Published: June 21, 2008 08:36 pm         

Mrs. Mollohan was certainly ‘no pale shadow’

Congressional wife, mother will celebrate her 95th birthday

CHARLES TOWN — People who have known Helen Holt Mollohan for a large part of her nonagenarian life use words like quiet, thoughtful and independent as she observes local and world happenings from Washington or her Jefferson County farm in the state’s Eastern Panhandle.

“I’ve always been my own person and yet try to consider others’ views,” she stated. “I don’t think my husband would have wanted me to be his pale shadow.”

In the typical understatement that she often uses, she is certainly no pale shadow of the late West Virginia Congressman Robert H. (Bob) Mollohan.

Mrs. Mollohan will be 95 years old on June 27, and her family will have a quiet celebration at Olive Boy Farm near Charles Town.

The farm was named for a prized race horse which now exists only in legend. No one remembers when Olive Boy was in his glory, but, it was some time after 1830 when the original part of the house was built and the turn of the century when a second section was added.

Just as she knows the origin and interesting aspects of the house, Mrs. Mollohan has always been interested in the details of her family history. She is an avid genealogist and traces her lineage to the American Revolution and beyond.

She is related to former Gov. Homer Holt and U.S. Sen. Rush D. Holt, as well as the latter’s son Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey, now serving in the U.S. Congress with her son, Congressman Alan B. Mollohan. Her other two children of Holt descent are Robert Holt Mollohan and Katherine Clyne Nelson.

Helen Holt Mollohan was born in Glenville June 27, 1913 in the house that her father built circa 1901 along the town’s Main Street.

Her father, Abraham Lincoln Holt, was an attorney. His father, John Fletcher West Holt, was a delegate to the Second Wheeling Convention that led to the formation of West Virginia.

Her mother was Cora Edna Shock, whose father, James Franklin Shock, once served as sheriff of Gilmer County.

“Mother went to Broaddus Seminary in Clarksburg where young ladies were taught fine arts under close supervision,” Mrs. Mollohan related. “She said that one time she inquired about a certain young man, and the teacher said she couldn’t court him because he smoked cigarettes.

“It was at Broaddus that mother received her art training. She did painting, and I have some of her work. There is one painting that I have in my bedroom that is a country scene with a fence and an old house in the background. There are geese that are the predominant focal point. I think they may have been looking for a sense of direction. My sense of direction, at least in my mind, often brings me back to Glenville.

“My grandfather was one of five Holt brothers who settled in Weston, then Virginia, in the 1820s. He came to Gilmer County shortly before 1845 and was on the first court when the county was formed. He lived approximately seven miles west of town. There is still a Holt Road that goes by the cemetery where he and his two wives are buried.

“Glenville is on the Little Kanawha River, which is very much a part of the town and Gilmer County,” she explained. “There have been so many changes in this small college town, but there is still very much that I can relate to growing up.

“Our house originally had gas lights and, of course, gas for heating since the area was in the oil and gas field. I remember when electricity came. Mother had the electric lights put in, but she never quite trusted electricity. She kept a gas light in the kitchen.

“Early transportation in Glenville was far different from today. If we went to Clarksburg or Pittsburgh, much of the road out of Glenville was unpaved. There wasn’t a hard surface until about seven miles out of Weston.

“In order to get the train, we took a paddle boat from Glenville to Gilmer Station. We had to go down very steep steps by the old iron bridge in town, and in the wintertime it would still be dark. The boat had planks on both sides where men stood with poles to get it over the riffles.

“These boats had a cabin with a big iron stove in the middle and seats along the sides. We would leave at 6:30 a.m. to get to Gilmer Station by noon to catch the train to Parkersburg.

“We had one of the earliest telephones. It was the crank kind. When I was older and wanted to call my future husband in Grantsville, the operator would go look for him. He would come to the telephone office to answer the phone. His family didn’t have a phone then. People seemed to be more economically cautious then than now. It was in the Great Depression.

“The Depression in 1929 hit everybody hard. The oil and gas wells had been drilled shallow and many were worked out when the crash came. There is still oil and gas in the area, but the wells are much deeper now.”

The country was still recovering economically when Helen Holt and Robert H. Mollohan were married in 1931.

He came to Glenville College as a freshman when his future wife was a junior in high school. She remembered that on their first date they went to a movie in Weston and the rain was pouring. The deluge, however, wasn’t a metaphor for their relationship, which soon became serious.

“Bob was almost 21, and I was two months shy of being 18 when we were married in Oakland, Maryland,” she recalled.

“The minister’s wife who stood for us remarked to me, ‘Oh my dear, I hope you know what you’re doing.’ Bob often laughed about that and said she might be surprised that we were married for nearly 70 years.”

The new bride finished high school and three years at Glenville College. Her husband began work with the Internal Revenue Service in Parkersburg and later was personnel director for the Works Progress Administration for northern West Virginia.

“He was 29 years old, and there were 36,000 jobs that he looked after,” she recalled. “Grown men would come in and some would cry because they had no jobs and no way to feed their families. They were often desperate, but would not have thought of robbing or stealing for food. It was a stressful time for Bob because it was difficult to turn away men that he knew were desperate for some kind of work.

“Bob then was moved to Huntington, and we were there before we came to Fairmont. I remember in Huntington in the 1930s, people came door-to-door begging for food. Often, they would stand in the background, and send their children to the door.

“This had a very profound impact on Bob’s political life. He always helped those in need, politically and personally. He thought life was about learning and urged young people to continue learning, to take advantage of higher education. He knew that change is a constant in life.”

Life for the Mollohans changed when he had a successful run for Congress. He began his first term in 1953, and the family moved to Washington. This was in the Eisenhower Administration and marked the first time they went to a White House reception.

“In the 50 years that I’ve lived in the city, it has changed into a metropolis. To my mind, the traffic is very heavy. People drive so aggressively and so much faster than they used to. That’s why I haven’t ventured out with my car. I’m not certain how far I’d get if I did.

“Because of the nature of government, people come and go in Washington. Over the years, we’ve had many good friends, but many are gone.

“When Bob retired, we came to the farm and had six wonderful years. We talked about going to Glenville, but he got there before I did. He’s buried in the cemetery at Otterbein Methodist Church as I will be and join my parents and many relatives,” she concluded. “It seems that we all want to get back to our loved ones. That’s a lovely part of living in West Virginia.”

The writer is a retired editor who first knew the Mollohans as a teenager in Washington, D.C.

     

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