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W.Va. Day 2021: An English bulldog and unwavering resolve

Today is West Virginia Day, and if you grew up here or you’ve lived here long enough, you know that it’s not just about the Civil War.

True, the hearty denizens of then-western Virginia did do something unprecedented when they began peeling away from the Commonwealth and the Confederacy to form what would become the 35th state in the Union on June 20, 1863.

For many present-day West Virginians, though, this observance is really about everything that came after.

It’s about that fierce love of place, they’ll say.

It’s about the bulldog tenacity required to simply live here, they’ll say.

Bulldog tenacity, everyone knows, on this, the 158th anniversary of West Virginia’s statehood.

Thank Babydog for that.

Do it for Babydog

Babydog is the agreeable English bulldog whose master, Gov. Jim Justice, has fashioned into a social media star and the centerpiece of COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

The pup will meet her adoring public in ceremonies today in Charleston, in fact.

Over the past several weeks, Babydog has been a pug-nosed media darling at Justice’s briefings for reporters on the state of the coronavirus in the 35th state.

He’ll plop her on his desk.

He’ll make her give high-fives.

He’ll speak on her behalf as the camera zooms in for a snuffling close-up.

“If you won’t do it for your family,” he’ll say in his call for sleeves to roll up, “do it for Babydog.”

English bulldogs, as a rule, are “kind, but courageous,” and “friendly, but dignified,” the American Kennel Club says.

They’re easygoing, the club says, even if their dour faces suggest otherwise.

And, they’re adaptable to the circumstances at hand.

Just like West Virginians, people here will say.

Underground fighters

In the late 19th and 20th centuries, when coal was king, people journeyed here to carve their purchase in the coal seams that were as knotted and intertwined as that heirloom quilt your great-grandma sewed by hand.

Blacks up from Alabama. Italians and Poles over on their homelands.

Mother Jones raising holy hell in the coal camps.

Mining was dangerous then, and it took its debt in blood. That’s why she was here.

Disasters and death came down over those camps like a mourning shroud made of coal dust.

Working conditions were so unsafe that by the early 1920s, labor analysts and industry watchers had formulated a grim statistic.

If given a choice of spending a day on a World War I battlefield, or in the maw of a West Virginia coal mine, you would have been statistically safer staying up top, they said.

Even with bombs, bullets and mustard gas.

It wasn’t all dire, though.

People persevered.

Creativity and courageousness in the mountains

West Virginians over the years have made contributions in all fields of endeavor, from downhome music to high technology.

Optimism, many say, will still win out, be it in the form of rooting for the sometimes-underdog Mountaineers or just simply being charmed by Babydog.

Pam Dodds was charmed by the place before she even got here.

She’s an environmental engineer and Washington, D.C, native who moved to Barbour County in 1982 with her husband Art Dodds, who was born and raised in Massachusetts and worked as a an aeronautical cartographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It was a back-to-the-land sojourn for the couple, who are both serious students of history.

They’re known across the region for their portrayals of the state’s original First Couple, Francis and Julia Pierpont.

Pierpont was an Abraham Lincoln confidante who kept the president appraised of the war effort in the western Virginia campaigns from his home on Quincy Street in Fairmont, Marion County.

His wife, Julia, was an Abolitionist who helped inspire Memorial Day with her work to honor fallen soldiers in both Blue and Gray uniforms.

Francis Pierpont would be elected governor of the Restored Virginia in 1862, as the Confederate war effort began to unravel.

Julia Dodds is impressed that the resolve of the Pierponts and the other people with Union sympathies here didn’t come undone.

“You look back and you see how creative and courageous people on this end of Virginia really were,” she said.

Babydog would likely give a high-five to that.

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