By Stephen Smoot
“Well that high tide’s risin’/ Mama don’t you let me down/ Pack up your suitcase/ Mama don’t you make a sound/ Now it’s king for king/ Queen for Queen/It’s gonna be the meanest flood/ That anybody’s seen/ Oh mama, ain’t you gonna miss your best friend now?
Yes, you’re gonna have to find yourself
Another best friend, somehow.”
And those who lived through the terrible nights and days, those who remember the Fifth of November, but different from the English, they all recall who their best friend was, even for just a few days, as sturm und drang strangled communities up and down the South Branch Valley.
That was Willard Earle, already a familiar voice for a quarter of a century on WELD.
While 1985 served as a focal point for flood and natural disaster memories, horrific floods had plagued the South Branch Valley and watershed since settlement.
In 1877, according to records, the South Branch River crested at 34 feet at Springfield in Hampshire County. March of 1936 witnessed a flood that slightly exceeded that mark. According to a contemporary Moorefield Examiner account “Moorefield was cut off from the outside world for two days by a flood that suddenly swept down the valley.”
Franklin saw the river crest seven feet above flood stage in that incident, Petersburg and Moorefield both endured flooding 10 feet higher. Storms hit in the middle of one of the hottest and driest decades in West Virginia and American history
Just as officials worry about in 2025, the flooding severely damaged the US 220 bridge at Petersburg Gap.
Unlike in 1877 and 1936, officials had somewhat more warning about the weather to come in 1985. Called “the Election Day Flood” in Virginia and “the Flood of ‘85” in the Mountain State, the origins came in the Caribbean Sea.
On October 26, a tropical storm named Juan picked up enough warm water “fuel” to elevate the storm to hurricane status. Hurricane Juan’s track took it first to the Louisiana coast on the 28th. It returned to the Gulf of Mexico, then made landfall once again on the 31st.
Throughout Hardy, Grant, Pendleton, Tucker, Pocahontas, Randolph, and other counties on the periphery of the region, children and their families happily enjoyed a tranquil night of trick or treat as the storm formed and evolved.
Petersburg High School had just handed Moorefield its fourth loss of the season with the Yellow Jackets needing a win in the upcoming contest against Franklin to post a winning record for 1985.
And Willard Earle, as he always did, manned his post in Downtown Fisher at the venerable studios of WELD.
As Chip Combs, WELD radio personality, shared, Earle “started his career in 1960.” He went on to explain that “long before his group purchased the station, he set an example of work ethic that was unparalleled.” Just as many cash-strapped small town newspaper and broadcaster outlets have had to return to doing, Earle in those days “split (his) time between on-air duties and sales and nobody wore both hats better.”
Eight months before the deluge, Earle purchased WELD AM 690, assuming the role as captain of that ship. Noting the popularity of clear FM broadcast radio, Earle “and his group took the plunge and created WELD 101.7, ushering in a new era of radio, right here in our little valley” said Combs.
As Earle’s daughter Sarah shared with the Grant County Press last week, “community was always important to my father.” His voice carried the community news to radio sets far and wide. In those days, listeners in 12 counties in three states relied on WELD broadcasts for news and entertainment. Earle’s stentorian voice also served as that of area high school sports that he broadcast over the decades.
Sarah Earle also told the Grant County Press that Earle provided much of the information that Facebook community pages share one fourth of the way through the 21st century. “When I was in high school, I used to think some of these programs were silly in a way,” she admitted, but has since concluded “maybe Dad was actually ahead of social media.”
As children in West Virginia’s Potomac Highlands enjoyed Halloween, those in Gulf Shores, Alabama endured a different fright night. Between 10 and 12 inches of rain forced families to flee their homes as floodwaters rose along with sustained winds between 60 and 70 miles per hour.
The historical retrospect of the National Weather Service on the “slow and erratic motion of Hurricane Juan” stated that it “made for a forecasting nightmare.” Meteorologists struggled to determine the path and expected impact of the “meandering” system that “drifted slowly north into the Tennessee Valley over the next several days.”
A combination of normal mid fall conditions combined with an abnormal storm system formed a recipe for destruction. Peter Corrigan, a Senior Service Hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Virginia, described how “dormant” vegetation, overcast skies, and “feeble November sunlight”, “reduced evaporation to the point that nearly all the rain that fell in the days preceding the flood” prevented water evaporation that might have mitigated the impact of the rains somewhat.
Juan’s remains formed a weak low pressure system that collided with an “upper level trough” from the central United States that put the still-powerful storms into a holding pattern over the central Appalachians. Nothing cut off the northward flowing stream of warm, moist tropical air keeping those storms so unusually strong.
When floods come to the Potomac Highlands, they follow a general pattern. Many floods that could happen do not, thanks to the extensive system of National Resources Conservation Service small watershed flood control dams. They take on significant stormwater burdens that protect lives and property downstream. Even during major floods, they reduce the potential damage to property and loss of life.
Streams swell first upstream in the south. Flood waters move relentlessly north through communities on and near the rivers.
John O’Brien, an Appalachian scholar who grew up in Piedmont and eventually took residence in Pendleton County, recalled initial signs of trouble in his book “At Home in the Heart of Appalachia.”
He wrote that Ruskin Murphy, Pendleton County jailer and member of Pendleton County Emergency Rescue, shared with him weekdays are normally bereft of calls, but the monitor had been “cracking with calls since he woke up and they are coming faster all the time.” The entire county seemed afflicted by whatever was happening, forcing Murphy to conclude “something is way out of line here.”
O’Brien recalled as the flooding opened in Franklin “Dyer Avenue has become a shallow stream with a quarter-inch sheet of of water gliding down.” Through Franklin’s historic downtown, annihilated by fire just over six decades prior “Main Street is a larger stream.”
Emergency phones and HAM radio broadcasts continued to reach out to the county’s command center. Calls of trapped families terrified of rising water, the South Branch extending from valley wall to valley wall in Ruddle, and a threat to the safety of the people not seen since armies traversed the county in the Civil War afflicted the area. Power lines failed, leaving broad swaths of the Potomac Highlands in the dark.
And the waters surged northward.
Upstream, the damage intensified as the loss of life and property focused on Hardy and Pendleton. The Moorefield Examiner’s coverage of the event stated that “thousands of residents fled their home on Monday night as Moorefield was evacuated just ahead of the rapidly rising waters. Some three to four feet of rolling water swept through the Moorefield business district. By Sunday evening a survey completed by members of the Disaster Recovery Committee showed that 453 homes and mobile homes in the Town were non-habitable with approximately one-half of those totally or nearly destroyed. An additional estimated 29 homes in the County were considered non-habitable as a result of the flood.”
Outside of the towns, approximately 1,500 residents of Hardy County had to leave their homes temporarily or permanently. Many homes on and around Town Run Road, just as happened again 11 years later, were completely destroyed by the flooding. Over 600 homes simply no longer existed.
Rick Gillespie currently serves as the emergency services coordinator for Pendleton County, but in 1985 he had six years under his belt as a West Virginia State Trooper. One of the most important aspects of keeping the area as safe and as well-informed as possible was Willard Earle and WELD radio.
With television and electric powered communications equipment unavailable, all anyone had in those days was radio, whether battery operated or in a vehicle.”I recall WELD and Willard doing stellar work in keeping the public informed.”
That amounted to more than simply reading the news, however. Earle served as a literal lifeline even as his grandson Jesse Earle shared, he had to set aside whatever concerns he had about the safety of him and his own to serve the region in one of its most desperate times.
First, WELD sent a request to the Federal Communications Commission as the scale of the disaster became apparent. Some smaller AM radio stations had restrictions on night hours broadcasting, including WELD. Quickly, they received a waiver for 24 hour operation for the duration.
Earle took full opportunity, staying in the studio, behind the microphone. As Gillespie remembered “I recall his ‘made for radio voice’ passing many important messages related to welfare, recovery, and other important matters to the public.” As his daughter Sarah related to the Grant County Press, this included the very human effort to keep families apprised of each other’s safety.
In her book No Road Maps, Margaret Allen wrote about hearing WELD utter “the F word – FLOOD” while providing warnings to residents to get clear of rising water.
Messages would come from individuals seeking to find family members, or others looking to make sure their families knew they were okay. The Diary of Mary Kellar, reprinted in part in the Examiner’s flood retrospective, shared that “W.E.L.D. is running messages so folks can earn if friends and relatives survived.” She also contacted WELD because “I want Mother and my boys in Virginia to know that we are alive.”
Throughout, Earle would relay these messages in the hope that they would provide a little comfort in a terrible time. Those broadcasts combined with countless other efforts to help, but also forged a bond between those who went through it that will never break.
Dave Workman, West Virginia University Extension Service Agent then and Hardy County Commissioner now, stated in an Examiner retrospective that “we grew closer as a community. It became a community, not just an agricultural community or a town community but an entire community.”
Others agreed. Peggy Hawse was principal of Moorefield Elementary School, then later served as a representative for the Office of US Senator Joe Manchin. In the same retrospective, she shared that “you can’t go through something like that and no come together as a community.”
For his decades of service to WELD and those days of dedication during the Flood of ‘85, Willard Earle earned induction into the West Virginia Broadcasting Hall of Fame. He took his place alongside state legends, such as Nick Fantasia Sr., Hoppy Kercheval, Jack Flemming, Woody O’Hara, and Tony Caridi, as well as nationally known figures such as Bob Denver, Soupy Sales, and “Little” Jimmy Dickens.
Earle has long since retired, but his legacy lived on. Those who remembered his daily news broadcasts, as well as the dark days of the flood, banded together long after he was gone to save the station he served so well for so long. Likely, without Earle building the bond between station and community, WELD would have faded away like so many rural media outlets.
That said, his legend will still find as its foundation his voice’s ability to keep a community hopeful and connected. Just as it will always remain a part of the life of those who endured it, his legacy will ever after be intertwined with his contributions.
That magical connection that still endures inspired Combs to share that “WELD enters your life one of two ways; you either grow up on it or grow into it.”
“A lot of us grew into it on November 4, 1985.”
