In 2015, Nellis Elementary School closed and left behind a vacant building. Meanwhile, residents had been wanting a place to meet, and serve the community.
In 2015, Nellis Elementary School closed and left behind a vacant building. Meanwhile, residents had been wanting a place to meet, and serve the community.
That’s when Anita Perdue had the idea to turn the empty building into a community center.
“We’ve always wanted one, So when we saw the opportunity to take something and refurbish it into something that was needed, we jumped on the opportunity,” Perdue said.
Perdue says when they first accepted ownership of the building the organization had no money. The next week they received a grant of $50,000.
Briana Heaney/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Thus the B.A.R.N. was created – an acronym for the communities it initially served: Brushton, Ashford, Ridgeview and Nellis. Now it is partnered with the Boone County Family Support center to support a greater area.
The organization provides free items and services to the community and gives community members a place to meet. They host events, often in partnership with other government or community organizations.
The Center has kits for the homeless that include portable grills, sleeping bags, warm clothes, and sleeping pads.
Briana Heaney/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Vaccinations And Christmas Celebrations
Last week the B.A.R.N. hosted the Boone County Department of Health in their community events room for a flu shot drive. Wanda Smith attended the event and got this year’s flu shot along with her husband, Luther and daughter Nioka Righter.
Luther Smith receives his annual flu shot. Workers at the health department said that meeting individual in the communities where they are comfortable helps overcome fear of vaccinations and get more residents vaccinated.
Credit: Briana Heaney/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
All five of her kids went to Nellis Elementary. Now they come to the building for shots and their great grandchildren’s little league games. This year Wanda Smith is hosting her 14 grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren at the B.A.R.N. for Thanksgiving.
“It’s really nice. We have a huge family. So we have our Thanksgiving and Christmas here in the gym. Every year for Christmas and Thanksgiving since it was a community center,” she said.
B.A.R.N. also provides resources for the community like free clothing, library books, WiFi, free meals, pet food, hygienic products, vaccines, cleaning supplies, fitness classes, meal delivery services – and the list goes on.
The Center has a clothing shop were all the clothing is free.
Briana Heaney/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Grassroots Valley
Dakota Smith is the director of the B.A.R.N. and helps keep everything from clothes to food stocked and ready for the community.
“This is one of our food pantry rooms. We have two refrigerators and two freezers. We’re hoping to add to the funding so we can get more meat for our community,” Dakota Smith said.
Dakota Smith has been with the organization since 2020.
Briana Heaney/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
He said the organization has a few different sources of food for families through different partnerships with organizations like the U.S. Department of Agriculture where they get free food, and the Mountaineer Food Bank where they get foods at deeply reduced rates.
“As it stands right now, we’re serving between 250 and 350 families or individuals a month. And that’s not quite good enough. So we’re seeking to expand our funding,” he said.
The organization is collaborating with the Boone Animal Rescue Coalition, or BARC, to offer free pet supplies for community members in need.
Briana Heaney/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 1 in 4 Boone County residents live in poverty. Boone County was also a region devastated by the opioid epidemic, which at one point had 1 in 4 residents receiving an opioid prescription and continues to see overdoses from opioids.
“The needs are great. And also I think that you know, I’m a believer in God. And I think that that’s what we’re here for us to serve one another. I really do,” Perdue said.
She said this grass roots community center exemplifies the heart and soul of Appalachian mountain living.
The holiday shopping season was a far cry from the experience of parents 30 years ago, waiting in line for hours and hours, forging through the crowds, down the aisles to get the hot new toys.
Not many people who lived in Appalachia over the past several decades could forget Hills Department Stores around Christmas time.
Hills is where the toys are WWF Hasbro (clips from the dead)
Those days are gone. Many department stores that carried toys have closed after years of pressure from super-stores like Wal-Mart. Hills filed for bankruptcy and was bought out by Ames in 1999. KB Toys closed in 2008 – while K-Mart held on in the region until 2018.
Jessica Lilly
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The storefront of the business called, 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV, displays a Christmas tree and toys in 2020. The store is located on Mercer Street in the Grassroots District.
But on Mercer Street in Princeton, where Matthew Collins opened the 80’s Toy Store in 2019, it’s a little bit like visiting Christmases past.
Inside, you’ll find toys like a 16-inch talking Beetlejuice doll modeled after Michael Keaton’s character in the blockbuster hit.
Jessica Lilly
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Toys in the 80’s Store of Princeton, WV, December 2020.
The store is also filled with vintage and replica toys from the 1980’s, including Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Strawberry Shortcake and more, sure to take anyone older than 30 back in time.
Jessica Lilly
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Care Bears and My Little Pony Toys
There’s even an entire room filled with wrestling toys like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Kurt Angle, and Bobby Roode,
Jessica Lilly
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Andre the Giant toy
“Wrestling is king around here,” Collins said. “It’s probably my biggest-seller in the whole store, the wrestling toys, whether they’re from, you know, old classic wrestlers or the new stuff that comes out.”
The 80’s Toy Store is part of the Mercer Street Grassroots District. In 2006, the street was 80% vacant with boarded up storefronts and a bad reputation. Today, there’s only a few vacant storefronts left.
Jessica Lilly
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Matthew Collins restocks a toy in the 80’s Store of Princeton, WV.
Collins grew up in this area and like so many of his generation, his childhood memories are connected to toys — that experience of walking into a store and carefully choosing your favorite one.
Jessica Lilly
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Boy shopping for toys in the 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV store in Mercer County.
“I miss some of those stores,” Collins said. “I remember as a kid going to Hills. Hills had the best selection of toys. I can still smell the popcorn. We loved to eat popcorn from Hills.”
Collins was adopted, or as his parents would tell him, he was “chosen.” He grew up in Mercer County with a stay-at-home mom. His dad worked second shift at a mining equipment company called Ingersoll Rand in Beckley, about 40 miles north in Raleigh County.
Transformers G1 1984-1986 Toy Commercials [In Order]
“I would do whatever chores I had to do and then we would go usually to town on Saturday,” Collins said. “I would take my allowance and go buy a toy.”
“At the time, the biggest toy line I collected was Transformers so I was always looking for Transformers,” Collins said. “I watched the cartoon. I had the comic books. We would play like we were Transformers.”
In fact, Collins still has the first Transformer of his collection. He keeps it in the store, at his computer.
Jessica Lilly
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Matthew Collins holds the first of his Transformer toy collection.
“Kind of a reminder of where I came from,” Collins said. “You know, our family, we didn’t have a lot of money, but you know, they obviously tried to spoil me because I was chosen, I was adopted. It really set the direction for my life.”
Jessica Lilly
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Toy store owner, Matthew Collins keeps the first Transformer he bought as a kid on his keyboard in the toy store. He says it reminds him of where he came from.
In his day job, Collins works with the Department of Health and Human Resources so he’s familiar with the needs of children in the region.
“The Toy Store is my fun job,” Collins said. “My 9-5 job, I’m a CPS worker so I know the importance of families having the items that they need.”
Jessica Lilly
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Matthew Collins stands by a wall of wrestling toys in his toy shop in Princeton, WV.
One day, Collins took a look around and realized, there weren’t a lot of options for kids, young and old, to go into a store and pick out a toy.
“So I decided that I was going to open up a toy store and have a place where the shelves will be stocked,” Collins said, “Just to kind of create some excitement in the community.”
So far, it’s working.Shoppers might not find the popcorn, but they’ll find many of the toys that were available in Hills during the 1980’s.
“Business is pretty good overall,” Collins said. “Even though we are in a pandemic, the community has rallied around my store, and they’ve shopped here.”
Jessica Lilly
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The 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV storefront in December 2020.
Collins has met customers half-way during the pandemic, even making trips from the curbside to the store shelves, selecting a toy and taking it to the door for the customer’s approval — several times.
Jessica Lilly
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Marie Collins helps to prackage wrestling toys that were sold online.
He said eBay has also helped when he needed to make ends meet or to clear out some inventory, but there’s nothing quite like the experience of selecting your own toy. So he’s opening the doors to a special section of the store, not just to paying customers, but families in need, by hosting a toy drive, this holiday season. Collins was determined to make it happen so he came up with a plan.
Jessica Lilly
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Matthew Collins boxes up toys after selling them online.
“So we started in November and we asked people if they would like to round up and donate to the toy drive,” Collins said. “We’ve had people round up and give extra, like, you know, $1, $5, $10. I don’t carry everything here at my toy shop, unfortunately, things like basketballs and things like that. So we’re going to go and use that money and spend so we can have a lot of toys for the actual toy drive whenever we let the parents come in and, and pick out their toys.”
Jessica Lilly
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Strawberry Shortcake vintage remake dolls sit on a shelf in the 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV store.
Many in-person holiday parties were cancelled this year because of COVID and the cut-off time for other toy drives has passed. But anyone who comes into the 80’s Toy Store in Princeton between now and Christmas Eve and simply says they are there for the toy drive, will get a toy.
Jessica Lilly
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Pound Puppies sit in the 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV store.
“If for some reason I get a phone call on Christmas Eve at 10 o’clock at night that says, ‘Can you open the store?’ I’ll be here,” Collins said. “We’ll let somebody in here to make sure that when the kids get up on Christmas morning they have something.”
Jessica Lilly
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The 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV store also sells modern toys like Fortnite figures.
If you spend any time at the West Virginia state capitol during the annual 60-day legislative session, you’ll notice many voices clamoring for the attention of our state’s part-time lawmakers. All citizens are welcome to approach legislators with ideas and requests, but average citizens generally don’t have the time or the know-how to impact state policy decisions. One grassroots initiative has been working to change that.
In Lewisburg, Clarksburg, Hurricane and Martinsburg, citizens are meeting this month to celebrate policy success, learn how to advocate for the issues they care about and craft initiatives to champion in the upcoming legislative session.
The initiative casts a wide net to solicit ideas, narrows the focus to a manageable list of priorities and then works collaboratively to engage state government officials.
Chris Kimes is Political Director for the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition. He says these workshops provide an avenue for people from around the state to learn about the issues, get energized and to believe they can participate in the process.
“As an active community member I can come, learn the skills that I need to begin working on policies and actually learn about specific policies that groups are thinking about advancing in the next session.”
And they have experienced success. This past year alone, seven of the group’s top ten priorities became law or were implemented into public policy.
Funding was restored to Family Resource Networks and other programs that help children and families.
The minimum wage was increased.
The state board of education approved a policy to increase daily physical activity in public schools.
A pilot for a parent mentor program was launched.
Cities and counties will now have a new tool to combat the problem of abandoned properties.
New protections for pregnant workers were put in place.
And the West Virginia Future Fund was established to set aside a portion of natural gas severance taxes to create an endowment fund.
Senate President Jeff Kessler says his hat’s off to this group, whose grassroots groundwork can be a real help to lawmakers as they try to stay in touch with the needs of their communities. “I represent 110,000 people in my district. I can’t shake all their hands and ask them all face to face, but when you get having a series of forums throughout the entire state where people that do have issues can come forward, present them, collect them, and put them in some type of rational agenda that we can now understand why they’re important,” says Kessler. “Sure it helps to pass policy and pass legislation that does have a direct and immediate impact on improving the lives of our people in our communities, so yeah, this is the way to get it done.”
House Speaker Tim Miley agrees that it’s an effective approach to advocating for public policy issues.
"So they have learned to come together as a large group with various interests, but a common theme to strengthen our communities. And by doing so they have created a very loud voice in Charleston for the legislators to hear and listen to and recognize by way of their agenda items. So it is very effective." – House Speaker Tim Miley
Not all of the group’s initiatives made it through the process. But Kimes says, even in defeat, there are lessons to be learned. That’s the case with last year’s effort to pass a prescription pseudophedrine bill and that group of citizens will try again.
“We literally were outspent there,” notes Kimes. “Big Pharma came in and made their voice known, but an interesting thing about that, is just last week at Lewisburg that team is back again. And they’ve learned from those lessons and they’re gearing up and they’re broadening the base and getting more people involved in the discussion and I think they may have a better try at it in this next legislative session.”
On September 9-10, 2014, groups from across the state will gather in Charleston for a Policy Symposium and in November, this year’s legislative agenda will be set.
