WEST VIRGINIA WONDER WOMEN THE EQUALITY CHAMPION THE REV. BETSY WALKER, LEWISBURG Priest of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in White Sulphur Springs and Church of the Incarnation in Ronceverte HER CALLING “After receiving my bachelor’s in education at Concord University, I taught art in Raleigh County for five years. I loved teaching, but I felt a calling to ordained ministry and became a Postulant for Holy Orders from the Diocese of West Virginia. I attended Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. We can do a lot as lay people, but the sacramental ministry of priesthood—it’s traveling with people throughout their lives. I felt called to be part of those sacred and holy times.” A LATE BLOOMER “Looking back on it, I’ve been gay all my life. I didn’t come to terms with my sexuality until I was in seminary. I realized I am a beloved child of God and that means every bit of me. I met my first long-term partner, Pat, in 1988 and we were married in D.C. in 2010.We were together until her death in 2015.” LOVE IS LOVE In the early 2000s, the Episcopal Church realized that no sacrament, including marriage and ordination, could be denied to anyone.My bishop now permits us to perform same-gender weddings as well as heterosexual weddings. It’s a blessing to be totally who I am. I even found someone to love again in 2018.Many people think the word ‘Christian’means you’re anti-gay or conservative.That’s not always the case, especially in my church. I spoke at the first Pride festival in Lewisburg and said, ‘Don’t paint us with that broad brush.’There are churches that love you, honor you, and cherish you. We welcome you and we really mean it.”WH THE CHANGE MAKER ROMELIA HODGES, FAIRMONT Director of communities of color at West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute and chief inspirational officer at the Dunbar School Stop Program
ADVANCING CHANGE “We know a lot about what good instruction looks like, but we haven’t spent enough time really digging into how to get better and what makes it hard to do so. When we invite math teachers to collaboratively to find and solve the problems of teaching and learning, we witness cultural transformation. Teachers who want to do this work together are seeing profound shifts in classrooms.” A FIGUREHEAD ON A SHIP “I gratefully accept this acknowledgment on behalf of the teachers of Pocahontas County and the statewide M3T Network.They are constantly working together to improve and be better for their students.”DL THE STORYTELLER ANN PANCAKE, REEDSVILLE West Virginia fiction writer, Pushcart Prize winner, Whiting Award recipient, and writer in residence at the WVU Humanities Center ONCE UPON A TIME “I wanted to be a writer since before I knew how to write. I’ve always been telling myself stories. Growing up in West Virginia, the richness of the language and the storytelling tradition were completely integral to me becoming a writer. My style of writing is somewhat poetic, but it also is really influenced by and draws on dialect in West Virginia. A lot of my writing is driven by sound.” BEAUTY IN CONFLICT “In West Virginia we have tremendous beauty, and we have a real conundrum because we’re so dependent on extracting natural resources for the economy, which is in conflict with the natural beauty of the place. And I think a renewed connection to the outdoors can help people with mental health issues, especially in Appalachia and especially after what we’ve gone through in the last year and a half.” APPALACHIAN LEGACY “The Humanities Center is supporting Arthurdale Heritage as they sponsor a Smithsonian exhibit in early 2022.This fall, I’ll be team-teaching an honors class that’s about the history of Arthurdale and the connection of Appalachians and place.”MY
ADVOCACY NORMALITY “I watched my mother provide what we now know as the clothing voucher program in West Virginia. I watched her fight for food stamps for individuals who barely had enough to eat in food deserts. I watched her fight for social justices that we see folks still fighting for today. I thought that was normal—I just thought that’s what every mother did.” THE ORIGINAL CONTACT TRACER “March 15, 2020—an event that was attended by eight different churches from three different counties with visitors from all over the state. It happened to be the day before the governor announced the state of emergency and lockdown, and it ended up as the state’s first outbreak.The original contact tracing that I did was based off of a picture that I had from within the church. When a person confirmed with me that they had tested positive, I would put a red X over their head, and because I personally knew these folks, I could call them up.” WHAT’S NEXT “My community is suffering with the opioid epidemic. My community is suffering from a lack of mental health resources. My community is suffering with health disparities. My community is suffering from lack of harmony amongst each other, as is the United States. I’m going to do whatever I can to change that.”AB THE MATH BRAIN JOANNA BURT-KINDERMAN, HILLSBORO Math coach in Pocahontas County Schools, project lead Mountaineer Mathematics, student agency lead First2 Network OPEN DOORS “I left high school with zero interest in being a teacher. It wasn’t until college, when a remarkable college math teacher changed everything, that I was suddenly transfixed with the idea. Now, I’m an instructional coach working with anyone who teaches math in our district as well as with a network of amazing teachers from across the state, honing in on those things that bug math teachers.Most of my work is about getting better at getting better.”
78 wvliving.com • fall 2021
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