On August 14, 1894, entertainer Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith was born at Alderson. At age five, Ada made her stage debut in Chicago, appearing in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. By age 16, she was performing on the vaudeville circuit. Soon afterward, a New York saloon keeper gave her the nickname ‘‘Bricktop’’ for her blazing red hair, unusual for an African-American.
In the 1920s, she was singing and dancing in Paris, where she became friends with composer Cole Porter. Porter supposedly wrote the song “Miss Otis Regrets She’s Unable to Lunch Today’’ for Bricktop. She opened a club in Paris called the Music Box, which was soon succeeded by another club called Bricktop’s.
During the late 1930s, she made radio broadcasts in France but returned to the United States when Nazi Germany began expanding across Europe. Her only recording, ‘‘So Long, Baby,’’ was made with Cy Coleman in 1970, and she continued to perform into her 80s. Her autobiography was published shortly before her death in 1984 at age 89.
Ada “Bricktop” Smith was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2013.
As many West Virginians continue to clean up from last week’s flooding, concerns about theft and looting linger in communities hit hard by the storm.
Homes are being left open to dry and many residents affected by the disaster are staying elsewhere — in shelters or with friends and family. The level of concern varies from town to town and some communities are implementing curfews to stave off the possibility of suspicious activity.
On Thursday night, as a massive storm ravaged many areas of the state, pharmacist Aaron Gwinn sat at home, thinking to himself about the possibility of someone breaking into his business — the Greenbrier Medical Arts Pharmacy, a few miles northeast of downtown Lewisburg. Sometime over the course of Thursday night, with all of the rain coming down and flood waters starting to rise in neighboring communities, Gwinn said someone actually was trying to break in.
“In the wake of all that was taking place, somebody thought that it would be a good opportunity — with the police diverted elsewhere — they could break into the pharmacy with minimal effort and wouldn’t encounter any resistance,” Gwinn said.
Credit Dave Mistich / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Pharmacist Aaron Gwinn speaks to a customer on the phone at the Greenbrier Medical Arts Pharmacy in Lewisburg. He filed a report with local police for an attempted break-in at the store that occurred last Thursday as storms ravaged the area.
When he arrived at the pharmacy Friday morning, a window was broken, but nothing was stolen. Others in the surrounding areas didn’t have the same luck.
Longtime resident of White Sulphur Springs Sadie Fraley said a friend of hers had a stove stolen out of her home over the weekend. Fraley remembers seeing a lot of unfamiliar faces around town.
“It kind of scared me because I was ready to approach them before I called the police and say ‘Hey, if you don’t have business here, you need to move on,’ ” Fraley recalled.
“I’m glad I didn’t. It was about twelve of them. I’d never seen them here. Like I said, I grew up in this town. I own a restaurant in town. I know a lot of people,” she added.
Reports of breaking and entering, theft and looting have led local officials affected by the flood to impose curfews in some communities, including White Sulphur Springs and Alderson. The curfews was implemented via city ordinance. However, officials in both municipalities failed to provide those ordinances when requested.
Judy Hoover has been volunteering her time at the Alderson Community Center, which is now functioning as a shelter and donation center. She says her home was not affected by flooding, but she’s glad there’s a curfew in her hometown.
“Our house is sitting there all day. Of course, it is locked. But, you know, locked doors don’t keep people out. I do know that some other people have been concerned,” Hoover said.
“I don’t think we’ve had any [looting or break-ins] in Alderson this year, which I’m very proud of. It seems that everybody has stuck together. But, it’s still a concern.”
Patrolman Mac Brackenrich, of the Alderson Police Department, has been enforcing the 11 o’clock curfew in the town that’s split between Greenbrier and Monroe counties.
Brackenrich, like many other city officials in Alderson, says the curfew is “out of an abundance of caution” and most everyone is cooperating. Mostly, it’s just a warning. He’ll pull up to teenagers walking around or vehicles on the streets and simply tell them to go home.
But around 11:30 Monday night, Brackenrich wrote his first two citations for residents violating the curfew after stopping a car driving the wrong way down a one-way street.
Credit Dave Mistich / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
A gas station is left vacant on Monday, June 27, 2016 along Riverview Dr. in Alderson, West Virginia. The city imposed a curfew to stave off potential theft.
“I’m going to cite them both for the curfew,” he said as he hopped back into his truck, “just because he was well aware of the curfew and she was well aware of the curfew, too.”
Down Route 60 in Fayette County, Sheriff Steve Kessler confirms his department made one arrest for theft-related crimes following last week’s flood. He says they’ve received other complaints from county residents and is quick to ask those out and about to heed the warning.
“We were just told that they was people coming into the area, sitting on four wheelers, and four wheel drive vehicles cruising through. We pretty much know who lives in those areas, we’ll just stop and check them. If you don’t live there, you don’t belong there,” said Kessler.
In other flood-affected areas, there’s no official count of how many complaints or reports have been filed with law enforcement. Resources are stretched so thin that, in many cases, paperwork has yet to be filed with city or county clerks’ offices.
Pharmacist Aaron Gwinn in Lewisburg says that’s the case with the incident at his store. He feels the attempted break in was an isolated incident, but thinks many similar ones in the area were a matter of survival and not maliciousness. He recounts an incident reported at his church as the storm hit the area.
“In my church that same night, in Harts Run, somebody had broken into the church. However, they were just, obviously, seeking refuge. They used some tablecloths to cover up with and slept through the night, helped themselves to some coffee and that sort of thing—and left twenty dollars into the offering plate and did not destroy anything,” Gwinn said.
“They took good care of the place. No police reports were filed because we were glad they were able to find a dry place to sleep for the night,” he added.
Gwinn, like many others in areas affected by the storm, feels the goodness of the community far outweighs reports of theft or hostility.
However, city officials in White Sulphur Springs say a curfew remains in place indefinitely — at least until a large number of residents are able to return to their homes and recovery efforts aren’t occupying so much of law enforcement’s time. Alderson city officials say Wednesday night marked the final night of the town’s curfew.
“Turn This Town Around” is a unique and groundbreaking project to select two West Virginia communities to receive training, coaching, and technical assistance to help them achieve success in revitalizing their communities.
You are encouraged to vote right now for the two towns from a selection of eight contestants: in the north – Grafton, Hundred, Petersburg, and Rowlesburg; and in the South – Alderson, Hillsboro, Matewan, Pineville.
Lots of folks are asking how the eight “Turn This Town Around” contestants were selected. Most commonly, they ask because they want their town to have a shot at this opportunity.
We think that’s great. We wish we could provide that opportunity to every West Virginia community that steps up.
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Rowlesburg, W.Va.
That being said, by my count there are 149 incorporated municipalities and 2,941 unincorporated communities in the state. In this first round of Turn This Town Around, we have the capacity to devote our resources to two communities.
So how were the eight contestants selected? There were several considerations. We knew we wanted to focus on one northern and one southern community. We thought selecting the two out of a field eight would narrow the focus and increase the competition. So we selected four northern and four southern communities.
Some of the thinking that went into the selection included:
· Where could we really make a visible difference in the course of a year?
· Where we did not already have a strong presence or relationships?
· We wanted towns that represented some geographic diversity.
· Which towns had attracted our attention as communities with potential that hadn’t been realized?
Yes, the selection of the eight was fairly arbitrary.
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Petersburg, W.Va.
But here’s the point: Turn This Town Around is an experiment – a very exciting one that we believe has huge potential – but an experiment nonetheless. This is its pilot year. This will be a great learning experience for all of us, one that we hope will help us improve and expand the process in coming years.
And unlike some community development initiatives, Turn This Town Around will be very well documented. Tools, tips and techniques will be openly shared. The lessons learned will be made available to any West Virginia community that is interested.
If you want to revitalize your community, but weren’t selected for Turn This Town Around, pay attention, because you can do this at home! Learn from Turn This Town Around and apply those lessons to your town!
While the Hub and the many service providers in the WV Community Development Network will be providing whatever assistance we can to the Turn This Town Around communities, it is a central principle of community improvement that the community must determine and drive the process. Mobilize your community and get to work – don’t wait for us!
We’re exploring ideas about how we might open the process up next year to give your community an opportunity to join the Turn This Town Around campaign. Stay tuned!
It starts with YOUR vote – you get to choose which two towns (out of eight candidates) will be part of this effort. Then, the community will take over. They’ll receive training and other resources to complete a project that builds on their efforts to revitalize their town.
As publisher Nikki Bowman of New South Media wrote in “West Virginia Focus” magazine:
The two towns you select will become living laboratories. Our goal is to help ignite change, to rally the community with a set of goals and deliverables, to showcase the successes and failures, to identify challenges, and to figure out what works and what doesn’t. The West Virginia Community Development Hub, a leader in community development, will coordinate the effort. The Hub will connect the two communities with training on civic engagement, leadership development, and project management; provide a community performance coach; help them assess their strengths and vulnerabilities; develop a community vision and plan; and link them to technical assistance providers in key areas like civic engagement, the local food movement, community sustainability, and organizational development.
Credit New South Media
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Hundred, W.Va.
You can (and should) read more of Bowman’s article here, which includes detailed information about each town.
You can check the current voting standing on the West Virginia Focus Twitter and Facebook pages.
