The Right Honorable J. Thomas Madden, lawyer extraordinaire in Moundsville and bon vivant in Wheeling (or is he--it's slipped my mind--a bon vivant in Moundsville and lawyer extraordinaire in Wheeling) said it couldn't be done. "I know that you've done some wild stuff, Herbie Furbee,"
he said, "like you're almost the definition of 'off-the-wall'--nothing personal, of course, you know
what I mean, but there is no way not even you can get THE FABLED EARL OF ELKVIEW, a/k/a
GEORGE DAUGHERTY, ESQUIRE to drive from Charleston to Belington, Barbour County, West Virginia to put on his famed STAND UP FOR WEST VIRGINIA show to SAVE THE CAT HOUSE !!!
Never !!! No way !!! And I'll even bet the Madden family farm on it !!!"
"O! ye of little faith . . . " It is a very simple project if one realizes that "what we have here . . ."
[Quick: In which one of Paul Newman's movies was this a tag line?] is a WEST VIRGINIA SYZYGY of three--an earthly trinity, as it were, of course--big hearted human beings, people who in their own way would make Mother Theresa look heartless.
The first of this SYZYGY of secular saints is DEENA COBURN of Belington, Barbour County,
West Virginia. (If you don't know where Belington is, don't ask because you can't get there from here.)
If there ever was a Sabat Mater in West Virginia it would be this woman. Once whenI was at a certain Protestant theology school, I gave a sermon that took me to the Dean's office as an
accused heretic: "Sometimes, I think, we may make too much of the suffering of Jesus.
Cast a glance at Mary, His Mother, look at her suffering. She stood there for three hours watching her Baby Boy being tortured to death . . . . Now ask yourself what is worse: To suffer pain or watch someone you love with all your heart suffer pain. You tell me, you preachers in embryo. Q.E.D."
Deena's Baby Boy, whom she birthed in Fairmont some 30 plus years ago, is currently under sentence of death in another state, a "far country" as it were from which the odds are great that he will only return to his sabat mater in a pine box or cheap urn. Moreover, her Baby Boy is in solitary confinement and in a wheelchair. [He needs a hip replacement which his captors refuse to provide for the very good and pragmatic reason that they intend to kill him."] And he's been in this "far country" for five years now.
Now, dear reader, don't confuse things by asking what he did, what heinous crime does he stand convicted? The first time I spoke with Deena on the telephone, the first words out her mouth were "And he's INNOCENT!" Professor J. Livingston Hall of Harvard Law School and the former federal prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts said "The trouble with being a prosecutor is that every defendant has a Mother." Baby Boy may or may not "deserve" what he got but what does his weeping Mother deserve?
I don't know the whole story but Deena and her Baby Boy traveled around a lot together; South Carolina being one of their stops. And they would collect stray cats, scads of them over the years that they were together. But Deena doesn't pretend to be the Father Flanagan of the cat world. "I need my cats more than they need me," she told me recently.
When I first talked with her a month or so ago, she had 11 cats (some cats' lineage is is traced back to the days of her vagabondage with her Baby Boy.) A couple weeks back one of her cats dies and Deena left this message on my recorder: "The death of my cat has multiplied all the horrors of my life." By the way, like her son, Deena too is in a wheelchair.
Ever since she's lived in Belington, Dr. Ilene Lannie of Elkins has served as the Angel of Mercy for Deena's menagerie.
However, when the unpaid bill went over $1000, Deena was told by one of the staff that they
could no longer extend credit to her (probably because they had a human family to feed.) Deena rejected out of hand my advice which was to "stiff" the vet and go somewhere else.
Her morals are obviously higher that those of the Furbee Gang.
It was when I was relating this sad tale of woe to THE EARL OF ELKVIEW, passing on the fact that one dead cat was pregnant (Deena told me that even after the body went stiff that she could feel the little kittens wiggling inside the stomach) and that Deena was going to take the body back to Fairmont for burial that Daughery broke in:
"HERBIE FURBEE, DON'T YOU SEE THAT THERE ARE TWO SAINTS HERE; THE
WOMAN WHO COLLECTED THE STRAY CATS AND THE WOMAN WHO PROVIDED MED-
ICAL CARE FOR THESE CATS FOR SO LONG AND FOR A MERE PITTANCE !!!."
In addition to being a great entertainer, George Daugherty was a great trial lawyer with
political connections and friends all over the State. Since the death of A. James Manchin, in addition to continuing on as THE EARL OF ELKVIEW, George Daugherty has served as the
avatar of the THE LOST SHEEP OF THE 35TH STATE.
He put me on hold for a few minutes and then boomed into his speakerphone: HERBIE
FURBEE ON THE 22 OF APRIL, WHICH IF MEMORY SERVES ME IS THE 78 ANNIVERSARY OF THE DATE OF YOUR NATIVITY, I SHALL DO A BENEFIT FOR DEENA COBURN AT THE BELINGTON CIVIC CENTER @ 3p.m. TO SAVE THE CAT HOUSE AND THE INHABITANTS THEREOF.
As I suggested at the beginning, I think that there are three good people who will be hon- ored on April 22 and you should COME ON DOWN; but if you can't make it, do a check to Ilene Lannie, DVM, and send it to Deena Coburn, 25 S. Crim Avenue, Apt. B, Belington, West Virginia 26250.
That money will be waiting on you in Heaven. If you don't believe me, ask your priest, rabbi, preacher, imam, snake charmer, whatever. Or Wheeling's Bill Hogan. He told me once "You have to give it away to keep it" and Bill was a stock broker. He knows $$$.
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