Dear Editor:

Pocahontas Memorial Hospital is working hard to continue providing quality healthcare. Quality healthcare is possible only if we can improve our financial viability, something that has been in trouble recently. 

The hospital cannot pay its bills if the people we serve do not pay theirs.  Since 2005, we have charged off to potential bad debt, 6,900 patient accounts totaling just over $4 million dollars. 

Starting this week, letters will be going out to these patients or their guarantor.  We are hoping that if you owe the hospital for services provided, you will contact us to make payment or to set up a payment plan. We want to work with you for our mutual benefit.

On behalf of the trustees and staff, we would like to thank you for your utilization of our county hospital.  The hospital and the healthcare services we supply are vital for this county, the people living here and the visitors who come to enjoy “Nature’s Mountain Playground.” 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate contacting our Business Office at 304-799-7400, extension 228.

Barbara Lay, Interim CEO
Board of Trustees and staff of PMH

Dear Editor:

We enjoyed the picture of the musicians performing at the Pocahontas County Fair. A correction needs to be made in one of the names.

Pictured third from the left is William W. Clutter, my dad, instead of Harry Lang.

Frances Clutter Kirchner


Dear Editor:

To Mayor Donald Peck:

Gloria and I both tender our resignations as of this date (September 6). We both feel that we can no longer have our names associated with a corrupt council that would knowingly and willingly go against town ordinances and laws. It is our hope that the good people of Durbin will correct this problem next year.

Gloria J. Ransom
Paul N. Ransom
Durbin

Dear Editor:

I am formerly from Hillsboro and my brother, John, and I still have the family home there, which we visit quite often, along with other relatives in Pocahontas County.

I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed Jaynell Graham’s article “Off we go into the wild blue yonder” in the September 9 edition of The Pocahontas Times. My dad was always an airplane enthusiast and on several occasions he would take my sister and me to the airport near the county fairgrounds on Sunday afternoons, to see some of the locals fly their planes. Your article touched one of those memories when you mentioned the three U.S. Navy planes that did an emergency landing there in 1944 and their getting stuck in the mud.  I had told my children that story several times, but did not recall the date, which you stated was 1944. So I know now I would have been 10 or 11, depending on what month it was.

The following is another airplane story that I recall and thought you may want to go into the archives to research it more thoroughly. I am enclosing the only photo I took with my mother’s Brownie camera and somehow managed to keep. It is a P-51 Mustang fighter plane used in WWII.

One summer, about 1946 or 1947, there was a U.S. Army Air Corps fighter plane, a P-51 Mustang, that flew over Hillsboro a few times, apparently with an engine problem or low on fuel. Several of us boys watched as it appeared to go down just over the hill going out of Hillsboro on the Denmar Road. A friend of mine, Bobby Clowser, and I immediately got on our bicycles and raced over the hill to find the plane had crash landed on the L.V. Weatherholt farm. It had come in from the west over the Randall Price Farm and broke the left landing gear on a fence post  between the properties, as it attempted to land. In addition, upon crash landing, it also bent the propellers and slightly damaged the left wing. Miraculously, the lone pilot pulled back the canopy and walked away unhurt.

Now, just being boys, we were full of excitement and some other town folks started to come by and see this rare spectacle. The pilot asked us boys if we would watch the plane a few days, probably in jest, but we took him seriously. Bobby and I went back to our respective houses, got permission from our parents, grabbed some snacks and our sleeping bags and went back to the plane. Being young, we thought we were really important as we staked off a perimeter around the plane with some stakes and rope and prepared to“guard”the plane. From whatever, we probably didn’t even know, other than the fact that this was an important “government job” and we may get paid. We set up a blanket for ground cover for our sleeping bags under the right wing, which was elevated because of the left landing gear being broken. This gave us cover from the rain, sun or morning dew. We took turns riding back and forth to our homes for food, snacks, supplies, occasional changes of clothes and, of course, use the bathroom. Naturally, our parents would “check in” on us daily, on our big project.

As young kids back then, we doubly were excited as we had previously built models of planes during WWII, such as the P-38 Lightning, P-40 Warhawk and P-51 Mustang; and now, we were actually seeing one up close and the job of “guarding” or “protecting” it. I mentioned earlier about this being  U.S. Army Air Corps plane, mainly because of the insignia on the wing. The U.S. Air Force as we know it today as not in existence then, but it was formed from the old Army Air Corps in late 1947 or early1948.

It was quite a coincidence, but I vaguely remember the pilot’s name had some initials similar to my dad, A. F. Walker. His name was either A. F. Barton or Barton F. Walker. It would be interesting to see if you obtain any additional information on this story, or whether it was a dream.

About three days after the crash, a large U.S. Army tractor trailer with a flatbed and crane came to pick up the plane. They disassembled the wings, used the crane to pick up the fuselage and wings, and placed them all on the flatbed. I believe it was from somewhere in Virginia.

How much money did we get paid? Never saw a dime or heard from anyone.

But the memories?

Priceless.

Tom Walker
Huntington



Dear Editor:
I am publicly, adamantly, fervently opposed to coal energy. Coal sickens and kills people, corrodes our civil government and threatens our climate.
I am told that coal keeps the lights on. Yes, of course. Indeed, more than 50 percent of our nation’s electricity comes from coal.  Including the electricity I’m using right now as I write. Coal contributes substantially to the tax base of West Virginia. Coal employs hard working people with excellent incomes to support their families. Yes, yes, I agree.
Yes, I am complicit in my use of coal. My complaint smacks of hypocrisy. But cry out, I must. I rebel at King Coal, a master whose slave I am, but to whom I refuse to bow.
After 120 years of a coal dominated economy, West Virginia is dead last in numerous quality-of-life state rankings. For example, an extensive Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index for 2009 places West Virginia at #50 in state rankings for Life Evaluation, Emotional Health, Physical Health, and Overall Well-Being. The Gallup folks break their study down by congressional districts as well. Our own Third District stretches from Cabell County through mountaintop-removal ravaged southern coal counties to swing up to Pocahontas and Webster counties. Out of all 435 U.S. districts, ours is ranked #434 or #435 in the above listed categories. To put it another way, our district is #1 or # 2 in “misery indices.” 
Impaired health? Studies such as by WVU Professor Michael Hendryx, and Nobel Prize-winning Physicians For Social Responsibility conclude that coal is brutal to human health. Mercury contaminants, mostly stemming from coal-powered power plants, cause one in six children to suffer lifelong loss of intelligence through neurological damage. The average lifespan of a woman in the heart of the coalfields is 10 years less than the national average. Air is polluted, wells for drinking are contaminated. Dr. Hendryx has calculated the coal industry generates $8 billion annually to the Appalachian economy. By using mortality figures correlated to the Value of Statistical Life (VSL), the value of premature deaths attributable to the mining industry across the Appalachian coalfields, conservatively, is at $42 billion annually.  A bad deal economically, a worse deal in sorrow.
The coal industry is a bully. To speak against it forcefully in the coalfields is to risk one’s very life. I know this personally. And politicians and regulators know to not cross the coal industry. All must bow their knee to King Coal.  King Coal sometimes even threatens our right to peaceably assemble.
I could go on with stories, statistics and analyses. I’m willing to listen and talk to anyone. For me it’s no longer just my opposition to the ongoing catastrophe of mountaintop removal. The coal cycle from mining to processing to power generation to waste disposal, along with its attendant sociological pathologies, is a structural malaise that must be throttled.
Sincerely,

Allen Johnson
Dunmore