Tag: writers
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Coach Kellie: A Tiny West Virginia High School is Making Football History
This story originally appeared on 100 Days in Appalachia on Nov. 9, 2018. It took a few weeks for Hannan High School principal Karen Oldham to realize her school might have made history. She was so busy with the day-to-day grind of running the small, rural Mason County school that it didn’t cross her mind, […]
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Moonshiner’s Got Nothing to Hide
This story originally appeared in the Charleston Daily Mail on August 27, 2014. RIPLEY — Dwayne Freeman makes his moonshine almost the same way as the old-timers. He uses big sacks of corn and a kettle connected to shiny copper lines. There are a few minor differences, however. First, Freeman doesn’t make his whiskey in the moonlight. […]
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Jackie Mitchell Couldn’t Win
This article originally appeared on Lapham’s Quarterly‘s Roundtable blog on March 29, 2018. Click here to read the full story. On the first pitch of that April 1931 game, Chattanooga Lookouts pitcher Clyde Barfoot gave up a double to New York Yankees outfielder Earle Combs. Then Lyn Larry singled to centerfield, bringing Combs home. Now […]
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Paradise Lost
This article originally appeared on Lapham’s Quarterly‘s Roundtable blog on November 29, 2017. Click here to read the full story. Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett moved to the United States to lay low. Although some have suggested they left England to avoid scandal—Margaret was both Harman’s wife and his niece—their flight had more to do with […]
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Live from Oak Hill
This story originally appeared in the spring 2017 issue of WV Living magazine. Angel Acevedo was known to Saturday Nite Wrestlin’ fans as Assassin No. 1 of the tag-team duo The Cuban Assassins. Richie Acevedo did not doubt his father’s stories about being Fidel Castro’s bodyguard. To his young mind, the evidence was all there. […]
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The Real Picker
This story originally appeared in the March/April 2017 issue of Morgantown Magazine. A strange-looking visitor stopped by Jake Hutchinson’s Pickers Paradise shortly after the Fairmont guitar and antiques store opened in 2011. “He had that big beard split in two, one (half) was going to the left and one was going to the right,” Hutchinson […]
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Protectors of the Forest
This story originally appeared in the Charleston Daily Mail on Thursday, May 3, 2012. LANSING — Zeus has been growing in Mill Creek canyon for four centuries. The massive hemlock tree stood watch as white explorers moved in, replacing the land’s native inhabitants. Zeus was there as the descendants of those explorers formed a new […]
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Coffee keeps friendships warm
This column originally appeared in the Charleston Daily Mail on January 2, 2015. I remember the day I became a coffee drinker. I stayed home from school with a blazing sore throat. That afternoon, as I laid on my grandmother’s couch in misery, I got an idea. I went to the kitchen, grabbed one of her green […]
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Carnival of Soles
This story originally appeared in the Charleston Daily Mail on Wednesday, May 7, 2012. Jina Jordan has held several jobs in her life. She owned a cleaning business and then worked as a pizza dough maker at Gino’s Pizza in Sissonville. She drives cars for the St. Albans Auction and repairs purses and leather jackets at […]
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Dogs, by Design
This story originally appeared in the February 2017 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. Look around Old Hemlock, the historic Preston County home of writer and illustrator George Bird Evans and his wife Kay, and it doesn’t take long to get a sense of the lives that once filled these walls. There’s a folksy quilt […]