This week, we visit a cemetery in Bluefield, Virginia and learn how racial segregation followed some people to the grave. We also hear from Neema Avashia, author of the celebrated memoir, “Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer And Indian In A Mountain Place.” And we remember Hershel “Woody” Williams. The West Virginia native was America’s last living World War II Medal of Honor winner. He died last summer at the age of 98.
This week, we visit a cemetery in Bluefield, Virginia and learn how racial segregation followed some people to the grave.
We also hear from Neema Avashia, author of the celebrated memoir, “Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer And Indian In A Mountain Place.”
And we remember Hershel “Woody” Williams. The West Virginia native was America’s last living World War II Medal of Honor winner. He died last summer at the age of 98.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
For decades, the graves of Black residents in a Virginia community were neglected in the town’s old, segregated cemetery.
It might have stayed that way if not for the efforts of one woman who had family buried there.
Folkways Reporter Connie Bailey Kitts brought us this story.
World War I veteran Robert L. Dalton was a corporal in the 803rd Pioneer Infantry which included the band of African Americans who played for French and American troops. His grave is now decorated on Memorial Day.
Credit: Connie Bailey Kitts/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Neema Avashia
Courtesy Photo
Coming Up Queer And Indian In Appalachia
Recently, Inside Appalachia put together a list of summer reading suggestions. We interviewed several prominent Appalachian authors, but we couldn’t fit them all into one show – including Neema Avashia.
Her collection of personal essays, “Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place,” about growing up in West Virginia, was a well-received memoir.
Mason Adams spoke with Avashia.
Remembering Woody Williams
Hershel “Woody” Williams was the nation’s last surviving World War II Medal of Honor recipient.
He was a West Virginia native and died June 29, 2022 at the age of 98.
Before he passed, though, he did an interview with WVPB’s Trey Kay for the podcast Us & Them.
Hershel “Woody” Williams
Credit: e-wv, The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Chris Knight, Chris Stapleton, Harvey & Copeland, June Carter Cash, and Little Sparrow.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
More than a thousand people, hailing from close to home and around the nation, attended the Wednesday memorial service for slain West Virginia State Police Sgt. Cory Maynard.
More than a thousand people, hailing from close to home and around the nation, attended the Wednesday memorial service for slain West Virginia State Police Sgt. Cory Maynard. The trooper was shot and killed in the line of duty last Friday.
Troopers from both panhandles and from the Iowa, New Jersey and Nebraska State Police, joined masses of first responders and civilians who packed the funeral service in the Mingo Central High School gymnasium.
Curtis Meade, from Matewan, said Cory Maynard helped him once when he ran out of gas. He said the trooper ended up helping save him from living a troubled life.
“We became buddies,” Meade said. “The day I found out that it was him that was shot. It ate me up. I ain’t gonna lie, I was wanting to go after that dude. But, like God and Cory said, forgive and forget. I decided the best thing I could do is come up here and show my respects to a buddy of mine.”
Denise Browning brought her daughter Olivia to the memorial, paying a debt of gratitude to a first responder who became a perpetual part of their lives. Browning said Maynard was there in a moment of personal tragedy.
“Olivia was raped in 2019 and Cory Maynard stood by her side,” Browning said. “He was a fantastic guy in every single way. If I needed him at one o’clock in the morning, I could call his cell phone, he would talk and come if necessary.”
Iowa State Patrol and New Jersey State Police Troopers in line for visitation. Credit: Randy Yohe/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Shawn Marcum said he was honored to call Maynard a personal friend. Marcum was one of dozens who agreed that the 37-year-old husband and father, library volunteer and community activist was the kind of person you wanted your son or daughter to grow up to be like.
“He would help anyone in need,” Marcum said. “I’ve witnessed multiple times of him just stopping on the street, both in and out of uniform, to help people. It didn’t matter whether it was to buy something to drink, if they needed food just to talk. Cory never met a stranger.”
State Police Major Jim Mitchell said the sermon he delivered at the memorial service honored a person who truly lived a life of service to others. Mitchell said Marcum was the finest example of a trooper — and a person. He called him a generous man who was raised well and cherished his loving family — his wife Rachel, daughter Zoe and son Finn.
“We want to give his family the honor that they deserve,” Mitchell said. “They’ve stood by Cory for the 15 years that he served us. And it’s not easy for a family. But they really have, and they’ve done well. So we want to honor him. We want to honor his family. We want to honor the state police family.”
Mitchell said he told Maynard’s fellow troopers to take the pain that might be inside them and manifest it for the good.
“Sometimes, if we’re careful or not careful, things like this can happen,” he said. “It can upset us, it makes us angry and makes us sad. And if you just respond to the mere emotion of it, it’s not the best thing. But if you can sit back and look at it and remember why we’re here, why we do this — that’s how we continue.”
It seemed all who attended the funeral were close or extended family who came to honor the life and legacy of a beloved West Virginia State Police Trooper.
While most of us don’t want to talk about it, it is vitally important to make plans for final arrangements: for our aging parents and ourselves.
While most of us don’t want to talk about it, it is vitally important to make plans for your final arrangements.
For WVPB’s radio series “Getting Into Their Reality: Caring For Aging Parents,” News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Charleston Attorney Franki Parsons, from the law firm Ray, Winton & Kelley, about wills and estate planning and the problems that arise if you don’t have them when you die.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: Let’s talk about some of the legal issues when caring for aging parents, or for ourselves as well. Where do you want to start?
Parsons: To your point on the topic of aging parents, I have this conversation not just once a day, but multiple times a day. I’m 45 years old, most of my friends are about the same age group and we are in the sandwich generation. I do not have children, but a lot of people are caring for children and also parents who are declining and have a career. It is a lot to juggle. And this is a very timely topic that I feel will hit home with a lot of people.
Douglas: What’s the first step, I mean? Prior to parents declining physically, mentally, I assume you would say get all these papers in order, have those difficult conversations. So how do you get started?
Parsons: All of us, regardless of age, need two things. This is how I explain it to most clients. You need your life planning documents and your estate planning documents. Life planning documents are powers of attorney and Revocable Living Trusts. If you or I left here today and got into a car wreck and were in a coma, financial powers of attorney are very important because you need to have someone who can manage your financial affairs, access your accounts, manage your business affairs generally, if you’re not able to.
Charleston Attorney Franki Parsons from the firm Ray, Winton & Kelley. Courtesy
Douglas: When we go to the hospital, we’re checking in for surgery, they’ll give us a form for a medical power of attorney, but that’s not what you’re talking about.
Parsons: Equally important. Medical powers of attorney are also part of that life planning document set that I talked about. Medical powers of attorney – say if I cannot speak for myself – here is [the person] who may make decisions about my medical care. Also, in a lot of those documents, the ones we use at our law firm, contain a living power of attorney, or living will, I should say, as part of the medical power of attorney, and also directions for the disposition of your remains. You’d be surprised how many conflicts arise about what we do with the remains of an individual once they’ve passed on.
Douglas: Which is really not the time you wouldn’t want to be having that conversation.
Parsons: No. In older documents, you’ll often see that type of language put into a will. The problem is when we need to make the decision about what we’re going to do with a body, we might not know where the will is. We have not had an executor appointed, we don’t have access to that document quite often.
Douglas: It may not be found for a week or two.
Parsons: There was actually language put into the West Virginia code, I believe in 2020, or 2021, discussing funerary provisions that go into medical powers of attorney. So we are doing that as a general practice now.
You definitely want it in a document that whoever is making decisions for you, while you’re still alive and incapacitated, would have access to it so they know what to do. Even if you have prepaid for a funeral, whoever is dealing with your body might not know that. In your situation, you clearly know what your mother’s plans are. If you have someone in my situation, I don’t have a spouse or children who would be around and maybe know that, right? So you would want to make sure you had that outlined in a document that whoever is around making those decisions would know you prepaid for a funeral.
Douglas: You’re talking about what happens when you’ve died and the hospital is asking, “Where do you want us to send the body?”
Parsons: I have clients that it seems to go one or two ways. I have clients that just put a general provision in that document that says, “My agent who’s named as the medical power of attorney can decide what to do with my remains.” I have other clients that want me to very specifically outline they are to be cremated, and where the ashes are to be spread, and what type of service can be held and who may have ashes. It’s a personal preference, but there is a legalized and outlined way to do that now.
Douglas: At the same time, we still end up with an awful lot of people who die without a will, without any plan.
Parsons: Yes. And well, as I said that you have your life planning documents, your powers of attorney and your revocable living trust can be a life planning document. And I can elaborate on that later if you want. But yes, an estate plan also is important. I have clients that come in who I think don’t want to face their death.
Douglas: It’s a tough conversation for a lot of people to have.
Parsons: The funny thing about life is none of us are getting out alive. It’s just the way it works. That’s the levity I try to bring to the situation. I have noticed in 20 years of doing this, I have two camps of people. You have the people who don’t want to talk about it. And if they do come to my office, they are there begrudgingly. And then you have people who will come in and have binders with tabs and an outline. They have thought carefully about this, and they want to make sure everything is buttoned up so that there’s no issue at their death. I just think it’s a matter of how you view the dying process.
And as you said, it’s not a pleasant conversation to ever have. But the other thing I tell clients is, “Well, you don’t have to have a will. I know where your stuff goes when you die if you don’t.” I get a puzzled look quite often. “Well, the West Virginia code, through the law of intestate succession, tells us what to do with your stuff.” And that normally registers a light bulb moment of, “Oh, no, I don’t want the code or lawmakers to decide who gets my stuff.”
Douglas: I’m sure you see this every day. But what’s the scope? I mean, this is an aging state with an older population. I imagine it’s tough, too, as families have moved away. It doesn’t feel like there’s any central clearinghouse of this information either.
Parsons: There isn’t. That’s why I got into this business. I’ve been an attorney for 20 years. I’ve been doing this since about 2011, because of what happened in my own family with my father. When I lived through that, I realized, “Wow, there’s a gross under-education of the population about the importance of powers of attorney, which I call your life planning documents. There’s a gross lack of education about that. There are attorneys who handle this work, but not a lot. That’s why I shifted gears and decided to focus on this.”
Discussing funeral arrangements is never easy, but as News Director Eric Douglas found out through personal experience with his mom, it is much easier to do it in advance than it is after a loved one has passed away. As part of his series “Getting Into Their Reality: Caring For Aging Parents.” Douglas spoke with Tom Nichols, the owner of Bartlett Nichols Funeral Home in St. Albans, to understand the process.
Discussing funeral arrangements is never easy, but as News Director Eric Douglas found out through personal experience with his mom, it is much easier to do it in advance than it is after a loved one has passed away.
As part of his series “Getting Into Their Reality: Caring For Aging Parents.” Douglas spoke with Tom Nichols, the owner of Bartlett Nichols Funeral Home in St. Albans, to understand the process.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: Do you have any tips for how you talk to your parents about arranging for their funeral?
Nichols: Most generally, the parents come in first and make arrangements so their kids don’t have to deal with it. But like you said, as you see them getting more ill, you take it upon yourself to try to come in and see what to do, and how we need to do it if something would occur, death at home or something. We just kind of guide you with some options.
Douglas: What do you need to do? What are the options?
Nichols: We will ask what type of arrangements you’d like, whether it be burial or cremation or whatever else you may have in mind. Say we’re doing a burial, we’ll go over a general price list, show you our charges, then we’ll go over caskets and then a vault if you need a vault. Once we get that type of thing out, and then we get figures and things, depending on how you want to pay, there’s two options. Some funeral homes use insurance to put your money into and most people use a trust account. If you give me $1 or you give me $10,000, we register it with state of West Virginia.
Douglas: Some people will worry, how do I know the money is going to be there if it’s five years from now, 10 years from now? This is all secured, the funds are secured and there’s a whole system in place for that?
Nichols: Once we put your money in that trust, it’s locked in and secure. It can’t be used until time of death, then we are allowed to use that money. We have to register those monies with the attorney general and they oversee your monies to make sure we’re doing a proper and correct thing.
Douglas: I actually got a letter, just a month or so later from the Attorney General’s Office saying this money is secured. I had no idea that was a thing.
Nichols: Once we register, then you do get a letter. It can be two weeks to four weeks, on average, you will get a letter from the attorney general. It just tells you we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing by registering it. And then when death occurs, then we do a death report, and that also goes to to the attorney general. If the money was in there five years and it drew interest, we have to show them that. And if there’s a refund coming back to you or not, just because money’s in the account, we can’t keep all of it. Because the interest is what goes with the inflation. And if it’s more monies than what you paid, or what today’s price is, then we refund back to the estate.
Douglas: What if the price has gone up, and it’s more than what I put in there?
Nichols: Then the funeral home eats that charge. You don’t pay the difference or anything because you paid it in full. We take the chance on taking that loss.
Douglas: After I went through this process with my mom, it was a relief. I don’t even have to think about it. I literally just have to make a phone call.
Nichols: Then usually you will meet one more time to go over times and things, what day you want to try to set schedule and your services and things and then of course coordinate with your minister and the cemetery. That’s really all you’ve got to do.
Douglas: I assume just about every funeral home does this kind of service.
Nichols: As far as I know, we all do. A lot of times we’ll do pre-arrangements for if your mom or dad went into a nursing home and they’ve got a little bit too much money, that they’ve got to do a spend down to meet Medicaid or Medicare limits. That keeps mom and dad qualified if they’re in a nursing home or facility.
Douglas: When I took my mom in, she ended up choosing some things I didn’t imagine she would choose. I don’t know that I would have thought to do that if she hadn’t been there to make those decisions.
Nichols: She told you that’s what she wanted. And you don’t have to second guess.
A military and first responder procession took Williams' body from the Hershel “Woody” Williams VA Medical Center in Wayne County to Beard Mortuary in Huntington. Barry Ransbottom with Beard Mortuary released the Williams family’s plans for the memorial and funeral services.
World War II Medal of Honor recipient Woody Williams passed away Wednesday morning.
A military and first responder procession took his body from the Hershel “Woody” Williams VA Medical Center in Wayne County to Beard Mortuary in Huntington.
Barry Ransbottom with Beard Mortuary released the Williams family’s plans for the memorial and funeral services.
A procession on Saturday, July 2 will leave Beard Mortuary at 8 a.m. and proceed to the State Capitol in Charleston.
Woody Williams will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, July 3.
The funeral service will begin at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Culture Center in the State Capitol Complex. Burial will be private at the family’s request.
Ransbottom said Williams would visit Beard Mortuary every so often to help plan his own memorial and funeral proceedings.
Nicholas County Deputy Sheriff Tom Baker was laid to rest Wednesday.Mourners came from near and far to pay their respects to a law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty
Nicholas County Deputy Sheriff Tom Baker was laid to rest Wednesday.
Mourners came from near and far to pay their respects to a law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty.
Last Friday night, Baker and Corporal J. Ellison responded to a domestic disturbance. Baker was shot and killed, Ellison was wounded. One of the assailants was also killed, a second is jailed and charged with murder.underearrest fo murder.
As deputy fire chief with the Summersville Fire Department, Brian Bell worked fires, accidents and disturbances side by side with Baker. As he helped organize the honors at the Summersville Arena and Convention Center funeral site, Bell said his friend Tom was a great guy with the badge on or off, a man who gave his all for his community.
“Anytime I’ve seen him out on a car accident or anything, he was smiling and doing this job while being respectful to people,” Bell said. “He took it seriously, but he showed a lot of respect to people that were in need.”
Connections can be distant but compelling. Sgt. Julian Hinton traveled from Chesterfield County, Virginia. Hinton said aclose friend of the men and women in his department is the brother of a Nicholas County deputy who was involved in the disturbance that left Deputy Tom Baker dead. Hinton said, as a fellow officer, he was compelled to pay his respects.
“It’s something that is a bond in the law enforcement community that we show respect since it was the ultimate sacrifice,” Hinton said. “Personally, I’ve been a member of the Honor Guard for several years. It’s just something that is in the heart.”
Jefferson County Sheriff Tom Hansen traveled from the Eastern Panhandle. He came to pay respects to a fellow officer and help send a message.
“I’ve been in law enforcement for over 35 years. I’ve been to too many funerals,” Hansen said. “My men, and every other law enforcement officer, go out every day to protect and serve whatever community, county, state they work, and they are not the enemy.”
Hansen said it’s all about mutual respect and honoring one who made the ultimate sacrifice.
