MORGANTOWN — Nancy Panoz knows exactly what can happen when earth is turned for a cause.
In the mid-1960s in Morgantown, she and her five children sat in the kitchen of a tiny house on Chestnut Ridge Road and watched – as the surroundings on the other side of the screen door were completely transformed.
When it was all done, that view turned into Mylan Pharmaceuticals, the global prescription drug maker founded her by late husband, Don Panoz and Milan Puskar, an old Army buddy who went by “Mike.”
“Those fellas made a lot of things happen around here, didn’t they?” she asked to no one in particular Wednesday afternoon near Morgantown.
That was as she was walking up to a structure that would turn out to be one of the final projects of her husband, who died three years ago after a lengthy battle with cancer.
It was the new chapel on a rise overlooking Chestnut Mountain Ranch, a 225-acre expanse just off Kingwood Pike near Morgantown that offers a faith-based refuge for boys and young men in trouble or fleeing it.
Crying (happy tears) in the chapel
Nancy Panoz let the tears flow as she stood in the center of the worship space her husband, in the final days of his illness, specifically wanted built.
“Will you look at this?” she asked. “Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful.”
“Well, that’s Don,” said Steve Finn, the ranch’s co-founder and executive director. “Don, and you.”
Panoz and her daughter, Dena Panoz Lovell, were guests of the honor for the ribbon-cutting at the chapel on the cloudy day.
They flew up from Atlanta, where her entrepreneurial-minded husband had remade himself several times over after Mylan.
In Georgia, he started up wineries, on top of landing more than 300 patents in the pharmaceuticals industry.
Panoz became especially known as innovator in Formula One racing, making sure that European-styled, open-wheeled sport had a place in NASCAR-saturated America.
Even with all that, his heart never stopped racing for his adopted hometown of Morgantown.
In recent years, he got to know the ministry and mission of the ranch Finn and his wife, Dawn, started up in 2004, in a textbook leap of faith.
Finn was a de facto city kid. He was born in West Virginia and his family moved to Atlanta when he was still in elementary school.
He grew up there, and joined the Atlanta police department. He quickly made detective, working the gang unit on the deceptively mean streets of the chrome-and-glass Mecca of the New South.
He got too used to seeing teenage boys trundled in the back of police cruisers or zipped up in body bags, he said.
“It was either get cynical or get shot,” he said.
Working for heaven – in Almost Heaven
After leaving the force and working with a rural Georgia retreat from which that Chestnut Ridge Ranch is modeled, he and Dawn, with three young children in the backseat, all their worldly possessions in a travel trailer – and a balance their bank account that was either just enough or just not – lit out for West Virginia.
Those country roads led to Ponderosa Ponds Road, a narrow, mountain lane in turn that led to the place that would be Chestnut Mountain Ranch.
The Finns, plus lots of other kindred souls, made some things happen, too.
Today, the ranch has its own school, with an accredited curriculum. There are three houses – Joy, Grace and Faith – where the boys and in-house parent-chaperones stay.
Faith House was just dedicated two weeks ago in Puskar’s name – he died in 2011 – courtesy of an endowment from his foundation.
The ranch wants to be home to seven houses by the time it’s done, Finn said. There are 16 boys residing at the ranch.
“It made a difference, me coming here,” 15-year-old Austin said. (The ranch prefers not to divulge last names).
“There people here care,” he continued. “And I like that you can earn points for field trips.”
Other ranch residents read scripture passages during the brief service that preceded the ribbon-cutting.
“This is going to be our spiritual center,” Finn said.
Nancy Panoz, meanwhile, looked up and said she wouldn’t be surprised if the “fellas” she spoke of earlier weren’t also at the center of it all, on this day.
“Don and Mike,” she said.
“They’re looking down, you know they are. They probably just finished playing cards, because that’s what did. They’re looking down, and they’re smiling.”
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