MORGANTOWN – Looking back, Rodney Pyles said he was probably preordained for public service.
After all, he said, political discourse ruled in the house he grew up in on Wiles Hill.
On Sundays, the kitchen table would be heaped with earlier incarnations of The Dominion Post.
The printed pages of the local newspaper on said table got equal billing with The New York Times and The Washington Post, Pyles said.
And all this mulling over, he remembered, smiling, was served in equal measure with the famous lasagna made by his mother Lucy – a pollworker who never missed an Election Day.
His father, Melford, a politically active coal miner, never shied away from a debate or a campaign either, Pyles said.
“That’s just how it was in our house,” he said.
Pyles died unexpectedly this past Tuesday in Morgantown. He was 80 years old.
REGROUPING, REINVENTING
In 2012, his friends – and his critics, especially – thought he might walk away from public life for good.
He announced that year he would not seek reelection as Monongalia County tax assessor, a decision to step away from an office he held since 1988.
It wouldn’t be long, however, before the Democrat would seek state office in West Virginia’s 51st House, where he would serve two terms and be lauded for his work on issues from education to human rights.
“Rodney Pyles was the kind of public servant every community hopes for,” state Democrat Party Chair Mike Pushkin said.
“He’s someone who truly cared about the people he represented,” the chairman continued. “Rodney approached every role with dedication, integrity and a genuine love for his community.”
Those roles went beyond a contentious final tenure as tax assessor.
TAKING DIRECTION
Pyles, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from West Virginia University, was on the faculty for a time at the former Alderson Broaddus College in Philippi.
He was also a historian who worked as an archivist for the WVU library system, and then later as state archivist in the administration of Gov. Jay Rockefeller.
Returning to Morgantown, he served more than two decades as Mon’s tax assessor.
His most profound influence, he said, was his big brother John Pyles, who was inspired to public life after John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign swing through Morgantown and the Mountain State in 1960.
Rodney graduated from Morgantown High School three years later in 1963, months before JFK would be felled by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas.
John Pyles, who had taught music in Monongalia County Schools, had left the classroom by then to also serve a stint in the state House.
The big brother was also elected to the Monongalia County Commission, a seat he held for nearly 20 years.
And a certain little brother was watching.
“It was just his idealism and that call to service,” Rodney said. “I started reading what he read. I started watching how he interacted with people and issues.”
Fred L. Jenkins Funeral Home has been entrusted with arrangements. Calling hours at the funeral home at 10 S. High St. are from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday.
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Monday at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church with the Rev. John P. McDonough as celebrant.
The family is honoring his request for cremation and burial will follow at a later date.
LEGISLATION (AND LASAGNA, TOO)
Survivors include his wife, Carol, and his daughter, Janessa Greg, who both appreciated his archival tendencies as the keeper of family photographs, writings and other mementos.
There was that, plus the fact that he could also make lasagna just like Lucy, they said.
He was an avid baseball fan and fixture at the Monongalia County Ballpark, where he held season tickets for both the WVU Mountaineers and West Virginia Black Bears.
Pyles also enjoyed the company of his feline pals, Carson, Weeb, Puff and Tess.
Barbara Evans Fleischauer, who served in the state House with Pyles, in turn, appreciated his community advocacy, she said.
It was her friend, she said, who pushed to recognize Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician from Greenbrier County who worked on Gemini and Apollo missions, in a uniquely West Virginia way.
Pyles successfully sponsored the resolution calling for the christening of the agency’s Independent Verification and Validation facility in Fairmont in Johnson’s honor.
