Think about those once-dilapidated warehouses now transformed into the bustling Wharf District.
Or the city’s walking and biking paths that were once a tangle of rusted rails and tumbling banks along the Monongahela River.
Consider Mylan Park and its now-destination status for the University City.
Think about J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital, and the medical hub it has become for the region.
George Farmer Jr., the attorney who helped make those enhancements (and more) happen, died Monday. He was 92.
His son, Steve Farmer, who also practices law, said the patriarch was simply a guy who engineered big deals — without making a big deal about his role in such proceedings.
“That was dad,” Steve Farmer said.
“He always got it done and he always did the right thing. If I could think of one word to describe him, it would be, ‘Leadership.’ ”
The elder Farmer certainly took a lead role in managing the estate that turned a sharp businesswoman into benefactor and household name in Morgantown, his son said.
He managed the legal affairs of Hazel Ruby McQuain, who literally gave millions to her adopted hometown of Morgantown.
It’s the name of her late first husband on the front of the mammoth hospital in Evansdale.
After her death, he became chairman of the board and chief deal-maker of the charitable trust that bears her name — and continues to dole out dollars for altruistic causes and civic projects in the town where Farmer was born, raised a family and made a career.
Farmer was born here, educated in Mon County schools and WVU. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent two years in Europe at the end of World War II.
He was a first lieutenant with gleaming ROTC bars on his shoulders when the fighting broke out in Korea, so he marched off again, to be recognized for his bravery while leading troops in combat.
His son is now in the process of obtaining his war record through all the official sources.
“He never talked about it,” Steve Farmer said.
Not that the elder Farmer was necessarily quiet as a rule, laughed Forrest “Jack” Bowman, the former WVU College of Law dean who never forgot their first meeting decades ago.
That’s when he was interviewing as executive director of the West Virginia State Bar and Farmer was halfway through his term as president.
Bowman regarded a big, hulking guy with a big, booming voice who was full of opinions.
On everything, he recalled.
“I remember thinking, ‘What in the hell have I gotten myself into? Well, what I got myself into was a half-century friendship that is without parallel in my life.”
Farmer, Bowman said, was unfailingly loyal as a friend with a sense of right and wrong, that was just as steadfast.
“He was a ‘lawyer’s lawyer.’” Bowman said.
And a mayor’s friend, Ron Justice said.
Justice, who served as Morgantown mayor from 2002-09, went back 30 years, having met him as a newly elected member of city council.
“Morgantown lost an icon today,” he said.
Funeral arrangements are incomplete.
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