Fairmont Story Archives - Page 6 of 7 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Fairmont to Donate Center to Domestic Violence Group

Fairmont officials plan to donate a former Army Reserve center to a group that helps domestic violence victims.

Media outlets report that City Council approved the first reading of a proposed ordinance donating the facility on Tuesday. A public hearing is set for Dec. 9.

The ordinance would transfer the former Lt. Harry B. Colburn U.S. Army Reserve Center to the Task Force on Domestic Violence, Hope Inc.

Hope executive director Harriet Sutton says the organization plans to move from its existing building to the center after renovations are complete.

She says the new location will provide services and house victims of domestic violence and sexual assault from Marion, Harrison, Lewis, Doddridge and Gilmer counties.

Second Smallest School in West Virginia Works on NASA Project

Chris Poniris, STEM instructor and Carol Coryea, 7th-12th grade science teacher at Paw Paw Schools.

This week, students at a very small West Virginia school are wrapping up a very big science project…with help from NASA. They’re building a full scale model of a satellite. It’s something you might not expect to see at the second smallest school in the state…but one teacher had the ambition and enthusiasm to make it happen.

Space exploration, the universe, satellites, rockets…it’s what many kids dream about. And for the middle and high school students at Paw Paw Schools, dreams like those are not so far away. 7^th through 12^th graders here are building a full scale model of NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Satellite.

“In short, the MMS mission is studying how Earth’s magnetic field works,” said Todd Ensign, the Program Manager at NASA’s Educator Resource Center in Fairmont, “In particular, you know, how it helps to protect us from high energy particles. Life on Earth would not exist, the way we know it at least, if it weren’t for Earth’s magnetic field.”

The NASA Center in Fairmont provides free training to instructors who want to teach STEM subjects. Two years ago, Paw Paw’s only 7th through 12th grade science teacher, Carol Coryea, went to one of the trainings. It was about the MMS mission and how its four satellites will monitor solar weather after they’re launched in March.

Coryea was so inspired by what she learned, she immediately brought it into her classroom. She first taught her kids about solar weather using iPads, and then they started making small, paper models of the MMS satellite.

About a year ago, she decided to take it even further when she and her students toured the MMS mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

“I asked the contact person, what would it take to build a model of the satellite,” Coryea said, “what if our students did that? And so one thing led to another, and we came up with this idea that why not build a full scale model?”

Unfinished full scale model of the MMS satellite.

She talked about her idea with her colleague, Chris Poniris, Paw Paw School’s STEM instructor. NASA was so intrigued by their enthusiasm that the agency agreed to provide all the materials for the project.

“We didn’t pick a random school in the state,” said Todd Ensign, “we didn’t pick Paw Paw because it was the second smallest school. We picked it because Carol and Chris have been very involved in NASA programs and specifically they’ve already done MMS with their students.”

The year-long project has taken over Chris Poniris’ construction and engineering shop, and Carol Coryea says sometimes space can get a little tight. But, she says, a small school like this is the ideal place for a project of this caliber.

“We have the same cohort of students,” Coryea said, “so students that I have for Science, Mr. Poniris will have for construction or megatronics, or I may have in a chemistry course or I’ve had them for biology, so we’re all working with the same group of students.”

Pieces of the full scale model ready to be put in place.

Coryea says sometimes the demands on the students can be challenging, but she and other staff take care not to let the project interfere with other subjects.

“We’ve been very cautious not to pull our kids out of courses that they need, you know…that they would be working on otherwise,” said Coryea, “We’ve done a lot of writing, we’ve done a lot of speaking and presentations, so we’ve been able to kind of support those other courses, but yet not actually ever pulling those students out of those classes.”

A year’s worth of hard work on the satellite project is about to come to fruition. On Friday, Coryea and her students will take the model to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and present it to the media and the public. After that, it will be on display at the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences in Charleston.

As the deadline nears, these kids are putting the final touches on the model.

9th Grader, Kelly White began working on the project with the paper models two years ago. She says it’s bittersweet to see it all coming to an end.

“It’s a little upsetting that I know that the project’s going to be over,” White noted, “but I hope we get to work on more, and it’s going to be neat to be able to see it in the museum,”

“And what’s one thing you’ll take away from this project that you’ll keep with you for the rest of your life?” asked West Virginia Public Radio reporter, Liz McCormick.

“That I can say that I built that project, I was a part of it,” White said.

Many of these kids say they might be interested in a career in a STEM field now, even if they’d never thought about it before. Carol Coryea hopes she’ll be able to take her students to see the real MMS satellites when they’re launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in March.

Sixty Years Ago: Black and White at East-West

Sixty years ago this week, two Marion County Schools – Dunbar High School and Fairmont Senior High School – met for the first – and last – time on the football field. Local historians say it was the first gridiron meeting in West Virginia of an all-black school and an all-white school. It came amid the tensions surrounding that year’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on school segregation.

It’s been sixty years since the game, but local historian D. D. Meighen says the event continues to resonate and offer lessons for today. He and a group of others rediscovered the story of the game a few years ago while researching how to handle an uptick in racial tension.

“This football game in 1954 seemed to be the answer,” says Meighen. “Where in the midst of a week full of very high tension where parents were protesting the integration of schools, a school outside of Fairmont – that this first football game between a black and a white school was being played. We were interested as to how that worked out.”

THE GAME

The game was played on September 30^th 1954…just a few months after the Supreme Court told schools in America they would have to integrate. The court granted schools time to comply. Dunbar and Fairmont Senior High Schools were to be integrated the following year. The two school principals agreed that, although they had never played each other before, they would compete in this final year before the two schools went together.

But just days before the game, tensions in the county were running high. The Marion County Board of Education had started the integration process that fall – a move that was met with protests, pickets, boycotts and threats at one small school.

A local judge denounced the actions as “rebellion against the government” and issued an injunction against protestors.

With that as a backdrop, the two teams prepared to meet for the first – and last – time. Local law enforcement was on high alert and out in force.

But Meighen says the event ran smoothly. And he credits the fact that, although they attended different schools, the players all knew each other.

“The surprising thing was, and people didn’t realize, was that these young men had played against each other in sandlot ball and even lived next to each other,” says Meighen. “And so there was absolutely no violence and no trouble that evening and there were only three penalties called.”

Meighen says that familiarity, and an ability to enjoy friendly competition, were the keys then…and are the keys now…to easing racial tensions and fostering healthy communities. As America refocuses on these tensions in light of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere, Meighen believes a football game, played sixty years ago, offers lessons and hope.

Lesson number one: opportunities to live, work and play together are key.

“And I think a secondary lesson is that we need to utilize sports in a better way,” says Meighen. “When people talk about this game sixty years ago, they don’t talk about really who won… or who lost. The score was incidental except to the players and they still debate as to how they could have won and you know what could have happened that would have made the game different. But it was a great game – 7-6 was the final score by the way. But I think we need to fashion sports in a way in which we don’t have such a high level of competition but a lot of you know cooperation. “

Q: But that seems the opposite of where we’ve headed with sports.

“ Yeah, it seems to be and with the high salaries and everything and the premium placed on children competing at a high level and getting involved in intensive training even as early as pre-school – it kind of takes the joy out of just sharing the athleticism on the field or wherever it may be.”

Q: So – 7 to 6, who won?

“ Uh you’ll have to ask them…(laughter) Fairmont Senior won…but the person from Dunbar, who represents Dunbar, said they could have won if they had run the play that he wanted to run. “

The Dunbar/Fairmont Senior football game of 1954 is now firmly back in the community’s shared memory – and commemorated with a special plaque at East-West Stadium where it was played sixty years ago.

The plaque commemorating the Dunbar versus Fairmont Senior game of 1954 will be dedicated Friday, September 26, 2014 during a pre-game ceremony at East-West Stadium in Fairmont.

State Investigates Sheen on Monongahela River in Fairmont

State environmental regulators are investigating a sheen on the Monongahela River in Fairmont.

The Department of Environmental Protection tells media outlets that the substance appeared to be petroleum based.

The DEP says the substance won’t affect Fairmont’s water supply. The city’s water intake is upstream on the Tygart Valley River.

Morgantown’s water intake is about 15 to 20 miles downstream. The DEP says the Morgantown Utility Board’s water intake is too deep to be affected, since petroleum based substances float on the water’s surface.

The sheen was sighted Saturday. The DEP says no industry or business has reported a spill.

Fairmont State University Student Wins National Poetry Award

April is Celebrating Poetry Month across the nation. West Virginia’s had a great many poets find success, including Irene McKinney, Linda Goodman, and Tom…

April is Celebrating Poetry Month across the nation. West Virginia’s had a great many poets find success, including Irene McKinney, Linda Goodman, and Tom Andrews. But there’s a young man from Fairmont who’s now also making a name for himself in the field of poetry.

Ian Williams is a 21 year old college student at Fairmont State University. He studies English Education and he dreams of becoming a college professor at some point during his life. But before that, he’s finding success as a poet. Williams recently won a national Poetry Award, in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies College/University Level Poetry Competition. Ian was one of two first place winners. He says he first got interested in poetry as a high school student in Fairmont.

“I was that kid who thought he was super sensitive, and was really pretentious about being able to feel. I can feel the pains in the world and I am able to write them down,” Williams joked.

Williams stopped writing for awhile in high school and early on in college but picked poetry up again during his second year at Fairmont State. He says he worked with a professor who helped him better shape his work. Now, he’s a teacher too. He is completing his student teaching at North Marion High School, in Marion County. He says writing poetry is like going on an adventure, and he hopes to convince young people that the adventure is worth taking.

“I think that poetry has been largely overlooked by a lot of people because it’s short, and it’s compact, and there’s a lot of meaning into it. I think it has gained this very pretentious reputation. I’m hoping in some small way I can help break down that reputation, and can make poetry more accessible for a broader selection of people,” he said.

Williams’s winning selection is a manuscript entitled “House of Bones.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Rattling Sounds, Bone to Bone

I have bruised my knees against the tiles flooring this clerestory of ribs backed by a Doric spine. Head bent, eyes adjacent polished marble—narrow lips dry the lines escaping. Everything I see shrinks away— now a valley of dry bones. The words shrivel behind my throat, knowing I cannot attach tendons; I cannot cover you with skin; I cannot put breath into your lungs again. I cannot make you live. I fear a vacant throat— I fear it might one day be filled.

What does it take to be a good poet?

Williams says writing a poem can present a great deal of struggles; including being happy with the words you’ve put to paper.

“I think that’s one of the biggest struggles with writing poetry in particular, that kind of self-criticism that goes on,” he said.

“I think the qualities that you have to have to be a good poet, is that you have to the determination to do it, and you have to study, and do your reading, to study it seriously. You have be open minded enough to take criticism, and allow other people to butcher your work,” Williams said.

Williams will be receiving the Florence Kahn Memorial Award for his win in this competition. That includes $500 in cash, and his manuscript will be published as a chapbook, a small publication including ten of his poems, which will be limited to just 100 copies. He will also be reading from the book in Salt Lake City in June to celebrate the victory.

“I’ve never really done a public presentation although that’s going to come up when the celebration for this chapbook comes up in Salt Lake City. So how I’m going to present that and perform poetry at that reading, I have no idea. It’s a completely new world for me. This award has opened so many new opportunities, it’s unreal,” Williams said.

Williams may have to get used to it. He’s already working on new poems, and on a new book of poetry about art. He hopes it to be released this year.

North Central W.Va. Students to Enter National Rocket Competition

West Virginia’s got a rich history of young people involved in the science fields, many using rocket science to fulfill their dreams. A group of students from North Central West Virginia is hoping a rocket will also launch them to the very top.

There are five students in North Central West Virginia who are building a rocket to launch in the Team America Rocketry Challenge competition.

This competition entails sending a rocket 825 feet into the air, which will hold two raw eggs inside of it. The rocket must come down within a certain time period, almost 50 seconds, and the eggs can’t break. Simple right? Well, actually, no.

But a very special machine is helping these students. It’s a three dimensional printer housed at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s facility in Fairmont.

“I like the 3-D Printer a lot, I think it’s really cool. I think it’s really cool that he invited us to play around with it at any time, that’s really amazing,” said Luc Peret, one of the students on the team.

NASA’s Todd Ensign helps students across the state enter these types of events.

“I personally believe that competitions like this provide a gateway for students to delve so much deeper than they could during their school studies. They don’t have the opportunity to use the kind of software and tools that we have here, but they really dig deep,” he said.

These students come from different backgrounds. Jack Thompson for instance, wants to be a ballet dancer. He’s only 16 and is receiving offers from different places for his services.

“If you’re a teenager and you don’t think you are ever going to use math or science in your life, it’s crazy how reality can kick you back into gear and realize everyone uses it at some point in their life,” said Thompson.

The team must launch its rocket before the end of the month, and if its scores are strong, it can qualify for the national competition. That takes place in May in Virginia.