Tag: Welch

December 4, 1883: Reformer Stella Fuller Born

Social reformer Stella Fuller was born in Point Pleasant on December 4, 1883. After graduating from a Huntington business college, she worked for a law firm in Welch. At age 23, she returned to Huntington and became actively involved in the Salvation Army. Her work with the organization turned into an obsession. She even lived for 20 years in the group’s citadel building.

However, her independent leadership style often brought her into conflict with Salvation Army officials. For instance, she organized a softball team that played on Sundays in violation of the group’s rules. Salvation Army officials thought Fuller was wielding too much power and was insubordinate. As a result of the disagreement, she split from the group at age 59 and founded her own relief organization on Huntington’s Washington Avenue. The Stella Fuller Settlement became the city’s largest haven for the disadvantaged and homeless. She would play a prominent role with the settlement for the next 37 years. Stella Fuller died in 1981 at the age of 97. The settlement closed its doors in 2009, and the building that housed it burned down in 2012.

November 11, 1918: World War I Ends

On November 11, 1918, World War I ended after more than four years of brutal fighting. Nearly 39 million soldiers had been killed, wounded, or listed as missing. American soldiers arrived on the scene only during the last year-and-a-half of the war. Still, some 116,000 died in the conflict.

About 58,000 West Virginians served in the war. Of these, more than 1,100 were killed in action, and nearly 700 died in training. Many others died from influenza or other diseases.

On the home front, patriotic West Virginians rationed food and coal, volunteered as Red Cross personnel, and sold Liberty Bonds. In addition, the U.S. government built an ordnance center at South Charleston and a gunpowder plant at Nitro. Neither facility, however, was completed before the war ended.

Of the more than two million Americans who served in World War I, the last-surviving veteran was Frank Buckles, who died at Charles Town in 2011 at the age of 110. Today, memorials to the war can be seen in Welch, Kimball, Logan, Martinsburg, Huntington, and Charleston, with individual statues and plaques in many other towns.

Army Transport Crashes Near Premier: July 1, 1942

Just after noon on July 1, 1942, a troop transport plane crashed and burst into flames on a mountainside about four miles from the McDowell County seat of Welch, located near the community of Premier. 

All 21 members of the U.S. Army Air Corps aboard the plane were killed.

The crash occurred during a heavy rainstorm with thick fog. However, the crash was caused by a mechanical malfunction. While flying at an altitude of about 500 feet, the transport lost a wing, plummeted into a community garden, and ended up in a ravine. Debris was scattered on the mountainside for nearly 200 yards. It was the first fatal plane crash in McDowell County history.

It was a tragic reminder of the realities of World War II. Most families in McDowell County had friends and loved ones serving overseas. Hundreds of people turned out for a memorial service in Welch and wept tears of sorrow for the dead soldiers, even though none of the airmen were from the region or from West Virginia.

A monument was later erected near the site of the crash to honor the victims.

Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers Shot in Welch: August 1, 1921

On August 1, 1921, Matewan police chief Sid Hatfield and his friend Ed Chambers were gunned down by Baldwin-Felt Detectives in front of the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch.

The trouble between Hatfield and the Baldwin-Felts had started more than a year earlier. In May of 1920, a shootout in the Mingo County town of Matewan had pitted Baldwin-Felts detectives against Hatfield and a crowd of angry miners.

A shootout left seven of the detectives, two miners, and the town’s mayor dead in the streets of Matewan.

After the Matewan Massacre, as it’s now known, Hatfield became a hero to the miners who were trying to unionize southern West Virginia. The Baldwin-Felts detectives decided to take revenge against Hatfield after he and 17 others were acquitted of all charges related to the massacre.

They seized their chance when Hatfield and Chambers were set to appear at the McDowell County Courthouse on charges unrelated to the earlier shootout. Hatfield’s murder sparked an uprising that led weeks later to an armed march on Logan County and the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest single conflict of the Mine Wars.

Drug Epidemic: 1 Small-Town Mayor Takes on Pill Distributors

A West Virginia mayor has joined the ranks of at least 11 communities suing some of the biggest U.S. drug distributors, bidding to make them pay for the damage done by addiction in a state already ravaged by the decades-long decline of coal.

Welch Mayor Reba Honacker says she’d like to establish a local rehabilitation center with any money her Appalachian city of 1,900 might gain from the lawsuit.

Her suit in state court is part of a growing push by local communities that lawyers say could ultimately rival the national scope of litigation against tobacco companies over smoking.

So far, 11 opioid distributors have paid about $47 million but admitted no wrongdoing in settling claims by West Virginia’s attorney general they improperly flooded the state with addictive pills.

Bernie Sanders Event Sunday in West Virginia

Former presidential candidate and Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is coming to the coal country of southern West Virginia for a Town Hall meeting about the needs of rural Americans.

Sanders will speak Sunday afternoon at Mount View High School in the city of Welch. The event is being hosted by MSNBC, which plans to broadcast it later, calling it “an unscripted, no-holds-barred conversation” with people from McDowell County about the issues facing them and communities like theirs.

“I think for too long the federal government has ignored the needs of rural America,” Sanders told The Associated Press on Friday. “All over this country: What we’re seeing right now in rural America is unemployment rates that are too high, health care that’s inadequate, infrastructure that’s in deep trouble. … And in addition to all of that is the opioid crisis, which exists all over, in my state and West Virginia, which has to be dealt with as well.”

Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton in last year’s Democratic presidential primary, though he easily won in West Virginia with nearly 124,000 votes. Republican candidate Donald Trump had just a few more than 156,000 votes. Trump later won in the general election against Clinton with 69 percent of West Virginia’s vote, promising to help bring back its slumping coal mining industry.

“What we are seeing in West Virginia, in Vermont, in rural America, is a decline in living standards for rural America,” Sanders said. “I think it’s important that people in rural America begin to have a voice to talk about the reality of their lives and to talk about what they think their communities need to go forward.”

He believes obstacles include the lack of quality broadband and cellphone service, and roads and bridges in disrepair. Sanders expects to visit other areas around the country to try to put rural needs high on Congress’ agenda, he said.

West Virginia and other states also could be hurt if Congress repeals the Affordable Care Act, which extended health care coverage to many people and helps support rural hospitals, Sanders said. “Unless there is a substitute plan that is as good or better, I fear very much that many, many people in West Virginia will A, lose the health insurance they have recently gotten, or B, if they’re on Medicaid, the kind of services they can receive on Medicaid will be diminished.”

House Republicans have drafted a substitute health care law. West Virginia’s U.S. senators, Republican Shelley Moore Capito and Democrat Joe Manchin, have expressed concerns about the possible change.

Sanders’ scheduled February appearance at the West Virginia National Guard armory in Welch was canceled. The Guard cited a U.S. Defense Department policy prohibiting the use for political and election events.

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