WEST VIRGINIA WONDER WOMEN
ANGIE SHOCKLEY The Rescuer
MARY STANLEY History Maker
Angie Shockley gives hope to the ones who need it most—young adults and animals. She has devoted her life to giving at-risk young adults the lives they deserve through her different branches at Q&A Associates. “I really shifted how I was living my life and let go of all the worry about the future,” Shockley reminisces, and by the next year, she had opened Q&A and established a small nonprofit organization called Saddles and Smiles offering equine-assisted learning. Young adult clients of Shockley’s benefit from both organizations, and each is a testament to her determination to manifest anything she sets her mind to. Shockley has created a way for young adults who have challenges or disabilities to reach their highest level of independence while remaining safe. She
Mary Stanley knew as a high school student in Vienna, Virginia, that she
wanted to be a lawyer. When she and her husband graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1973, he had a job offer in West Virginia. The law was still a male profession, and finding a position here was challenging—but after practicing corporate law for two years and then, as a new mother, clerking part-time for U.S. District Judge Dennis Raymond Knapp, she made history by becoming the first female assistant U.S. attorney in West Virginia. Fifteen years later, in 1992, she broke another barrier as the first female U.S. magistrate judge in the state. As a lawyer, Stanley says she felt best and proudest prosecuting cases in which she vindicated the public interest. “As a judge, I liked working on big, complicated cases and helping the parties get to a reasonable conclusion,” she says. She names litigation over the Fike Chemical Superfund site in St. Albans and over the failure of the First National Bank of Keystone in McDowell County among them. Stanley took her firsts as a woman seriously. “I set a higher standard for myself, because I felt like I had to demonstrate that women were as good or better than men,” she told The State Journal when she retired in 2013. “I’ve always tried to be the best. I felt like, if I didn’t do well, that it would be more difficult for other women coming behind me.” PK
uses a number of methods to coach her clients to reach independence and uses her horses to provide comfort and teaching. She is also a certified shamanic practitioner, which equips her with a spiritual approach to helping her clients cope with traumatic or physical issues.
Shockley sees a constructive difference between therapy and coaching. “Therapy is dealing with what has happened in the past,” she explains. “Coaching is dealing with what you’re going to do with it as you move forward.” MM
MIRTA MARTIN Opening Doors with Love
Fairmont State University President Mirta Martin is devoted to opening doors for her Falcon family. She left Cuba as a young girl and immigrated to Spain, where she lived in a convent with her grandmother and sister. Several years later she immigrated again, this time to the U.S. “A journey like that is one that is not forgotten,” she says. “I will never forget my roots, nor where I came from, because the challenges of the journey have given me strength.” Her grandmother took a leap of faith to give her a better life—to open a door for a better future. “I feel very strongly it is now my turn to be the voice for those who do not have one, to open doors that lead to making someone’s dream a reality.” “As I look back through the footprints in the sand, there are moments that have made a difference
in my life. It is now my turn to pass it forward and to spend the rest of my life trying to improve the human condition. That mission is what brought me here to Fairmont State,” Martin says. “I ask God to put love in the hearts of humanity, because as we know, three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.” MM
72 wvl • fall 2020
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