Blue Ridge Country November/December 2021 - 15

OUR BLUE RIDGE TOWNS
RUSSELL LEE, PUBLIC DOMAIN, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
ABOVE: Welch spreads
along the Tug Fork River
and NS rail tracks.
by renowned local artist Tom Acosta. You'll see long
stretches of beautiful rock retaining walls built by Italian
stonemason-miners, the concrete smoothed with forks
and spoons to assure their strength.
" Welch was the most ethnically diverse city in the
country, with people coming here from dozens of countries, "
Grubb says. " Architecture, culture, history-we
have everything. Welch epitomizes everything the coalfields
are about. "
Grubb is a member of Mayor Harold McBride's " Team
Welch, " who are on a mission to bring Welch into full
tourism mode. " Let's make it better, folks " is McBride's
challenge.
It's hard to argue with a mayor who buys a muchloved
Welch restaurant, the Sterling Drive-In, to keep it
in business, and who spends his off-time rewiring and
remodeling same. And who happily takes a role in the
play " Terror of the Tug, " chronicling the 1921 murder of
Sid Hatfield on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse.
Written by West Virginia playwright Jean Battlo,
" Terror of the Tug " has been performed more than once
in 2021, the centennial of Hatfield's murder.
McBride grew up in Welch, worked underground for
twenty years, and believes strongly in his town. " I choose
to live here because of the people, " he says. " People are
the key to everything. "
Two people were central to the formation of a landmark
partnership of the American Federation of Teachers
(AFT) and McDowell County. Ten years ago, AFT President
Randi Weingarten and Gayle Manchin (current cochair
of the Appalachian Regional Commission) formed
Reconnecting McDowell, an initiative focusing on improving
students' lives and education as the necessary
first step to regional progress.
With over 100 partners, Reconnecting McDowell has
built a large apartment complex, Renaissance Village, to
TOP RIGHT: In 1946,
Welch's McDowell Street
was the center of the
Pocahontas coalfields.
RIGHT: The McDowell
County Courthouse,
scene of the 1921
Baldwin-Felts shootout.
provide teachers and other prospective Welch residents
with affordable, contemporary housing. It's a beautiful
20-unit, mixed-use building, with a Brazilian coffee shop
and local-crafts mercantile in the works for the ground
floor.
Reconnecting McDowell has also brought summer
programs connecting students with legislators, made onsite
health care available to students, provided drop-out
prevention programs and established college scholarship
programs. The high school graduation rate has risen, the
drop-out rate is substantially lower, and college enrollment
has doubled. It's unique-the only project like it in
the country-and it's in Welch.
There's no denying that Welch, like most small mountain
towns, has its share of difficulties. But with partnerships
like Reconnecting McDowell and the energy of
hometown city officials and employees, there's good reason
to be optimistic about Welch's future.
There's a cautionary quote from The Great Gatsby
that's never far from my mind as I travel our mountains:
" I wouldn't expect too much of her....you can't repeat
the past, " Nick Carraway says to Gatsby.
Probably he's right. But in Welch, West Virginia, a lot
of folks are working a lot of hours to assure that their
place will bring people to live and work and play, honoring
their past in present time.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 15
Blue Ridge Country November/December 2021

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