Tammie Alexander doesn’t make a big deal about it, but she’s helped moved some mountains in her time.
Growing up in Cameron, Marshall County, she tended to her family’s 400-acre dairy farm, while doing a host of domestic duties for her parents — cooking, bill-paying — that a lot of teenagers don’t always have to do.
The morning after her high school graduation, she was on her way to California, where she got a job at a company that supplied accessories to the transportation industry.
She married young and had a baby. There was a divorce, but there was also a college degree.
Two degrees, actually: An associate degree and bachelor’s degree, both by way of evening courses, since she worked during the day.
Alexander was back in West Virginia, raising her daughter as a single mom when she decided, at the age of 33, to go to law school.
There were economic struggles along the way. More than once — and always reluctantly — she had to ask for help.
Which is how Alexander eventually made her acquaintance with United Way of Monongalia and Preston Counties.
It’s an association going back at least 20 years, and in coming weeks, she’ll be even more visible with the outreach agency.
Alexander, an attorney and ranking officer at the Morgantown offices of the Steptoe & Johnson PLLC firm, is chairing United Way’s 2022 campaign.
“We Can Move Mountains” is the theme. The new chair had a hand it that. Especially the “We” part.
“My thinking is that this campaign is about everyday people,” she said.
Everyday people, she said, simply linking arms to help. In Morgantown and north-central West Virginia, she found out the local United Way had a lot to do with that.
She began working with rape and domestic violence victims in her legacy and helped build houses with Habitat for Humanity as a volunteer.
Mon and Preston’s United Way is a big advocate of both of the above, and Alexander was also able to exhale — knowing her daughter was receiving reputable daycare and after-school care, courtesy of United Way-sanctioned agencies.
“That’s personal to me,” she said. “I know when I first moved here, I couldn’t have made it without the support of those United Way partners.”
That so many of those partners were shuttered last year due to the pandemic, she said, only serves as a grim eye-opener to what things here could be like — were it not for the generosity, fiscal and otherwise, of the member agencies and other proponents.
“There are just so many good, generous people here,” Alexander said. “And so many mentors for me.”
Of pandemics and pocketbooks
Macall Speaker, who directs development services for the local United Way, still marvels at the 2021 campaign, and it made goal, and beyond, even under the shadow of COVID-19.
“People in Mon and Preston always come through,” she said of their role in the campaign that brought more than $1.2 million.
That money goes to fund 24 United Way partners across the two counties, she said, all there for the young moms and others who don’t want to ask for help — but have to.
Coincidentally, $1.2 is also the goal for the 2022 effort, Speaker said.
That effort begins next month with United Way’s Community Leaders Breakfast and Power of the Purse events.
After that, in-house donation drives begin at businesses across the two counties.
Visit the organization’s Facebook page for campaign news, she said.
For Alexander, the longtime United Way friend and new campaign chair, any offering is appreciated — since all offerings remain local.
“We can do this $1 at a time or $10 at a time,” she said. “I love that 100% stays right here at home.”
TWEET @DominionPostWV
