As election nears, Taylor County residents look for candidates to address opioid epidemic and bring jobs

Carolyn Wilson sat on her deck, looking out at the railroad tracks that run through Flemington, and reflected on the toll the drug epidemic has taken on her family.

One of her daughters is in prison. She thinks the other one is in Clarksburg, but she doesn’t hear from her.

“You see them destroying themselves, and there’s nothing you can do,” Wilson said.

Mountain State Spotlight is asking people in all 55 of West Virginia’s counties what they would like to hear candidates talking about as they compete for votes. In Taylor County, residents said they’re concerned about drugs, crime and the rising cost of living.

After seeing her grandchildrens’ experiences, Wilson said she’d like elected leaders to improve the state’s child welfare system by retaining quality Child Protective Services workers and stricter vetting for foster care parents.

“The foster care system is broken,” she said.

Next door, Carol Ware said she likes the slower pace of life in Taylor County. Most of her in-laws live in the nearby houses on the hillside and it feels safe.

But, she worries about crime and about her daughter who attends West Virginia University, particularly now that concealed carry is allowed on college campuses.

“Teachers should be teaching, not carrying guns,” she said.

Flemington, a town of around 300 people, sits along railroad tracks. The railroad is an industry that was vital to the development of Taylor County. Eastbound trains pass through on the way to Grafton, one of the nation’s first railroad towns and the county seat.

At the turn of the 20th century, Grafton was a boom-town as coal and timber were transported to the nation. Glass factories also provided stable employment.

Today, the largest employers in the county are a coal mine owned by a subsidiary of Arch Coal, the schools, Walmart, the hospital and the state prison in Pruntytown.

Behind the counter at Robert’s New & Used, an antique store in Grafton, Cheryl Austin greets visitors with a smile. She looks after the store for the owner from time to time. A lifelong resident, she homeschooled her kids after her son was bullied in elementary school.

She said she wishes that there were more fun activities like parks or pools in the area to keep kids and adults out of trouble. There’s things to do in Bridgeport, but that’s a 25-minute drive away.

“The kids in Taylor County are not going to go to Bridgeport because a lot of them are poor,” she said.

At the antique store, she said some people come in who are visibly high. Austin said drug addiction has gotten worse and it’s the biggest issue facing the area.

“It’s horrible in this town,” she said.

She gives each person who visits the store a card about the love of Jesus, and she prays over it, hoping they’ll find Christ.

Austin isn’t on social media and hardly watches television. But she said she appreciated a candidate who stopped by the store to hand out a brochure that included her personal cell phone number.

“I was like, ‘Wow, I could actually talk to her or read it,’” Austin said, adding that she did vote for the candidate because she wasn’t hiding behind false promises.

On the front porch of his house along the river in Grafton, Doug Spring fiddles with a cigarette and leans back with a calm expression. He moved here when he was six and has lived here most of his life.

“I’m a country boy,” he said. “West Virginia’s country. You either hunt, fish or that’s it.”

For over two decades, he worked at a glass factory in Taylor County until it closed in 2015 . After going through a job retraining program, he works at the Clarksburg airport in aviation maintenance.

The biggest issue on his mind as the election approaches is the drug epidemic. He said he’d like to see law enforcement more aggressively investigate and prosecute people who sell drugs.

It’s been difficult to watch his kids deal with addiction.

“Me and my wife, we’ve had to endure a lot of pain,” he said. “Watching them go through that and not being able to help them.”

His daughter lives in nearby Bridgeport while his two sons still live in Grafton.

The sons live nearby and work at Rex-Hide Industries, which operates a tire flaps factory just north of town. But Spring said the area needs more jobs and he hates to see his sons have to work just as hard as he did for fewer benefits.

“When I first started — I’m 61 — I did get a pension,” he said. “Now, you don’t get a pension. You don’t get healthcare. You don’t get nothing, unless you pay for it.”

Empty talk from politicians at the federal level frustrates him, and he’d like to hear them talk about the policies they plan to enact.

“How are you going to save me money?” he asked. “How are you going to lower my taxes?”

But he thinks West Virginia and elected officials are doing pretty well — not a lot of complaints.

“I think that they are trying to do good for the state.”

As election nears, Taylor County residents look for candidates to address opioid epidemic and bring jobs appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight , West Virginia's civic newsroom.