MASONTOWN – Put away those pastoral-tinged “Mayberry” glasses for the moment, if you don’t mind, and settle in for a lesson on civics and sociology.
Which is this: Being mayor of a small town is exactly the same … as being mayor of a big town.
Yes, really.
In other words, it’s not all covered-dish and kumbaya at the community picnic.
Not when there are ordinances to uphold, fees to collect and grants to pursue for that sewage plant or police cruiser, both desperately needed.
All the concerns are the same. The same, as said, as the big town.
Today, the diminutive municipality of Masontown, Preston County, says goodbye to its larger-than-life mayor, Lydia Main, who did all of the above – and more – for nearly four decades in the town hall that now bears her name.
She died at the age of 96 at her house last week, surrounded by those she loved while “listening to her favorite polka music,” as her obituary notes.
Her funeral Mass is 10 a.m. at St. Zita Catholic Church on Maple Street.
“I just thought I couldn’t do any worse than the others,” she famously said in 1972, when she launched her first write-in candidacy for mayor – and won.
“I never decided to become mayor until I had kids,” she continued, “and I decided that we needed so many things, like a park.”
By example
Main was already a successful businesswoman in town. After two years in pre-med at West Virginia University, she dropped out, because she and her husband Wayne, were expecting their first child.
As her kids grew older, she went back to WVU to train as a pharmacist. She and Wayne founded Main’s Pharmacy in 1956, the year she graduated.
Her work ethic and business acumen, she got honestly.
Main’s parents, Luigi and Marcellina DeBoni, who both hailed from the same province in northern Italy, sailed to these shores and found themselves in Preston County, where they happily discovered several neighbors, as it turned out, from the other side of the Atlantic.
With immigrant zeal, Luigi and Marcellina launched a number of successful enterprises as they carved their purchase of the American Dream in Appalachia.
Marcellina owned and operated Masontown’s Bridgeway Inn for years, and her daughter was an apt pupil.
“If I can’t give it 100%, I’m not going to take the job,” Main said.
Governing, in the wee hours
Related, Main would always say, there is one big, discernable difference between small-town mayors and those presiding over larger municipalities.
In a small town, people know where to find the mayor. Always.
Especially, she said, chuckling, when the mayor is also the pharmacist at the only drugstore in town.
It wasn’t uncommon for her to get out of bed at midnight and to go fill a prescription for a shift worker just clocking out.
Over her tenure as Masontown’s mayor, she landed that sewage plant and police cruisers, along with a town park and computerized records – plus many of the other amenities that make the small towns appealing to the people who move here from the big towns.
The West Virginia Municipal League was so impressed, it created its “Lydia Main ‘Breaking Boundaries Award,’” which annually recognizes women making an impact in their local communities.
After her Mass today, people are invited to the Masontown Fire Hall for food, fellowship and, of course, a Lydia story or several.
Such as the one instance a woman called her house – at 3 a.m. – to grouse that the trucks rumbling and bouncing through the potholes on her street were keeping her awake.
The mayor noted the complaint.
Workers were dispatched.
And Main made a follow-up phone call – also at 3 a.m. – to make sure the resident was pleased with the repairs.
No matter. The mayor was almost always in good stead with the town.
Besides, she said: You don’t always have to be polite – when people know where your heart is pointed.
Over the years, outside groups would try to get her to seek state office, and she would always nicely – yes, really – say no.
After all, came the proclamation, a pharmacist and a mayor can fill many healing prescriptions. Masontown needed her, and she needed Masontown.
“I can make more of a difference at the drugstore,” she said.
Jeniffer Graham also contributed to this report.
