Meet the Candidate
Five years ago, if you had asked me to name our county commissioners, I would have answered, “What?”
We had just moved to Pocahontas County from Athens, down in Mercer County. I was a professor of computer science at Concord College. During my years there, I spent the summers of 2000-2002 here, actually, at the NRAO in Green Bank participating in workshops for teachers seeking to enhance their classroom experiences. As many attest from their own first visits to Pocahontas County, I was hooked. So was my wife Monica and, as much as can be, our then 2 year old daughter Maddy. A seed had taken root in us, and we spent much of our time back in Athens thinking of Pocahontas County. In 2003, I got hired on at the NRAO as a software engineer, and that is when we moved here.
We quickly fell into place. Growing up on a small farm in Spanishburg, being here for me was a lot like that only bigger and quieter. Monica, having worked with K-9 search and rescue efforts elsewhere, found that the BFD was a good place to get involved. She also got hired on in the health clinic at Snowshoe, her skills lending well to the team’s task of fixing up broken skiers. And Maddy, well she had the biggest back yard any young’un could hope for in the Monongahela National Forest.
But honeymoons end and life sets in, as the realities of being far away from conveniences assumed elsewhere become clear. The solitude of the Pocahontas County Winter amplifies the ticking of the second hand. Living here is not easy, we were being taught. It is not to be taken for granted or taken lightly. It is, either by right of blood or by trial of time, to be earned. You can buy a home here, but you might find that you cannot live here.
As part of life setting in, the NRAO was experiencing some growing pains as it adapted to funding cuts and restructuring of its management. After a couple of years, I no longer enjoyed the work I was doing. So in 2005, I left the NRAO for the University of Illinois on related but personally more interesting work. By this time, we were well settled into Green Bank, Maddy loving school and friends. We were becoming part of the fabric of the community. Being West Virginian all my life, I was asking, Illinois? We decided the best thing to do was for me to go out there and get settled in, let Maddy finish out the school year, and so on. So I went to Champaign, Illinois while Monica and Maddy stayed home in Green Bank. Yet the pull of Pocahontas County would prove too strong, and after 2 years I’m glad to be back home running a fledgling website design business.
While in Illinois, outside of work I spent my time missing family and thinking of home. Everything about West Virginia became more important to me. Anything affecting families became important to pay attention to. Primed with this state of mind, two events happened in early 2006 that drove the point home: Sago and Slatyfork.
When twelve miners lost their lives on January 2, 2006 in the Sago mine disaster, families lost sons, husbands, and fathers. As a husband and father, instantly there was nothing of more value to me than my own family. Likewise, when news spread that the land of a Pocahontas County family would be seized by eminent domain for a highly suspect reason, all Pocahontas’ families lost the promise that what had been earned and kept over generations actually belonged to them and theirs. As a family earning our own way in Pocahontas County, there was a need to stand up and defend this promise.
Five years was a long time ago. Much faces this county in addition to concerns of eminent domain. As luxury and second home development progress, we struggle to recall who we are and to understand just what kind of community we have and want. As wind power blows in our ear, we are reminded how outside speculative interests continue, always, to want to profit from our unique geography and leave the tab on our front yard. As development and growth continue, we are called back to our moral responsibility to safeguard our farms, streams, and valleys by pursuing nothing less than the best we can do to simultaneously prosper and protect.
We need a commissioner that can encompass the breadth and scope of these and further issues as they conduct business. We need a commissioner that can and will listen, one who encourages and engages in conversation of the issues with the will of the community standing above all other concerns. We need a commissioner who seeks to nurture our history and heritage while at the same time offers a fresh, hopeful, and complementary vision of the future that unfolds before us.
Five years was yesterday. Today, if instead you ask me can we improve the commission, can we begin to heal, can we begin to work hard and together on the challenges that face us, I will answer, “Can you vote?”
We have a long way to go, and I look forward to getting there with you, to earning our future here together.
Sincerely,
David March Fleming
Democrat for County Commissioner