ELKVIEW, W.Va. — Five years and two days ago, when Mike Kelley finally made it to Herbert Hoover High School, he was in awe of what he saw.
“The water had been up over seven feet in the bottom floor. It looked bad. There was mud caked on everything and trophy cases had been picked up on one end of the building and floated to the other end,” he explained.
Kelley, the Principal of Herbert Hoover, faced a daunting task. It was unclear what would happen to his school. Initially, it was believed cleanup could start and the school would be repaired. Soon afterward, FEMA made the determination it would not fund repairs to the school since the damage was so great and it would need to be rebuilt out of the flood plane.
There was also some consideration for doing away with Hoover and moving its students elsewhere. Kelley led the fight against the idea.
“The schools and churches are the hubs of this community and there was no way in my mind the best thing was for our kids to be dispersed to other schools. That conversation took place at one point and we fought hard for the school. It was determined the best thing to do would be rebuild,” he explained.
But with that battle won, there were many more to fight. Hoover students didn’t return to school on time and when they did it was in portable units built in the parking lot of Elkview Middle School. It wasn’t the ideal setup at all, but Kelley said it was functional and refused to let it be an excuse for poor performance.
“Our school has continued to thrive. We’ve done well academically, enrollment has increased since the flood, and we’re having the best athletic year in the history of the school. Our kids have really excelled through all of this adversity,” he said.
This year’s graduating class left with a Herbert Hoover diploma having never set foot in a Herbert Hoover High School building. The same will be the case for the class of 2022 and possibly 2023, but residents of Elk River today have real hope. Along the road connecting I-79 and U.S. Route 119 a new road is emerging. A wide swath of trees has been carved out and heavy equipment is moving earth daily.
Just out of sight of the highway, a new building is emerging. Work is underway to erect what will be Kanawha County’s most state of the art high school. Kelley’s eyes gleam when he looks at what will be the academic wing with a two story media center. Rebar snakes through a sprawling concrete pad to show where walls will soon stand to form a simulated workplace for students in vocational and technical education classes.
On the other end of the job site, workers erect the steel skeleton of what will eventually be the Home of the Huskies. A main gymnasium and an auxiliary gym are part of the plan. Attached are various locker rooms , training facility and equipment storage. Nearby the band and choral departments will be situated with their own quarters on the edges of a massive auditorium which his hooked to a larger cafeteria featuring indoor and outdoor seating.
In the distance, across what will eventually be a sprawling campus, site preparation is complete for a softball, baseball, and soccer field along with an elevated plateau to situate a football field and fully regulation running track. A grandstand will be built into the hillside and a press box will be the highest vantage point on the mountain.
“It is going to be beautiful. It’s fun to look around and imagine what it’s going to look like when it’s finished, but it’s going to be a beautiful place,” said Kelly.
Listen to “Chris Lawrence — A new Herbert Hoover HS” on Spreaker.
Construction crews have leveled two hillsides and filled the hollow between them to create the flattened space for the campus. Kelley has been visiting since the first trees were cut. Every day, progress is noted.
“It’s exciting to me and exciting to our community. They now know it’s coming, a lot of people didn’t actually think it was going to happen until they saw work being done,” he said.
Although there’s at least one year to go and possibly another, the progress for the community has come a long way since standing in the muddy hallway at the old school looking at a ruined trophy case.
“They lost loved ones. A lot of people lost property and jobs so I don’t want to diminish the impact of the flood, but this community has come back strong from it. You only have two choices when you get knocked down, you can stay down or you can get up and keep going and that’s what this community has done,” Kelley said.