By Jessica Farrish
“Long before Johnny Cash tickled his country-and-western faithful with the woeful tale of a lad growing up saddled with a feminine name in ‘A Boy Named Sue,’ a coal miner’s wife decided in southern West Virginia to name her second son Shirley.”
And that begins the life of well-known Fayette County television personality and politician Shirley Love — and the first pages of a new book penned by Register-Herald reporter Mannix Porterfield.
“A Man Called Shirley” chronicles the colorful life of Love, who is known by thousands in West Virginia and around the country, as he grows up in southern West Virginia, marries the lovely Audrey Painter, lands on a local television program, then catapults into state politics.
Porterfield, a veteran newspaper writer who currently covers the Legislature for The Register-Herald, said he wrote the book after Sen. Love, D-Fayette, asked him in 2006 to put together a small booklet on Love’s life.
“After thinking it over, I advised him if I wrote a book, I wanted one that was novel length, about 200 or 300 pages, covering his life from the point of arrival to his final time in the Senate,” Porterfield said. “He agreed, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Clearly, Porterfield had no trouble filling the pages, collecting stories from the young Love’s nights as the live host of “Saturday Nite Wrestlin’” on WOAY-TV in Oak Hill to his later days in the Legislature.
Love’s contemporaries may experience a revival of their own life memories when reading “A Man Called Shirley” as he recalls days of early local television.
“Without question, the most enjoyable part of composing this book came with his reminiscing about the old days of ‘Saturday Nite Wrestlin’,’” Porterfield said. “One reason is that I remember watching the youthful Shirley Love emcee that raucous event.
“It was popular among my junior high school peers — not the wrestling, of course — but the between-matches interviews.”
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Love was singing in church one Sunday morning when R.R. Thomas, the father of a local radio station owner, heard his voice and liked it.
Before long, Love was announcing for WOAY Radio in Oak Hill — and popping over to the other side of the WOAY complex, where WOAY-TV was on the air.
At WOAY-TV, Love began by announcing commercials. Everything in those early days of television was live, so what came out of his mouth was sent over the airwaves immediately.
Love devised “West Virginia Bandstand,” a show that let local students dance to Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson and Chuck Berry at WOAY studios. The shows were broadcast live.
Porterfield wrote that Woodrow Wilson High School athletes were driven to Oak Hill and let out to cover the 14-mile distance back to Beckley. One day, the boys couldn’t resist sneaking a stop into WOAY to join the dancers.
Although the athletes tried to jitterbug outside the camera’s range, it didn’t work: They were recognized by WWHS coach Jerome Van Meter’s wife, who happened to be tuning in to “West Virginia Bandstand.”
“From that day on,” Love mused in the book, “you couldn’t get them to look in the door.”
Love began announcing for a new local show that debuted in the fall of 1955: “Saturday Nite Wrestlin’.”
The show was totally arranged, with one wrestler appearing humble and saying only nice things tailored to gain acceptance with the crowd. The other did all he could to stir the crowd with regionally charged insults. The people’s choice wore white, while the “bad guy” dressed in black.
Each show was carefully scripted so that falls by the wrestlers would be decided by the amount of commercial time Love had to fill.
Often, Tyree Funeral Home would bring hearses, doubling as ambulances, to carry “unresponsive” wrestlers to the local hospital. Promoters gladly paid the $10 to $25 medical bill in exchange for the publicity.
For the night show at the TV Lanes Auditorium adjacent to WOAY-TV, Love would huddle with promoters before going on the air, setting the stage for the night’s show.
One novelty that thrilled fans was a group of little people who wrestled.
They were called “midget wrestlers” in the book, and Love recalled that they would stand on his desk for their interviews and eventually would scrap. Once, a pint-sized grappler even hopped on Love’s back.
“Thus was born the phenomenal wrestling program that magnetized a following that spilled into several states, turning WOAY-TV into a part of everyone’s family, and morphed Shirley Love from an unassuming announcer and jack-of-all-trades into the voice of Saturday Night Wrestlin’ and an eventual force in West Virginia politics,” the book reads. “Love understood people, perhaps better than his boss, so his first innovation, almost right from the very start, was to inject a new wrinkle into the menu — live interviews with the fans.”
Only the interviews with fans were unrehearsed.
These fans often arrived armed and angry. From a little old lady stabbing wrestlers with a hairpin to fans throwing food at wrestlers and bringing guns and knives to the matches, there was no doubt that “Wrestlin’” evoked passion among the local residents.
Station workers also played jokes on Love, who was broadcasting live on the air.
“Some of the fellows at the station would think it was humorous to do things to me, to put me in that position to see just how I would react,” Love said in the book.
One time, a local minister’s wife named Gladys Meadows dressed like a heavily made-up rogue, carrying a huge handbag.
“When the bad guy would come up right in front of my desk to ream out the Good Guy’s eye with an object he had stashed in his trunks or bare hands, she would be behind me and swing that pocketbook,” Love said.
Only, she “missed” the bad guy and instead caught Love with it.
“They had this lined up with the cameraman and everyone else,” Love said. “She would swing and hit me, then say, ‘I’m sorry.’
“I was ducking down, and I’d tell the promoter, ‘Get that woman out of here!’”
Porterfield writes that after all these years, Love still shies away from calling the wrestlin’ “fake,” preferring instead the term “pre-arranged.”
“An ordinary person couldn’t do some of the things the wrestlers did, so you couldn’t exactly call it a fake,” Love is quoted.
Love, who also filled the news anchor seat at WOAY, among other positions, was inducted into the West Virginia Broadcasting Hall of Fame after a 44-year- career on WOAY-TV.
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Love entered local politics because his boss, Robert R. Thomas Jr., didn’t have Neilsen or Arbitron and wanted to get viewer demographics.
A friend told him to “run Shirley” as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
Love garnered votes only in the WOAY viewing area.
In 1962, Democratic Party chieftains wanted Love’s co-announcer, Elmer Hickman, to run for the spot of Democratic committeeman, but Hickman penned Love’s name on the paperwork.
Love, 26, beat out competitor John Frisk.
“Later, I felt bad for beating him because he was such a nice guy,” Love remarked.
In 1960, Love silently recruited African-Americans from towns like Minden, Harlem Heights, Scarbro, and Glen Jean to work as poll clerks — positions that had been held only by whites until that point.
In his first county clerk race (a race he lost to some dirty politics, according to the book), opponents started a false rumor that Love had stolen a pig.
The rumormongers were so persistent and well rehearsed that Love began having doubts, not about his honesty but his memory, according to Porterfield.
“I didn’t steal the pig, but it got so convincing that I said to my wife, ‘I really didn’t steal that pig, did I?’” Love recalled.
Love became a state senator in 1994, when a series of political events not only propelled him into accepting a five-month stint as a Democratic senator but ended up leaving his name as the only Democrat on the ballot in the primary election.
He defeated Republican John Lackey in the general election.
The book gives vivid accounts of brushes Love has had with national political figures and celebrities.
Porterfield recounts a humorous visit Love had with Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the world-renowned sex therapist and Holocaust survivor.
At the 1992 Democratic Convention in New York, Love and other delegates from each state were treated to dinner in an upscale restaurant with a celebrity.
Love’s celebrity dinner companion was Dr. Ruth — a lady Love did not recognize.
A nearby diner explained that she was a “therapist,” leaving Love to assume she was a physical therapist.
Dr. Ruth helped Love with the menu, and the small talk began, according to the book.
“As she recounted her horrific childhood in the Third Reich, passers-by stopped long enough at their table to wave and issue a greeting, which Dr. Ruth happily returned,” Porterfield wrote.
When a reporter came by the table and asked Love if he’d read any of Dr. Ruth’s books, Love was still unaware of the therapy Dr. Ruth gave. He assumed she helped people regain mobility.
“If your horse ain’t sick, you don’t take it to the vet,” Love quipped.
When he awoke the following morning at his hotel, he picked up the day’s supply of tabloids that room service had slid under the door. His picture with Dr. Ruth was on page 16. The caption read, “Dr. Ruth Has No Hate for Love.”
“Ten minutes later, his telephone rang and his daughter Christie was on the other end, unleashing a scolding,” Porterfield writes.
“You dumb hillbilly!” she berated him. “You’re on the front page of The Register-Herald. You and Dr. Ruth. Didn’t you know who Dr. Ruth is?”
In addition to national celebrities, area readers will also recognize the names of many of their friends and neighbors in the book.
Published by iUniverse, “A Man Called Shirley” is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com and iUniverse. com.
