The next time you drive past the Wharf District to regard all that riverfront development, think of former Morgantown mayor Ken Randolph Jr.
Same for your next social-distancing foray down one of the city’s interlocking rail-trail networks.
Both are requests from his friend, Terry Jones, who was heading the city’s Chamber of Commerce at the same time Randolph was helping craft Morgantown’s developmental fortunes in the late 1980s.
“Ken was instrumental in a lot of this,” Jones said Wednesday.
Randolph, 73, died last week at Mon Health Medical Center.
His legacy, Jones said, is in those trails and along the banks of Monongalia River, not to mention the Wharf District, which is now home to an amphitheater and office buildings that were once abandoned warehouses.
The mayor and the chamber president were both on the committee of Vision 2000 — an outreach that was exactly what it said it was.
It was an idealized blueprint to bring Morgantown into the 21st century.
Call it an owner’s manual for dreaming big, Jones said.
“And it worked,” Jones said. “We didn’t have any of that before.”
What the city did have, he continued, was a smiling, unperturbed mayor who knew how to turn a deal.
“He always thought about the community,” the chamber president said.
Before Jones moved around the other side of the desk, he was a Morgantown councilor who put in time as mayor himself.
He carried the title in the late 1960s, while Randolph was doing a hitch in the U.S. Army.
His honor, the mayor, was born to Baltimore and came to Morgantown with his family as a kid.
It was a career move for Ken Randolph Sr., who was the second dean for WVU’s School of Dentistry.
Once he was out of olive drab for Uncle Sam, Randolph, the younger, was back in his adopted hometown, earning a business degree from WVU and getting himself on the city council ballot.
He married and raised a family here, and his children also took degrees from the state’s flagship university.
His survivors include his wife, three children and seven grandchildren.
A private burial service will be held at the West Virginia National Cemetery in Taylor County, befitting his time in the military.
Family will host friends at a public gathering that will follow later.
Tom Bloom, who currently holds a seat on the Monongalia County Commission, is one of those friends.
Bloom served on council with Randolph, and occasionally answered to him when he was mayor.
Randolph, said Bloom, who was a guidance counselor for Mon County Schools at the time, found out early on that the mayor expected you to do your homework — before you went on record in a council meeting.
“There was always a follow-up question,” Bloom said.
“He’d tell me, ‘Look, you represent the Second Ward.’ ” He always expected you have your facts in order before you spoke. And you knew when he wasn’t happy with you.”
How so?
“He was always a quiet leader. But you knew. He was a good mayor and a good guy, and I really learned a lot from him.”
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