In 1990, a wind out of Alaska blew a dynamic redheaded bearded physician, Dr. Zeke Rabkin, into Morgantown. Formerly with the Indian Health Service in our northernmost state, he transferred here to join the National Institute for Occupational Health (NIOSH) to work on safety research projects.

Coming from a remote wilderness where he had been a member of a Toastmasters club, Zeke was surprised to find that WVU's academic community had no similar organization. The challenge was there! Why not start one? Going one-on-one with people he had met at NIOSH and with colleagues at the Morgantown Energy Technology Center (METC), he invited about a dozen interested individuals to a lunchtime meeting.

Not knowing anything about Toastmasters but intrigued by Zeke's enthusiasm, I was one of those initial people, half coming from NIOSH and half from METC. Also in that first group were current members Kamal Das, John Etherton, Ellen Harris and Jeet Malhotra.

To give us an idea of what Toastmasters had to offer, Zeke had invited three members from the Fairmont Toastmasters (Jim and Irene Martin, and Frank Palotta) to conduct a demonstration meeting. We started by introducing ourselves and got our first lesson in TM procedures, that the proper form was to stand up when you had something to say. Our three guests then demonstrated Table Topics, followed by a speech by Frank Palotta and his evaluation. We were impressed.

After the demonstration, the consensus was that we should start a club immediately, to meet every other Thursday over lunch. Being a man of action, Zeke immediately wrote out a check for our charter fee so we could get off to a good start by obtaining a set of manuals and other materials without delay. Both Zeke and the members from Fairmont promised to help us get organized, to elect officers and to recruit the additional members to reach the 20 we needed for our charter.

We began holding regular meetings, alternating between sites at NIOSH and METC. Though I was extremely nervous, I gave my Icebreaker speech at the very first meeting after the demonstration. I was fortunate to have had Irene Martin from Fairmont as my evaluator. An experienced TM, she was very supportive and helped put me at ease. The fact that I'm still a member after almost a decade, shows how well she did her job.

Despite our efforts, however, our club got off to a slow start. Though we kept meeting through 1991, we never quite got the required 20 members necessary to get our charter. But that didn't stop us. We had made our commitment, so we practiced Table Topics, made speeches and learned to evaluate. The Mountaineer Toastmasters Club was on its way!

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Our founder, Zeke Rabkin, who now lives in California sent us this picture. Although it is impossible to see his face, as Frank Hearl said "this captures Zeke’s spirit!

Chapter 2 Bonanza

For those of us meeting in 1991, life as an unchartered club was easy. No dues, no officers, no annual reports. We thought we were doing just FINE meeting informally during lunch hours every other Thursday and giving speeches out of the manuals provided by founder Zeke Rabkin. Besides, no one seemed eager to do the recruiting or to take on all the paperwork that applying for a charter from the national organization demanded.

But our mentors from the Greater Fairmont Toastmasters club were urging us to go that last step, to recruit the needed members and file for the document that would legitimize our activities. There was a reason behind that urging. Under the system in place at that time, Toastmasters who wanted to attain the individual education award as a Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) had to sponsor and mentor a new club, and the Fairmont club had two members, Jim and Irene Martin, awaiting that opportunity.

We began recruiting, first via word-of-mouth, then with flyers, bulletin board postings and something new called "e-mail." As a result of our efforts, we quickly reached charter strength with 25 members, most from METC and NIOSH but including our first WVU student, Andrea Rilke, an exchange student from Germany.

One of our more active members, Mark Williams from the Morgantown Energy Technology Center (METC), collected our initial dues checks and forwarded our charter application to TM headquarters. We also submitted our first list of officers, with Mark Williams as president.

When our charter was approved as of December 23rd 1991, we planned to celebrate with a chartering ceremony at a special meeting, the first to be held in the evening. We met at the Bonanza Steakhouse (now the Chinese Buffet) on Patteson Drive. For most of our members, this was their first exposure to a formal Toastmasters event. Attending and giving us their blessing and support were: then District #13 Governor Lois Gore, DTM; George Gore, DTM; and our Division and Area Governors.

With most members present, on behalf of the club President Mark Williams accepted a framed Club Charter as Club #8538 in Toastmasters International. Each member also received an individual "Charter Member" certificate. The Charter is now passed on for safekeeping to each new president upon taking office. That night, the Mountaineer Toastmasters Club was officially born.

Chapter 3: Tiger Teams

By 1993, two years after our club was chartered, we were still riding on our initial momentum, with a membership that included 16 of our original Charter members, plus the recruitment of five additional members, mostly from among employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Morgantown Energy Technology Center (METC). Additionally, our club’s first president, Mark Williams, had moved up to serve as Area 3 governor.

But only a year later, our membership had begun drop off. As often happens, after the successful but difficult recruiting drive necessary to reach charter strength, a club’s efforts to retain or seek new members wanes. Attrition sets in for various reasons: those who joined for curiosity or at the urging of someone else, lose interest; others joined just long enough to gain confidence to make a special speech or presentation; some found that work schedules or family demands kept them from meetings.

Whatever the reasons, as we entered the 1994 club year, our club’s roster was down to eleven, nine Charter members plus two others. And then, our two principal sources for members, METC and NIOSH, were beset with internal turmoil. Safety problems had been found at several of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories, one of which was METC. The DOE sent in one of its high-intensity inspection "Tiger Teams," which created havoc when it temporarily closed the facility and put stress on its employees to return the labs to higher productivity levels. For those METC members who were in our Toastmasters club, until the crisis was over few felt they could spare time for meetings.

Compounding the club’s problems was the concurrent downsizing at NIOSH as a result of President Clinton’s "Reinventing Government" initiative. The pressures and uncertainties this placed on all NIOSH employees, and their consequent efforts to reorganize their operations, forced those among them who were are our members to reassess their priorities. For most of them, Toastmasters was moved down or off their list.

As a result, when meetings were held it became very difficult to fill all the roles necessary for holding a good meeting. Those remaining members who continued to come were beginning to show burn-out stress from having to cover several of the agenda positions all of the time. The low point came when our Area governor came for his periodic visit and only three members were present. We moved the meeting to a table in the METC cafeteria, where, over coffee, we discussed whether our club had a future.

Though we didn’t know it at the time, we would find our salvation was just a few short miles away, on the campus of West Virginia University.

Chapter 4: "The Mountaineers Become Mountaineers"

Late in 1993, during the period that the charter members still with our club were still trying to determine its future, a recent addition to the faculty of West Virginia University’s School of Journalism was looking for a way to improve the speaking skills among his students. He was Theodore Lustig, a former public relations professional who had taken early retirement from his private sector job to fulfill a long-time desire to teach.

As a result of a positive experience with Toastmasters in the 1960s, he had decided that a club on the WVU campus could be the answer. Back then, he had successfully formed a TM club in New Jersey to train public speakers for a major chemical company that had just moved to the area. His success there led him to believe it could be done again here.

His announcement in the WVU student newspaper seeking members was brought to the attention of our existing but struggling Mountaineers club, which immediately contacted him to offer a merger that would be mutually beneficial. The students would forgo the expense and delay of going through the chartering process and would benefit from early exposure to experienced speakers. The Mountaineers would gain both the members it needed to remain chartered and would have access to a new and large pool of potential members.

It was a win-win situation for all, and, early in 1994, Professor Lustig not only accepted, but offered a centrally-located large classroom, with audio-visual capabilities, in the School of Journalism (SOJ) building as a permanent and convenient meeting room. The immediate addition of four new members was just the transfusion of new blood that our club needed to move forward into a major period of growth and development.

Professor Lustig also used his position with the SOJ to tell his classes about the benefits of Toastmasters, both for them as students and as preparation for furthering their careers after graduation. He, too, joined the club in February 1995, and is still a member. Since the merger, our club has included students from most of the colleges at WVU (arts & sciences; journalism; law; engineering; medical; business administration; etc.), as well as several staff and faculty members.

Professor Lustig helped to save the Mountaineer Toastmasters Club and to make us Mountaineers in every sense.

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