West Virginians have had a difficult journey; The mountaineer's life is not an easy one. It takes grit to endure the snowstorms that slam us every winter and sheer faith to carve roads, homes, churches, and businesses out of mountains. At times, we have been the butt of the nation's jokes and some Americans are ignorant of our existence as a state. Uneducated. Poor. Lazy. Hillbilly. White trash. Backward hicks. Labels that we have tried to outrun for more than 50 years, since the "War on Poverty" initiative of President Kennedy and then LBJ's administrations. Kennedy vowed to reverse the poverty in Southern West Virginia and erase these labels. I am reminded, though, of a book I read on the history of the Appalachian Volunteers, a group of young people dedicated to eradicating poverty in Kentucky and West Virginia. A picture of a man in his Sunday best stands in front of his home, a modest shack, and stares directly in the lens of the camera. The photographer had asked him to dress in old, dirty clothing to portray the impoverished lifestyle of Appalachia. The man refused to give up his dignity and dressed in his nicest clothes for the photograph because this was the reality: he may be poor, but that doesn't mean he lacks pride. He shifted the narrative.
Whenever I see photos from the 1960s of Southern West Virginia, I don't see people living in squalor, but a mother raising her babies, doing the best she can. I see children without shoes, but playing outside with their siblings and playmates. In 2016, we still struggle with poverty. Drugs and alcohol abuse is rampant all over the state. I am from Wood County, the Mid-Ohio Valley, the north-western part of the state. Last Thursday, I sat on the couch in my sister's apartment in Huntington, reading a book as a torrent of rain, thunder, and lightening shook the splashed and briefly illuminated my window with every lightening strike. Rain and minor flooding are common in Huntington, so much so that I and many other students lovingly call it "Floodington," and last year a few days after the fall semester started, someone paddled down 6th Avenue in an orange canoe. I wasn't worried.
Pictures of entire neighborhoods and cities completely submerged in water overshadowed any other news that first day. Greenbrier, Nicholas, and Kanawha counties were the hardest hit. People were trapped in their homes, swept away by the flood waters, or lost everything to the mud and muck. A four-year-old child drowned in the flood water after his grandfather tried to pull him to safety in Jackson County, Ravenswood, West Virginia. Five hundred people became trapped in the Crossings Mall in Elkview after a connecting bridge to the main roadway collapsed. So much devastation and loss. My stomach dropped as I scrolled through pictures of submerged houses and videos of muddy brown floodwater.
There is so much pain all around me: people are confused and hurt because their whole livelihood is gone; for many, the foundation is the only evidence their house ever existed in the first place, and there is a shadow of grief over the death of elderly, children, friends and family in West Virginia. I want to to take the weary and bereaved in my arms and comfort them. We are a clannish people, those that claim this state as their home. I've seen photographs of the National guard in red life preservers carrying children. People of every faith and background are handing out food and clothing for those affected by the flood. Volunteers with compassion in their hearts are traveling to Clendenin and White Sulpher Springs to serve food, rebuild, and offer general aid in any way they can. Yes, a mountaineer's life is not an easy one, but we don't survive in isolation.
In his Centennial Speech marking the 100th year of statehood, in Charleston, West Virginia, President Kennedy reflected on West Virginia's people and its values on a rainy June day in 1963:
"The sun does not always shine in West Virginia, but the people always do, and I am delighted to be here...This State was born to turmoil. It has known sunshine and rain in a hundred years, but I know of no State, and I know this State well, whose people feel more strongly, who have a greater sense of pride in themselves, in their State and in their country, than the people of West Virginia."
This is not the first time our state has suffered and it will not be the last. We must continue to pull tightly together and heal. We must continue to have pride in our state and its people by helping those who suffer. Surely, the heart does not beat of its volition, but the brain, veins, capillaries, and arteries all work together to make the heart function properly. Be a brain, vein, arteries, or capillary during this time. If you would like to help donate items or your time to helping flood victims in West Virginia: please visit The Red Cross or call 1-800-RED-CROSS for more information.
