A visit with my neighbor Eleanor P. Zizzi inspired me to travel back in time to the days when her mother and my grandmother were neighbors in Richwood on a street called Park Place.

Located 100 miles south of Elkins, Richwood was the dominion of the Cherry River Boon and Lumber Co. (CRBLC). Eleanor’s father, C.J. Pingley, became the superintendent for the lumber company, and my grandfather B.L Roberts served as the college-trained forester who marked timber before loggers started cutting.

Eleanor remembers that her father had excellent handwriting and was immaculately dressed when he left the house each day. Her mother used a state-of-the-art “mangle” to iron his white shirts and all clothing for her family. Mr. Pingley was the much-admired local manager for the company, and my grandmother ran a bungalow where New York executives stayed when they came to see how West Virginia operations were doing.

In preparation for visiting Eleanor, I read my father’s “Sociological Report of Richwood, W.Va.”, written at West Virginia University circa 1933. He drew on his memories and interviewed “dozens of the town’s leading citizens” over his winter break and by telephone. Inside the front cover of his report was a graph showing the increase of Richwood’s population from zero in 1900 to 6,000 listed in the city directory in 1924-5. Population decline began by 1930 when the tannery and handle factory moved, and Don Roberts thought more would leave.

Nevertheless, under the leadership of Eleanor Zizzi’s father, the CRBLC continued to employ thousands of nonunion laborers in the 1930s. In the early days local farmers were employed, but they would work a few months, take their pay checks, and return to their land. After that the lumber company brought in Italians and Austrians to keep the lumber production moving. Soon there was a railroad, paper mill, clothespin factory and thriving business district. Most laborers were men, but the clothespin and butter tray factory employed 62 men at $2.50 a day and 120 women at $2 a day.

Eleanor Zizzi has good memories of growing up in Richwood in the 1930s and 1940s. Most women were homemakers, and they seemed content to socialize over the backyard fence. By 1930 public education was available through 12th grade and 20% of the graduating class went to college. Children in the “laboring class” were not encouraged to stay in school when their parents needed for them to work. There was a Boy Scout troop and 4-H club, but poor children were often unable to become engaged in these programs.

According to the Roberts Sociological Report, the thing most lacking in Richwood was good government. The mayor was expected to organize public services, including police and crime investigation, volunteer firefighters and provisions for the poor. Before 1930 there were few roads, no traffic laws and one of two trains to Clarksburg was taken off line. Public health care was not available for the unemployed.

Consecutive stories of Richwood and Elkins in the lives of Dr. Don Roberts and Nurse Eleanor P. Zizzi create a tale of two cities in West Virginia that show the influence of earlier extraction industries. CRBLC brought rapid growth to Richwood in the pursuit of the virgin timber that was plentiful on the hillsides, and WVC&P Railroad built its base of operation in Elkins in order to remove as much coal and timber as possible. Benevolent concern for organized local health care was left to people like Roberts and Zizzi.