Multiple fire departments in Raleigh County responded just after 9 p.m. Sunday night to a structure fire at what was once the home of former governor Hulett Smith.
Robbie Bailey, chief deputy state fire marshal, told West Virginia Public Broadcasting that an investigation is underway but still in the very early stages.
Bailey said the structure is just outside of the Beckley city limits. It was unoccupied and known to have issues with vandalism and squatting. He described the damage as “a total loss.”
The house is currently owned by Gov. Jim Justice’s family.
Smith was born and raised in Beckley and served one term as West Virginia’s governor from 1965 to 1969. He spent much of his life before and after his term in the Beckley area where his father, Joe L. Smith, served as mayor.
Curtis Tate spoke to David Wohl, who at the time was an acting teacher at West Virginia State and asked Jones to come speak to his students.
Renowned actor James Earl Jones died earlier this month at age 93. Jones was part of the cast of the 1987 John Sayles film “Matewan,” which was shot in Thurmond, West Virginia.
Curtis Tate spoke to David Wohl, who at the time was an acting teacher at West Virginia State and asked Jones to come speak to his students.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tate: Why did James Earl Jones come to West Virginia to be in Matewan?
Wohl: I think he chose the film because it was just an interesting acting choice for him. And I mean, Sayles was really lucky to get him at that point. But when you think about it, he had done the voice of (Darth) Vader in ‘Star Wars.’ He worked steadily, but he wasn’t a movie star.
His main work was in theater, in ensemble work especially. And he still continued to act on Broadway and in smaller plays. The first time I saw him was in a tiny play off Broadway. And then I saw him in ‘The Great White Hope,’ which was the show that won him the Tony Award for Best Actor when he was fairly young. This would have been the ’60s, I think, and so he’s not the star, like a Brad Pitt. He was in a lot of independent films, and he wasn’t a leading man at that point. He was an ensemble player, a character actor, and he knew that. So he chose projects that he thought were meaningful to him, and that’s one of the things I really respected about him, about his acting, and about the projects that he chose. So I think it spoke to him.
Tate: How did you get Jones to come speak to your students?
Wohl: So we had some faculty, we had students appear in the film. We’d been trying to get James Earl Jones as a speaker at State for years, and had no luck. Just on a whim, I knew the casting director [who] told me where they were staying, which is one of the motels in Beckley, the cast while they were down there, Econo Lodge, or one of the cheap motels that was out there.
Yeah, and I called a couple of times and just asked to speak to him, and sort of luckily, he actually answered the phone. Before he hung up, I said, ‘Hey, I’m a theater instructor at West Virginia State. It’s a historically black college. We’d love to have you come up for a day. I can give, I can give you probably, you know, 500 bucks or 1,000 bucks, and pick you up and bring you to campus.’ And he said, ‘I don’t know what the shooting schedule is going to be, but I’d love to do it.’ And I said, ‘Great.’ And so we traded phone calls back and forth, and when we scheduled one day and they had a shoot, he was called for that day. We couldn’t do it.
At the last minute, he said, ‘I’m free. Can someone come get me?’ I said, ‘I will send a student out and bring you to campus.’ Which I did. And I don’t even remember what month it was. I think it was winter, January, February. And I happened to be teaching my acting class that day at the fine arts building. He came in around 9 o’clock – I think my class was 9:30 – I introduced myself, and he sat down with the class for an hour and a half and talked about his experience and his career and acting tips. And he was just marvelous, just wonderful.
Tate: The film got many critical accolades, but few awards. Why?
Wohl: Because it’s not a studio film. They couldn’t publicize it. They couldn’t release it widely. It’s one of the difficulties that independent filmmakers have. Unless it’s a Marvel film, it’s tough, unless you’ve got backing. A lot of these films have gotten critically acclaimed, but they don’t make money, in terms of how much money you’re going to put up. They’ve got to do it on the cheap. Critically acclaimed doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful at the box office, you know? It’s not a feel-good film. It’s got a story. It’s slow in developing. The characters are really interesting, but it’s not an action film. It’s not a comedy, it’s not monsters, and so it’s always going to have a small audience, and that’s one of the difficulties in independent filmmaking.
Tate: One of the themes of the film that resonates today is that the union movement in the coalfields was a multiracial coalition. Whereas the coal companies tried to use racial differences as a wedge between workers to discourage them from forming the union.
Wohl: That’s one of the basic tenets of it. You got the Italians who settled in southern West Virginia who came over to work in the mines. You had the blacks, and then you had the poor whites. I think it was pretty accurate in terms of those sort of disparate communities and the union sort of bringing it together. I think that was one of the big messages that Sayles wanted to get across in the film by having these separate, identifiable communities, and then the whole idea of the union, then bringing it together in terms of commonalities.
It’s interesting. It’s pretty topical now in terms of the political environment, where we’ve got people trying to divide us because of our differences. I think what Sayles was trying to do was saying, we got more in common than you think. We all have to buy from the company store. We’re all living in these horrible conditions. We’re not better than anyone else. And I think that that’s part of the arc, message, of that movie.
Both service plazas closed in 2022 for demolition and reconstruction. They will reopen by year’s end with more amenities at a cost of $122 million.
The head of the West Virginia Parkways Authority told lawmakers that two big turnpike projects should be finished by the end of the year.
Parkways Authority Executive Director Jeff Miller said Tuesday that the Beckley and Bluestone travel plazas on the West Virginia Turnpike will be open to the public by Dec. 15.
Miller told lawmakers that most of the work will be complete for the holiday travel season.
“I think a majority of it will be done, and the buildings will be completed and we’ll be able to get those open back up to the traveling public,” he said.
Miller also said that the toll plazas will begin to accept credit card payments by the end of the year. They will continue to accept cash and EZ-Pass.
The series is meant to engage members of the university community in determining the most important attributes of the institution’s next president.
The WVU Presidential Search Committee will hold a series of virtual and in-person listening sessions in September across three of its campuses in Morgantown, Beckley and Kaiser.
The series is meant to engage members of the university community in determining the most important attributes of the institution’s next president. The first listening session was last month with WVU Faculty Senate leadership. There will be separate listening sessions for staff, students, faculty and community members.
Sept. 9
Morgantown Faculty in-person sessions
Morgantown Community in-person session
Sept. 10
Morgantown Staff in-person sessions
Morgantown Students in-person session
Sept. 11 – Beckley in-person sessions
Sept. 12
Morgantown Faculty in-person sessions
Morgantown Staff in-person session
Virtual session for Faculty, Staff and Students
Morgantown Students in-person session
Sept. 13 – Keyser in-person sessions
Last year the West Virginia University Board of Governors extended the contract of President E. Gordon Gee through June 2025, in the midst of controversial cuts to hundreds of faculty positions on the Morgantown campus to make up a $45 million budget shortfall.
Participants are asked to come prepared to discuss several questions, including:
What do you see as the key attractions for this leadership opportunity?
What makes you proud to be part of the WVU community and excited about the future?
What are the skill sets, experiences, qualifications, credentials and personal attributes needed in the next President?
What are the key opportunities and challenges facing West Virginia University?
How should the new President seek to capitalize on or address them?
Those interested but unable to attend a session can complete a survey available at presidentialsearch.wvu.edu. A complete schedule of all the listening sessions is also available on the site.
Communications Workers of America (CWA), union members have ratified a new contract with Optimum Telecommunications.
Communications Workers of America (CWA) union members have ratified a new contract with Optimum Telecommunications.
After months of negotiating, the CWA approved an agreement Wednesday that translates to nearly an 8 percent wage increase over the course of the three-year contract.
Shannon Flink, a staff representative, said the union polled workers for what they wanted in a new contract then took those items to the negotiating table with Optimum.
“I would say that this was better, you know, with wages,” Flink said. “You know, one always hopes for better, but we felt like this was a good start.”
Flink said the contract also maintained previous negotiations from the last contract that preserved job security.
The new contract covers Optimum workers in areas across Raleigh and Logan Counties. This is the second contract that the union has reached with the company. The first contract was ratified in 2020.
Optimum is a subsidiary of Altice Telecommunications. Altice is the fourth-largest telecommunications provider in the country.
Documentary filmmaker and West Virginia native Morgan Spurlock, an Oscar nominee whose most famous works skewered America’s food industry and who notably ate only at McDonald’s for a month to illustrate the dangers of a fast-food diet, has died. He was 53.
NEW YORK (AP) — Documentary filmmaker and West Virginia native Morgan Spurlock, an Oscar nominee whose most famous works skewered America’s food industry and who notably ate only at McDonald’s for a month to illustrate the dangers of a fast-food diet, has died. He was 53.
Spurlock died Thursday in New York from complications of cancer, according to a statement issued Friday by his family.
“It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” Craig Spurlock, who worked with him on several projects, said in the statement. “Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas, and generosity. The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him.”
Spurlock made a splash in 2004 with his groundbreaking film “Super Size Me,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. The film chronicled the detrimental physical and psychological effects of Spurlock eating only McDonald’s food for 30 days. He gained about 25 pounds, saw a spike in his cholesterol and lost his sex drive.
“Everything’s bigger in America,” he said in the film. “We’ve got the biggest cars, the biggest houses, the biggest companies, the biggest food, and finally: the biggest people.”
In one scene, Spurlock showed kids a photo of George Washington and none recognized the Founding Father. But they all instantly knew the mascots for Wendy’s and McDonald’s.
The film grossed more than $22 million on a $65,000 budget and preceded the release of Eric Schlosser’s influential “Fast Food Nation,” which accused the industry of being bad for the environment and rife with labor issues.
Spurlock returned in 2017 with “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!” — a sober look at an industry that processes nine billion animals a year in America. He focused on two issues: chicken farmers stuck in a peculiar financial system and the attempt by fast-food chains to deceive customers into thinking they’re eating healthier.
“We’re at an amazing moment in history from a consumer standpoint where consumers are starting to have more and more power,” he told The Associated Press in 2019. “It’s not about return for the shareholders. It’s about return for the consumers.”
Spurlock was a gonzo-like filmmaker who leaned into the bizarre and ridiculous. His stylistic touches included zippy graphics and amusing music, blending a Michael Moore-ish camera-in-your-face style with his own sense of humor and pathos.
“I wanted to be able to lean into the serious moments. I wanted to be able to breathe in the moments of levity. We want to give you permission to laugh in the places where it’s really hard to laugh,” he told the AP.
After he exposed the fast-food and chicken industries, there was an explosion in restaurants stressing freshness, artisanal methods, farm-to-table goodness and ethically sourced ingredients. But nutritionally not much had changed.
“There has been this massive shift and people say to me, ‘So has the food gotten healthier?’ And I say, ‘Well, the marketing sure has,’” he said.
Not all his work dealt with food. Spurlock made documentaries about the boy band One Direction and the geeks and fanboys at Comic-Con. One of his films looked at life behind bars at the Henrico County Jail in Virginia.
With 2008’s “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” Spurlock went on a global search to find the al-Qaida leader, who was killed in 2011. In “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” Spurlock tackled questions of product placement, marketing and advertising.
“Being aware is half the battle, I think. Literally knowing all the time when you’re being marketed to is a great thing,” Spurlock told AP at the time. “A lot of people don’t realize it. They can’t see the forest for the trees.”
“Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!” was to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 but it was shelved at the height of the #MeToo movement when Spurlock came forward to detail his own history of sexual misconduct.
He confessed that he had been accused of rape while in college and had settled a sexual harassment case with a female assistant. He also admitted to cheating on numerous partners. “I am part of the problem,” he wrote.
“For me, there was a moment of kind of realization — as somebody who is a truth-teller and somebody who has made it a point of trying to do what’s right — of recognizing that I could do better in my own life. We should be able to admit we were wrong,” he told the AP.
Spurlock grew up in Beckley, West Virginia. His mother was an English teacher who he remembered would correct his work with a red pen. He graduated with a BFA in film from New York University in 1993.
He is survived by two sons — Laken and Kallen; his mother Phyllis Spurlock; father Ben; brothers Craig and Barry; and former spouses Alexandra Jamieson and Sara Bernstein, the mothers of his children.