Radio Story Archives - Page 3 of 234 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

December 11, 1905: Filmmaker Pare Lorentz Born

Filmmaker “Pare” Lorentz was born in Clarksburg on December 11, 1905. After attending West Virginia Wesleyan College for a year, he transferred to West Virginia University, where he wrote stories for West Virginia Moonshine magazine. At the age of 20, he moved to New York City and began writing for some of the nation’s most popular magazines.

In 1933, Lorentz conceived, edited, and published a pictorial review of Franklin Roosevelt’s first year as president. Two years later, the government contracted with Lorentz to make a film about FDR’s New Deal. The Plow That Broke the Fields was a pioneering film that helped change how documentaries were made. In 1937, he made another film for the administration. The River showed in emotional terms how the New Deal was addressing environmental problems.

During World War II, Lorentz made hundreds of training films for pilots who were flying previously uncharted routes around the world. Pare Lorentz, who is remembered as “FDR’s filmmaker,” died in 1992 at the age of 86. Five years later, the International Documentary Association created the Pare Lorentz Award to honor the best documentary film of the year.

Songwriter Billy Edd Wheeler Born: December 9, 1932

On December 9, 1932, songwriter, musician, playwright, humorist, and poet Billy Edd Wheeler was born in Boone County. He started writing and performing songs when he was just a teenager.

Wheeler got his first check in the music business when Pat Boone recorded his song “Rock Boll Weevil.” He would go on to write more than 500 other songs, including the country classics “Jackson,” “The Reverend Mister Black,” and “Coward of the County.”

Some of his songs are uproariously funny. “Ode to the Little Brown Shack Out Back” laments the loss of backyard outhouses. But he also wrote poignant songs, like “Coal Tattoo,” which sympathizes with the plight of coal miners.

Over the years, the performers who have recorded Wheeler’s songs read like a Who’s Who of country music. They include Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Merle Haggard, Chet Atkins, Glen Campbell, Bobby Bare, Kenny Rogers, and Hank Williams Jr.

In addition, Wheeler wrote the long-running Hatfields and McCoys play, performed by Theatre West Virginia. In 2007, Billy Edd Wheeler was inducted into the inaugural class of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.

December 7, 1941: Japan Launches a Surprise Attack on Pearl Harbor, Sinks USS West Virginia

In the early morning hours of December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The raid killed more than 2,400 Americans and prompted the United States to enter World War II. Torpedoes and bombs sank four U.S. battleships, including the USS West Virginia, which lost two officers and 103 crew members.

The battleship, which had originally joined the naval fleet in 1923, was a great source of pride for West Virginians. She was raised from the mud of Pearl Harbor and rebuilt in time to serve during the last year of the war. The ship went back to sea in July 1944 and participated in the invasion of the Philippines. At Surigao Strait—the largest naval battle of the war—the West Virginia led the line and was the first American ship to open fire. In September 1945, the West Virginia was in Tokyo Bay for Japan’s official surrender, the only Pearl Harbor survivor present.

World War II marked the end of the battleship era. The West Virginia was decommissioned in 1947 and sold for scrap in 1959.

November 27, 1848: African-American Educator William H. Davis Born

African-American educator William H. Davis was born in Columbus, Ohio, on November 27, 1848. As a young man of 15, he enlisted in the Union Army and served in a Light Guard company that helped protect President Abraham Lincoln.

After the Civil War, Davis settled in Malden—about 10 miles east of Charleston—and became a school teacher. Malden was an important center of African-American history and culture because of the large number of black laborers who worked in the saltworks there. His most famous pupil was a young Booker T. Washington, who would go on to become the nation’s most prominent black educator.

In 1870, Davis became principal of the black grade school in Charleston, a position he served in for 24 years. He was also an active member of the African Zion Church in Malden and the First Baptist Church in Charleston.

In the 1930s, Davis was a guest of honor at the Booker T. Washington anniversary celebration at Tuskegee University in Alabama, the famed college founded by Washington.

William H. Davis died at his home in Charleston in 1938 at age 89.

October 15, 1850: Virginia Constitutional Convention

On October 15, 1850, Joseph Johnson of Harrison County called the Virginia Constitutional Convention to order. The convention had been a long time in the making. For years, residents of western Virginia had felt neglected by the state government in Richmond. This was due in large part to the region’s under-representation in the state legislature, which because the eastern part of the state could use its large slave population to inflate its number of delegates despite the fact that slaves had no legal rights. Beginning with the 1840 census, western Virginia’s white population surpassed the rest of the state. Still, western Virginia had fewer representatives in the legislature.

In 1850, Virginia lawmakers met to address these concerns. The new constitution, adopted the next year, based representation in the lower house on white population. As a result, western Virginia was able to take control of the House of Delegates for the first time ever. Although the new constitution eased some of the West’s concerns, it would be too little, too late. Western Virginia, frustrated by many years of neglect, would split away from Virginia during the Civil War.

Chuck Yeager Breaks the Sound Barrier: October 14, 1947

On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 rocket airplane dropped from the belly of a B-29 bomber. Seconds later, Yeager entered the history books as the first pilot to break the sound barrier.

By this time, the 24-year-old Lincoln County native was already an aviation legend. During World War II, he had flown 64 combat missions over Europe and, in a single dogfight, had killed 13 Germans. In his eighth mission, he had been shot down over German-occupied France.

After the war, he served in California as a test pilot for high-speed planes. A year after breaking the sound barrier, he visited Charleston and gave the people a show they would never forget. During a boat race on the Kanawha River, he flew his Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star jet beneath Charleston’s South Side Bridge.

Yeager retired from the Air Force in 1975 as a brigadier general. Thirty years later, President George W. Bush promoted Yeager to the rank of major general. In 2012, on the 65^th anniversary of his record-setting flight, he again broke the sound barrier—this time, at age 89.