Without a stopwatch and a film crew to prove it, there’s no way of knowing for sure if John Pyles had broken any Olympic sprinting records along High Street in late 1950s — scurrying up and down its sidewalks as he did then.
That’s when the newly minted music education graduate of WVU was doing triple-duty for Monongalia County’s school district.
Pyles, who left the classroom for the halls of Charleston after being inspired by John F. Kennedy, died Wednesday in his Morgantown home at the age of 89.
Services will be 11 a.m. Monday at Wesley United Church. His many survivors include his wife and daughter. His complete obituary appears on Page A-6.
The former state delegate and longtime Monongalia County commissioner had been in declining health for years and was forced sometimes to use a wheelchair due to medical and orthopedic issues.
However, if you got him reminiscing about his early years, it was taillights all the way, his family and friends said. That’s because his spirit would be off and running, just like those days on Morgantown’s main drag.
Pyles took a teaching degree from the university in 1955 and shortly thereafter found himself serving (simultaneously) as band director at the former Sabraton and Westover junior high schools, along with Clay-Battelle on the western end of Mon.
Come parade season — WVU Homecoming, Veterans Day, the Fourth of July — when all the bands from all the schools would step off, Pyles made sure to march with each musical assemblage he was directing.
There you’d see him, running a gauntlet of elbows, grandmas and baby strollers. Slightly stocky, always smiling but never breaking stride, even as he was shaking your hand and asking about your family along the way.
“When my kids went to a parade, I would march with one band and then run back and march with other one,” he said. “I didn’t want them to think I had a favorite.”
His kid brother, Rodney Pyles, also a WVU-taught educator inspired to public life by his band director sibling, always chuckles when he hears such accounts.
“Well, that was John,” he said Friday, as the final signatures were being applied to the funeral arrangements.
“He was just there for people. He was there for me, I can tell you that.”
Life on Lorentz
That was in Morgantown’s closely packed Wiles Hill neighborhood above the student enclave of Sunnyside and WVU’s downtown campus.
Home for the family was a frame house on Lorentz Avenue, where Sunday newspapers, music on the radio and Milton Berle on TV ruled. Political discourse had a seat at the dinner table, too, Rodney remembered.
Their dad, Melford, was a politically active coal miner and mom, Lucy, was well-informed on all the issues, too.
“My mother would work the polls on Election Day,” Rodney said. “Dad was always out campaigning.”
On Sunday, the kitchen table would be heaped with earlier incarnations of this newspaper, along with those of the Charleston Gazette, New York Times, Washington Post and the papers from Clarksburg, as his mother was a Scarcella from Harrison County.
John, meanwhile was a good student with a good ear for music.
At WVU, he played trombone in the Pride of West Virginia Marching Band, but his real instrument was his voice. He could sing anything from the Great American Songbook to light opera.
So could the boys’ older sister, Pauline, whose career in music education took her from Kentucky to New York state. She was a voice major at WVU.
The note in that house on Lorentz turned sour, though, when Melford’s coal mining job was eliminated in the late 1950s due to downsizing in the industry.
That stressor probably led to Melford and Lucy’s eventual divorce, Rodney said.
The big brother stepped in.
A different kind of spotlight
John, who was 12 years older than Rodney, suddenly became a mentor to his little brother – even if he didn’t always realize it.
“It was just his idealism and that call to service,” he said. “I started reading what he read. I started watching how he interacted with people and issues.”
Growing up, John became friends with a neighbor: A skinny kid with comedic timing and thespian flair named Don Knotts.
Watching Knotts become famous only increased John Pyles’ then-laser intensity for a career in show business.
During his college years took a bus to New York City and nailed his audition for “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” which was the “American Idol” of its day.
The Godfrey show, however, went off the air before the singer from Morgantown was called back to perform live. Back home, he was still busy as a band director. He had his radio show on WCLG-AM.
He sang at weddings and funerals. Then a certain politician from Boston taught him a whole different tune.
John signed on when John Kennedy made West Virginia a key route on his road to the White House in 1960.
Two years later, he successfully ran for the House of Delegates. After that, it was back to Mon County, for a 20-year run as assessor and another 18-year tenure as county commissioner.
During his time on commission, which included stints as president, the civic achievements stacked up like a parade route on High Street.
He helped garner the funding that replaced the South Street Bridge. He helped establish the Cheat Lake rail-trail and co-founded the Scotts Run Public Service District. Main Street Morgantown named him its “Official of the Year” in 2004.
Other state and national accolades would follow.
He was one the key players in the refurbishing of the Metropolitan Theatre on High Street – and the chief fundraiser which made possible the statue of his friend, Don Knotts, which now sits in front of it.
“You work together,” he said, “and you do what you can do.”
Breadwinner, benefactor (and still helping out)
Another neighbor on Lorentz was Larry Nelson, the Morgantown radio personality and entertainer who came to the University City in 1969.
His last name was well-known in the Pyles household.
Nelson, who will be a pallbearer Monday, grew up in show business as the son of Jimmy Nelson, the gentlemanly ventriloquist with the razor wit who was a player on the Milton Berle show with his sawdust buddies, Danny O’Day and Farfel the Dog.
“My mother loved Larry,” Rodney said. “She thought he was a celebrity.”
Nelson, meanwhile, thought she was too, for her culinary skills.
“Her lasagna. My God. All I’m gonna say.”
What Nelson found out he couldn’t say to her eldest boy was “No.”
Back in Morgantown and Monongalia County, John was always involved in some outreach effort that required an emcee. He knew just who to call.
“How do you say no to John Pyles? You don’t say no to John Pyles. He had a sincere love for this community. And he did so much. We used to have a lot fun going back and forth with each other at these events. I’m gonna miss him.”
One of John’s biggest acts of outreach, though, his brother recalled, didn’t involve a microphone, or a crowd or a committee meeting or a song. Only a select group knew about it.
In the early years of Lucy and Melford’s divorce, there were financial troubles, worsened by the fact that Melford couldn’t always find sustainable work, given the economy.
He had been a trackman for the B&O Railroad in Harrison County when he and Lucy relocated to Morgantown. They wanted college educations for their kids and thought having WVU as a neighbor might make for better opportunities.
The house on Lorentz wasn’t working either. It was a rental and the landlord wanted to sell.
Neither Lucy nor Melford could make the asking price. John, meanwhile, had started making steady money by then as a teacher.
“So my brother steps in and buys the house, so we’ll have a place to live.” Rodney said.
“And then later, he helps with my tuition when I was getting started at WVU. He was my big brother and my benefactor. I have him to thank for everything.”
When he left public life, John didn’t disengage — particularly with this newspaper. He frequently wrote letters to editor and made phone calls to pitch a story.
Sometimes, he’d call to agree — or disagree — with what appeared on the opinion page that morning.
Last Monday, two days before his death, another call came in to the newsroom from his number. He was looking for information on how to contribute to the Ukrainian cause.
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