MORGANTOWN – Call it the Paul Martinelli catechism.
A three-point primer, if you will, of getting it done and helping people, in the workplace and in life.
No. 1: If you’re going to make a promise to someone – keep it. Do what you said.
No. 2: If you’re going to a meeting, especially one where you may be called upon to represent someone else, make sure you’re more than prepared.
No. 3: When engaging in the particulars of Nos. 1 and 2, either separately or simultaneously, make sure your hair is perfect.
OK, Paul’s friend Terry Nebel said, with a chuckle, maybe No. 3 didn’t apply so much in Martinelli’s world as the first two – even if it was a most definite sartorial component of his presence.
“I used to tease him about the hair,” Nebel said of his longtime West Virginia University colleague and friend who died last week.
“Guy couldn’t have a bad hair day if he tried.”
IN SOLIDARITY
Martinelli, 88, died this past Sunday at Harmony in Morgantown after a lengthy illness.
If there were no bad hair days at WVU, where Martinelli would spend more than 50 years – he hired on in 1966 and retired in 2017 – the good work days were just as common.
He held several key administrative positions in the course of his climb up the ladder at WVU Extension.
Martinelli made his name and his brand, however, in support of the rank-and-file.
He got himself on Staff Council, where he advocated for the administrative assistants, maintenance workers, line cooks and others who make the state’s flagship university go.
That meant lobbying for employee rights in Stewart Hall on the downtown campus and salaries and benefits for the same, at the state Capitol Complex in Charleston.
It meant being there for an employee on the receiving end of a not-so-good experience – one that was unfair or unjust, even.
THE TEACHER AND THE PUPIL
Nebel, who was an information technology administrator at WVU, got to know Martinelli from his very first days on campus as a freshman in 1979.
He took a work-study position at the Extension Service, and Martinelli was one of the first people he met.
“Paul became my mentor,” he said. “He really turned into a WVU father figure.”
When Nebel dropped out of school and joined the military, Martinelli, himself a Vietnam-era veteran, gave the kid some front-line advice, Nebel remembered.
“He said, ‘Terry, some of this you’re gonna hate, but make it work for you.’ I did.”
And when Nebel dropped back into school to finish his degree, and then became a university employee himself, Martinelli coaxed him onto staff council – where another phase of his education began.
That was by watching Martinelli at work, Nebel said.
In his staff council leadership role, Martinelli heard it from classified employees and cloistered administrators.
And woe to the guy with the good hair – if both sides had ill will at the same time.
“Paul was the consummate professional,” Nebel said.
“It was impossible to make him mad. I never saw him show anger. He would always call me if I couldn’t be at the meeting. He’d say, ‘Terry, they really beat me up on this one, but we got it done.’”
MEET THE FAMILY
Martinelli grew up in Greenmont. His grandparents were Italian immigrants. La familia ruled. Siblings. Aunts and uncles. Honorary aunts and uncles. Pasta on Sunday.
His brother, Danny, taught English and coached tennis at Morgantown High with a rivaled longevity.
Paul and his wife Dixie share a son, two daughters and numerous grandchildren. Their house in the Morgantown area was the social epicenter. There were always people over. Nebel had an open invitation.
If you worked nightside at The Dominion Post, it wasn’t uncommon to see Martinelli power-walking in the hallway.
That’s because he was also employed part-time as an ad insertor in the mailroom (on top of everything else) which wasn’t easy on the back and legs. The jaunts kept him limber while burning his boundless energy at the same time.
Last Sunday, when Dixie called with sad, inevitable news that her husband’s earthly journey was drawing to a close, Nebel made one more visit to Harmony.
“I couldn’t not be there for Paul,” he said. “Because he was there for everybody.”
