A Tennessee company has completed its purchase of a West Virginia psychiatric hospital and two affiliates.
Brentwood, Tennessee-based Meridian Behavioral Health Systems announces Wednesday the conclusion of the purchase of Charleston’s Highland Hospital, which has 80 acute-care beds along with a 24-bed residential treatment facility for children.
Included in the sale is Highland Health Center, a 16-bed substance abuse treatment and detoxification program, and outpatient provider Process Strategies.
Meridian says there will be no changes in programs, staff and local leadership at Highland, which is the largest provider of behavioral health care services in southern West Virginia.
A former West Virginia Republican Party chairman has been selected to become the top federal prosecutor in the southern half of the state.
President Donald Trump nominated Mike Stuart to be U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia.
Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito says she recommended Stuart for the position. She says Stuart “has shown great leadership, professionalism, and character throughout his career.”
If confirmed, Stuart would take over from Carol Casto, who was appointed after former U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin resigned in December 2015 to run for governor, a bid which he lost.
Stuart is an attorney from Charleston who served as state GOP chairman from 2010 to 2012. He served as a co-chairman of Trump’s West Virginia presidential campaign team.
State and Federal officials were in Huntington Thursday afternoon to announce a series of grants aimed at helping create employment in the southern part of the state.
Three grants in excess of $6 million will target manufacturing, agriculture and healthcare in the southern part of the state. The grants were awarded at the Robert C. Byrd Institute in Huntington. The Appalachian Hatchery project will boost workforce training opportunities through RCBI. The Sprouting Farms program will help facilitate an agricultural industry in nine counties in southern West Virginia.
And the third program to receive money was the Sustainable Employment for Community Health Workers program. The initiative started by Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine will create 26 permanent community health worker jobs in coal-impacted communities.
United States Representative Evan Jenkins said this is a step in the right direction.
“We’ve now got things turned around, we’re getting the policies right, we’re trying to get coal moving again, but we’re also making investments to make sure West Virginia diversifies it’s economy, jobs are the future,” Jenkins said
United States Senator Joe Manchin echoed Jenkins sentiments.
“This funding will help Marshall University boost training opportunities in advanced manufacturing and will create and retain over 330 jobs,” Manchin said. “This investment will foster sustainable economic growth and improve our communities and our workforce.”
The grants were awarded by the Appalachian Regional Commission, the U.S. Economic Development Administration, the Benedum Foundation and the One Foundation.
Mohawk Industries Inc. says it is closing a wood flooring manufacturing plant in southern West Virginia, idling 111 workers.
The plant at the Buck Harless Wood Products Industrial Park in Holden will close by May 7 and its operations will be moved to a recently upgraded facility in Melbourne, Arkansas.
Mohawk president of laminate and hardwood Gary Lanser says the closing reflects a reduction in customer demand for solid wood flooring products.
Mohawk vice president of human resource Jerry Hendrix says the company will assist employees with retraining opportunities, job fairs and unemployment benefits.
Mohawk acquired the plants in Holden and Melbourne from Columbia Wood Flooring in 2007.
West Virginia is expected to be in the national spotlight on January 26 in an episode of the PBS documentary series, American Experience.
“The Mine Wars” is a two-hour feature that sheds light on a bloody yet pivotal time in West Virginia’s history that has often been mostly overlooked. But a class at Shepherd University aimed at West Virginia History teachers provides a personal experience with southern West Virginia and knowledge for those educators to take back to their classrooms.
“This is part of who we are, and it’s a history that’s kind of been suppressed, it’s been lost for a long time,” said Doug Estepp, an adjunct professor who works in Shepherd University’s Lifelong Learning Program.
The Lifelong Learning Program at Shepherd provides continuous education to teachers and community members. Estepp is teaching a class on the West Virginia Mine Wars for the second time during the spring 2016 semester.
Credit Courtesy of Kenneth King and the WV Mine Wars Museum
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“I grew up in Mingo County, in a family of coal miners; my family didn’t talk about it, my grandfather didn’t talk about it; they would just kind of brush it off. I would see little hints; I would see stories about tent colonies and strikes, and they just didn’t want to talk about it, and that was kind of the way people reacted all around the state.”
The Mine Wars were a period of two decades at the beginning of the 20th Century when coal miners and coal companies clashed in a series of brutal conflicts over labor conditions and unionization.
And until the 1980s, major pieces of these historic clashes were left out of many West Virginia classrooms and textbooks.
Claire Webb is an eighth grade West Virginia History teacher at Wildwood Middle School in Jefferson County. Webb has been teaching history for six years, but this will only be the second time she includes the Mine Wars into her lesson plans.
Webb took Estepp’s class in the spring of 2015, when it was first offered. As a lifelong Eastern Panhandle resident, Webb wasn’t familiar with the stories of the southern West Virginia conflict, but when she found out, she insisted on sharing them with her students.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Claire Webb writes on her white board in her West Virginia History class.
“I did not realize how pivotal a role West Virginia played in the labor movement,” Webb noted, “and some of today’s fair labor practices were implemented upon the literal backs of West Virginia miners, and so I did not understand how crucial some of these boycotts, the strikes, the uprisings, the battle of Blair Mountain; I did not realize how formational they were to today’s labor practices.”
Doug Estepp takes his classes of educators on a three-day tour of southern West Virginia provided through Coal Country Tours. Estepp is also the owner of the touring company.
Eighth grade teacher Webb says actually visiting the region was the most beneficial part of the class and is even considering going back on the tour again.
“My first experience was taking the tour with Coal Country Tours,” Webb said, “We took the Mine Wars, the Coal Heritage Tour, and we visited about half a dozen spots around the southern part of the state that were relevant to our mining history, and prior to taking the tour, I hate to say it, but I honestly knew so little about this part of West Virginia History, and so taking the tour was eye-opening.”
Coal Country Tours formed in 2010, when Estepp took the first group through the coal fields. It’s something he’s passionate about and Webb says it showed in the classroom.
“It was so packed full of solid information,” Webb explained, “Doug is so knowledgeable about this subject and passionate, and so it was just an easy listening for two hours each week to all of his knowledge from the kinds of weapons that the Baldwin Felts detectives would bring, to the relationships between some of the townspeople, to the dates and of the struggles and the uprisings, and exactly things transpired in this part of the state.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Now, Estepp is hoping to reach an even wider audience with this class. Students can meet physically on Shepherd’s campus in Shepherdstown or in Martinsburg, but Estepp has also created an online element so that folks can participate virtually via webcam in real time.
“I’ve been getting the story out there for quite a while. When I got the chance to kind of roll it over into the Lifelong Learning Program that was even better, because now instead of three days with a few hours on the bus, I’ve got, you know, eight weeks, two hours every week to talk about this,” Estepp said.
Estepp will also be featured in the upcoming episode of the PBS documentary series, American Experience called, “The Mine Wars.”
The premiere will no doubt bring more attention to West Virginia’s critical role in the country’s labor movement.
Quick Facts on 2016 W.Va. Mine Wars Class:
Class begins on February 9, 2016
Any teacher in or out of state may sign-up at any time before the class begins
Classes are held either at the Shepherd University Shepherdstown campus or at the Martinsburg location. Classes will also be held online simultaneously.
The cost of the class is $147 (through Shepherd University)
There is a three-day tour component that is a requirement of the class.
The cost for the tour is $340 per person double occupancy, $379 single. Cost covers transportation, lodging, meals, and all admissions and tours.
The dates for the tour are April 23-24, 2016. Teachers may join the tour either in Shepherdstown or at Tamarack in Beckley.
Awards 3 credit hours toward professional development requirements.
A much anticipated alternative for addiction recovery is now a reality in southern West Virginia. The Four Seasons Recovery Center in Mercer County is…
A much anticipated alternative for addiction recovery is now a reality in southern West Virginia. The Four Seasons Recovery Center in Mercer County is part of the West Virginia Justice Reinvestment Act.
State, federal and local representatives as well as participants on Wednesday packed the dining hall of the newly renovated school to celebrate the new option for addiction treatment in the region.
The ceremony opened with a prayer followed by several speakers including Mercer County Circuit Court Judge Omar Aboulhosn. He says he’s glad there’s have an alternative to incarceration.
“There are other cases in which the safety of the community is not an issue. It’s the individual needs are the issue and those appropriate cases this is going to give us a local option,” Oboulhosn said.
Patients are referred to the non-medical detox facility and qualify for the Four Seasons program after a referral from the court system.
The facility is run by recovering addicts themselves and utilizes a 12 step program.
Four Seasons Director Terry Danielson is also a recovering addict and has been clean since November 2011. Danielson says the ceremony is nice and he appreciates the community’s recognition but he knows his work to help people in the region is just beginning.
Right now, the facility in Bluefield can house 20 men. The state plans to double the amount of beds in the second year and provide space for 60 men in year three. Danielson is also tasked with raising funds to remain open after the money from the state runs out. The Justice Reinvestment Act covers the next three years.
