WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — Make no mistake about it, this is a company town. And the company — the fount of most of the town’s jobs — is The Greenbrier resort.
Tragically, seven White Sulphur Springs area residents died when floodwaters submerged the Spa City on June 23, and many other townspeople saw their homes and their personal possessions washed away. With The Greenbrier also sustaining major flood damage and, therefore, being forced to close its doors to the public and cancel its signature event — the Greenbrier Classic PGA tournament — a substantial portion of White Sulphur’s populace was hit with an employment gap on top of all of the other losses.
Those employees finally had something to cheer about when Greenbrier owner and CEO Jim Justice staged a news conference on the front lawn of the hotel Thursday and announced the resort would reopen just five days hence, on July 12.
Addressing the media and what a fact sheet referred to as “Team Greenbrier” — about 300 of the resort’s nearly 2,000 employees — an uncharacteristically subdued Justice spoke of loss and of renewal…