Southwest Virginia still remains a region in need
The situation hasn’t been positive in the geographical pocket west of Martinsville for a long time — even prior to the pandemic
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, from his home in Richmond last week, conducted a series of on-line discussions on COVID-19, including a session on “feeding Southwest Virginia.”
Feeding Southwest Virginia. Think about that. It’s not exactly what you want to see in print. How bad will this get?
Of course, in Southwest Virginia, the situation wasn’t good prior to the pandemic. It has been seriously un-good for a long time.
Admittedly, Gov. Jerry Baliles gets into this column more often than most — I worked for him — but that’s largely due to the reference point it offers, i.e., before, during and after. The years — the decades — roll by and the difference between hopes and actualities can be stark.
Southwest Virginia mattered greatly to Baliles. After his election in 1985, he hosted a “preinaugural” at the Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon. It was packed. Virginia had elected governor one of their own. Baliles had been born and raised in Patrick County.
Not that Patrick County really gets you all the way to Southwest Virginia. You can leave Stuart, the county seat, and make your way via Rt. 58 through the Meadows of Dan, Hillsville, Galax and Mouth of Wilson and find yourself driving roughly 230 miles before exiting that distant pointy part of Virginia through the Cumberland Gap.
Get into the governor’s office and a certain mentality kicks in. Wait, you think, there should be something we can do. There must be. It just needs to be dialed in right. Baliles thought that about Southwest Virginia and so have many, many others.
It’s an interesting history. I found a full-page ad in The Post (the Big Stone Gap newspaper) taken out by Tim Kaine’s father-in-law, Linwood Holton, during his successful 1969 bid for governor. “Here’s Mr. Holton’s program for the people of Southwest Virginia,” it said.
A better network of roads, Holton promised. That would help. So would food tax reform and educational opportunities, with the state covering costs that the localities could not afford.
There would be new medical services and facilities, Holton said.
And, of course, economic development.
The drumbeat goes back even further. I rooted around some more and came up with a Dec. 28, 1958, editorial from the Bristol Herald. “Southwest Virginia Can’t Wait Any Longer,” the headline read.
It pegged 1940 as the point when “this slackening” began. “Let us hope that specific measures will be taken to halt the continuing decline of the economy of Southwest Virginia,” the Bristol paper said. “While ‘rock bottom’ has not been reached, we have a suspicion that it is not far away.”
So, now it’s been 80 years since those words were published — and rock bottom may have been in the back of everyone’s mind all along.
Not that anyone was ready to give in. There’s no audience for that. So, better marketing was touted, along with shell building programs, prepared industrial sites, revolving loan programs, on and on.
Kaine tried himself, while governor. He pushed new transportation funding in Southwest Virginia, along with early childhood education, health programs and water quality improvements.
Other governors had their own ideas and proposals; it all may have helped.
Just not enough. The current food bank lines, according to the folks on Wednesday, now run two hours or more.
Even as Kaine talked with the people from Southwest Virginia on Wednesday, an almost mocking announcement emerged from Gov. Ralph Northam’s office.
Microsoft Corp., it was announced, will invest $64 million in Fairfax County for a new software development and R&D regional hub. It will create 1,500 new jobs.
In Northern Virginia, that is. “This announcement couldn’t come at a better time,” said Northam — and who could argue with that? Along with the 2017 arrival of Amazon, Northern Virginia has become hot economic territory of late, pandemic notwithstanding.
Not only that, Northern Virginia has become a louder, more insisting voice in the commonwealth, via a collection of Democrats in the General Assembly whose agenda, politically-speaking, locates Southwest Virginia on the far side of the moon.
In other words, Southwest Virginia is just not relevant to large, growing portions of Virginia — and that’s a huge problem.
Just watch the 2021 statewide campaigns, as they emerge. See if the candidates even mention Southwest Virginia. See if they make the trip at all, physically or rhetorically.
Baliles constantly argued about the danger of indifference to the more removed, rural portions of Virginia. He was right to worry.
After writing editorials for The Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot in the 1980s, Gordon C. Morse wrote speeches for Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, then spent nearly three decades working on behalf of corporate and philanthropic organizations, including PepsiCo, CSX, Tribune Co. and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and Dominion Energy. His email address is gordonmorse@msn.com.