MORGANTOWN – For years, Sandy Barton was known as the “Million Dollar Man” across north-central West Virginia.
The title owed itself to the $1 million in unclaimed properties he typically managed to reunite with taxpayers every fiscal year, in his role as a regional director in the office of State Treasurer John Perdue.
Barton, 62, of Westover, died Saturday. Survivors include his wife and two children. Services will be Wednesday at McCulla Funeral Home. His complete obituary appears on Page A7.
Barton’s boss said he will forever have a debt of gratitude for a man he called his “good friend and confidant.”
Perdue recalled Barton as competent and personable in his job.
“Sandy never met a stranger and loved to strike up a conversation with everyone,” the treasurer said. “He connected with people.”
That’s because he was of the people of north-central West Virginia, Perdue said.
Barton grew up in Grafton, a sports kid obsessed with the WVU Mountaineers.
On Saturdays in the fall, his ear was always mashed to the speaker of a transistor radio, as he listened to Jack Fleming and Woody O’Hara call the football action from Morgantown.
He was even crazier about WVU basketball.
When it came time for college, there was no question. He graduated cum laude from the school in Morgantown in 1979 with degrees in political science and speech
communications.
He was a Truman scholar candidate in the program that honors top students in the country considering careers in public service. He also served in the Student Government Association and as a member of the Alpha Omega service fraternity.
There was all that — plus he never missed a game.
After he turned his tassel, he parlayed his business savvy and love of his alma mater into a career.
For years, he was the owner and operator of the Mountaineer Hut, which sold WVU merchandise at the height of Coach Don Nehlen’s glory years in Morgantown.
Before the team with the flying WV logo on its helmets would line up against Pitt or Penn State, fans would line up at his store for the jerseys, hats and hooded sweatshirts to get them ready for the game.
When WVU and Marshall finally got around to playing their first in-state rivalry game in 1997, Barton had been at it since May, getting ready.
“Don’t worry,” he grinned to reporters. “More souvenirs are on the way.”
More dollars and cents were on the way to taxpayers after he went to work for Perdue in 2001.
It didn’t take him long to become a regional director, serving Monongalia, Marion, Taylor and Harrison counties from his home base in Morgantown.
He was a fixture on High Street, shaking hands and talking sports, and at the Boston Beanery, his favorite Morgantown restaurant.
Barton often called himself a “detective,” as he studied over tax rolls, forgotten safety deposit boxes, uncashed checks and other money-minutiae, in his zeal to help a citizen claim the once-unclaimed.
And that $1 million goal?
He met it the past four years in a row, including fiscal year 2019, which ends June 30.
TWITTER @DominionPostWV
