Goldenseal Back Roads: Winter 2009

Chapel to a Little Boy
It stands on a wooded knoll, just off the Sago Road that leads to the site of the 2006 mining tragedy.
The sign on the little chapel reads "Randy Brown Memorial Chapel, Hampton MYF 1966." Immediately inside the door of this steeple-topped miniature chapel hangs a fading color portrait of Randy Brown, who died in 1965 at the age of 7.
The chapel interior is plain - white walls; four short, simple, low pews facing a slightly elevated platform; and a simple pulpit upon which rests an open Bible. A few children's books are scattered across the front pew. A window made of glass blocks arranged in the shape of a cross is at the center of the front wall. Glass-block windows on each side wall contribute what light the overhanging trees permit.
A poem hangs above a podium toward the rear of the chapel; a registration book rests on the podium. The signatures indicate a steady stream of visitors, local and distant, whose visit to the chapel and Childrens Memorial Park raised more questions than answers. Who was Randy Brown? What claimed him at such a young age? What was so special about his life that it compelled those around him to erect this memorial?
A few miles down the road, Ron Hinkle, a glass artisan who has lived on the family farm all his 50-plus years, begins to unravel the mystery for me. Randy was in his second-grade class at Hampton School.
"I can still remember when someone came knocking on the schoolhouse door," Ron recalls. "The teacher came in and gave us the news, that Randy had passed away."
Ron's memory of his classmate is one of a sickly boy who missed a lot of school due to operations. More than 40 years have erased the details, however. He also lost track of Randy's parents, Bud and Marlene Brown, but believes they are alive, perhaps still living in the Hampton house where Randy grew up.
Neighbors tell me Bud and Marlene moved years ago, and it requires some phone calls to finally track down Randy's brother, Charles, a French Creek resident who points me to his father, Archie "Bud" Brown.
Bud, in his 80s, lives on Truby's Run, off Truckers' Lane, south of Buckhannon. Marlene, Bud's first wife and Randy's mother, died in 2004; Bud, now remarried, struggles to recall the details of Randy's life, but his memory of his only biological son (Charles was a foster child the couple adopted after Randy died) is vivid and bittersweet.
"Randy, he was very quiet," Bud says. "Randy and me was real close. He was more or less a daddy's boy. He always went out and helped me work. He thought he was a mechanic and wanted to help me work on cars."
Bud's job at the time was driving a bus for a charter company. His runs were mostly local, but occasionally he'd make the Clarksburg-to-Wheeling overnighter, and Randy accompanied him.
"He'd sit up there in the front seat right across from me," Bud says. "He thought he was a big man."
Bud says Randy liked school, as well, but his greatest pleasure was being around his father and acting grownup.  Perhaps that was important to Randy because his span on this sphere was so short. Bud says their son had a kidney that did not function from birth, but the defect went undetected until Randy became gravely ill.
"He was very active," Bud says. "He went to school and was very active. We didn't know it for a long time, and then he just got sick. He kept getting worse, they did this operation and that operation on him."
Bud says complications set in after their son's bad kidney was removed, and he never recovered.
"My mother used to tell me about the times he was in (the hospital) at Morgantown for six weeks at a time, and (Marlene) would go there and stay the whole time," Charles Brown says.
Randy was buried in Hampton Cemetery, across from the United Methodist Church where he was a member of the MYF.
Bud says that organization and church took on the project of erecting the chapel the following year. The St.Clair family provides the land. Oral Starkey and Cecil Linger, members of the church, designed the chapel and assisted other volunteers in building it. Memorial donations paid for the materials.
Responsibility for maintenance has fallen variously over the years: Ron Hinkle says his son and a buddy mowed the property, a memorial park for all children of the area, for a couple of summers. Volunteers from the church have kept it up, as have Bud and Charles. The last few years, Bud's been unable to do the work because of a bad heart, and he says the condition of the property is suffering. It bothers him.
Bud still likes to go to the chapel occasionally and remember his son and the wonderful times they had together.
"I still see people up there, taking pictures and looking around," he says.
On Christmas Day, 2006, Charles honored the brother he never knew - he was adopted after Randy died - by getting married in the chapel that bears his name.
"We had 17 people there," Charles says. "We actually all didn't fit in there, but it was close."
As for whether or not Charles and his bride, Kristen Chapman, were able to walk down the aisle side-by-side, Charles says, with a laugh "Sort of, somewhat."
When their first son was born, Charles debated about naming him in honor of Randy. He decided not to, but says that's not the end of the matter.
"If we have another boy, we are going to name him after Randy," Charles says.
The Randy Brown Memorial Chapel is at the corner of Route 20 and Sago Road, south of Buckhannon; it is open year-around.