Papoo Crofton transferred from Ohio Northern University to the prestigious Foreign Service School at Georgetown University in 1927, where he drove a cab to put himself through Law School. He went home to West Virginia and was elected Prosecuting Attorney for Wood County in 1936. He was a union man, a champion of the underdog […]
Walter Timothy Crofton (Papoo) was an Irish tough who put himself through Georgetown University on the GI Bill, supplemented by driving a cab around DC. He always loved the Jesuits – rooting for Notre Dame whenever they weren’t playing the West Virginia Mountaineers. He returned to Parkersburg, West Virginia and when we visited in the […]
“You,” Mother Jones yelled at the gallused, grizzled men. “have stood and seen yourselves robbed.” Of every ton of coal they mined, “so much was taken out, and professional murderers were hired to keep you in subjugation, and you paid for it! Damn you, you are not fit to live under the flag. You paid […]
My Father used to say that he turned down an Ivy League scholarship (Brown University) so he could play basketball at West Virginia University with Jerry West (known to NBA fans as “The Logo”). He loved telling the story about a game early in his college career when his parents drove in to Morgantown to […]
My great great uncle, LP Somerville, ran away from home to fight in the Spanish American War that made Teddy Roosevelt famous as well as President. Like many of the mountain settlers in Appalachia, LP was proud, adventurous, self-reliant and patriotic. Even ornery. That did not make him unique in West Virginia. I can remember […]
I was reviewing a medical record today and came across a caveat I’ve seen before without paying a lot of attention. Portions of this chart may have been created with Dragon voice recognition software. Occasional wrong-word or “sound-alike” substitutions may have occurred due to the inherent limitations of voice recognition software. Please read the chart […]
In 1781, Hugh Henry Brackenridge left the relatively cosmopolitan city of Philadelphia to ‘make his bones’ in what was known as The Wilderness. He settled at The Forks (where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet to form the Ohio) – or present day Pittsburgh. He lived through the first open and armed rebellion in the […]
During the late 1800’s, my Great Grandfather grew up in Washington, Pennsylvania – about a half hour west of Pittsburgh. He begat my Grandfather who begat my Dad. That baby in the bottom right of the photo is my Granddad sitting on his Father’s knee in 1915 at a Reunion. James Thompson was awarded a medical […]
For here were God knew how many citizens, deliberately choosing not to communicate by US Mail. It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of defiance. But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery. Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference to the power […]
The dogs on Main Street howl Cus they understand That I can take one moment in my hand Mister, I ain’t a boy No, I’m a man And I believe in a Promised Land Bruce Springsteen, Promised Land I was watching the Grammys last night, feeling my age. I felt like Eastwood’s character in Gran […]
