05-08-2025
Fairmont's MVA clinic providing progressive care for nearly 70 years
FAIRMONT – In the early morning hours of Nov. 20, 1968, with smoke still roiling from the ruined No. 9 Mine, a team from the Fairmont Clinic was already on the road.
A series of horrific explosions tore through the coal mine near Farmington in outlying Marion County.
Those who weren't killed instantly – the first explosion rattled windows 20 miles away in Fairmont – would die wrenching deaths in the hours that followed, from poisonous gases that had layered and led to the disaster in the first place.
Meanwhile, a team of physicians and nurses from the clinic, along with associated social workers and clergy, arrived and went to work, digging in before most of Marion County even knew what happened.
The handful of survivors pulled to the surface received immediate medical care.
Families of the miners who perished received counseling services and other attention in the days that followed.
This week is National Health Care Center Week, and the Fairmont Clinic, now known as the MVA Health Center, is still doing its work from its Frank Lloyd Wright-styled facilities on Locust Avenue in Fairmont.
While the name has changed, that's the only thing, CEO Raymond Alvarez said.
'We're still providing services to families in Fairmont and the county,' he said. 'That's why we started in the first place.'
In 1958, the year the clinic was founded, the West Virginia University Medical Center was still two years off. Regional networks of the medical variety, Alvarez said, were still unheard of in mainly rural West Virginia.
'Families needed access to care,' he said. 'Especially families with husbands and fathers who dug coal for a living.'
Dr. Edward Vacher Jr., a local physician, opened the practice that would become the Fairmont clinic in a small house on Locust Avenue, with the living room serving as the waiting area and the kitchen standing in for the nurse's station.
Two bedrooms were also converted to exam rooms, with space in the basement partitioned as business offices.
A Chicago architect was commissioned to design its current location, which was heralded in the industry for its contemporary stylings when it opened in 1965.
What you don't see, Alvarez said – a progressive infrastructure in the culture of the place – is just as important.
Non-discriminatory policies, both for hiring and for patients presenting for care, were quickly enacted in that first year at the direction of Thelma Shaw, a longtime community benefactor and activist.
Rose Cousins, a pioneering Black aviator in Fairmont whose high school and college classmate was Tuskegee Airman George 'Spanky' Roberts, was hired and worked her way up to a key administrative position.
'I like that we were able to respond so quickly to Farmington,' Alvarez said. 'I like that we hired Mrs. Cousins. And here we are, 67 years later.'
