Matewan Oral History Project Collection
Sc2003-135

Howard Sutherland Interview

Becky Bailey: (outside voice - testing, two, three, four.) Yes, okay. I tested it before I came in this morning. (outside voice-oh, okay.) Okay, if you would, Mr. Sutherland, please give me your full name and when and where you were born.

Howard Sutherland: Okay. Howard Harold Sutherland. As I indicated earlier, I was named after my grandfather, Howard Boone Shortridge, from Buchannon County, Virginia and the middle name is after uh...Harold uh...Cudden who's a former mayor of Logan and was the family doctor for years there. I was born uh... actually born in Huntington, West Virginia. At the time, my parents lived in Peach Creek which is a little community near Logan, in Logan County, of course. And that was May 31, 1938.

B: And, do you know where your family had originated?

HS: Yes, I do. I have a cousin that's done quite a bit of research on that and she's gone back as far as she can. As you know, many of the southern counties were...their records were destroyed in the Civil War and that's what we suspect happened, in the northern part of North Carolina. Even she suspects that ...well of course we are of Scottish heritage...and she suspects that the family originated in the United States from Wilmington, which was a landing spot, we understand, in probably the eighteenth century. Either Wilmington or Charleston. Seems to be a lot of Scottish that came in that way. The furthest back she can trace our family is to Surry County, North Carolina which is the county that is adjacent to Virginia. Mount Airy I think is the county seat in that county. The family, for the most part, were farmers in Wythe County [Virginia]. More current history, from what my dad has told me, his grandfather was a caretaker for a steel company operations and I say caretaker, he took care of the livestock and in that day and age, you used livestock to move items around rather than fork lifts and things like we have today, power equipment. So he he took care of the livestock on a farm at Foster Falls, Virginia. An interesting point about that, too, his father, who was named Spain Marshall Vaughn, was killed on the same day that Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded at the battle of Chancellorsville. The battle of Chancellorsville turned out to be probably the high water mark for the Confederacy as far as their battles are concerned and that's what I've got on my office walls here. Something that I wasn't aware of but that my cousin had found out in her research was that both my great-great grandfather and great grandfather who was John Vaughn. Uh...did I get my greats right? My great great grandfather was killed, they sent my great grandfather home because he was the only surviving male in the family just wouldn't have thought that they were that sophisticated at the Civil War times but they did do that. So he came home to take care of the family. My grandfather was named Thomas Sutherland. Married Mary Elizabeth Vaughn, of Wythe County who was a daughter of John Vaughn. Thomas Sutherland was an engineer for the Norfolk-Western railroad but he did not...he wasn't a...uh...locomotive engineer, he was a... a...civil engineer. I'll get it right in a minute. And at a very early part of this century, I think like 1905, the best I can recollect, my grandmother passed away during the flu epidemic that was very rampant...in the United States at that time. My grandfather, Thomas Sutherland, traveled a lot and those days he would...he would not come home that often and after my grandmother passed away he did not return, so, that's one of those dark spots in your family history that you just...you never know what happened. He may have been killed somewhere...never had any word of him. We just had no idea whatever happened.

B: How...

HS: My faith...

B: Oh, I'm sorry. I was just gonna ask you, how old were...were the children at the time that...

HS: There were uh...let's see, the best I can remember, I should have some records here of that. There were five children uh...I believe I'm right on that and they were...they ranged in age from uh...probably mid-teens to uh...uh...infants. The mother of this cousin I refer to, I think she was the baby of the family at that time...she was an infant. So uh...the family ended up being raised by their grandparents because of the death of their mother again at Foster Falls, Virginia, which is south of Wytheville. My dad was raised on the farm. He obtained a tenth grade level of education there, which was in a rural county of Virginia, in the early part of the century was, I guess, considered an accomplishment. He went to Roanoke and, the best I can remember him tellin' me, got a job with a [coal] company store and did very menial work, and as things worked out he got a job. Someone promised him a job in the coalfields of West Virginia. So, he came to Logan County in the early part of the century. He primarily worked in Logan County and at the peak of his work career, [he] had seven stores. What he...what he would do, would be to work with small coal operators and he would work as the company store for the small operator when they didn't have the resources or the wherewithall to set up company store. So he had these small company stores that would serve several small coal operators. They used scrip and I understand scrip was illegal but still, that was the method of business in those days. The operators paid off in scrip and the scrip was only usable at his store stores and in turn then, he would sell the scrip to the...to the companies. And I'm sure there was some...as it's been written...discounting that went on with that. He became a very successful merchant and he, at a very early age became a millionaire. As I indicated, he had seven stores in Logan County. There's a store in Logan today, called McCormick's that's a...an appliance store and furniture store. That was one of his stores prior to 1936. The depression cost him everything...he lost it all and went to work for Imperial Ice Cream Company, forerunner of Foremost, managed their plant there in Logan, was transferred to Williamson in 1941, I believe. [He] had an opportunity to go in business here in Matewan, in 1942, I believe that was when we moved to Matewan. At that time, I was about four years old. The place that he bought was owned by John Nenni, who is the grandfather of Ed Nenni, was a restaurant that served beer. I don't want to call it a beer joint, but I guess that's what it was and this was during the war years, of course, 1942, '43 and the N & W trains came through, the troop trains. Williamson couldn't handle them all so Matewan was a stop for the troop trains. The location of the restaurant, I'll refer to it as the restaurant (laughter) was as it turns out, Testerman's old jewelry store location and it fronted on the railroad as well as the main street of town today. The troop trains would stop, why there would just be, oodles and oodles of people after something to eat they did not want to just eat the box lunches or whatever that was provided on the trains and my mother became known for her homemade ice cream and homemade soup so, they...they did quite well for that year. It gave them enough of a start that they were able to buy the Matewan Supermarket in 1944. The Matewan Supermarket was in the location that now is occupied by the Coal City Parts on the corner of the Buskirk building and they stayed in business. My dad passed away in 1965 and my mother continued the business until 1967, I think it was, when a flood finally took it all. That was about the third or fourth flood that had just wiped out the family fortune. So, that's pretty much the story of what my family's been in town. I grew up, of course, in town, graduated from Matewan High School in '56 as the second highest or salutorian of the class. Was very active in the music program and played football. You look back on those days and think about the small schools and the pluses that those small schools provide. Went to Marshall, was very active down there grade point wise, I think I did alright. Graduated with over a B average and was the little old boy from Matewan that did pretty good at Marshall. He was president of the senior class and in the student senate. Had several offices in his fraternity. I don't know why I'm talkin' third person. Sigma Alpha Epsilon, president of that, was selected for a couple of honorary organizations, Omicron Delta Kappa, which is the liberal arts school equivalent to Phi Beta Kappa. The Robe, which is a local honorary. Probably the last thing that I did was to be the chairman of the Commission on University Status for Marshall and I might add, that's what I have hanging on the wall here is the first class that has the Marshall University name on it rather than Marshall College. So, I'm proud of that and we worked hand in hand with the faculty at Marshall and in trying to communicate our desires to the legislators and overall, the efforts worked. The university status was changed either late 1960 or early 1961, I don't recall what period [year] it was in. I graduated from Marshall in January of '61. I still identify myself as uh...as part of the class of '60 because I'd find it a little hard to say I was president of the class of '60 but graduated in '61. So, I actually carried over an extra semester at school. The ROTC credits required additional hours...I stayed an extra semester at school I was commissioned in the United States Army, in the Armored Branch, went on active duty in April of 1961, and stayed for nearly four years. Served at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Hokkaido, Japan, Sigami, Japan, Fort Hood, Texas, and I got off active duty at Fort Hood, Texas in August of 1965. I started with Owen's Illinois Glass company as an Industrial Engineer trainee for a year...stayed with them for a year. Went to work with Xerox [and] stayed with Xerox for almost twenty years. Bought my own business in 1984, I've had that business since then. Currently, my son runs the store day to day. I do take care of the bookkeeping at a distance and accepted a job in Matewan in April of 1990 as Director of Community Development with the Matewan National Bank which is really the outcome of a year's work with the Matewan Revitalization Task Force. I may mention in my Xerox career, that I was fortunate in having success with Xerox, at the top of that career peak, I guess we would say, I was responsible for seven manufacturing plants across the United States that had an employment of around three thousand, the best I recall, and I know that we also had a budget in excess of $100,000,000, which is a pretty good sum of money. I held that job for two years and at the end of two years, I asked to be reassigned because, as you can imagine, traveling three plus weeks a month for that period of time starting taking its toll and it did require being on site. You could not...you could not just stay in the office without without visiting the plants.

B: Okay.

HS: Cue me. (laughing)

B: If you don't mind, I'll back track a little and work back to some of the questions that I have...

HS: Okay.

B: From what you've said.

HS: Alright.

B: Okay. Um...your grandfather that was a civil engineer for the railroad, do you know what kind of training he had to...to be...

HS: I do not.

B: To qualify?

HS: Do not. That's the unfortunate part my dad was so young and the family was so young, he knew nothing about his father and I think there may have been some hard feelings between my grandfather and my great grandfather that raised the family and I do remember one story that he came to call on the family and brought them some gifts and the grandfather, John Vaughn, told him to leave and take his gifts with him so there were some hard feelings there so, he was not talked about by the grandfather that raised my dad.

B: Uh-huh. Okay. And you said...you think your um...your grandmother died during the flu epidemic. Have you ever heard any more stories about the flu epidemic?

HS: No, I haven't I...I really haven't. I think, again, that probably relates to uh...because the family was so young. At that time they, at least the family members that I knew, my dad and his sister, my aunt Gladys, they were too young to remember any of it. And it's just what they had been told as they grew up.

B: Was your father one of the younger children?

HS: Yes, he was.

B: Okay.

HS: Yeah.

B: Okay. Hum. Alrighty. Let's see. Do you know your parents birthdates and...and when they met back then?

HS: Yeah. My dad was born January third, 1895 and my mother was born August twenty-fourth, 1911. I'm actually part of the second family. My dad was married previously. I have older half bro- brothers and I had a half-sister, she's since deceased but they are a bit older than I am and with my mother, there is myself and a sister. My mother's from Buchanan County, Virginia, which is Grundy and she was part of a large family as well, as I remember ten children and she was not the baby, but I think next to. Her maiden name was Shortridge.

B: Uh-huh. Do you know how your parents met?

HS: Mother worked for my dad in Logan County as a bookkeeper, so they met through work. He had been divorced for, I think, three years or something like that when they met and got married.

[B] How old were they? I mean, how old, say, how old was your mother when they got married?

HS: Well, let's see, they got married in 1936, I think it was, so, that would have made her, what, twenty five, twenty six, something like that. And he would have been forty...forty.

B: Okay. Did she ever tell you what had brought her to West Virginia?

HS: Yes she had an old sister that had come to West Virginia. She went to Marshall from Buchanan county, and and got a teaching certificate and ended up in Logan County as a teacher. She tried to help the family the best she could and one of the ways she could help was to bring her youngest sister to Logan County and let her live with her and go to school. So my mother graduated from Logan High School and lived with my aunt Mandy, Amanda, again, she was a bit older than Mom but Mom lived with her and went to school there and got her education while she was with her. She did not go to college, she did take some business courses though.

B: Uh-huh. Okay. So, of you and your sister. Are you the older child?

HS: Yes, I'm the oldest...right. She was born in '46, I think it is. (laughing) so she's uh...yeah, eight years younger than I.

B: Okay. Okay. Um...let's see. Do you think that part of your drive to success may have been the fact that your were a child of the Depression, as many people call it?

HS: I would say that the fear of failure probably has a great deal to do with the drive, yeah, to succeed. Also, I think I think a small town environment helps with that as well to have your ego fed in a small town by your little accomplishments. I, some people tend to thrive on that and others don't. I think I did. I strived to succeed in whatever it was I did. And my parents also took a great deal of pride in what I did. Good grades in school or or whatever accomplishment it was recognized by them.

B: Uh-huh, Did your father ever talk about the setback that he had suffered because of the Depression?

HS: No, he didn't uh...he didn't talk about that too much. I think it was a painful time for him, cause, again, he did lose so much I'm sure if I would have had enough wisdom at that time and had queried him, why he would have probably had told me more about it but my older brother probably has been more of a source of information for that than anything else. I might mention, relevant to Matewan itself, when we moved to Matewan, we lived over the restaurant that they had bought, which, as it turns out, and for I which had no indication or idea at the time. But the place where the Testermans had lived and then eventually, Sid Hatfield, lived up there. We moved from there to a house in the upper end that's no longer there across from, rather it was near the old grade school, which was handy to go to school. Then we moved from there into the Buskirk building and lived in the Buskirk building for many years. It was a good place to be. Mrs. Buskirk was still living at the time and she lived in the Buskirk family apartment and she was a very kind lady and showed me many kindnesses. I have some very fond memories of Ruby Buskirk. Then my dad purchased a home on the hill which was the old Stony Mountain superintendent's house and we lived there until my father passed away and we sold it at that point. My mother moved back to the Buskirk building where it was more convenient for her to stay.

B: uh.. How was the Buskirk building divided then when you were growing up?

HS: Uh...it was divided into apartments but they were larger apartments than what they are today. What I know about it today, it's been pretty much subdivided into a lot of two room apartments. Back in those days the apartments were made for larger families set ups and there probably weren't more than a half dozen families that lived up there at that time. I have no idea how many apartments are up there today but I would say it would be double or even triple that number.

B: What kind of utilities were there in these apartments when you were growing up? Was there running water and uh...

HS: That's a good question. Yes, the Buskirk and all the buildings we had then were as modern as many could be. The only thing that was then missing in Matewan was natural gas. I understand that was a (laughter) a political issue several years ago that there were powers in the town,were substantial holders of Appalachian Power Company stock and...and they did not want to see natural gas come in. Which we hope, in part of our economic development to be able to bring that into town because it is a utility that's desirable to have. Electrical power was always very convenient. It was not that bad. We've always had good water in town but no natural gas.

B: What do your remember about Ruby Buskirk?

HS: Again, a very kind lady but, a strong lady. Saw her on several occasions giving instructions to the employees that she had around taking care of the building and there was no doubt who was boss, because we have to remember that R.W. Buskirk Sr. passed away, as I recall, on the day that R.W Buskirk Jr. was born. He,as I remember had a carbuncle on the back of his neck that infected his brain and killed him. That would have been early, early twenties. In, 1920, '21 , if not before that, he passed away so she had to handle the affairs of of the Buskirk business. The..Buskirks had substantial holdings in this community.

B: Un-hun. We're trying to flesh out the...his background in this community. Do you remember some of the...the properties or...or business interests that they had?

HS: Well, of course, the Buskirk building he owned. Across the street from the Buskirk building, as I was growing up, was the the icehouse which was considered part of the complex across the street, cause again in those days when the building was built, 1911, I think it was. There was not refrigeration, there was just ice,so there was a building built into the ground. The roof of that building was about the same level as what the sidewalk is across the street at the Buskirk building so most of the building was under ground. When I was growing up, of course, it was not used as an ice house. Walter Varney, had a shoe shop in there and Joe Morrell, had an apartment in there. Joe was one of the caretakers for the Buskirk building and I think he probably had a tool shop and a little work shop in there as well. Robert Buskirk, Jr. tore that building down to make space for a new,in those days, Esso station, which is today, Exxon. And, currently that building is being used as a (phone rings) town tavern.

HS: And he built the Esso station uh...goodness, that must have been right after World War II, mid-forties anyway. Also, Buskirk, Kentucky, was appropriately it so, named after R.W. Sr. because he owned so much of the property over there. Now the Buskirk family doesn't own any property there I think they have disposed of all those, properties. I saw on a old plot the other day, R.W. also owned a considerable amount of land on the upper part of Matewan, that is on the east side of the underpass and also along the railroad track on the West Virginia side across from the Kentucky properties that he owned. He was a pretty large land holder in this community.

B: Okay. While we're discussing prominent figures in the community, I'd like to ask you about Frank Allara, Dan Chambers, and Buck Harless. Um...I understand that Frank Allara was another prominent business man in the area when you were growing up.

HS: Buck Harless, I have not known. I just met Buck Harless recently so I really can't comment much on Buck Harless. Frank Allara, though, was in business in town. One of his sons and I grew up together, all the way from the first grade through the twelfth grade at the schools here. Windy, his given name is Frank, but he's not Frank, Jr., he's Frank W. Allara, and he goes by the name Frank today. I don't know why he was called Windy in high school but that's what we called him then and now. In any event, what I remember of the Allaras is having a very nice home and a lot of land and a lot of yard to play in and we used to really have some good touch and tackle football games up there as youngsters in the Allaras' front yard. Frank also was a railroad fanatic as most of us that grew up in this town are. We can't help from being aficionados of the railroad and they had a large model train collection in their attic. I mean, they cut holes through the walls and everything else to make their layouts and it was something I remember so fondly. Frank Allara, as I remember growing up in town, was the owner and operator of the Matewan Theater, which is in the building that Margaret Casey now has her store. It would certainly be nice to bring the old theater back, but I understand it's been torn up so much that it could never be recovered. But in any event the Allara family ran the theater for years and years. In a small town like this, in those days before television, the theater was quite a popular gathering place, particularly on the weekends. Saturday morning movies. You went to the movies to watch the cowboy movies and the serials and the cartoons and as I remember, it cost a dime and you could get a nice bag of popcorn for a nickel. Didn't take anything to drink. You just got your popcorn and that was it.

Those are my recollections of Frank Allara. Now Frank was also involved, I must say, in the church and active in many of the community organizations. He was quite active in the Rotary Club. I do not remember the Rotary Club when it started because that was before my time here, but I know he was involved with that he was, with several other men, was active in getting the Magnolia Fair started, I think in 1950. I believe that's when it started. The first Director of the Fair, and director for several years after that was Dr. Kennedy. Then there was Carl F. Montgomery principal of the high school and later was the superintendent of the schools of Mingo County. The Fair, in the early days,I think that's probably all I could say about Frank Allara. I don't think that, at least what I knew, the Allara family was well to do, let's say, in the days that I was in town. They did alright, but it was not 'til later, as I understand, with Frank's business partnerships with Buck Harless that that he really came into a great deal of money. I did visit with him about a year ago after his stroke and it was very sad to see him in the condition that he's in. I've heard people say, it's the mind trapped in the body and they cannot communicate with you in any way or any form or fashion so all your're doin' is really making a courtesy visit and I understand he's even in worse shape today so it's sad to see.

B: Hum. Did he um...at that time, when you were little and growing up, did he still take people for rides in airplanes, say on July fourth or the holidays or the summer times?

HS: You know, I recall that uh...but I did not get in one myself, I wasn't uh...didn't have the opportunity to do that but it, that is right. He was a pilot and he did fly. But I don't know, I just don't recall anymore than that.

B: Okay. Now, this may be before your parents' time here, but we've noticed that July fourth was one of the bigger holidays in this community and the stores in town were the source for peoples' ice cream, say on July fourth...What do you remember about, say your family's store and...and how it was active around holidays?

HS: I recall that very vividly,being one of three grocery stores in town. Refrigeration, though was in existence at that time, if you had a family gathering, you may have not a had adequate enough to keep ice cream frozen or in the quantities that you'd like to have had so most fourth of Julys', we came to the store, not open for business, but to be there for people to come by to pick up their ice cream orders. I'll call it that way and maybe even watermelons and soft drinks so though we weren't open for business the fourth of July, we were active on, at least the morning hours of the fourth of July, dispensing items that had been ordered previously. Yes, it was...it was. Big family time. Not a...not a big community gathering...

Like we see in communities with parades and things like that, but it was a big family time. The Fair, I...I think, may I mention this again, the Fair was uh...in the early days, I'm gonna say this and I'm gonna say it in a kind way, as much as I can, the Fair today is no where close to what it was when it began. The Fair today is really nothing more than a carnival. What I saw last year with rides and that was about it. It did have some stage events but the early days at the Fair were much more an arts and craft exhibition, displays of can goods, awards given for baking contests, quilts on display, art displays, the businesses in the area having displays about their businesses, educational type displays, again, much more what you would think an arts and crafts or a small rural fair would be. Now we didn't have anything, about livestock because, again, this area's not really conducive to livestock raising though people do raise and have small...uh...holdings of perhaps cattle and pigs. They're even some goats around but that's about the size of it but not to the extent that we had any kind of competition in that regard. There's always been Miss Magnolia Fair though. Now you mentioned another gentleman that I have quite a bit of fond memories of, I should say, is Dan Chambers. Dan's son, Joe and I, were near the same age, I think Joe was just a few months younger than I and Joe was an only son of his third marriage with Kathleen Chambers and we grew up together, in those early years. Joe, eventually, went to Greenbrier Military School and left town for his schooling but until that time, Joe and I spent a great deal of time together and then of course on the in the summers as well. We went to boy's camp for three years in the late forties and uh...that terminated when there was an outbreak of polio at this particular camp and we did not go back anymore. But it's with fondness that I remember the Chambers', and of course, Mrs. Chambers is still alive in St. Petersburg. I visited with her last fall, I think it was after Dan, Sr. had passed away. I was fortunate, I visited them a couple years prior to that, which was about six months prior to his death and it was sad to see the frailness that had set in but he was still strong of voice, strong of mind we always enjoyed to visit. But Dan, Sr. was a...the reason I call Dan Sr., there's a Danny, Jr. too. Dan was one of those community leaders that was always there, very supportive of all the activities in the community and sheriff of the county at one point, of course, president of the bank and chairman of the board for years and years. He followed his dad, and that was E.B. Chambers. The Chambers left the are in the '50's. I...I don't know the reason why, nor did I ever understand the reasons why , but he gave up full-time managing the bank to, I think, Frank Allara, at that point moved to Huntington, and spent several years in Huntington while Kathleen, finished her college education and then they moved to Florida and that's where they spent probably the last twenty years.

B: Un-hun. Hum. Well, um...I have some more socially oriented questions for you now, If you don't mind. Um...what had taken you to boy's camp, in the summer when you were young? How...was that something that most of the boys in town did?

HS: No, there were two types of camps that were available for most of the boys around. A week with the boy scouts, which is a short one or, this boy's camp up in Greenbrier County which, to be quite honest, was rather expensive, at that time and it was like six weeks or so duration. It uh...Carl F. Montgomery, that I mentioned earlier, at that time was a counselor up there so uh...several boys from this area went up there because of his presence up there and Mrs. Montgomery was a counselor at a girls camp, which was across the river. Camp Allegheny, as I recall. If you'd have ask me the name of that I would have never remembered it but it popped up there. The camp that we went to was called Camp Shawmideleca, which is a derivative of the four indian tribe names, Shaw...Shawnee, Shawme, Miami, Del...Delaware, Ica...Seneca. Yeah. So those four indian tribes were thought to be in this area so that's where they came up with that. It was a fun time. We had all the things that...that you would think would be at a camp like that. Horseback riding, bow and arrow, marksmanship training, wood crafts, all that type of thing It was a good time. The sad ending of it I understand, that the camp came back later, but was an outbreak of polio and in the forties it was still the scourge of the nation. In a cabin...I recall a cabin next to us, a boy died of it and another one caught it and it was supposedly related to uh...the river water. We swam in the Greenbrier River. The river was damned at that point. The river was the uh...suspicion of where the virus came from. And after that, they built a swimming pool supposedly; and I don't know whether the camp's going today or not, but to answer your question did most boys go to camp, no, they did not go. Uh...just a few of us that had that opportunity and were able to go.

B: When you were growing up, was there a...a social or an economic distinction between say, children like you who grew up in town because your parents had businesses, and say the children that lived out in the camps or up the hollers?

HS: I would say there was, yes. Um...I think probably, again, it had to do with uh...gosh, I'd hate to think we were snobs, I don't think that was the case, but I think it was a case of a small community. We went to church together. We went to school together and some dating went on. I'd like to come back to dating later. The kids in the camps and what have you, about the only time that we saw them was when they came to school. They caught the bus and came to school, got on the bus and went back home and that was...that was about the extent of the contact that that we had. There was not a great deal of socializing or whatever. The people in Thacker stayed in Thacker. The people in Red Jacket stayed in Red Jacket. The people at Lobata and Surosa, stayed in Lobata and Surosa and the people in Matewan stayed in Matewan. Now within Matewan, itself, we had our own shall we say, social strata that did not seem to make any difference, whether from a lower income family or from a merchant family. I wouldn't say we had any high incomes at that time, but we did have a...a substantial number of merchant families in town. Again, I don't think there was any kind of ostracizing because we were merchant families or anything like that. There were several kids my age in town, that we use to buddy with and go down to the river and skip rocks. I never did swim in the river but I'd go down with them. I...I was told not to do that and I didn't do it and I'm glad I didn't.

B: Why was that?

HS: It was so filthy. That river was just absolutely filthy. I mean, raw sewage and coal. I mean, it was just...just hard to believe. By looking at it.

B: You said you wanted to come back to dating?

HS: Yeah, dating, now that was an interesting phenomenon too, my best recollection, during our high school years, I don't think it was just me, I don't think I was a wall flower, that's generally put to a girl, isn't it. But there was not that much dating that went on in our high school. As I recall the first date I ever had was for the Junior-Senior prom when I was a junior. I had to get a date. I come back to the merchants again, in that period of our life, in this town, Saturday's, that was the day for business and if your parents were merchants, you worked on Saturday. Most of us did anyway and I know in our case in the grocery business, we opened at, uh...I think it was eight o'clock in the morning and stayed open until ten at night on Saturdays and by the time you broke down your produce and meat cases and stuff like that, it was midnight or after before you left. So, there wasn't a whole lot of time for dating in those days in that regard and because you knew you had a hard day on Saturday, you didn't go out and spend a lot of time on Fridays, either. That was in the days when drive in movies were just starting to open. In the early fifties cars were available, but they just weren't all that available...as...as they are today and when you would go would be...it would be a big outing. So my recollection, there wasn't...there wasn't all that much dating that took place in Matewan, and me personally, it wasn't 'til I went to college. Uh...I'm gettin' into more of a social environment, I guess.

B: Um...something along the lines of...of the dating question, is um...Vinci Morrell mentioned in his interview that there was a curfew for the youngsters in Matewan. Was the curfew still in existence when you were growing up?

HS: As I recall, there was one. And by the way, I mentioned Joe Morrell earlier about being the caretaker for the Buskirk property. That was Vinci's father. I think there was one, I don't think we had a siren to sound or anything like that; but I don't remember the time or anything. You were expected to, get off the streets.

B: Okay. Um...something that the...the older people that we have...have interviewed is...they...they talk about how much um...the schedule of the trains coming through Matewan. How...How that affected the order of say, day to day life. Was that still part of the pattern of...of life when you were growing up?

HS: Yes, it was. Let's see, best I remember, we had like uh...four trains that stopped in town a day: two east bound, two west bound. I remember the numbers fifteen and sixteen, uh...I don't know which was what. I know from my dad's business perspective, that was one of the one of the nice things he did from a business stand point, being on the N & W Railroad, he dealt with an outfit by the name of, why would I remember this, Ballard, Fish, and Oyster Company in Portsmouth, not Portsmouth, Norfolk and he would mail an order, like on Tuesday, they would have it on Wednesday, because again, the trains took the mail in those days. The mail is sorted on the trains. They had postage cars, railway postage cars. Postal cars. I'll get it in a minute, but the mail was sorted in route as it was picked up in towns like Matewan. On the evening train of Thursday,I believe it was, from Norfolk to Matewan, we got fresh fish and oysters. We'd go over and pick that up, packed in ice, of course, and before Friday and Saturday trade, we had fresh fish and oysters and that was quite a a thing in Matewan to have. Fresh fish and oysters from the Atlantic. Unheard of, you know. (laughing) But, as far as the relationship of the trains in Matewan my father used it from a business perspective.

B: Un-hun. Did um...were people still basically, say, traveling between here and Williamson mostly by train at that time or had it started to be automobile traffic?

HS: It had started with the automobile traffic but there was still a considerable amount of train traffic plus at that time, we did have a bus service. The bus traveled a regular schedule back and forth from Williamson. Between the train and the bus, more people were traveling that way than automobile. Now, I remember one traffic event that took place down there at Lobato. A bus lost its brakes goin' down the hill and crossed the tracks and ended up in the river. I don't know, there was one or two people killed at that, as I remember. It was quite a drop there, but we had bus service in here for quite a bit of time. But it was just...just to Williamson. To Williamson and back uh...had a bus terminal near the underpass that's no longer there that the floods took.

B: Un-hun. Okay. One um...follow up question I have is, you say, at one time your parents store was one of three grocery stores in town. Um...how big was the community support with three grocery stores in...in Matewan?

HS: Matewan was and still could be, I think, a trade center for the surrounding area. Matewan is not a coal camp, as you can tell by the looks of the town. Matewan, we must still keep in mind, is the oldest incorporated town in Mingo County so it's been a multi-faceted community from the last century. Though coal is the, of course, the main commodity drives...that drives it all, ...but people would come from the various coal camps, and nearby coal communities and stuff to Matewan to trade. If they weren't absolutely tied or dedicated to the company store, they would come and buy groceries and other items from this community. I think in that way they felt their independence from the company store. And, I can, you know, I just go right down the line. I can remember the stores that were here at the time. We had a good full line drug store, of course the liquor store has been there where it is right now since...since I can remember.

B: Un-hun.

HS: There was a variety store. Hope's had a variety store that had the kinds of things like you'd find at K-Mart today. A small town nickel and dime kind of thing with clothing. We had two very fine clothing shops in town that carried both men and womens clothing. We had a couple of restaurants uh...served beer as well. Nenni's was, of course, in operation. You had about everything you could want here, plus we had the bank and you had two full line automobile dealerships that were top volume dealers in the county. Ford and General Motor products were the dealerships, so people come to town to get their automobiles worked on. Neither on of them are here now. The schools, themselves, though they didn't draw people for trade, gave some identity, I think, to the community, as it does to this day. We say it's probably a trade center for eight to ten thousand people today. People that are in business today, would double that number probably, more like twenty thousand. The people come to buy, say from Superior Electric down the way. Their products. I'm not sure what the question was now. Uh...

B: That's pretty much answered, I was just wondering, to try to get an idea on how big the community was when you were growing up.

HS: Yeah. The town, limits were smaller than what they are today. The town limits did not include what we call now, today, the O'Brien edition. The town limits to the east are where they are today at Pauline Roberson's. The town limits only went to the railroad crossing to the west and of course, the bridge, so Hatfield Bottom had been added and the O'Brien Edition has been added but ironically, the number of people today is about the same as what it was when I was growing up because there's been such a loss of the housing and so on with the floods.

B: Un-hun. That's um...I guess my last couple questions would be, what do you think, of course, you really weren't here through much of this period, but what do you think was the cause of the town...the town's decline.

HS: Oh. One word, floods. Oh, absolutely there's no doubt about it. I was here part of the time. The first major flood that the town had was in uh...1956. January, 1956. It happened to be between semesters at Marshall my freshman year and I was home when that first one happened and that was when water got in the main street, in my dad's store about five feet deep. So as you can imagine, five feet in a grocery store pretty well takes care of everything that's there. I'll never forget a couple things about that. One was the experience of gettin' to the store after the watern had gone down and helping my dad force the door open and you looked inside and there's this big paste all over the floor. It was a mixture of mud and flour and livestock feed and beans, I mean, anything that was in bulk pack that was in the store. Of course, the bags had broken and just mixed up into a big paste and...and like I say, I'll never forget the look on my dad's face because of what it really represented to him. As I had said earlier, he had lost everything in the depression and now, here it is all over again. He was back in business in about ninety days though. SBA loans had brought the money in and propped it up. I've been asked several times, well, why didn't your dad move at that point after that?

(Tape two of Howard Sutherland was taped approximately a week later and inadvertently begins in the middle of a discussion.)

HS: We Had to move at that point, after that flood, I said, well, I guess it's like anything that's a record uh...it happened, and I said well, that's the first time that's happened like that in a hundred years and probably won't happen again. Well, low and behold, it did happen again in '63, I think it was. I was over seas when that happened. (tape cuts off).

B: Okay

HS: When I was a small boy, I remember the chief of police was Allen Hatfield. Now, I don't know where Allen stood in the genealogy of the Hatfields but he was now, a direct descendent of the main...the main line. The son of one of Devil Anse's brothers. I don't remember which but, I called him Popeye. And he was a feared police officer in town because I think uh...he had killed two or three people that had resisted arrest or..or for what ever reason and people were...it was Mr. Hatfield, or Allen, or Mr. Allen, or whatever here in town but a little...you know, little tots, they fear no one and I called him Popeye. And the reason I called him Popeye was he smoked a corn cob pipe and he got the biggest kick out of that. I can remember him just chucklin' uh...I'd call him, "Hey, Popeye," but he was a...he had a beer belly and he sort of snorted. He'd get that pipe and stick it up like you see the cartoon Popeye would with his...either he had his false teeth in or out or whatever. But I had an experience not too long ago that tied to Allen Hatfield. Went to a Marshall dinner in Atlanta about a year ago. Marshall Alumni meeting, and we had a table with about twelve people set at, mostly couples. Six couples, and about three couples or so of us knew each other and...and the others, we didn't. In the course of our talkin' to each other, one of the people I knew said, well, I understand you've been goin' to Matewan how have your trips been to Matewan with your Task Force? I didn't even...I didn't get to say anything when one of ladies I'd just met said,"Matewan, are you from Matewan?" I said, "That's where I grew up" and she said, "Well, I was born in Matewan." I said, "Well, is that right?" It turns out that, in 1946, I think it was, Allen Hatfield fatally wounded McCoy. I don't remember his first name. I don't think it was Jim, but it was a McCoy boy. It turns out that this lady that I met at this Marshall alumni event was this McCoy fellow's daughter and she was just like a month or two old when he got killed and she said that her father died..she said he died. She said he died here in Matewan in 1946, well, I start nosin' around a little bit more, but, I remember that incident. Now, I would have only been eight years old but that's old enough to remember something like that. It happened out here on the tracks. I understand, the McCoy fellow was uh...was drunk and Allen was taking him to the jail, the jail across the street over there, on the hill and Allen either stumbled or the McCoy fellow stumbled or something like that, but anyway, it was the opportunity, he grabbed for Allen's gun and they fought for the gun and Allen killed him. I can remember, that it even got national press. "Here's another Hatfield-McCoy incident, will the feud break out again?" And all this kind of thing. Course the feud was way past. It's just interesting to see how something even as current as a year ago brings back some of those memories, only reason I mention that. You, do you remember that? I'm sure you've heard this story before, do you remember the McCoy fellows name? I just don't remember.

B: I want to say...Jim or Bud or, there's so many. I...I don't remember. Hum.

HS: After Allen, I'm not sure I've got the right sequence but we just buried a week ago, a fellow by the name of Ernest Hatfield who was a, like a nephew of Allen, that was a long time police chief in town and the fond remembrances that I have of of Ernest was one of which I started drivin' when I was thirteen years old, or so. My dad, as I've told you before, was in business in town with the Matewan Supermarket and we delivered groceries in those days. The way it would work, would be, you had a list of customer's that you would call each day, uh...Cleo Varney is one of them, that's was a very regular customer and(she'd answer) uh.."yeah, I need a...I need a loaf of bread, I need a quart of milk and I want I want two or three good tomatoes, now, I want you to get Daisy to pick me out the tomatoes." Daisy was an employee of my dad and...and she didn't want me to pick them out or anybody else she wanted Daisy to pick them out to make sure they were top quality, and I need a head of lettuce and da...da...da- ...da...da(meaning etc.) Well, you took all the orders, the first thing in the morning, and about mid-morning you'd make your run out and deliver the groceries. Well, at a very early age, twelve, thirteen, I guess I learned to drive. I started sneakin' the truck out to take some of those orders. Ernest Hatfield, he knew how old I was cause, when I started driving at that age, I would take a milk carton, an empty milk carton and collapse it and put it in the driver's seat. I didn't have enough sense, I guess, to get a cushion, so I used an old carton, it got me about four or five inches higher so I thought I was big stuff, you know. I put my hand out the window and drive around. He knew I didn't have a driver's license, just as much as I did, but he never said a thing, he'd just, wave, and go on about business. I think the reason he probably never said anything was, he grew up, his dad was a merchant in town too, and he probably did the same darn thing when he was younger.

But again, in the interest of history, we just buried Ernest a couple of weeks ago, He had a deputy that worked for him, Perkins was his last name and you know, I don't remember what the fellows first name was because we always just called him Perkins and he had to be, and I got to be kind to this guy, one of the dumbest guys there ever was. I'll never forget the tale that there was a car that came through town and he stopped it for some reason, maybe goin' too fast or something, he just stepped out and flagged it down and he asked the people inside, said now, "Where you all from?" (They) said "Columbus." Said," I caught you lying cause you got Ohio tags." (laughter) I mean, that may have been a different state and a different town but that was the point I made, I mean he was just so dumb. But he lived in Matewan, now he did get killed in an unfortunate event. Again, somebody, I don't know whether it was some kind of altercation and he got killed with a gun shot. I...I assume he still has children around here, I just don't know. That's been a long time ago.

Let's see, after Ernest, Ernest, I think, was the town police when I went to school and went over seas. Had one other event with law enforcement officials. Even before I get into that, when I was growing up, Joe Chambers and I were about the same age. Now, Joe was the son of Dan Chambers and in the forties, I think that's when it was, be late forties, maybe early fifties Dan was Sheriff of the county for a couple of terms and that, to me, that must have meant that that was the cat bird seat cause if Dan Chambers was sheriff of the county that must have meant, that was...that was the position to be in. As I said I had the utmost respect for Dan Chamber's. Ah..I haven't been...been around him for so many years, still have respect for the man though he's been dead several years. Um...later, I think Broggs Chambers was a cousin of Dan, he became the sheriff and they lived in town as well and Broggs, I'm not sure that there was even a limitation on terms at that time cause seem like Broggs was sheriff for the longest time and then, when he passed away, his son, Howard Chambers was the sheriff and uh...Howard's son, Bob and I grew up together in this town as well. The unfortunate part about Howard Chambers was he broke the mold of the sheriffs up to that point, as I said, Dan Chambers was a respected member of the community and was well thought of. President of the Bank (Matewan National Bank) uh...probably could have been Governor had the right circumstances connected because he was that well thought of, but it didn't work and Broggs was...was fairly well thought of. But Howard, he was just involved with one tale after another. Kick backs and all that kind of business. The recent history ties that to Johnny Owens. He went through the trials and stuff here during the last three or four years. He was a chief deputy of Howard Chambers. Now, Howard has since died and Bob, his son, will not come back to any of class reunions and I don't know whether that's because of maybe an embarrassment on Bob's part because of the things his dad did or not. I just don't know. I haven't posed that question to Bob that way but he will not any of our reunions. One other incident that happened was when I went over seas in '61. It must have been the presidential election in '64. I voted by absentee ballot that election and my dad wrote me a letter and told me later that Ernest Ward, which was another character in town, now, that's another one got killed by a gun shot, you know, I think a gambling scrape or something. But anyway, Ernest Ward was a deputy in the county and he came up and told dad that he was really disappointed in how I'd voted because they were going through the absentee ballots and saw where I voted for Nixon (laughing) or whoever it was runnin', anyway, it was a Republican candidate at that time and I just didn't agree with McGovern, whoever it was. I don't remember who was even running at the time but I voted on a different ticket, he made it a point to come to dad and let him know that he knew how I voted by absentee ballot. (laughing) So from the law officials' stand point, that's probably probably all the recollection I had. There was respect for the law, though, so these fellows were, maybe in some cases, some unsavory characters; they didn't take anything from anybody here in this town, you felt like you were protected and safe. The problem in those days was related to the mine crews working five and a half days a week. The mining shifts were six days a week and on Saturday nights, watch out because payday was on Saturday afternoon and fellows would come in from the coal camps and hit the beer joints and get the booze under their belt and it was problem.

B: Well, sociologists and historians have tried to figure out what it is about the people in this part of West Virginia that makes them, so seemingly, lawless and willing to uh...I think, the most recent newspaper said, willing to resort to violence so quickly. Did you see that growing up? I mean, do you think people resort to violence here more quickly than they do in other places that you've lived, and if so, why?

HS: I don't know that it's any more than elsewhere though, growing up, I certainly saw some violence. One Saturday afternoon, two stores up from my dad's business there used to be the Silver, and a couple of guys got in a fight and one knocked the other through a plate glass window. Nobody got killed out of it or anything like that but there was some cuts and what have you. I don't know that it was any worse here than it was, say, in the Texas oil fields. The tales you hear about saloons of Chicago or New York. I don't know that it was any worse than that but I know that we did have incidents of violence here.

B: You think maybe it was where men work hard, they play just as hard? And it kind of spills over from there.

HS: That could very well be it. You know, that's probably a good way of looking at it too. There were as many problems on the docks of New York and San Francisco, where, like you said, the men work hard and they got out and they wanted to let off a little steam, frustrations, or whatever. Here, they came to town...they came to Matewan, to drink away their problems.

B: Un -hun. Okay. What about some of the politics moving from the town level on up. What did the the position of mayor mean? What is that meant in...in Matewan? Is...is the mayor a powerbroker or is it a job that a businessmen would take so that things would get done or what kind of position is it here?

HS: You know, the whole time that I remember growing up, we only had one mayor and it was a fellow by the name of Ira Cooper. And, I did not and do not to this day have a uh...have a feeling that he was any kind of power broker. I think that's probably, you know, up to the individual. I think his fiefdom was a very small one compared, say, to the Sheriff in...in this county, at least it used to be, the Sheriff was the guy that controlled the politics and the jobs. Now, the mayor, he didn't have, at least of this town, didn't have that many jobs, really to control. Ira Cooper, again, was a businessman in town and the feeling I have about it is that he really wielded no great authority.

B: Un-hun. Okay. What um...one of the things that...that we've heard about the police in...in the oral history collection here in town, is that if there was a corrupt mayor or a corrupt police chief, that they would do things like um...if the mayor was walking through town and saw somebody go into a saloon and have a drink, is...he would contact the police chief and when that person went to leave the bar, the police chief would have him arrested for public drunkenness or drunk and disorderly to get the fine out of him. We've...we've heard reports of that.

HS: I...I'm not surprised to hear that but I don't have any personal knowledge of any of those events.

B: Okay. Would you care to comment on any of the uh...the corruption that Mingo County has become known for? I know you were gone for most of the...the period that it really made national attention...

HS: Yeah. Well, as I already indicated, the sad part of that was it looks like it really started under the regime of Howard Chambers. Now, I'm sure that in the days before that there was probably some good old politics, quote unquote, going on, taking care of the people that vote for you and that kind of stuff. But pure kickbacks and all that, protecting the bootleggers and that kind of thing, that, you know, that's gone on for years. The meanness, looks like really started with with the Howard Chambers regime and then the fellow that followed him was even worse this Johnny Owens. You can ask my brother about Johnny Owens and he'll probably take about an hour and tell you about it. He was involved in a divorce and child custody situation. He and a former wife of his and Johnny Owens came to his house over there and cussed him and I think, manhandled him a bit and that kind of thing. Wasn't even in Mingo county. It was just, lack of respect for people. The people we had before, the ones I mentioned, the ones I recall that used to be sheriff, Dan Chambers and Broggs Chambers were gentlemen and I think that's probably what people would expect out of people in that position. Then when you get into head knockin' and tryin' to hurt people, to terrorize them, that's completely different. And that started, probably, about thirty years ago.

B: Un-hun. I thought of the um...the...the politicians and...and school officials like um...Blind Billy and Noah Floyd, people like that. Did you...

HS: I mentioned the uh...the Sheriff's office and of course, I didn't even get into the uh...into the School Board. The School Board was the real patronage vehicle in the counties and unfortunately, it looks like there might be some backsliding on that even right now. Blind Billy Adair and J.B. Pitcock, who was a resident of Matewan. Blind Billy was a resident of Delbarton. Noah Floyd was from Williamson. We get some unsavory characters like that on the School Board. The stories I have heard about J.B. Pitcock, none of his family remains in the area now, he had a daughter Louise, Louise Hopkins, who passed away several years ago. Her husband Ken Hopkins passed away, I think, about three years ago had the little, house right next to Dr. Roy's home on the lower end of town; one of the remaining little homes down there. He had two other sons that I think, live in Huntington. But anyway, J.B. had a furniture store and there were stories about if a person wanted a job as a teacher, then you had to go down and buy a living room suite of furniture or one got a promotion into a principal's job, or something like that, there may be a truck to show up at your house with a load of furniture. You knew what it was and why it was there. I do remember when there was an all out effort to form progressive ticket this would have been in the fifties. It was Fred Shewey. I met Fred for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Fred Shewey, O.T. Kent, and Brookes Lawson, Sr., I think it was, or it may have been his wife, Mrs. Brookes Lawson, Sr., a progressive ticket to clean out the Board of Education and by George, they pulled it off. Like I said, I think that was in the fifties when they did that and that was the first breath of fresh air that we had on the Board of Education. (bell rings) (tape pauses) Backsliding over recently concerns me. That's still a subject that needs to be addressed if we're going to advance education in this state. The role of the Board of Education on a local level has to be addressed on what their structure is, their role. We just can't have them totally concerned about service jobs and not be concerned about education.

B: What do you think has...has put the um...stranglehold that seems to be on...on education and...and, more or less, opportunity in...in Mingo. What do you think...is it politically or educationally or what...what do you think keeps the strangle hold on the people?

HS: Well, I think it's (Board of Education) still is the largest employer in the county. And, there are enough people that are willing to sell their souls to some politician somewhere to allow them to control those jobs. I don't know whether it's a fear (referring hypothetically) that one might have to go to them someday for a so I'll just support him in what he's doing. I don't know whether that's it or not but we've got to elect a group of officials that have a concern about the education of our children and not be concerned about who's gonna vote for who at the next election. And, I'm afraid this is something that goes back in our history and not just on the School Board, but in this part of the state where the robber barons could come into an area and buy it out. John Kennedy did the same thing in his campaign for president in 1960. The people may want to duck that issue all they want to but it happened in this county and it happened in other counties in West Virginia. He bought the election in West Virginia to be able to go on and become the presidential nominee of the Democratic party in 1960, and of course, eventually, the president of the United States. In a lot of our W.Va. counties, we don't have a two party system, though in reality, we do. We have the "in" Democrats and the "out" Democrats and the way Kennedy people approached it, I don't remember the exact dollars, but they would give like thirty thousand dollars to the "in" Democrats and twenty-five thousand dollars to the "out" Democrats so that way J.F.K. was covered on all slates. That way it got him around the Catholic religion issue and he got elected. It seems to be the attitude that powers outside this state, have if they want to get something in this state, they can come in and buy it and by George, they do it. That's the frustrating part about it. They can do it.

B: What I...I know it was probably less out in the open, it may or may not have been at this time, but what did, what did knowing that corruption in that kind of operation going on, what effect did that have on...on honest businessmen here in town? It's hard to imagine that level of corruption going on at the same time that a man like Dan Chambers might have been in power or business men here in town like your father. Did they look the other way because it was nothing they could control or?

HS: I think they felt that it was probably bigger than they were and they just went on about their business and did the best they could. If you stood up too tall then, you stood the chance of getting whacked by it. By the system that is, a boycott of your business. I find it hard to believe that Dan Chambers was involved in some of those things, he may very well have, but I don't believe he was. I think he had a standard that was of a high level. It's not just in this area today. It's throughout our society, though here lately we've had our own governor, Moore, being accused and admitting to taking kickbacks from coal operators, so it's as current as today's news, still. Just pure greed, but back to your earlier question, "why does it continue?" It only continues as long as the voters in the area allow it to continue and maybe this is where leadership comes in. There's not leadership that steps up to it and says enough is enough. As I indicated earlier the coalition that was put together in the fifties on the Board of Education. They put together a campaign and they got elected.

B: We've just...we've heard um...in some of our interviews that, your average run of the mill person says, well, if there's an out that wants to reform, once the outs gets in, he becomes and in on his own, an...example uh...Huey Perry who wrote the book, "They'll Take Your Project"...About the original E.O.C....A lot of people we've interviewed have said, well, he became a power broker, himself, when he be...when he got some power, then they became an in of themselves and I was wondering if you thought that to be true?

HS: I...I can't comment on that specifically cause I don't know...I don't know him. I think, again, there are some basic individuals ethics that if a person has a strong enough fiber and character about them, that they would not have to be part of that, though, at the same time, I know some people here that have been indicted the last few years for having been accused of abscounding with funds or forging travel expense reports because their boss wanted them to. Well, I guess, you try to put yourself in their position, if the boss says, yeah, go ahead and make up a travel voucher, report you went somewhere so you can get that extra hundred dollars and you give me half of it and you can have the other half, well, I guess, depending on what income level you are, that gets very tempting. That did happen in this county. I think that's the way Donald Chafin was convicted and spent tine in prison.

HS: I said there were two things I remember from that day and one was opening the store and seeing the look on my dad's face. The second one was, I...I remember very plainly, telling my dad, "I will not go back to Marshall. I'll stay here and help clean up." He said, "No you will not, you will go back to school. We can clean up... your education is more important."

B: Mr. Sutherland, my last group of questions center around what do you see as Matewan's future. What do you see happening to Matewan in the future?

HS: The vision I see for Matewan, is first of all, obviously, we got to have flood protection. It would really be interesting to see if we could turn the clock back forty years and not have had any floods, to have seen how this town would have either progressed or not progressed, in the time that's passed. I tend to think that Matewan would have flourished during this period because, again, of its natural setting and being in the trade center location that it's in but, we don't control that. As I see it, the town, in the future with proper flood protection, can once again grow to, a trade center position and I have to be careful how I say that because, we do not anticipate having a large Kroger store here or a large K-Mart store here or anything like that. But I think we will see some convenience shopping that people will come to town to do. At the same time, I think we will develop some specialty type businesses that will be not just for local clientele, but for more of a regional type clientele, trying to develop some businesses that again, will appeal to people beyond, our district, or even our county. We're a two state community here. The third element of that will have to do with the tourist draw. It's interesting to note that here in five months time, three hundred people have come to town and signed the visitor's register at the Development Center. That is without any publicity or without any effort what-so-ever to get people to come and even really prior to when we're properly set up to do it. I see it as a three prong developmental approach to the town and it all gets entwined with quality of life issues. We've got to have decent housing in town to draw people back. I think if we can do the right thing in the upper end of town with the housing development there, the West Virginia Housing Authority will see this constructed, I think. We will draw some folks back to town to live. My dream is to have an area where we can attract some professional families back to town as we used to have. We used to have doctors and lawyers and dentists in this town. In a trade center position at that this little town is, people would come to town for those services. As it stands now, they have to go to Williamson, or Pikeville, or locations far beyond which they should not have to do. That's what I see the town becoming, a model community for not just Southern West Virginia, but for the Appalachian area and not just a tourist center and not just a little town for shopping, but a combination of those. And, by the way, I think I should also mention, that in regard to tourism, there is probably a fourth element we ought to throw in as well, and that would be to exploit what you're doing from a cultural stand point. We would like to see ourselves become a study center as well; ...an archives, a place that can be a repository for artifacts related to not just specifically Matewan, but the mountain areas that are Appalachia. There's a fourth element as well, the cultural aspects and maybe some arts and crafts and theater along with that. I think we ought to separate that away from tourism and not just throw it all into one big pot.

B: Right. Okay. As a...as a businessman, um...you have contacts with other people around this state, and I was wondering what, what strategies are people coming up with today to deal with the problem of Southern West Virginia being under the single industry grip of...is there a future for West Virginia as they developed out in California, the service industry or...or techno...you know, technology, um...that kind of...

HS: I wish I could answer that question at this point. If I could answer that question then I would have a very secure future in Southern West Virginia. As I've indicated to you, I've been working with the Task Force for over a year now, so I am getting back involved in West Virginia and then the last sixty days or so, networking, as you indicated, in state circles. I have come to the conclusion, first of all, that no one is going to come to us with an economic opportunity and say, "Here, is a job, here is a plan, here is an operation go with it." It's not going to work that way, it's going to be the reverse order. We are going to have to come up with the idea, the company, the plan, the initial financing to get something started, and at some point then, we can bring in state and federal agencies to help us with training and perhaps additional financing, and some other aids in getting something set up. But it's going to work in that order. I'm absolutely convinced of that now. I hope I'm wrong. I would certainly like to think that the state has some marketing effort in that they could come to us and say, "Hey, we happen to have a fifty person plant we can put down there," you know, that's what we need in our area. We know we cannot have a Toyota plant or a General Motors plant. Our geography will not allow that. The terrain will not allow for larger operations. If we can have a thirty to a fifty person operation, and we could have several of those around, that is a half a million dollars payroll a year. One bias that I picked up in some of my discussions with some of our state officials was, that one of the problems that we have in Southern West Virginia was the wage rate. It is so high because of the coal mines... and I said, now, wait a minute, you mean you're telling me that you will not make any efforts to place anything in Southern West Virginia because the coal miners are making twelve, fifteen dollars an hour. Yeah, that's right. I said, you're wrong. That's not valid. You give me some operations with six and seven dollar an hour jobs, and I'll fill your jobs. There won't be any problems what so ever down here in getting peopke [sic] to work for that.

B: Right

HS: We'll have people coming from miles around to take jobs like that. We're working against some bias against our area.

B: Un-hun. Okay.

HS: Did I answer your question?

B: Yes, sir. (laughing) I..I was just um...wondering about what...this area seems to be a case study in youth oriented brain drain. Also the problems of an aging community that is dependent on state assistance or social security. How ever you want to term it.

HS: Some kind of transfer of payments, yeah.

B: And, I was wondering, what really, what kind of work force with the geography the way it is, what kind of industry, even if it was, say, a half million dollar payroll industry. What, is there a product or something that you could name that would give a point of reference that would have a factory that size?

HS: Okay. The electronics industry. You could probably do something as few as ten people. A small piece work kind of assembly operation. But now you start getting into scales of economy to maintain a building for that number of people. Probably would not be practical but the same time, I have to say that Marshall University has received a considerable grant that Senator Byrd sponsored on studying the factory of the future, looking at decentralized operations, example being, let's say, that Marshall would set up a dummy company that would have an engineering department, possibly a packaging design department, a purchasing or a procurement department, the type of headquarters operations that a typical plant would have, then with that, you could have spread out, let's say in Matewan, and Logan or Gilbert or Hamlin, West Virginia. You could have the small plant operations actually doing the assembly work, though the headquarters work would be done at the central location. It will be intersting [sic] to see how that falls into place. The thing I'm a little concerned about is the people that are putting this together, to the best of my knowledge, have no practical experience in manufacturing operations. I might be a devil's advocate for them, when they start putting this thing together it will be interesting to see. I hope that we might be a test case with some of that in the future. There are some other ideas that one can pursue, perhaps, some food processing plants, making sausages, ect [sic]. Something like that would be very menial, unskilled labor. In that regard and back to your point about the youth drain of the area, but I say again, you know, I don't think filling those jobs would be...would be a problem. About three points came to mind. If you've got enough tape and time (laughing), we've been having a considerable number of high school reunions in the last several years, various class groups, and I've had more than one person tell me that they would come back to this area if they had a decent job and they could get a decent place to live. So, it goes back to the point I made earlier about having adequate housing in the area and then, if the jobs were to come. Secondly, I had a person, an old school teacher of mine, his first job was at Matewan High School, he took an early retirement two years ago and he said, "I'm about to go batty." I said," You're the perfect person that I'm looking at for a seminar series that I want to do next spring on going into business for yoursel." These would be perfect people for us to become entrepreneers [sic] in our area. They've got an income. They need something to do. Those that have not left the area and most of them have a desire to create some value, business of their own. My intent, right now, is this fall, to have a meeting of retired teachers in Logan and Mingo county to pursue, just that discussion. My first discussion will be just a general discussion. "If you think you have an interest in this, I want to know who you are and what kind of interest you may have," and our next step will be, we'll have some formal training on the psychology of being in business yourself. Franchises versus private ownership. We'll talk about break even points. How you calculate break even points. Profit and loss, financial statements, and all those types of things. Get into it so that if we have a great deal of interest in that, we will have, hopefully a prepared group of people to go into business. Now, we'll start pursuing the businesses that they can go into and they won't be just for Matewan, obviously, it will be other places as well. In Matewan, we're gonna be probably four years away, or at least three years away, before we would start trying to pursue new businesses in the new development area inside the the flood wall. Those are the people I see as our prime candidates for the new merchants in our small communities that have been depleted of that talent over the years. Third point, we talked about our aging population. One of the things I want to pursue is a true retirement community somewhere in our area. And when I say a retirement community, I just don't mean a high rise building that's got some apartments in it, I mean a complete complex, retirement facilities that would progress from single family housing to apartments to assisted living apartments being for people that may need some help with their housekeeping and meals to a nursing home facility that could take care of those that could not take care of themselves. And try to have it of a size where you can have the appropriate services associated with the facility for medical services. Everyone that retires does not want to move to Florida. A lot of people, as we well know, have left this area, have gone to Ohio, Michigan, points North, West, East, and again, I've had people tell me if we had decent housing or facilities they would come back to this area. We have had people to leave this area that are getting up into their years because they were afraid to stay here. They felt they had to get somewhere where they could get into a health care facility to take care of them. I think that we've got an opportunity to be able to address that in the future.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Well, thank you for talking to me, two days total. (tape cuts off)

Matewan Oral History Project Collection