Latest National Assessment Reinforces Academic Decline Post-COVID-19

The latest national assessment of academic ability shows a continued decline in student achievement nationwide. 

The latest national assessment of academic ability shows a continued decline in student achievement nationwide. 

Eighth graders on average scored five points lower on a U.S. History assessment in 2022 than in 2018, and almost 10 points lower than in 2014, according to test results published by the U.S. Department of Education Wednesday.

Known as the nation’s report card, the National Assessment of Educational Proficiency continually assesses what students in the country know.  

The results echo declines in reading and math published in the fall. 

Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, presented the assessment results. She said history and civics results further highlight educational issues post-COVID-19.

“The assessment isn’t just about the facts, it’s not just about dates and times and people and all those great things that you and I both know that’s on the assessment,” she said. “It’s about taking that information and conducting some critical thinking and some of the evaluative work relevant to that information. And I think this is where we’re seeing some real problems in these results.”

Unlike the reading and math scores reported last fall, which relied on a sample size of more than 200,000 students, the U.S. history and civics scores are based on a much smaller sample size, about 16,000 students, which does not allow for detailed, state by state analysis.

Carr pointed towards the decline between 2014 and 2018 history assessments to indicate that something beyond COVID-19 is impacting student achievement in the subject.

“I think we can all agree that COVID had an impact in both sets of assessments, reading and math, history and civics, but what was going on in U.S. History in particular, started long before COVID,” she said.

Carr also dismissed reports that instructional time for U.S. history and civics had declined significantly, with 90 percent of students assessed reporting their teachers spent three to four hours a week on U.S. history.

“These subjects are not getting squeezed out I think in the way that people sometimes might imagine,” Carr said. “There’s been a bit of a decline, but nonetheless, a lot of instruction is going on in these areas.”

Cemeteries Project Revives The Stories Of W.Va. Veterans

The West Virginia National Cemeteries Project pairs history graduate students from West Virginia University with high school students from Grafton High School to delve into the lives of veterans buried in the local cemeteries.

Trifold poster boards commemorating the lives of West Virginia veterans lined the entrance hall of the Taylor County Historical and Genealogical Society Monday evening. 

They were part of an event celebrating the culmination of the West Virginia National Cemeteries Project’s second year.

Kyle Warmack, West Virginia Humanities Council program officer and the project’s facilitator, said the project’s goal was to foster deeper engagement with the stories and sacrifice of local veterans, but also to promote important research and writing skills.

“At the Humanities Council, I have the privilege of working with a lot of folks in academia at the college level, and when you talk to them, there can sometimes be frustration with the students that they have coming in, and the level of experience they have with research and writing,” he said. 

For the cemeteries project, Warmack helped pair history graduate students from West Virginia University with high school students from Grafton High School to delve into the lives of veterans buried in the local cemeteries. Grafton was a logical place for Warmack to start the project. 

“Look at Grafton and the long history that they have with the cemetery, with the Memorial Day parade they have here,” he said. “Parades are wonderful, these are wonderful displays of both community and patriotic sentiment. But when do we get a chance to tell the stories behind the veterans that we’re celebrating? There are thousands of headstones in these cemeteries.” 

The Grafton National Cemetery was established in 1867 as a permanent burial site for Union soldiers who had died in hospitals and on battlefields throughout West Virginia. Two years later, the town held its first Memorial Day parade, a tradition that continues to this day. Then, in the 1960s, the West Virginia National Cemetery was established five miles away in Pruntytown as the Grafton cemetery began to fill up.

Some of the students from Grafton High School and West Virginia University that participated in the West Virginia National Cemeteries Project pose for a photograph at the Taylor County Historical and Genealogical Society Monday, April 24, 2023. Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting

For high school students like Karigan Roudte, who researched the life and World War II service of twins Charles and William Lewellyn of Harrisville, the process was eye-opening.

“It’s an amazing experience. I honestly have never really thought about war as much as I have,” she said. “It’s brought so much insight to me to see how these twin brothers, they grew up together and they died together, how they intersect. It’s honestly a real changing thing, how I thought about war and life, and it’s brought such a new world and opened so many different doors to me. I think it’s a really great thing that they brought us to be able to experience.”

Becky Bartlett is a teacher and librarian at Grafton High School, and along with her colleague Richard Zukowski, she supervises the students’ research. Bartlett said the project is an engaging way for her students to learn research skills that go well beyond the computer.

“Probably one of the most important things for the kids of the 21st century to learn is that not everything is online. Since I have been the librarian, I have literally had students say to me, ‘It’s all online,’” she said. “They don’t understand, because they’ve grown up in a life that they can easily get online and search, that sometimes you have to go find a book. Sometimes you have to go to the courthouse and pull records. Sometimes you have to actually contact people to get interviews that were recorded, things like that, that aren’t online.” 

Students had the opportunity to learn about major military events like the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in World War II, to the more human aspects of service, like Pauline Tetrick of Bridgeport who joined the Women’s Army Corps at the age of 36, at the end of the Korean War.

Beyond hard skills, one aspect of the project that Bartlett likes is that she can see it fostering a deeper interest in history, one that she hopes will last her students a lifetime. 

“We have learned a lot just about the history of these wars that these veterans served in. I did not know the story behind the USS Indianapolis until we did this project,” she said. “There’s that rabbit hole, you learn something, and then you see the connection to it in so many places. And I think they’ll probably be learning stuff for the rest of their lives.” 

One of the displays created by students presents information about veteran Bud Greathouse, who was killed in action serving on the USS Indianapolis. Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting

That level of engagement is certainly evident when speaking with Emily Bublitz who is a graduate student of history at West Virginia University.

“We do a lot of the back-end research,” she said. “In the initial stages, we go in and we have this huge master list of everyone who has been buried at the National Cemetery, then we go through and research the vets to try and get one that we find that has enough materials on them to know that we can write a biography based off of them, because some people, there’s nothing. Maybe, there’s like just a draft card, but there’s nothing else.”

For Bublitz, the most rewarding aspect of the project is precisely why it was established: making a human connection to the name on the gravestone.

“The more I learn about these veterans like that, the more I care about them and their stories, and I want to do them justice,” she said. “That becomes very central to how I go about doing my work with this. I see it as giving them back their personhood, because they’re more than just veterans. That’s such a core part of who they were, but they’re also more than that. I want them to be remembered as fully fleshed out people who had families and interests and hobbies.”

The West Virginia Humanities Council hopes to expand the project to more schools in the coming years.

Historians, Local Jewish Congregation Recognize Civil War Passover Feast In Southern W.Va.

Soldiers came together during the conflict for a Passover feast known as a Seder. Reporter Shepherd Snyder spoke with Joseph Golden, Jewish researcher and secretary of the Temple Beth El congregation in Beckley, along with Drew Gruber of Civil War Trails, about this celebration’s historical significance.

Civil War historians are recognizing a unique local celebration that happened during the conflict in the wilds of southern West Virginia near what’s now known as Fayetteville, when 20 Jewish Union soldiers came together during the conflict for a Passover feast known as a Seder.

Reporter Shepherd Snyder spoke with Joseph Golden, Jewish researcher and secretary of the Temple Beth El congregation in Beckley, along with Drew Gruber of Civil War Trails, about this celebration’s historical significance.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Snyder: Starting off with the main topic of the interview, and for our listeners who might not know, can you give me some background on what a Passover Seder is? Can you talk a little bit about the holiday and the event?

Golden: Passover Seder is a ceremony that you usually have at home, but you can have it at your congregational headquarters, that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt by the ancient Hebrews. They were slaves to the Egyptians for hundreds of years. And as the Bible has told us, Moses answered the call of God, to lead the ancient Israelites out of Egypt and onto the land of Canaan, which they got to in about 40 years. 

So for centuries, the Seder has been celebrated as the beginning of Passover, and Passover is that holiday commemorating the Exodus. And there are many ways of celebrating Passover. There is usually a text, which we call Haggadah. And there are many different variations on the Haggadah, it’s not a deeply religious text, it’s more of one that tells the story, has songs, has readings and such and you go through it to various degrees at your Seder. “Seder” itself means a set formula of how to do something. So there’s different steps along the way in doing these commemorations.

Gruber: Speaking of a set way to do things, one of the most fascinating parts of this project for me was thinking about the Seder dinner items and the symbology behind each one of those items, and how the soldiers from this regiment had to adapt the traditional menu to the bounty that’s available in Appalachia in the spring of 1862.

Snyder: I do want to circle back to that here in a second. But before we get to that, I do want to ask if the both of you could provide some historical context on this Seder in particular. Why is something like this interesting in the context of the Civil War and in the context of West Virginia history?

Golden: It’s basically a footnote through the movement of troops and the battles that took place. But it’s also an insight into the various, diverse members who entered the Union army from various backgrounds. Apparently, 23 percent of the Union Army were foreign born. Now, some of these Jews may have been foreign born, some may have been first generation here in the United States. But it was an example of something that’s little known. There were Germans, and there were Irish, large contingents, and there were approximately 7,000 Jews who were in the Union army. And there were also about 3,000 estimated Jews in the Confederate army, mostly from South Carolina. 

But for the Jews to be there away from their usual communities, [the purpose of this ceremony was] to bond and to commemorate something that is basic in their culture and traditions of having a Seder. And they were in winter quarters, there was some guerrilla activities around it, but no major battles or confrontations. So they had more time on their hands. And so they decided to ask permission to get together and to go through this ritual. 

And to remember, they would use, from the Seder, “Always remember that you were slaves in Egypt,” that’s a basic expression. So it commemorates their knowledge and their awareness of slavery, or at least what it meant Biblically.

Gruber: For us at Civil War Trails, although the story may be a footnote in history, it’s exceptional. And as much as we see in this dark period in our nation’s history, this beautiful bright spot [is also there]. And it’s not just these individual soldiers, but it is the community in the area and the greater Jewish community at large that sort of enables this bright spot and offers up a moment of peace and beauty and what is otherwise a pretty terrible season in American history.

Snyder: I want to dive a little bit more into how or what the significance of this event was to the soldiers themselves during wartime. Why was this important to them, how was it important? And how does that historical significance translate to the present day?

Golden: I’d say it was on different levels. We have [Private] Joseph Joel’s account. And in his account, he doesn’t really go into how far afield these Jewish members came from, but they’re from Ohio, and most likely they came out of the cities of Columbus and Cincinnati, and possibly Cleveland, and maybe some smaller cities. They were young men, Joseph Joel was 17 or 19 when this took place. He was born in 1844, is what’s recorded. And it’s sharing a compatriotship. It’s sharing a cultural observance that’s deep into their childhood and their families. And it also, in his relation to when he wrote it down, some of these people, some of these men had died. He himself was wounded at South Mountain. 

So by recording it, perhaps he reignites that sense, our togetherness, compatriotship, sharing, that may resonate with those who survived, and perhaps the families of those who didn’t survive. And it reflects the importance of other people hearing about it, Jewish people hearing about this, and reflecting on the importance of Passover to them as well. That you didn’t need to be in a metropolitan area or city area, to acknowledge Passover and to celebrate it and to share in that.

Gruber: For our team, interacting with this story, highlights the fact that as historians have focused on the Civil War, they’ve often focused, at least for the last 150 years, on the military maneuvers, and sort of the macabre idea of how many soldiers were killed at this engagement or how they got there, and what the results of that individual battle were. But every time we have an opportunity to work with communities and they share the stories of their soldiers who came through their community, it is these bright moments that the soldiers choose to recognize in their letters and their diaries. They don’t go into a huge amount of detail about how a battle went down or occurred, they’ll usually refer to a friend who was lost. 

But these bright spots of interacting with somebody who would otherwise be the enemy on a picket post and exchanging a newspaper is a bright moment for them to share because it’s, again, that bright, peaceful spot in this war. And I think it’s Joel, who comments in the latter part of the 1860s, he says something to the effect of like, there’s no other occasion in his life that gives him more pleasure than remembering that 1862 Passover. And that should tell you something about this soldier who’s wounded at a major engagement and sees multiple campaigns, but this is the moment that gives him the most pleasure to recall.

Golden: I would say that Joel’s rendition of the event is analogous to a letter home to your folks. But here it’s a letter home to all the Jews in the country at that time, tying them to something that they can relate to and they can cherish.

Snyder: Can you tell me again who Joel is and his significance in all this?

Golden: He was a private in the Ohio 23rd Volunteer Infantry, along with these other compatriots, and their commander was at that time, Major [later President] Rutherford B. Hayes. And they had gone into western Virginia, because West Virginia was not yet a state, and had come up the Kanawha River they had fought at the Battle of Droop Mountain [in Pocahontas County]. Then they crossed the Kanawha River to go into winter quarters at Fayetteville, or the village of Fayette; it was just a few houses, apparently, at that time. And so there are bivouacs there. They went on to be in battles, going south into Wytheville, Virginia. And then later, in September of 1862, fought at the Battle of South Mountain [near Boonsboro, Maryland], which preceded Antietam by about three days.

Snyder: I want to also talk about the celebration and the actual events of the Seder itself. I know you mentioned the dinner items that might be unique to a Civil War, West Virginia 1860s Seder, I was wondering if you could shed a little bit more light about that kind of thing.

Gruber: I’ll leave that up to Dr. Golden. He and my coworker Victoria sort of cracked the code of the traditional Seder menu and then how the soldiers adapted that menu for being in the wilds of West Virginia. But most excitingly for us, working with some private collectors and the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museum, we were able to put on the sign [commemorating the event in Fayetteville] a photo of Joseph Joel and a photo of a sutler token. So a sutler is a shopkeeper who’s moving with each regiment during the Civil War. And there’s a token from the sutler of the 23rd Ohio Infantry, the same regiment that is represented by the soldiers here. And it’s possible that this sutler helps these soldiers sort of create this Seder menu.

Golden: The food has symbolic meaning. The main one that most people know about is matzah, which is unleavened bread, it’s almost like a large cracker. And it commemorates that Hebrews were leaving Egypt without time to bake their bread and let it rise to be leavened, so they just had to put out the water and the flour and such and let the sun bake it and move on. 

Then there are bitter herbs, which are to symbolize the bitterness of slavery. Traditionally, in today’s age, we use horseradish, but they went foraging for bitter herbs in their environment and came up with something. They didn’t say what it was, but they said it was very powerful, and it could have been ramps, it could have been something else. 

There’s four cups of wine that commemorate certain parts of the order of the Seder meal. They couldn’t find wine, but they found cider, so they had at least a keg of cider. There’s something called charoset, which is a mixture of apples and nuts and cinnamon wine, which was supposed to be symbolic of the mortar that went between the large stones that the Hebrews had to work on. They couldn’t find that, so instead they had a brick. 

There was a shank bone that commemorates the Paschal lamb that was sacrificed just before the Exodus took place, but they couldn’t find that, so they had chicken. 

And usually there’s something that’s green, representing springtime, but I think they use the herbs that they had for that. I think they had some eggs as well, and eggs are symbolic of life and symbolic of Spring.

Gruber: We’ve found a lot of people are really intrigued by this blending of cultures, all the things that we know and promote today as the beauty that is Appalachian foodways. And how this intersects with these Jewish traditions is, I think, just very invigorating, and enamoring for people to think about happening and what was otherwise sort of the wilds of West Virginia at the time.

Snyder: I also want to talk a little bit about faith. You hear a lot of these stories about soldiers during wartime coming together to celebrate their faiths. I think the most famous example, or the one that comes to mind for me, immediately, is the World War I Christmas truce. But I was wondering if either of you could speak a little about why and how religious faith matters to soldiers during wartime and why that’s so important.

Gruber: I’ll start by saying I’m by no means an expert in this. And I can just speak generally to this concept that throughout the Civil War, especially as the military campaigns wind down and you sort of hit the winter periods, there are multiple revivals in camps, both north and south. And those revivals run the gamut of religious perspectives. So we often see that once the military campaigns sort of quiet down a little bit, that soldiers will turn back to these things and also chat with each other about their faith.

Golden: I think that in conflicts facing possible death, just about everybody gets in touch with their spiritual self. And whatever faith, tradition they come out of, they turn to that to help maintain their spiritual connection and their sense of purpose in the conflict. Both the Confederacy and the Union invoked God as the protector, you might say. When this was mentioned to Abraham Lincoln by someone, Lincoln said, “The real matter is, are we on God’s side?” That’s how Lincoln phrased it, but I think in military conflicts, you turn to your deeply ingrained religious experience that you’ve had growing up and rely on that to maintain your faith that your role is righteous.

Snyder: How are you recognizing this Passover Seder today? Can you get a little bit into how this project came about and how it’s being recognized?

Gruber: Absolutely. So it was about two years ago this month that I got an email from Dr. Golden that said, “I hear your organization is interested in this story that took place in our backyard.” And that was in response to me calling some folks in and around the Kanawha River Valley and saying, “Do you know anything more about this story?” My coworker Victoria and I had sort of stumbled across it just doing some reading about the average lives of Civil War soldiers. And we were just simply enamored by it, especially given the context of everything that’s happening in America right now, as far as antisemitism is concerned. 

So for Civil War Trails, we don’t really pursue stories per se. But this one was just really evocative to us and stuck with the team here. So we began by making some calls in and around the greater Charleston area, and in a really beautiful turn of events was introduced to Dr. Golden, who, you know, we consider to be the expert on this topic. 

And that’s not where it ended, working with the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museum in Ohio, who connected us with other collectors, other archives, we started interacting with people who’ve lived in the area who have done some amateur archaeology, who were able to find examples of the unique uniforms that Joseph Joel and his comrades were wearing, and through both oral history and amateur archaeology, pinpointed the location of their camp. And it’s very much in fitting with the 1862 Passover itself, it’s very much been the situation where the community has come together from all walks of life and all perspectives to bring this to fruition, 161 years later. So it’s been a beautiful project for us, for our team to be part of.

Golden: I first encountered the narrative in about 2001, and someone heard that I was from West Virginia, and told me about the story that they had read, and sent me a copy of it and read through it. And then I started sharing this at the usual place where my wife and I go for Seder, with some friends who live in Fayetteville. And there were about 10 to 14 people around the Passover table, and we read through it, and it brought a little bit more home to it, that we were in the same locale as them, separated by all these years but I could appreciate the setting and the experience. And so we continue to read portions of this at each Seder.

Snyder: Why is it worth recognizing these diverse, off the beaten path events in history, or celebrating these voices that we might not typically hear from in more general history books? 

Golden: I think it personalizes our connection to the people who were there, the troops, the men who are fighting, and the areas in which they went through. By knowing these people as people, it’s not just about a bit of data. It’s allowing us to empathize and to learn from them personally.

Gruber: For us, the stories are about that particular place, standing in that moment. And as Dr. Golden said so eloquently, it’s being able to empathize with these people who seem so far away and realizing that they’re not too much different than you and I.

Snyder: Did you have anything else worth mentioning or any closing thoughts we didn’t get to before we wrap this up?

Golden: I think there are many other stories out there from people from other nationalities and religious backgrounds. Jews were quite different because of their religion. But there are stories of Irish and African American and German, and even some French that emphasize how their particular experience was shaped by their cultural upbringing.

Gruber: My hope is that other communities see this community step up with a story that maybe isn’t recognized as a traditional Civil War story, and they will be sort of empowered and emboldened to want to add their story to this collective narrative. And in part, we’ve already seen this through two discussions in western Maryland and Tennessee about Union soldiers who are Muslim. And that is my hope with this project, that not only can we lift up the story of Dr. Golden’s congregation and the story of these men who gave thanks in 1862, but also encourage other communities to step up and add their story to the collective Civil War narrative.

A Conversation About A Unique Celebration’s Historical Significance, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, Civil War historians are recognizing a unique local celebration that happened during the conflict in the wilds of southern West Virginia, when 20 Jewish Union soldiers came together during the conflict for a Passover feast known as a Seder.

On this West Virginia Morning, Civil War historians are recognizing a unique local celebration that happened during the conflict in the wilds of southern West Virginia, when 20 Jewish Union soldiers came together during the conflict for a Passover feast known as a Seder.

Reporter Shepherd Snyder spoke with Joseph Golden, Jewish researcher and secretary of the Temple Beth El congregation in Beckley, along with Drew Gruber of Civil War Trails, about this celebration’s historical significance.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from West Virginia University, Concord University, and Shepherd University.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

WVU Marching Band Celebrating 50 Years Of Women In Their Ranks

This college football season, West Virginia University’s marching band is recognizing 50 years since women entered their ranks.

This college football season, West Virginia University’s marching band is recognizing 50 years since women entered their ranks.

The Mountaineer Marching Band started as a males-only military band in 1901. Back then, every man attending WVU was required to take at least one course in Military Science, and joining the band was a way to fulfill that requirement while continuing their interest in music.

Fast-forward to the early 1970s, and female students are participating in their high school marching bands across the country. But aside from a period during World War II, many collegiate marching bands still excluded women.

It was a point of contention for students like Joyce Dawley. She says pushing for opportunities for women to join collegiate marching bands was important to her as a music education major.

“That limited the scope of applying for jobs, you know, you couldn’t apply to high school, etcetera, if you had no marching band experience,” Dawley said.

Fellow student and eventual bandmate Angie Bowman says Dawley started a petition to allow women to join.

“They said that Penn State just allowed females in their band, marching band, and so we should be able to be in, so I signed the petition. And then soon after I received the letter about band camp,” Bowman said.

Dawley says she doesn’t remember exactly if she was the one who created the petition or not – but she also doesn’t doubt it.

The addition of women in the band coincided with the creation of Title IX, the famous law that banned gender discrimination at federally funded universities. But one of the first women in the band, Jill Cochran, says it also came from a push from the band’s then-new director, Don Wilcox.

“He’s the one who said ‘Let’s do it.’ The Dean of Women was not happy about this whole idea, especially the idea that we would go off to band camp at Camp Dawson in Preston County, with all of those… men,” Cochran said, adding a sarcastic gasp.

WVU Bands Archive, digital restoration courtesy of Al Hall
Now-Director of Bands Emeritus Don Wilcox is recognized as one of the driving forces to include women in the WVU band. He joined WVU as band director in 1971, with the Dirty Dozen signing up a season later.

Wilcox entered the position in 1971 and is credited with making much of the band’s style and presentation the way it is today. He’s now celebrated as the Director of Bands Emeritus by the WVU School of Music.

After sign-ups took place and acceptance letters were sent out, Cochran, Dawley, Bowman and nine other women made the trip to Camp Dawson for band camp. This inaugural class became known as the “Dirty Dozen,” a moniker the group took in stride. Dawley remembers excitement, not fear, at the opportunity.

“I wasn’t scared,” Dawley said. “I don’t know if any of us were afraid. We were like, empowered. Like, yeah, this is no big deal. We can do this. We’d done it in high school.”

Dawley says a lot of the men initially thought the new members wouldn’t be able to keep up – but that assumption changed quickly.

“It was an awareness of, oh, they’re not going to screw us up. So we’re okay. They’re going to add to it, they’re not falling down and fainting or whatever they expected,” Dawley said.

A page on the band’s website detailing its history says the 1971 season fielded an all-male band of only 88 members. But by the end of the decade, the band ballooned to around 280.

WVU Bands Archive, digital restoration courtesy of Al Hall
An aerial shot of the 1972 edition of the WVU band. Membership greatly increased by the end of the decade, partially because of the inclusion of women.

Eileen Smith Dallabrida, who joined the band during the ‘72 season but after that first band camp, says she thinks the addition to add women was also a matter of practicality.

“Having women in the band vastly expanded the pool of musicians of candidates. And by 1975, the fall of 1975, there were more people who wanted to be in the band than there were positions for them,” Dallabrida said.

For those original alumni, joining the marching band ended up giving them lifelong memories. Dallabrida says she remembers her first game and how proud she felt to be on the field.

“I remember the first game that we were all encouraged to literally let down our hair, so that people in the stands could see that there were some women – even though there weren’t very many of us – that there were women out on the field,” Dallabrida said.

In Angie Bowman’s case, she found her husband of nearly 50 years. She and her then-boyfriend Dale started dating after the ‘72 band camp and got married in the winter of 1974.

Angie Bowman and Dale Bowman, digital restoration courtesy of Al Hall
Angie and Dale Bowman are widely recognized as being the first married couple out of the WVU band.

“Mr. Wilcox always likes to remind my husband and I that we started something because we may have been the first marriage out of the band. But there have been many, many
matches since that,” Bowman said.

Today, the WVU marching band consistently hovers around the 300-member mark, and half of its members are women. Heather Miller, a fifth-year member of today’s band, says her interest in joining a big marching band was something passed down from her mother.

“It was one of the major reasons I wanted to go to a university when I was looking at education after high school,” Miller said. “When she marched in the early 90s, she was given that opportunity, which inspired me.”

Cochran says she’s in the middle of an Internet-wide search for the “Dirty Dozen” so they can meet and have dinner after this year’s Homecoming game.

“I’ve turned into Sherlock Holmes, sort of a modern day Sherlock Holmes, trying to chase people down through the Internet,” Cochran said. “When I get them on the phone, it’s as if, oh gosh, we haven’t talked for a month or two.”

Scott Tobias, Director of Bands at WVU, says that this year, the band is recognizing the anniversary during their Homecoming halftime show at the end of October, inviting those original alumni to be honored on the field.

“Sometimes you look at it as a historical event, and don’t think about what the ramifications of that event actually were or are,” Tobias said. “We’re acknowledging it, and we’re celebrating it, but we’re also looking at what that means today.”

Cochran says every time she visits Morgantown for Homecoming, she’s pointed out to the current members as one of the first women in the band. She appreciates this year’s celebration, but she just hopes the recognition inspires young women to continue to pave the way forward.

“They don’t believe that there could ever have been a time when women weren’t in the band,” Cochran said. “I don’t need to be on the Jumbotron and have somebody call out my name but I would like people to know that we did something, we tried to make the world a little bit better for you.”

Editor’s Note: Shepherd Snyder is a former member of the WVU marching band.

Marshall Students Launch Digital Archive For Forgotten Appalachian Writer

Students studying Digital Humanities at Marshall University build archive for historical documents relating to forgotten writer, Tom Kromer.

Tom Kromer was a prolific writer best known for his semi-autobiographical 1935 novel, “Waiting for Nothing.” Kromer’s work is heavily inspired from his experience with homelessness during the Great Depression.

Now, students studying digital humanities at Marshall University have developed an online archive of the forgotten work.

Kromer was born in 1906 in Huntington, where he studied journalism at what was then Marshall College.

“You didn’t know that an author, that papers at the time compared to Hemingway, lived here,” said Stefan Schöberlein, director of digital humanities at Marshall University, “There’s no marker to Kromer at his birthplace, no statue or sign for him anywhere in town, and no street bearing his name.”

Students designed the Tom Kromer Digital Archive in an effort to restore his visibility. Students put four variations of Waiting for Nothing in the archive, including a German translation, an annotated edition, and an audiobook.

kromerarchive.org
Annotated Edition of, “Waiting for Nothing.”

Kristen Clark helped produce the Waiting for Nothing audiobook.

“The way the work is written it’s kind of like Kromer speaking to you about his experience,” she said. “Having somebody read it to you embodies that affect really well.“

The archive also features transcribed book reviews from the time the book was published, a student developed podcast, and virtual tour using the external history website, Clio.

Michael Martin said the Kromer Clio tour focuses on locations of personal significance to Kromer in New Mexico, Virginia, and West Virginia. Students chose locations like the Keith-Albee Theatre (now known as the Keith Albee Performing Arts Center) in Huntington, which relates to his time at Marshall. Martin said, “He had a small experiment for the journalism major that he wrote about, where he panhandled in that little area.”

kromerarchive.org
“Waiting For Nothing,” Newspaper Reviews

During the early 20th century, Kromer was part of a growing American socialist movement. He spent time writing for socialist newspapers in Appalachia and around the rest of the United States.

“It was a great piece of culture to read about to really give the other side of the sentiments at the time, because of course, when you’re learning about the Cold War, you learn about America as being super anti communist, when in reality there was a huge movement,” Krys Smith explained.

Students working on the archive interviewed one of Kromer’s nephews, Steve Barnhill. Although Barnhill was young when he knew his uncle, he recalls that his family suspected Kromer of being a Russian spy.

Stephen Schöberlein
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Marshall University
Marshall University Students Interviewing Steve Barnhill Over Video Call

Although Kromer’s work has a wider scope than Appalachia, Michael Martin says the influence is present.

“Kromer very specifically writes from a proletariat perspective,” Martin said. “It’s something that you wouldn’t get in a lot of other places that didn’t have the specific economic conditions Huntington had and still has.”

Despite students archiving a great deal of documents, many of Kromer’s writings are lost forever as a consequence of the Red Scare.

As an example, Schöberlein said, “his literary agent was Maxim Lieber, who was then accused of being a Soviet spy, so he fled the country and burned most of his correspondence.”

Despite the loss of historical documents, students are still optimistic about what they can find, as many documents are left to be discovered in the physical archives of newspapers and libraries, and private storage; what scholars refer to as The Great Unread. The students are looking to expand the Tom Kromer Digital Archive with more podcasts and more documents.

“Living history through this single man and his writings throughout the country was probably my favorite part about this whole experience,” Smith said.

Kromer is buried in Springhill Cemetery in Huntington, West Virginia.

You can find the Tom Kromer Digital Archive at kromerarchive.org.

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