This week we have a virtual conversation with Don Perdue.
Don is a West Virginia native and former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates representing District 19.
We will be releasing new episodes bi-weekly, sometimes even more regularly, for the remainder of 2021!
https://coalfield-development.org/
This week we have a virtual conversation with Don Perdue.
Don is a West Virginia native and former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates representing District 19.
We will be releasing new episodes bi-weekly, sometimes even more regularly, for the remainder of 2021!
https://coalfield-development.org/
This is Change in the Coalfields, a podcast by Coalfield Development, all about change in Appalachia, what change has happened, what change is happening and what change still needs to happen. I'm your host, Brandon Dennison, founder and CEO of Coalfield Development. I'm really honored and excited to have Mr. Don Perdue here with us today. Don is a Wayne County legend, and a personal friend of mine, we've done a lot of work together. And he's been a part of many change efforts here in the coalfields for many years. So Don, welcome. And thank you for joining.
Don Perdue:Thank you, Brandon, thank you for the opportunity.
Brandon Dennison:So maybe just start off tell us a little bit about about your career in southern West Virginia, and some of the different change efforts that you've been a part of, and then we'll back it up and learn more about you as a person.
Don Perdue:Well, first of all, my profession was as a pharmacist, that's what I did for the majority of my working life. But as I did that, I became more exposed, if you want to call it that, to the personal lives of people around me in this part of the world. And that created a desire on my behalf to get involved in some way to create a better atmosphere, if you will. Appalachia is known for being sort of dark, cynical and friend of mine, Dave Payton said once that their philosophy is that, well, it could get worse. And that's always impressed me as being probably true, but should be wrong. And that just is the sort of bailiwick that I operated within for the first part of my professional life. So and that lends itself to a desire to become more active, and lifting that that sort of dark demeanor. The other thing I remember that day once I was speaking about West Virginia, he said that the sign shouldn't say "Wild, Wonderful West Virginia", it should say "West Virginia, It's Not for Everyone." And that's quite true. But how do we make West Virginia for everyone? How do we move away from that, from that impression of the state that it's a dark, diminished existence that in itself led me to get involved locally, there was a factory or a coal dock that was moving in close to my home, and many of us didn't want the traffic and the dust and all those kind of things. So I was one of the forming members of something called the Wayne County Concerned Citizens. This was in 1996 or 95. So we fought that - we raised money, we hired a lawyer, we went to court. We lost, but we changed the way that that facility was viewed and we also changed the physical way that the property was entered. And it probably saved lives. Because at one at one time, that coal loading facility was seeing 700 trucks a day, in 24 hours, let's say 700 trucks. That was consuming while it was going on. But the fact that we lost it made me believe that the reason you lost wasn't because you weren't right and it wasn't because you weren't righteous, it's because the other guy had the ability to define what"right" was. So I say all that to say this, in 1998, I ran for the actually in '94, I ran for the House of Delegates and was defeated by the incumbent. And then I didn't think about it again until 1998. And so I ran again, and I won. And then that allowed me to serve from 1998 to 2016 in the West Virginia House of Delegates. This was an interesting time - I sort of started out as that freshman on the back row. And then after I had served for a number of years on the Health Committee, I was made the chairman of the Health Committee in the House of Delegates. The first year it became a major committee, which was a big accomplishment, they actually started viewing us like a new judiciary and finance. And it was held up to that level. And then from that I was able to move up to the front row. And then in 2012, I guess it was, the other party took over the majority of the House. And I moved almost to the back row again, but not quite. And that made me feel like well, okay, they weren't mad enough at me to put me clear out. And they must have thought I had something to say, so I was kind of in the middle. And during that time, and those legislative seasons and that legislative session, a tremendous number of really interesting and important and actually critical topics came up that I was able to participate in and I'm very grateful for that. The first one I can recall that really struck home with a lot of people was when we were trying to reduce the weight of coal trucks on our highways. The trucking industry literally surrounded the Capitol with these monster trucks, a car could drive around the block. They literally circled the Capitol and did that for several hours. And it created some fear and trepidation amongst those of us who were trying to get the weights reduced. But at the same time, a gentleman named Mike Caputo had arranged to have people that wanted to see those weights reduced come to the Capitol. So they were there, the truckers were there. I was there. It was an amazing moment, because we could hear them outside and we're blowing their horns, the engines were running at full throttle. And inside these advocates, these protesters, if you will, were singing. If you've been ever been able to return to the Capitol, if you're sitting there if you're here, all over the place. So it's an amazing sort of juxtaposition of a sound, and thought. We were successful after a period of time. And that was gratifying for me.
Brandon Dennison:And that was reducing the amount of the weight of coal a truck was allowed to legally carry on the road?
Don Perdue:Right. They in those days, they had sideboards on the backs of those big 18 wheelers, and they would load 26, 30 tons, 40 tons on those trucks. We have one actually that wrecked right at the mouth of the road that I drive on, right? Where it comes out on us 52 and turned over sideways and dumped it's load and hit a car lot and wrecked seven cars. And that was why we were trying to fight the coal load, something was going on right there. And that was about the time they decided to change the way the road ran. My strongest belief is that God's not always looking the other way. And sometimes he sends messages in very vivid ways that we overlook, that wreck of that coal truck was very vivid for me, I remembered that when they circled the Capitol, and we fought to get that done. And we got it done - was very gratifying. It was like had answered a call that I hadn't really heard it the first time. The next thing I guess that sort of grabbed my attention about that same time, we were trying to raise the taxes on spit tobacco, which is horribly under taxed in West Virginia, and it got to be a real brutal kind of fight. And I remember, we wanted to make it commensurate with the tax on cigarettes. And no, they don't want to do that. It's much, much, much lower. And so we actually got to raise it from I think it was from 3% to 7%. And so the what 45% it is now or whatever it is. We passed that that day on the House floor. A lady that I have tremendous amount of respect for Virginia Mahan out of Summers County, she came over to me and she put her arm around me and says "We did a brother." I can't contemplate to this day, how that struck me. She and I were not always on the same side. And sometimes very vividly so but I became her brother in that moment. And that's another thing that I learned that day. If you advocate for something that is the right thing to do, you attract yourself people who never knew and didn't think you would ever go, and they will have the same feeling you had. And that is real power. That it real power.
Brandon Dennison:That depth of a bond of serving together.
Don Perdue:This this would have been about 2006 I was notified, made knowledge of a bill that was being crafted called the Affordable Housing Trust Fund Bill, the lobbyist who was pushing for that was making the rounds trying to find somebody that would sponsor it so they could get it out there. It came to me and I looked at it at first I thought "I don't know if that's going to work." And he came to me later the same day said, "You know, I haven't had any success yet. Will you sign on to this bill as well?" I said- "I'm not too sure. But yeah, I will." And I did; I was the first sponsor they had. The bill passed, remarkably, in a landslide - it really surprised me because it was the first bill that I'd ever gotten passed as a lead sponsor. I've had several other paths along with the speaker and other people. But that one was passed with me as, as the lead sponsor. That bill created thousands of jobs, hundreds of homes and made a house available to people who had never had anything but a home and house at home must go together. They just do. That was that was another really gratifying moment.
Brandon Dennison:And that's a program that's funded, that's helped fund several Coalfield Development projects too, that agency.
Don Perdue:It did. It was amazing that it had such a broad impact, when at the time, I couldn't see it. I didn't see the depth of the surge it would create. I didn't see that. But at the time, I thought well, maybe this will do a little something. It did a lot. I think a lot of times, good legislation achieves great ends that nobody ever anticipated when you started. The focus on health care was really where I was most comfortable. I didn't know a whole lot about finance. I didn't know anything at all about judiciary. I did know something about health care...
Brandon Dennison:Being a pharmacist.
Don Perdue:Yeah. My community attracted lot of interesting people with interesting ideas. And it taught me that you have to figure out how to take the talents somebody has, and use them and overlook any fractures in their personality they had. Because the good things that you're capable of will far outweigh tremendously outdistance anything else. It's a really hard thing to do. When I became chairman of the Health Committee, around 2008 '06, somewhere in there, I was able to pick bills out that I would want my committee to look at. You have to be more than careful, you have to be almost persistent in being careful. But by the same token, it gave me an opportunity to do something. So it was around about that time I started seeing my culture become consumed by drugs. I would be into prescription counter, and I literally would see whole families disintegrate in front of me. And these were people that ordinarily were stand-up folks, had jobs. And I came to recognize that, you know, I was part of that continuum, because yes, I had a valid prescription. Yes, I filled it for an opiate. But should I have? Morally? No. Legally? Yes. That's a terrible dichotomy with the people in my profession and we'll see more of it, it's time goes on and these lawsuits grow. Being in the legislature, I thought I could do something about this. What can I do that would bring the most positive result? Well, that winter, right before the legislative session, I met with eight people at the old Douglas High School in Huntington on a night where the snow was like four inches deep. I mean, it was almost impossible to get there. But we got there. And I had two guys come in to tell us about a place called The Healing Place in Louisville, Kentucky, and it was a recovery center. And they talked about it and they were very energetic, very informative. When they finished, they said - By the way, we are both graduates of The Healing Place. And these were very erudite well dressed, extremely intelligent, well educated,both at master's degrees, young men. So those four or five, six folks that were there, kind of grasped this opportunity. And so we started developing plans for The Healing Place, which became Recovery Point later. So that year, the Attorney General in West Virginia had won a lawsuit against a drug company, that it wasn't did anything with opiates, it was something else. And it was $7 million that he got. Well, he gave the money to the governor to use as he would. I started seeing what they were planning on using the money for and it was all for interdiction, and criminal intervention. It didn't have anything to do with the societal problem that I saw as a pharmacist - didn't have anything to do with it. I started advocating with the governor's office to take a portion of that money and put it into a fund for recovery. It was a struggle that today would never have existed. I mean, as soon as that money was available, they would have turned it into something positive. In those days, everybody really believed that the choices that people made, determine their criminality, and it was entirely their fault, and no one else's. I'm sure that's exactly the way people thought. I enlisted the assistance of the fellow who's now our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Evan Jenkins. Evan and I got a meeting with the governor's chief of staff. I spoke to him at length about it, how I believed it would help and we needed to do this. And we can create something. The next day, we got word that he was going to take not quite a million dollars and set it aside for recovery - such that it can be used to develop a Healing Place in Huntington. So we did that. And to this day, I think it's had over a thousand graduates, most of which are gainfully employed, have families. And that and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund are the two big things for me, big gratifications that I got. That's why I valued that part of my career so much, and looking back and figuring out that in 18 years, I spent six years completely away from my family. And once I recognized that I said - well, you know, it's not so important that I feed my ego by being a delegate, it is important that I feed my ego by being agood father and grandfather. I decided that it was time to pack it in and I did, I don't regret it never have.
Brandon Dennison:So you started out in...it's interesting, the Wayne County Concerned Citizens sort of on the engaged citizen, sort of the civil society part of change. And then you've also been as an elected official on trying to drive change how is changemaking as an elected official different from changemaking as a concerned citizen?
Don Perdue:I think I could put it this way. When I was an advocate remember in the Wayne County Concerned Citizens who I was working to stop something, I surrounded myself with people who felt the same way. I had a buffer between me and our opponents...our opponents, we would receive legal letters from them, and there would be newspaper articles, but there was no personal communication. So as an advocate, you have a lot of personal communication with people and feel the same way you do. When you go to the legislature or to any elected post - yes, there are people there that feel the same way you do and are advocating for the same things you are but you're in direct contact with people who absolutely oppose you, for whatever reasons, and sometimes they can't even elucidate what they are. It makes you more aware of your arguements, it makes you better armed, if you will to win the day. What you do is you figure out what the other guy wants and try to figure out a way to get what you want around that. It teaches the art of compromising in a dramatic way, albeit thing that I did also learn was to learn that there are actually people who will not desert their principles, they may not be advocating the same way you are. But if the principle is the same, there'll be with you. I have a friend who sat next to me my last year in the session who was a profound member of the Republican party opposite my very conservative (side). In West Virginia, I'm known as being very liberal but I doubt I could get a driver's license in Massachusetts. But there was a bill that came up that I really did like it all, I can't tell you how much I didn't like this bill. And Josh should have been on his team's side, the issue was forced pooling of gas reserves. In other words, if you had gas reserves and your neighbor had gas reserves, and they sold all their reserves to somebody that you would have to sell yours to the same person for the same price. That's what the bill said. But it had tremendous support. Everybody was a speaker on that. And the speaker, as you may know, was actually Josh's boss. He was the Republican leader in the House. The final bill came up for voting. And he looked at me more than once, he said - you know, I can't be for this. The bill failed on a tie, vote on, a tie vote, he could have made all the difference in the world. His party knew that, too. And in many ways, he was ostracized for that. It was a tie vote and it died. And it's never passed since. That moment, that ability to interact with somebody who doesn't believe the same way you do but his principles are the same as yours. And maybe it's wrong way to put it but doesn't believe in that issue. Doesn't see it doesn't see that issue, necessarily in the same light. His principles would not let him vote for it.
Brandon Dennison:Well, and it's interesting, you know, open with the Dave Payton quote, which of course we miss him. We all miss Dave, I know he was a friend of yours. You wrote a beautiful sort of memoriam to him. And that was published in the paper about cynicism. And I do think a lot of what I'm hearing from you, Don, I mean, we have our challenges. You didn't win every battle you took on to fight. But change, it is possible, and it does happen. And sometimes we don't celebrate that enough or open our eyes enough to the good change that has happened.
Don Perdue:I agree and Appalachian culture being what it is, it's a little easier to look back than it is look forward. Somebody said something that I felt was very, very intuitive. You risk failure, everybody risks failure, or should, some don't. But what he said and I thought was very important. I don't remember who was said, but "you always have to fail forward." That's true. Because when you fail, you need to go back and figure out why you failed and how you can be successful. People who live here have gotten so used to not being successful, they've forgotten that every failure is an opportunity. And trying to present that in the right way is the challenge everybody who lives here has to accept. I worked for six or seven years after I retired as a pharmacist as the Economic Development Director here in Wayne County. That's where I met you first. I started to see the truth in what you said. The first time we met you referred to something called"social entrepreneurship." And that was a phrase I'd never heard. I certainly didn't know what it meant. I learned through you and Coalfields what it means. And successes, whatever successes I had in economic development, are all sort of tied to what you are bringing to us, and how we can make it work. Our whole state could utilize a little bit of mentorship when it comes to understanding what it means to define yourself and not define yourself as others see you.
Brandon Dennison:So you were born, obviously, you know a lot about West Virginia. Were you born and raised in West Virginia? And even in Wayne County?
Don Perdue:Yeah, sure was I was born and raised in Ceredo, West Virginia. And I just wrote a piece for something my daughter's having me do about Ceredo. And it brought back memories, and how things have changed so dramatically. And that's, it's interesting because of our discussion here. When I was growing up and Ceredo, it's a little small bedroom community, a very conservative community. There were two or three major companies that were operating there - manufacturing companies. There was a glass factory, actually two glass factories, a lumber mill that was very large. There were jobs, most people had a job of some kind. There were folks who didn't, but they usually were disabled in some way. If you go back there, now those factories aren't there, they are not operating. The glass plant morphed into a rubber plant, which is no longer operating. So the immediate employment in this area moved outward toward the Armco, over in Kentucky and to International Nickel. If you got a good job for then, working for the railroad. There's still a lot of stuff being moved on to rail lines but it's not same kind of stuff. When I was growing up in Ceredo, almost all your recreation was outdoors. There were no indoor facilities for really anything. All the young people in that era recall that when they left the house in the summer, at nine in the morning, they were encouraged not to come back until the lights went on at night. It was just a way of life during that timeframe. Ceredo, West Virginia, if you've never been there, go there, it's a lovely small town. People actually had hogs in their backyard. They had chickens, butchering hogs, basically, on the city streets of Ceredo. In November in Ceredo, it was not uncommon to see a couple of hogs hanging in trees. Can you imagine how that would look today? That's a change, probably a change for the better. But by the same token, it's a, it's a sea change, it's a different way of looking at how you provide for yourself. It's a mentality change, too. The town has gone through a lot of manifestations through its tenure. And today, it's still a very vibrant and vital kind of area, it probably should have died back in the 50s. But it didn't, I have to believe that that's because the people who lived there were willing to do whatever they had to do to to sustain their life where they lived. And so they did, they drove 40 miles for the job, they were able to purchase the things that they ate, that was a dramatic sort of change in culture. At the same time, education with my parents was extremely important. Through high school, you were encouraged to get education. But, you were not encouraged necessarily to carry it any further in high school, because you could get a good job paying more money than you could teaching English at Armco. There was a great thrust to sustain yourself through high school. But after that, you were just kind of, well, you're just left on your own. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. Seeing some of my schoolmates, my classmates, from grade school and middle school and in Buffalo High School, I saw them try to raise themselves up, many of them in that class I was in was phenomenal. I think we had like nine doctors and 15 lawyers, we had a bunch of business majors who became millionaires and retired at 40. And so it was, it was an era where improving your lot was really important. Today, I'm not so sure improving your lot...I think what it is people have lost faith that they can. In many ways it goes back to what I was saying before...you have to inculcate in people the desire to define themselves in their terms and not someone else's.
Brandon Dennison:Is that the main thing, Don, that you think, for our future in the coal fields, that is that the main thing that really needs to change and shift?
Don Perdue:You can't assume that your past will make you a future, you have to assume that today is where you'll make your future. And I do believe that a lot of our young people are starting to kind of get that. I really want to believe that being a father and grandfather, I'm very fortunate my children...my son is a lawyer, daughter is working on her doctorate at Ohio University. That is not something I even thought about when I was growing up. I never thought about even getting a professional degree, I became a pharmacist because I wanted to make enough money to buy the things I want to buy. Not because I was initially attracted to pharmacy, I was driven by this desire to move my lot, a little farther ahead of my parents. My mother and father from that generation, that was the lesson they really taught and pushed hard was that you need to be better and get better than you are today. You need to educate yourself such that you can be prepared for the changes that come and that's what's happened in West Virginia. We weren't as well prepared for those changes.
Brandon Dennison:Yeah, even if we were clear-eyed, we the data was clear, but we just weren't willing to except it.
Don Perdue:Exactly, exactly. If you fall down every time you try to go up a set of stairs, pretty soon you'll find another way around instead of really learning to get up the stairs and doing what it takes to get there. That's all kind of trite but it really revolves around that whole business of making sure you define yourself and don't define yourself in somebody else's terms.
Brandon Dennison:Well, Don, thank you for your service to our state. Our time together...you've lived a full life, I feel like we're gonna need to have you back to dive into more. But you've done so much for Wayne County, for West Virginia and for me as a mentor to me, personally.
Don Perdue:Well, it's a labor of love.
Brandon Dennison:Well thank you for your leadership and let's let truly let's let's stay in touch
Don Perdue:Will do, Brandon - God Bless.
Brandon Dennison:You too. Take care. Change in the Coalfields is a podcast created by Coalfield Development at the west edge factory in Huntington, West Virginia. This episode was hosted by Brandon Dennison, and produced and edited by JJN multimedia. Become a part of our mission to rebuild the Appalachian economy by going to our website Coalfield-Development.org to make a donation. You can email us anytime at info@Coalfield-Development.org and subscribe to our newsletter for up-to-date information on the podcast. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by searching for Coalfield Development. Check back soon for more episodes.