On July 26, 1917, Governor John Cornwell commissioned and provided funding for the West Virginia Flying Corps, headquartered at Beech Bottom in Brooke County.
The corps was the brainchild of 22-year-old Weston native Louis Bennett Jr., who’d become a pilot while attending Yale University. Bennett believed that airplanes—a relatively new invention at the time—could support the U.S. military effort in World War I. The U.S. Army, though, refused to accept the West Virginia Flying Corps as a unit, so Bennett entered flight school with the British Royal Air Force in Canada.
With the RAF, Bennett went on to become West Virginia’s only World War I ace. His 12 combat kills, including three aircraft and nine observation balloons, ranks Bennett among the top American-born aces of the war. He accomplished all of this in just 10 days in August 1918. On August 24, Louis Bennett died in France after being shot down by German anti-aircraft fire.
He was initially buried in France. After the war, Bennett’s body was returned to West Virginia, and his body was reburied in a cemetery in Weston.
West Virginia was named the 15th safest state in the US for settling down and raising a family. According to a blog from the SafeWise.com website, West Virginia is one of the safest places to live in America coming in at number 15.
SafeWise.com, compiled the list using data from recent FBI Crime Reports along with their own research. They also created a list of the top ten safest cities within West Virginia.
Those ten safest communities are:
Stonewood
Kingwood
Paden City
White Sulphur Springs
Eleanor
Romney
Weston
Harrisville
Ripley
Winfield
The site used FBI Crime Report data from 2012 as the basis of their research then narrowed down the list to cities with a population of 1,500 or above. They analyzed the number of Violent Crimes and Property Crimes.
At the end of a 2 and-a-half-mile, single lane road, sits La Paix Herb Farm. Owner Myra Bonhage-Hale is a retired social worker in her 70’s. She and her son Bill live here, in a brightly painted, purple homestead that dates back to the 1800’s. The house, formerly called the May-Kraus home, is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Bonhage-Hale grows a variety of herbs that she distils into essential oils and hydrosols. She makes about $8,000 a year selling her herbal products and doing herbal workshops on her farm. She lives in the unincorporated community of Alum Bridge, and she doesn’t own her mineral rights. She’s worried that she won’t be able to keep energy companies from drilling for natural gas near her home.
“I am terrified that I am going to lose this farm to Marcellus Shale Drilling,” said Bonhage-Hale.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Myra’s son Bill and her granddaughter Aijah, who is describing her school project she has been working on upstairs
Credit Roxy Todd
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Aijah, standing in front of her garden on La Paix Herb Farm
Credit Roxy Todd
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To release gas from the Marcellus Shale rock formation deep underground, companies blast water and chemicals deep into the ground at high pressures. Bonhage-Hale is worried that at tonight’s meeting she and her family are going to find out that these types of hydraulic drilling well pads are coming to Alum Bridge. She is scared for her health and worried that her well water and the air on her farm will be contaminated.
She points to neighboring farms in Doddridge County, which has seen tremendous gas and oil development in the last few years.
“They’ve had beautiful farms, they’ve got fracking pads next door, they’ve lost all their property value. And they can’t move, cause there’s nowhere to go. And that’s very much gonna happen in Lewis County,” Bonhage-Hale said.
Exactly what is going to happen in Lewis County—that’s still unclear.
Lewis County Commission president Agnes Queen, says she’s been told most of the new development will be in the part of the county where Bonhage-Hale’s farm is located. “We know that in one area, they are anticipating 288 wells, in the Western part of the county.”
Queen said that lots of citizens are excited that drilling could bring new jobs to Lewis County.
“Many many many of our citizens currently work in the oil and gas industry, but possibly work out of state. A lot of those folks are excited because they’ll be able to work at home for awhile,” Queen said.
78-year-old Bob Shear lives just over the hill from Myra Bonhage-Hale’s farm. He feels bad about her situation. But unlike her, he owns most of his mineral rights. He’s benefited from 14 conventional gas wells on his property.
“For the hydraulic fracturing, in my case, it could make me a fortune,” said Shear.
Still, Shear is not sure yet if he would welcome fracking operations on his land.
“If it was in an out of the way place where I didn’t think that it could ever contaminate my water system, I might be agreeable.,” said Shear.
Back over the hollow at Bonhage-Hale’s Lavender farm, Myra, and her son Bill, and her granddaughter, Aijah, are out in the garden. 9-year-old Aijah has discovered three tomatoes that she planted this spring.
Bonhage-Hale fears that this idyllic scene will be lost, along with her farm’s customers, if hydraulic fracking comes to Alum Bridge.
“And I feel so badly that I spent so much time, and I grew to love something so much, that we’re all gonna lose,” said Bonhage-Hale.
If fracking plans go ahead, Bonhage-Hale is considering buying property in Maryland. But she knows that even there, she might not be able to escape the development of natural gas drilling, which could include fracking in the future.
On Tuesday, hundreds of people crowded into a tight assembly hall at Jackson’s Mill to attend a public forum, hosted by CONSOl energy. Though many people, including Myra Bonhage-Hale, were anticipating a presentation, energy company representatives instead spoke to people one on one to people. For a report on this meeting, click here.
Credit Department of Environmental Protection
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Department of Environmental Protection
Screen shot from West Virginia DEP’s interactive oil and gas wells map. Horizontal wells are marked red.
The latest figures from the Department of Environmental Protection indicate that there are upwards of 400 horizontal well pads in West Virginia. How many more will there be? Want to learn how you can navigate the DEP’s interactive Gas Well Map? Click here.
The Department of Health and Human Resources is facing a June 11 deadline to come up with a plan to address issues at the state’s two psychiatric hospitals.
These issues include staffing shortages and noncompetitive wages for workers.
The Charleston Gazette reports that Kanawha County Circuit Court Judge Louis “Duke” Bloom ordered the plan on Tuesday. Bloom said the court might develop its own plan if the DHHR doesn’t submit one.
As of March 30, there were 48 vacant positions at William R. Sharpe Hospital in Weston and 41 vacancies at Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital in Huntington.
Both hospitals also lack critical-care staff that put them in violation of state code.
Bloom’s order came in a case originally filed in 1981 that dealt with the treatment of mental health patients.
