This story originally appeared in the November/December 2015 issue of West Virginia Focus magazine. Patrecia Gray’s home is tucked away up a narrow hollow in Mason County. She bought the property in the 1970s with her husband, partly because it reminded her of the Laura…
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014. My conversation with songwriter Todd Snider started off pretty normal. Normal, at least, considering Snider’s confessed love of psychedelic drugs. We talked about Snider’s upcoming appearance on this Sunday’s “Mountain…
This story was originally published in the May/June 2015 issue of West Virginia Focus. When Sam Burdette first visited the Tri- State Greyhound Park in Cross Lanes in the mid-1980s, he didn’t even know how to read the program. The sheets of paper were filled with…
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Friday, May 7, 2010. This morning, State Schools Superintendent Steve Paine will dub more than 200 West Virginia eighth-graders “knights and ladies of the Golden Horseshoe” for their knowledge of state history. But there’s…
This story was original published in the March/April 2015 issue of West Virginia Focus magazine. In late October 2011, storm winds brought down trees all around James Ball’s home near Danville, making the road to his home impassable. It was a terrible time to have a…
This story was originally published in the March/April 2015 issue of West Virginia Focus magazine. Talking with Bill Cole, you get the sense he doesn’t use phrases like “over the moon” very often. But that’s how the baritone-voiced, serious-faced Senate President describes his frame of…
This story originally appeared in the Charleston Daily Mail on Aug. 28, 2012. FAIRVIEW, W.Va. – Kent Leonhardt wants you to make him the state’s next agriculture commissioner. He promises he’ll work hard to improve food safety and increase the number of farms in West…
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Nov. 6, 2013. NELLIS, W.Va. — William Gunnoe noticed his safety lamp had stopped burning. Gunnoe, a section foreman at the Nellis No. 3 Mine in the Boone County with 19 years’ experience, knew…
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Oct. 28, 2014. A little more than six weeks after it went on the air, Charleston’s first community radio station is nothing but static. The community radio station collapsed in a heap of dysfunction….
This story was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Oct. 22, 2014. MAN — Drive down Main Street, and it’s easy to tell what people in this small Logan County town have on their minds. Painted bedsheets and poster boards hang on fences…