WVU is one of the sponsors for Main Street Morgantown’s annual West Virginia Birthday Party, presented by March Westin, which is scheduled from 1-5 p.m. Saturday (June 15) at the Monongalia County Courthouse Square, High Street.

Join the celebration of West Virginia’s 161st birthday and Main Street Morgantown’s 40th year of service.

The free, family-friendly event will feature live music from Ryan Cain and the Ables, Grace Campbell, and Adrian and the Soul Miners, a Kids Zone with fun activities for children, a vintage market, birthday cake, and local food and vendors. 

Show up for work at 9 am, scan your social media pages to check up on your friends, and then begin thinking about an early afternoon exit to walk your dog. At least that was what was going through my mind when my boss, Michael Fragale, walked into the office to tell me that Jerry West had just died.

As someone responsible for writing obituaries for the department, oftentimes you have some things prepared in case one of the school’s living legends passes. That was the case with Hot Rod Hundley and Sam Huff, both of whom had been experiencing declining health prior to their deaths.

Where to start with a man who accomplished so much? What do you include and what do you leave out?

When you don’t know where you are going, the best place to start is always at the beginning, and for me the beginning is a file cabinet of interviews that I’ve kept through the years, including some conversations with West. My interviews with him amount to about a half-dozen transcribed telephone calls spanning in length from roughly 20 minutes to a half hour.

Some people will give you 10 or 15 minutes of their time before their attention wanes and they want to end the interview and get on to more important things in their day. I’ve had people much farther down the pecking order do that to me.

He was always willing to spend as much time as needed to answer any questions I had, particularly regarding West Virginia, West Virginia University and his Mountaineer basketball teammates. I immediately realized the easiest way for me to get interesting responses from Jerry was to get him talking about his dear friend Willie Akers or his fellow classmates.