On Thursday, May 17, 2018, Jack Canfield, press spokesman for three governors, will present “1968: Fifty Years Ago in West Virginia” in the Archives and History Library at the Culture Center, State Capitol Complex in Charleston. The program will begin at 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
In his informal remarks, Canfield will cover how West Virginia dealt with Vietnam, race relations, strip mining, Chicago riots, Lyndon B. Johnson, strikes, the Silver Bridge disaster, politics, mine explosions, gun control, and other topics on a month-by-month basis. His perspective is that of the youngest press secretary in the nation: Serving as Governor Hulett C. Smith’s press secretary at the time, Canfield was only age 24.
Canfield is an entertaining speaker who is popular in West Virginia political science classes at West Virginia and Marshall universities. An amateur gubernatorial and presidential historian who has helped catalog records of West Virginia governors, he was a press spokesman for Governors Smith, Jay Rockefeller and Bob Wise. He was a member of the House of Delegates, Commissioner of Employment Security, vice-president of Charleston Area Medical Center, and a public relations and advertising executive in Charleston until his retirement in 2015. A member of the West Virginia Broadcasting Hall of Fame, Canfield is a native of Mineral County, a graduate of Potomac State College and WVU, a contributor to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, a civic leader in Charleston, and a volunteer for the gubernatorial archive collection at Archives and History.
Participants may park behind the Culture Center after 5:00 p.m. on May 17 and enter the building at the back loading dock area. There also is limited handicapped parking available in the new bus turnaround.
For additional information, contact the Archives and History Library at (304) 558-0230.
