By Jessica Farrish, The Register-Herald
BECKLEY, W.Va. — When Gayle Connelly Manchin was growing up on South Kanawha Street in Beckley, it was a “wonderful time,” she said.
“The country was calm,” she said. “The Cold War was a threat, but not on us, personally.
“We grew up in neighborhoods where everyone knew everyone. I walked to school in Beckley: I walked to grade school, then to junior high and then to high school.
“There was never any question of whether it was safe or not.”
Manchin, 74, is federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), the federal-state partnership that President John F. Kennedy founded in 1965 to fight poverty in Appalachia by building a sustainable economy in the 420 counties spread throughout West Virginia and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia…
