Chad Lovejoy Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Flags at the Capitol and in Cabell County are at half-staff Thursday, honoring the life of longtime legislator Chuck Romine who passed away this week at age 87. Romine’s life combined politics and music – tied together with a passion for service.

Family and friends from near and far are listening to CDs (maybe a cassette tape as well), enjoying Chuck Romine’s Dixieland, ragtime, jug band banjo and vocals. They are remembering a popular musician and a devoted public servant. Former Cabell County Del. Chad Lovejoy said his mentor in politics and life would sometimes turn the House Chamber into a concert hall.

“He played on the floor,” Lovejoy said. “He and Shirley Love, who’s also passed, did a song together on the floor, and he would bring that banjo out to different legislative events.”

Shortly after being selected as Huntington Young Man of the Year in 1968, Romine was elected to the House of Delegates, then re-elected twice over the next 50 years – again in 1998 for one term – then one more in 2016. He retired in 2018 at the age of 83. That same year, Gov. Jim Justice awarded Romine one of the state’s great honors, a Distinguished West Virginian Award, after his life of dedicated service in public and private sectors.

Lovejoy said the Cabell County Republican, known for seeking consensus early, didn’t yearn for sound bites or the cause of the day, but conducted himself as politics “used to be.”

“He always fought for home. It wasn’t about Democrat, Republican, it was like, this is good for Huntington, this would be good for Cabell,” Lovejoy said.

Banjo pickin’ Chuck Romine with The 1937 Flood band.

*Courtesy of The 1937 Flood*

In the 1960s and ’70s, Romine and his banjo led the Lucky Jazz Band. In 2001, he took a break from politics and joined the eclectic string group, The 1937 Flood (the band, not the disaster).

Flood bandleader Charlie Bowen said Romine carried the best of music and politics wherever he went.

“Chuck was a born politician in every good sense of that word,” Bowen said. “He just naturally gravitated to people he didn’t know so he could get to know them. Governors and statesmen would have copies of 1937 Flood CDs, because Chuck would make sure they’d have one. He had a natural promoter’s instinct when it came to music because of his political background.”

Romine’s wife of 66 years, Phyllis, passed away less than three weeks ago. Lovejoy said the devoted couple seemed meant to stay together.

“He went to be with her, which is 110 percent the way he would want it to be,” Lovejoy said.

A Marshall University graduate and 40 year State Farm insurance agent, Chuck Romine lived an active life. Besides decades as a musician and bandmate, he gravitated to the water in his younger years as a boater, water skier, fisherman, lifeguard, swim instructor and competitive diver. He had a passion for golf, shooting pool and getting together with his Thursday night poker club.

Lovejoy said Romine taught him the skills of considering all sides of an issue, how to hand-tie a bow tie, coming from a time when manners and etiquette mattered. He said this father and grandfather figure was a friend and mentor to him, and so many others.

“As a citizen, a friend, husband, father, he was a consummate gentleman,” Lovejoy said. ”He’s a giant to me. You get role models that you love and say that’s the kind of guy I’d like to be as a husband, a father and as a legislator.”

A House Judiciary Subcommittee reconsidered a bill Thursday that barely made it through the legislative process on the final night of the 2016 session.

That bill required West Virginians to bring some form of identification with them when they go to cast a ballot at their polling place. It also set up an automatic voter registration process between the Secretary of the State’s office and the Division of Motor Vehicles.

Delegates initially intended to gut parts of that law altogether this year, but have since worked on a compromise.

As introduced, House Bill 2781 got rid of the automatic voter registration system altogether and removed a large number of the allowable forms of ID, including a health insurance card, birth certificate, and several others. Those two provisions were pushed by Democratic members of the Legislature during the 2016 session.

Thursday morning, a House Judiciary subcommittee, led by Republican Delegate Mark Zatezelo of Hancock County, met to negotiate the bill’s provisions. The subcommittee’s version of the bill puts all of the ID options back in, and it also reinstates the required automatic voter registration system.

Zatezelo says, however, their bill pushes back the effective date one full year.

“We want to make sure the DMV is ready for July 1, 2019,” Zatezelo noted, “And so, we will put into this bill [a] proviso that they be ready with their new software by July 1, 2018. That gives them a year to work all the bugs out and do that type of thing; we feel it’s fair.”

Zatezelo also says the bill makes it clear that if someone doesn’t want to register to vote when they go to the DMV, their information won’t automatically be sent to the Secretary of State’s office.

The single Democrat on the Judiciary subcommittee is Delegate Chad Lovejoy of Cabell County. He says he’s very pleased with the compromised version of the bill.

“I think the bill has been greatly enhanced by the work of the subcommittee,” Lovejoy said, “You know, as we approached it, there were two kind of major concerns with bringing it back up. One was changing the IDs, the list of IDs that were negotiated last year as part of the legislation, and the second, were, what could be perceived as attempts to roll back the automatic voter registration.”

Lovejoy says he anticipates wide support from his party when this bill comes to the floor. House Bill 2781 will now go before the full Judiciary committee for further consideration.

Tag: Chad Lovejoy

Longtime Legislator, Banjo Player Chuck Romine Remembered

Subcommittee Reaches Compromise on Voter ID Bill