Wheeling, are you listening?

The following is Bill Grimes's response, printed with his permission, to my post of a few days ago in which I took exception to some of the statements contained in his acceptance speech on the occasion of his induction into the Wheeling Hall of Fame. If you were not present to hear Bill's HOF acceptance remarks, they are reprinted at the end of of this post.

Bill Grimes's reply to my earlier post

Dear Sean,
Thank you very much for taking the time to communicate your thoughts on my remarks, and more importantly, your views of the reasons Wheeling’s has suffered such economic decline. I read your blog carefully and admire your analytically thinking about and passionate feelings for the city which we share positive feelings, memories and hopes for a better future. Regrettably I have not had the pleasure of meeting your father. Having read of his many sustaining contributions to the community he seems eminently deserving of the Hall’s recognition and I humbly extend my sincere congratulations and good wishes.

I have chosen to respond below to your comments you in the order of their appearance in your blog rather than beginning with later (in your blog) points that might be more important. This method makes responding a bit easier for me since it reduces later editing time and I can work off your printed document that sits here aside my keyboard. Along the way I will add a thought or two that purposefully did not appear in my “bracing” comments” the other evening. Finally, I hope an occasional dialogue between the two of us might follow this constructive communication that you have initiated.

In your first paragraph while sensing a tinge of antagonism and sarcasm in your rhetorical question, “doesn’t this guy realize we already know that?” (referring to Wheeling’s decline), I can accept the fairness and validity of your perspective that here I sit l (you) listening to this pompous exhortation from some insensitive, ungrateful ex-business guy who doesn’t even make the effort to come home and deliver such thoughts personally. The answer to your question though based upon my experience of spending nine days in Wheeling in August and talking with scores of people is that I left with the overwhelming sense that while maybe “we already know that” nearly everyone I spoke with over lunches and dinners, in the library, at Oglebay Park and in other public venues throughout town expressed a deep resignation that while things haven’t been great here in Wheeling…well, that’s just the way it goes. Can’t be helped and though things aren’t great they’re not so good in other places, right, Bill? One old friend smiled when describing how city management has ignored the deteriorating condition of the Wheeling’s main tunnel through which much traffic flows. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles here, you know that, Bill, the government doesn’t care and most people don’t either.”

Sean, I could go on but this experience of numerous people on one hand acknowledging “we know that” and on the other dismissing “that” as not too bad with the unspoken implication compared to some other places (virtually none of which I can think of including your New England mill towns) and concluding with a combination of disregard for events out of our control and a “life goes on” state of mind fatalism created a most negative impact upon me and stimulated my initial comments that you refer to in paragraph one. In retrospect I feel that stating these bracing comments in my induction comments rather than lobbing up some soft pitch was the right thing for me to do and my only regret was not being there to personally speak the words and talk about these observations with citizens there who like yourself care about Wheeling.

Paragraph 3: That in the late sixties “the steel and coal industries wre already faltering” is certainly true. Having had certain family relatives involved in the management of the steel business I think it would be fair to suggest that more enlightened d management and union leadership may have ameliorated this decline. Continual haggling over work rules, compensation and damaging strikes I would like to think could have been handled better by both constituents resulting in a healthier industry and a healthier Wheeling. Yes, I think of the auto industry in writing this but in that case I can claim twenty years of working fairly closely with executives of the Three (unhappily “Big Three” just cannot be spoken any more). I could see the coming devastation in our domestic auto business and the lessons Detroit did not learn from Wheeling have contributed greatly to the situation we currently have there. My point is that steel and coal were industries on decline but better management could have lessened the degree of the damage. My opinion based upon my best learning and experience.

You then add the phrase “other economic forces would undercut Wheeling’s economy”. While you didn’t identify any I will not quibble that there were macro-economic factors that adversely over years affected Wheeling. But here I arrive at what I believe is a significant factor not mentioned by you and one I could not in my most bracing thoughts have written. The business owners of scores of Wheeling’s companies decided to sell their businesses to companies located elsewhere. They did NOT buy companies located elsewhere as ambitious, energetic, community-oriented owners and managers in so many other cities did over the last century. No, Wheeling’s company founders took the easier route: given the choice of building and acquiring businesses or selling out, Wheeling’s owners, the backbone of the city, in overwhelming numbers sold their equity which led initially to continuing decreases in Wheeling’s employment and later to the complete removal of all of the business’ operating assets to the home city of the acquiring companies.

This is not an “economic force”. This is a micro-economic decision that business owners have the choice to make or not. Wheeling’s leaders elected to sell for many reasons, certainly not all bad but mostly so, and the result over time was as equally disruptive as the industry changes that affected steel and coal. See the book I referred to “Wheeling: A Brief History” for a listing of scores of companies that were thriving in Wheeling’s “Golden Age” (p.67-88).

To your point of the decision made by The Downtown Wheeling Associates to resist the development of the shopping mall I also agree that it had a debilitating impact on the city. However, the decisions made by owners I refer to above had already weakened the city by the time of the mall decision. And I believe you place greater weight on that as a major contributor to Wheeling’s decline. To bolster that assertion I would add that when I left Wheeling in 1963 its population was 59,000 and according to the book above its population was “80,000 in 1919” (page 92). Obviously a significant decline as measured by population had occurred long before the mall decision. And, finally, on that your comment that “Wheeling ceased to be the retail hub of the valley” is also true but cites cannot prosper as retail hubs alone and Wheeling and the Valley’s prospects were not promising at the time.

You say that “What Wheeling and West Virginia lack are capital investment.” True today but certainly that was not the case for decades. On page 89 of “Wheeling: A Brief History” the author states that in “the late fifties…the stretch between 10th and 16th streets…had five major banks.” Even without “major banks” there is no reason, despite your lament, that Wheeling “lacked” or had no access to capital. It was there in the city banks waiting for entrepreneurs to provide business plans to deploy the capital. None showed up. The best and brightest had left for reasons cited above and those who remained in Wheeling lacked any interest, initiative, knowledge or desire to create any enterprise. Living in the past, clinging to the picked-over remains of family businesses or clinging to public sector jobs was the mindset of everyone in Wheeling in “the late sixties.” I know this is true and it is the very reason I left and went to New York with no contacts there and no job prospects. I could smell the odor of death by neglect and hubris that was overcoming my hometown, Wheeling.

Wheeling and West Virginia have never “lacked access to capital.” Capital in America, and now the world, for decades has, if not actively sought out entrepreneurs to invest its capital, been available for those with good ideas seeking it. None came from Wheeling people. I can only relate to the industry where I have spent my career: media. How was it that a forty year old state employee who lived in an old, depressed clock-making town in central Connecticut, much poorer than Wheeling, in 1979 gain access to $25 million dollars to start a company that would televise sports all-day on cable television systems that were available in 15% of the nation’s households? A company called ESPN. How did a man and wife with no money who lived in Maryland get $19 million the same year to start something called The Discovery Channel?

Sean, the point is that access to capital has never been a restraint to people with ideas and energy. Sadly, by “the late fifties”, Wheeling had no more of these people. They were all retired and their children who had any ambitions were off to other locations. Those who didn’t returned home and lived off dwindling coupons. It was a lack of energy, ideas and effort, not a lck of capital, that killed Wheeling.

Now let me turn to a new point that has its roots in the decisions made by Wheeling business owners and leaders in those prosperous decades of the first half of the last century. Many Wheeling business scions back in those long-ago days decided that the city’s private and public schools were not good enough for their children. Either because of perceived educational or social deficiencies many of the city’s young were sent way in grade school. I can name several kids in my era who in fifth and ninth grade were sent to prep schools in the east. From Andover and Exeter they followed the Ivy path and by the time they finished their schooling they had likely developed an strong inclination that living in New York and plotting ahead (often with the fortuitous trust fund to help them over any stumbles) there as an employment was far preferable than returning home to Wheeling to manage dad’s brewery, glass factory, brokerage house or bank.

Who knows whether the parents who owned the companies should have been able to convince them to return to Wheeling with their degrees, knowledge and energy to take over the family business and strive to manage and grow them. I suppose after saying to my kid that the schools in our town are not worthy of your attendance it would require a most convincing story---both intellectually and ethically-- to convince them to return. So the loss of youth that I referred to in the Hall remarks has a long and sad history in our town but there was nothing inevitable about the migration. It was the result of unintended consequences of decisions made by well-meaning people who did NOT thoroughly think through the ramifications of these decisions.

A comment in response in following paragraphs to your comment on retaining talented high school and college graduates. You followed that with reasons why the city and state is not succeeding in achieving much progress. I do not disagree but want to point out that in 1995 I returned to my college to speak at graduation. Somehow the regional correspondent for NPR called and asked my opinion on what I would think of to address the declining economics and population of the state. I replied that the instead of spending so much federal funding on highways that even then accommodated sparse traffic Senator Byrd and other state government leaders should create a significant venture capital fund that would be dispersed annually for new business start-up companies in the state. I suggested locating it in Morgantown near the University where most of the technically trained students in the state are.

The emphasis would be on creating technology companies that would if successful produce the kind of “intellectual capital” employment that a retail hub can never replicate in any way. But I also suggested not limit the fund’s resources to technology companies alone. Provide it to young people with credible business plans who would be required to keep the business in West Virginia for some period of time. (A friend from Buckhannon went to WVU and received a master’s degree in engineering. He went to Dallas where he eventually started a tech telephony company recently valued at a half billion and employing 300 people.) This idea was picked up by AP and got some exposure but I have heard nothing about anything like it since.

These are things I would have liked to have said to the people at the Hall dinner and to the number of people I spoke with in Wheeling who are resigned to changing economics. I am reminded of the story of an unmotivated person who has decided that there is little he can make little difference in life. Asked what his plans for the day are, he answered, “Whatever.” At the end of the day after admitting that nothing at all happened his response was, “Oh, well”. That, Sean, sums of my view of the prevailing Wheeling attitude today. It is very sad.

I am beginning to run out of steam but I want to comment on a very interesting idea of yours and close with an out-of-box idea of my own. I like your idea of West Liberty State moving to Wheeling. I visited there on my recent trip back to Wheeling and was amazed at its present size. It would seem financially challenging with all the building and infrastructure there to replicate it in town but I agree that the vibrancy of Wheeling would seemingly benefit. I would though ask what effect Wheeling College has had on the community and think about what WL’s would be different and hopefully better.

Finally you mention Wheeling and West Virginia’s lack of capital investment and to that I would add a declining tax and revenue base. That’s a huge problem that in their current state neither Wheeling nor West Virginia may be able to solve. That may require an unorthodox attempted solution. My idea is to think about eliminating the State of West Virginia. Merge its geographic regions into adjoin states. This would eliminate the federal expense of federal government representation and the state government cost apparatus to “manage” the state. The northern panhandle would become part of Ohio and your panhandle part of Virginia. I have not thought this through but I think a case could be made that significant expense savings would occur that could be used for better ways to serve the people. And, who, knows, some people’s attitude might just change for the better knowing they were part of a different state with presumably better, more enlightened government.

Thank you for writing and I wish the best.

Bill Grimes December 2, 2008

Bill Grimes's Acceptance Remarks at the Hall of Fame Dinner Nov.28, 08

Good Evening to you all. I regret that because of previous commitments over this Holiday weekend I am unable to be here this evening to accept this recognition and honor. I want to thank all who supported my candidacy.
Although it has now been nearly a half century since after college I left Wheeling my thoughts today frequently return to so many hometown memories. The early childhood lessons of fair-play, industriousness, accountability and perseverance have impacted my life most positively. Much of this learning was shaped at Linsly where discipline, duty and honor were practiced and recognized daily.
Recently I read a wonderful new book, “Wheeling: A Brief History” by George Fetherling which catalogues the city’s development over its two hundred fifty year history and highlights many of its unique characteristics and people. The book’s penultimate chapter describes many of the city’s economic difficulties over recent years. In the final paragraph the author notes: “As with a number of American cities, the cyclical nature of its history is becoming apparent. By traditional standards of measurement, Wheeling had contracted and even deteriorated to the point where it was on the verge of becoming a frontier, in terms of under-development that Ebenezer Zane would have understood. What happens next is uncertain.”
As I reflected upon this thought from the book and upon my own observations of Wheeling during a recent week’s visit, I at first felt an acute sense of sadness at the diminishment of the population, particularly the young; the deterioration of historic endemic architecture and the depletion of many business enterprises. This sadness slowly gave way to an increasing sense of unease, almost a feeling of guilt, in being selected a member of Wheeling’s Hall of Fame. That’s because I chose to leave my hometown instead of remaining here and contributing to community’s progress and welfare.
Then I began to think about the concept of a “Hall of Fame” which is an entity or place designed to commemorate individual achievement in various endeavors. And I would hope that Wheeling’s Hall gives strong preference in its selection process to honor those whose time and efforts have been invested in the service of this community, in Wheeling itself. Awarding opportunists like myself who left for a better material life elsewhere seems to send the wrong signal to Wheeling’s young.
Further, it seems indisputable that the future of any city depends to an important degree upon the return of its college educated sons and daughters to their home where their skills and energy can immediately be applied to new ventures and to solutions of the community’s challenges.
In this context a couple of thoughts come to mind. Perhaps Wheeling today needs other another Hall of Fame to recognize meaningful contributions of the community’s younger citizens, maybe a “Today’s Famers” or “Wheeling Achievers.” I have seen such symbolic acclaim excite young managers and thrill entrepreneurs. Sometimes small efforts produce large returns.
The national YPO (Young Presidents Organization) is such an organization that brings together company presidents under 40 years of age who often mutually engage in efforts to produce economic value for companies in need. Why not for communities in need?

Last week I attended a conference in Silicon Valley which focused on a variety of ways large digital media companies are investing in new venture partnerships with local businesses in smaller cities. Yahoo, Google and IAC described plans to work with local newspapers and radio to produce technology and communications that can be potentially valuable for local businesses and could possibly create new jobs. A related benefit to these exciting digital endeavors is that cities like Wheeling might find that their some of its youngest and brightest would be less be anxious to seek their fame and fortune elsewhere.
At this conference during this moment of nationwide credit crisis, collapsing markets and constrained capital a husband and wife, founders of small company in Indiana, described how they recently raised one million dollars from the Federal Government’s Small Business Administration (SBA) which has $13 billion currently available to lend to local businesses.

My hope is that continued and more creative efforts by Wheeling’s business leaders, Chamber of Commerce, the Hall of Fame, local government, schools and NGOs can together find ways to revitalize this great community. Perhaps Mr. Feathering’s last sentence, “What happen next is uncertain,” is not true. Perhaps what happens next to Wheeling can be something new, dynamic and value-building for all in the community. It is in your hands. And while I am miles away much of my heart remains in this valley town on the Ohio. If I can ever be of smallest assistance I would happily respond.
Thank you and Best Wishes.