative ideas. I needed that energy. I needed to know that things were happening in the world, and that I could be a part of it with my story.”

Good had felt stuck, creatively, while living in West Virginia. And staying in California for a short time gave her the boost she needed. But she felt pulled back. And she had a plan: to launch a newspaper called Black By God, The West Virginian. It’s the only newspaper in the state that intentionally centers non-white voices.

“I know that this is needed, because how many black journalists are working in West Virginia right now?” she said.

Good only knows of one fulltime Black journalist currently working in the state. And she hopes that eventually, Black By God will grow so she can hire more writers and editors.

Her second print issue, which was published in early December, features stories about Black culture, health care and history. There are also white voices speaking to anti-racism in the papers’ opinion section.

The past several weeks she’s been distributing the free papers across the state, hand-delivering them to coffee shops, restaurants and hair salons.

“I have 1,000 pounds of Black By God newspapers in my car,” Good said, laughing. “Like, this is like nuts, right? But I just believe in it.”

Crystal Good distributing her paper ‘Black By God’ shortly after she returned to West Virginia in 2021.

The process of traveling throughout West Virginia, meeting people she’s never met, has been an eye opening experience for Good, because it’s made her realize that there are some places where her paper isn’t welcome. And that’s made her question, is she welcome, too? It’s also brought her situations that have made her afraid, like one day when she was pulled over by the police when she was traveling through Beckley.

“I got pulled over by the police because I have California plates. And that was probably one of my scariest West Virginia moments because I didn’t know why I was being pulled over.”

She said she wasn’t aware, but her license plates were expired. Pretty soon into her conversation with the police, they continued to ask her the same question, she said.

“They wanted to know if I was from here, and thank goodness I have a West Virginia I.D. And they wanted to know, they must have asked me four times. ‘Do you like it better here? Or do you like it better [in California]?’ And my answer was, ‘Officer, I like it better here.’ Now, there’s some truth to that.”

But there was another truth—that there are things about California she likes better. But she stuck with the answer she decided would probably get her on the right side of the police.

“And so that gave me perspective about where Black By God can go and can’t go because I was nervous.”

Good said some people at coffee shops or gas stations have refused to carry her paper. Other times, if she sees a lot of Confederate flags, she just keeps on driving. She said this saddens her, that this place she loves, and wants to make home, doesn’t feel fully welcoming at times.

She knows it’s a gamble to launch a business in the midst of a pandemic, not to mention a media project at a time when newsrooms across the country are collapsing. But she feels like it’s important, something she has to do.

“Success for me is 10 years from now. I’ve got a whole bunch of emails saying, ‘I wrote my first article for Black By God.’ ‘I made my first podcast for Black By God.’ ‘I had my first paper route with Black By God.’ You know, I want to be that catalyst.”

Good wants to see her publication become successful. And while she’s not 100 percent sure she’ll stay in the state—and admits there is a lot about it that frustrates her—it’s where she calls home. And always will. Good publishes her third issue of Black By God in Spring 2022.

W.Va. Native Bridges Country Music With Orchestral Arrangements

West Virginia native Luke Frazier is the founder and music director of the American Pops Orchestra. PBS recently filmed an hour-long program called “One Voice, The Songs We Share,” which features the American Pops Orchestra performing in Luke’s home state. Reporter-producer Roxy Todd spoke with Frazier about how his childhood in the Mountain State helped shape his musical abilities.

***Editor’s Note: The following has been lightly edited for clarity.

Todd: Growing up in West Virginia, what was your first exposure to music?

Frazier: My first exposure to music really was in church. And I always grew up wanting to be in the choir or play the piano. And it wasn’t until I was about eight years old that I agreed to take piano lessons. And a lot of that also was because of my elementary school music teacher in Lubec, West Virginia [in Wood County]. She would play for our class, and also my first grade teacher would play piano in class. So I was surrounded from a very young age by public school teachers and church musicians that really got me excited about music.

Luke Frazier conducts the American Pops Orchestra in a performance recorded at the Marinoff Theatre on the campus of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Frazier: For me, something I learned very young is that music is about connecting people, whether it be the students in my class, whether it be the congregation, whether it be my fellow scouts. My scout troop music always brought people together. And no matter what I do, that is the lens I look at it through. When I’m picking repertoire, I’m thinking about what do people want to hear? What would I love to share with them that maybe they’ve never heard before? And what are pieces of music that are going to start conversations? That’s the way I look at everything. So no matter whether it’s a big famous celebrity, or whether it’s a kid straight out of college that we’re giving their first chance to perform. It’s always through a lens of connecting people.

And the other thing I firmly believe is that if an orchestra or any ensemble is not as passionate about connecting with the audience, as they are as passionate about making the music, then that’s a critical gap. And so whenever I work with an orchestra, whenever I put together a group, I always want to make sure that that passion to be with the audience and to have a sense of serving the audience, is there at all times.

Opera singer Amber Merritt performing with the American Pops Orchestra in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Todd: Can you talk a little bit about the mission of the American Pops Orchestra and how you feel like it bridges music to audiences?

Frazier: I started the orchestra six years ago, and I started the orchestra for a couple reasons. One, I saw that orchestra audiences were in decline, which is no mystery to most listeners out there. And unfortunately, that’s the case all across the country. The numbers have not been steadily going up in years and years on the whole. And so that was concern No. 1, as someone who cares deeply about orchestra and orchestral music.

The other thing that was critical to me is that so much music I find is getting lost. And it’s not just popular music. Yes, we’re called the American Pops Orchestra. And we spend a lot of our time on classic American popular repertoire. But we also play a lot of classical music as well.

I wanted to create an orchestra that could honor all types of music. And again, make sure that we keep certain types of music alive– music that is quickly becoming forgotten. Recently, I was guest-conducting a high school orchestra and a series of master classes. And I was talking about a piece of music by Ella Fitzgerald. And would you believe that out of 90 high school students in that orchestra, not a single one when asked if they knew who Ella Fitzgerald was, could say that they knew. And we’re not talking about, you know, Johann Sebastian Bach and knowing the music of Bach, we’re talking about an artist who was alive not that long ago, and created music that their parents and grandparents listened to, and we still hear all the time in our regular life, but it’s, it’s getting lost. And so the players in the orchestra and from my place in the position of selecting the music and designing the programs, I put all of this thought into these concerts. And that’s how I choose what I do. And that’s what fires me up every day to get this music back into people’s ears, and to get them excited about it.

Todd: Can you talk about a particular song that’s featured in the PBS special that you think resonates with listeners of all ages?

Frazier: Absolutely. In the “American Roots” episode we open with an artist I’ve always wanted to work with. Her name is Jacqueline Schwab. Most people would know her from the music she did for the Ken Burns’ documentaries on PBS, “The Civil War,” “Mark Twain,” “Baseball.” She’s the beautiful piano music in the background.

Jacqueline Schwab performs “Danny Boy” in “One Voice-American Roots.”

And so for the concert we open American Roots, by the way, filmed in West Virginia over in Shepherdstown. Shepherd University, because how appropriate to have a show about American Roots and to have it actually happen in the state where my roots are, in my home state of West Virginia. So we open with music of a lot of the early settlers of West Virginia, music of that heritage and tradition, with the piece “Danny Boy.” It’s a beautiful piece that’s connected so many people through so many generations. And I can’t wait for everybody to hear it in that episode with Jacqueline playing so beautifully with the orchestra.

Todd: Well, Luke, thank you so much and I look forward to watching more of this.

Frazier: Roxy I’m so glad to be on and thanks so much.

You can watch the hourlong program Frazier conducted on PBS Passport. The program is called “One Voice, The Songs We Share,” featuring the American Pops Orchestra.

New W.Va. Bigfoot Museum Highlights A Local Take On The Mountain State’s Sasquatch

Central West Virginia has a new monster museum which pays tribute to Bigfoot, and what could be lurking in West Virginia’s forests.

The museum in Sutton is small, located in the back of a store that sells knick-knacks and handmade items by local artisans.

The co-owner of the West Virginia Bigfoot Museum, Laurell Petolicchio, wore a soft cream-colored sweater as she meandered through aisles of kids’ puzzles and wooden, hand-carved toys. She then headed into the new museum, where a six-foot tall, wooden sculpture stood prominently. It looked like a bearded man with long hair. Petolicchio said the sculpture is what kicked off the idea for the museum.

“He brought it in and I said, ‘Oh, you brought me Bigfoot?’ And he said, ‘No. Those are out West. And they’re mean.’” His opinion of Bigfoot being “mean” is something that is disputed among some Bigfoot researchers.

Unlike the stories of those grumpier Sasquatch, the woodcarver, (who Petolicchio said prefers to remain anonymous) had based his statue on a local version of Bigfoot. “We have the Old Man of the Mountain. And we have a lot of them here. And they’re not mean.’”

Hand-carved wooden bench depicting two Bigfoot.

The wood carver wasn’t the only person who told Petolicchio the local name for Bigfoot. Others in Braxton County referred to “The Old Men Of The Mountain” to describe giant primate-looking creatures they claim to have spotted in the area. These Bigfoot sightings in Braxton County, according to Petolicchio, include no instances of violence.

The worst story she’s heard is they threw rocks, but didn’t hit anyone. She said she thinks they’re pretty tame and have just kind of figured out how to live side by side with people in a pretty remote part of Appalachia.

“And the fact that they’re throwing large rocks as something to scare you away but not hitting you says a lot about what their intent is,” Petolicchio said. “They just want you to go away and leave them alone.”

Petolicchio didn’t believe in Bigfoot, until recently. She changed her tune after hearing one story after the other about the “old men of the mountain.”

“I’ve had people tell me that they have them living on their land like they have for generations. One guy, he said he has eight of them. And they’ve been on his land since he knows of, since he was 16. And he’s in his 60s.”

Even though she’s never seen Bigfoot herself, Petolicchio said she believes these sightings are true because she’s heard so many similar stories from people she respects.

According to Petolicchio, there are about a hundred sightings reported in West Virginia. Petolicchio’s museum even has some casts of footprints that are supposedly made by Bigfoot.

When asked if there are theories that they’re just people that happen to take up residence in the woods and go wild, Petolicchio said no. “Even the locals, they call it the old man of the mountain but they don’t believe that it is a man. They think it’s an animal like a bear. They keep saying that. They said it’s not a bear, but it’s something different and it walks on two legs and it acts man-like, but not man-like enough.”

A lot of the sightings she’s heard of are around Sutton Lake. Some people have seen a big creature swimming in the lake, even swimming under a canoe while a family was out fishing.

Petolicchio and her husband celebrated the launch of the museum back in June with a Bigfoot festival in downtown Sutton. The local library got involved and kids made crafts. Well-known Bigfoot researchers also spoke. They’ve had a steady stream of people stop by the museum since then, and Petolicchio said a few tourists from Europe have even dropped by.

“I think everyone relates to Bigfoot a little bit, because it’s a mystery that has yet to be solved,” Petolicchio said. “And I think as human beings, we just love the unknown. But also it draws from all walks of society, because, you know, real men’s men can be into Bigfoot, and be looking for it.”

That search can get people to explore West Virginia’s forests and connect with its untamed wilderness. “And I think there’s also like a sense of freedom about Bigfoot, just the thought that something could still be surviving, even in North America, where there’s so much commercialization built up. I think, it just really excites the imagination.”

Petolicchio and her husband are planning a series of Bigfoot-themed events, including a bigger festival next summer when they celebrate the one-year anniversary of their museum.

Thousands Of Children Set To Age Out Of Foster Care As Moratorium Lifts Sept. 30

Last year, the federal government put a temporary moratorium against pushing foster children out of care, after their 18th birthday. This moratorium expires on September 30, leaving thousands of children across the country without support.

Teshiana Smith-Nicols was 19 years old when she aged out of foster care.

“I feel as though the system could help more teens aging out of foster care by really securing more safety nets,” Smith-Nicols said.

Foster teens like her have one choice if they want to continue receiving assistance from the government– they must enroll in college or in a training program. Last December, that changed, when the federal government waived these requirements, as part of Congress’ Consolidated Appropriations Act.

But the moratorium expires on Sept. 30, leaving thousands of children across the country without support. The state department of Health and Human Resources says 275 teenagers in West Virginia will be affected.

Foster teens who are pushed out of the system without support often become homeless.

Smith-Nicols was in college when she aged out of foster care, and though she continued to receive aid for college, she has been financially independent for two years. At age 21, she will graduate this December with a bachelor’s degree in social work.

She’s volunteering as an advocate to help make changes to how the government deals with foster children as they approach their 18th birthday, like help with housing assistance and health care.

“Improving access to resources would really be a major change. This will help them to feel as though they have those connections, those lifelong partnerships, those lifelong people in their life,” she said.

Lawmakers in Washington introduced a bipartisan bill in May 2020 to extend and expand support for foster youth. This bill would provide more funding for foster children who are aging out of care, and allow more flexibility for youth to receive emergency resources until they turn 25.

“I believe that in order to create change, there really has to be an open ear to hearing what foster youth and those who have aged out have to say,” Smith-Nicols said. “As a representative, and a person who has experienced foster care, I truly believe that it is within the system’s ability to really try to implement change.”

Lessons For W.Va. In West Germany's Transition From Coal

The Mountain State isn’t the only place to reckon with the difficulty of transitioning away from a coal economy into something different.

West Germany emerged from World War II as one of the leading coal and steel producers in the world. Then, in the 1960s, oil emerged as a competitor, and the country found itself in the midst of an economic crisis. But there, the emergency prompted a strange and unusual alliance.

“The state government, the regional governments, the trade unions, and the employers, the industrialists, sat together and tried to find solutions to the problem,” said Stefan Moitra, historian at the German Mining Museum in Bochum in the Ruhr Valley — a densely populated valley in West Germany that’s home to five million people.

On the one hand, the coal employers were motivated to cooperate by their revenue losses. “On the other hand,” Moitra said, “it was in the interest of, obviously, the workers but also of the state to have one of the major industrial regions not falling into the darkness.”

Miners protest against the threat of mass closure in 1997.

This coalition of stakeholders eventually settled on a surprising idea — they agreed to shrink the coal industry. They merged all the coal companies into one corporation, called “RAG Aktiengesellschaft,” formerly known as Ruhrkohle AG. And the government poured lots of money into helping miners retire early. They invested in emerging industries, like auto manufacturing and tourism, to diversify the area’s economy.

They also built universities.

“Until the 1960s, there was no major university in the Ruhr. Today the universities in the Ruhr are one of the major employers,” Moitra said.

It wasn’t easy, but West Germany survived the contraction of coal and steel jobs. Then in the 1990s, the coal industry that was left declined even worse. And once again the coal companies, the government, and the unions sat down and worked out a plan to completely phase out of coal mining by 2018.

Sure enough, three years ago, the last mine in the Ruhr region, and the last “black mine” in Germany, closed.

It wasn’t a perfect solution. The Ruhr area has still faced high unemployment at times.

But the earlier transition efforts in the 1960s made this latest shift to close the mines much easier.

No Unified Plan For Appalachia

West Virginia’s economic future may hinge on what leaders do in the next few years to plan for the next 50.

But politics in the United States are different than in Europe. And when people talk about economic diversification in coal country, there isn’t a clear path forward. Should such an effort be funded by the federal or state government? Or, by private investment?

Earlier this year, West Virginia Del. Ed Evans, D-McDowell, pleaded with his colleagues in the House of Delegates to plan for a transition away from coal.

Delegate Ed Evans is a state lawmaker from McDowell County

“We’ve closed Walmart. We’ve closed Magic Mart. We’ve closed everything. Y’all have no idea what my people go through,” Evans said in a speech on the House floor.

In the 1950s, his county was booming economically, fueled by coal jobs. Now, McDowell County is filled with ghost towns and ranks as one of the poorest in the country.

“I’ve asked for help many times on this floor. What have I got? Failing to plan is failing to plan,” Evans said, urging fellow lawmakers to invest a chunk of the state’s federal COVID-19 aid into helping coal communities plan for an economic comeback.

His request was denied.

How Pittsburgh Dealt With Collapse Of Steel Jobs

One way to examine this issue is by looking at neighbors to the north.

In Pittsburgh, the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s prompted existing businesses to retool for a new reality. But it took decades. Economists predicted the decline all the way back in the 1950s, but their warnings were ignored. And the larger companies were the slowest to adjust, said Allen Dieterich-Ward, professor of history at Shippensburg University and author of “Beyond Rust: Metropolitan Pittsburgh and the Fate of Industrial America.”

“The bureaucracies that develop in large corporations are not known for their flexibility and their ability to quickly adapt to new situations,” said Dieterich-Ward.

Smaller companies are more adaptable, and they were a big part of Pittsburgh’s renewal. Aided by lots of government funding, as well as help from philanthropic organizations, entrepreneurs created smaller start-up industries in tech, the arts, and restoration of the city’s historic resources.

“Pittsburgh really [became] a laboratory for what and how to save the past in a way that allows it to be integrated into the future,” Dieterich-Ward said.

Some businesses in West Virginia already are reinventing and reimagining themselves, according to Derek Scarbro, business development director at the Robert C. Byrd Institute at Marshall University in Huntington.

“Companies are definitely more and more interested in learning how they can broaden their base,” Scarbro said.

An employee with Vintec Manufacturing creates a camera mount, using a laser cutter at the Robert C. Byrd Institute in Huntington, West Virgnia.. The company, which used to primarily work with the coal mining industry, is pivoting to now sell outdoor cameras.

The RCBI opened 31 years ago with funding from the Department of Defense to assist defense contractors in the region, and to support workforce needs for advanced manufacturing.

Today, it works with large scale businesses, as well as small entrepreneurs. Business owners can use 3D printing and other machines at the center to help revamp their business.

A mining equipment company based in Nicolas County uses the equipment to make mounts for outdoor cameras. “And they’re selling them online and they have done extremely well with that,” said Scarbro. “Talk about a pivot, going from mining equipment servicing to outdoor cameras.”

These are small glimmers of signs that entrepreneurs are moving towards retooling. But many are still reluctant, Scarbro said.

Attracting Investors

Avinandan Mukherjee, interim provost at Marshall University, said he sees an increasing number of venture capitalists looking to Appalachia to invest. “And there is a lot of interest in our part of the country in terms of what these ideas are, and which ones can win.”

When West Virginia Public Broadcasting interviewed Mukherjee in July, he pointed to a company called App Harvest, which specializes in growing hydroponic vegetables on former strip mines and has attracted investors from all over the country. A month after the interview, AppHarvest reported a net loss of $32 million in its second quarter. Following this announcement, stocks in the company plummeted.

A farm worker at a hydroponic tomato farm in Kentucky, operated by AppHarvest

West Virginia also falls behind in other aspects of infrastructure, including roads and bridges. One national study gave the state a D. A few communities, like Keystone and Northfork, in McDowell County, even lack access to potable water.

Mukherjee also mentioned Ascend West Virginia as an effort that could have lasting impacts. The program offers virtual workers $12,000 to relocate to West Virginia. About 7,500 people applied to the program this year, and 53 were selected.

Over the next 20 years, Mukherjee said he expects West Virginia to see an increase in virtual jobs like cyber security and software engineering.

Employers are already hiring in these sectors, said Natalie Roper, executive director for Generation West Virginia. But “very often they have job openings and are struggling to get qualified applicants.”

When Roper’s organization created a fellowship program to match qualified employees with employers, half of the jobs were in software development, and most were virtual. That poses a problem in some areas of West Virginia, where there is a lack of high-speed broadband.

According to the West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council, the Mountain State ranks third-lowest for broadband access, and 30 percent of rural residents are without an internet connection in their homes.

A Bottom-Up Approach

West Virginia also falls behind in other aspects of infrastructure, including roads and bridges. One national study gave the state a ‘D.’ A few communities, like Keystone and Northfork in McDowell County, even lack access to potable water.

Priya Bascaran, assistant professor of law at American University and director of the school’s Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, said she thinks that without these essentials in place, the state won’t be able to keep people from fleeing.

“If we give them an employable skill, and they don’t have good, safe water, or a decent road, of course, they’re going to take this skill and leave town,” Bascaran said.

Bascaran has worked with communities across the country that are dealing with a hollowing out of jobs, and people.

She said leaders often neglect to ask people what they actually need and want.

“And when you turn that conversation internally, you really see that, maybe, what people really want is a grocery store,” Bascaran said.

She wonders if helping people get grocery stores, or better water infrastructure, could be where economic development begins.

“What if instead of training people to be coders, we trained people to be wastewater engineers, or water system operators,” Bascaran said. “Because there’s a real need for that in West Virginia and greater Appalachia.”

Not Enough Investment In Appalachia

Jim King is the president and chief executive of Fahe, a network of more than 50 nonprofits that funds about $330 million each year in projects throughout Appalachia. But he says much more investment is needed, and he adds that philanthropy and other institutions of wealth lag behind.

“There is a historic disinvestment in West Virginia and Appalachia,” King said. “And not only was the coal taken out, but the wealth went with it. And other parts of the country benefited.”

King estimates that it would take nearly a billion dollars a year just to get West Virginia at the same economic playing field as the rest of the country.

Lavender growing in Boone County W.Va. in 2018 on top of a reclaimed strip mine, as part of a grant funded project to train people to become lavender farmers. Follow up reporting by West Virginia Public Broadcasting found that the project did not result in permanent job creation.

Jobs In Mine Land Cleanup

The coal industry in West Virginia has also left behind thousands of acres of land in need of reclamation. In Germany, years of ongoing work to undo environmental damage, and infrastructure decay, have provided needed jobs, said Christian Wicke, assistant professor in political history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Wicke specializes in communities that have moved away from an industrialized economy, like in the Ruhr region of Germany.

“You have to imagine the Ruhr region as is hollowed out like Swiss cheese with lots of mines,” he said. “And it’s incredibly difficult to organize a water system.”

Wicke helped edit a book with Stefan Berger called “Industrial Heritage and Regional Identities,” which explores the connections that heritage has with regional identities.

Wicke said Germany hasn’t buried its coal and steel history. In fact, they’ve built museums about it. Artists have built steel statues on former mining sites, that now attract millions of tourists a year.

“One might argue if you have a good job that the region is more livable than ever before,” Wicke said.

Back at the museum of mining, Moitra, the historian, said that some of the older miners in West Germany say they miss what mining was.

“But they all they are also very aware the times are changing,” Moitra said. “What many find important is that they can be sure that their kids and their grandkids can work and live without having to move away.”

Those words ring true in Appalachia as well, where many worry about sustaining the next generation.

The losses in both places go deeper than economics. Cultural identities are deeply woven into the fabric of societies in places that have predominantly been fueled by coal. Finding new realities and retooling the economic landscape means these cultural ties also have to be reimagined.

“One might argue if you have a good job that the region is more livable than ever before,” Wicke said.

Back at the museum of mining, Moitra, the historian, said that some of the older miners in West Germany say they miss what mining was.

“But they are also very aware the times are changing,” Moitra said. “What many find important is that they can be sure that their kids and their grandkids can work and live without having to move away.”

The front of a small mine in Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany, in the early 1980s.

A former miner in the Ruhr region of West Germany told historian Moitra in 2017: “You cannot turn everything into a museum, that’s for sure.”

Said Gottfried Clever, who began working in the coal industry in 1977: “In the beginning we joked with bitter irony: ‘Well, we can create new jobs if we travel the Ruhr region as museum miners. So we’ll all be a museum ourselves. And people can visit us as a vanished reality.’”

Clever worked in several coal mines in the Ruhr, including the Walsum colliery in Duisburg, Consolidation and Hugo in Gelsenkirchen, and Ewald in Herten.

As in Germany it will probably take many decades, or even generations, for Appalachia to get through this transition to the other side — and what that other side looks like is still unknown. But what’s certain is that planning for that future will probably help the state have a better outcome.

In 1986, the city of Essen in West Germany closed its last mine.

Now, 35 years later, this region has a labor participation rate of 71 percent, more than 25 percent higher than West Virginia’s workforce rate of 55.2 percent, the lowest in the United States.

The highest number of employed people in Essen today work in the service sector, followed by manufacturing, forestry and agriculture.

If people in West Virginia decide to follow Germany’s lead, it’ll mean those from different industries and leadership roles agree on a plan. Most importantly, they’ll have to figure out a way to support coal miners, and their families, in the years to come.

Tom Hansell from the After Coal project and West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s David Adkins contributed to this report.