Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
The Pocahontas County Parks and Recreation board didn’t have to look far for its new director after Lauren Bennett retired in March. Luckily, Alyssa Vickers was ready to move up the ranks from program coordinator to take the helm as director.
Vickers is originally from Chesapeake, Ohio, but has called West Virginia home since she attended Marshall University where she received a degree in art and design. She had several different jobs in the Huntington area, gathering skills and and knowledge as she planned for her career.
Her final job in Huntington before moving to Pocahontas County was for Greater Huntington Parks.
While Vickers and her husband, Steven, worked all week in Huntington, their weekends were usually spent in Pocahontas County, where they brought their two kids to enjoy the many outdoor activities here in Nature’s Mountain Playground.
“We would basically work all week long and then camp, hike, mountain bike – all of that – in this area,” she said.
The Vickers were familiar with the area thanks to use of a friend’s cabin in Green Bank. They used it as their base while they explored and adventured in the area.
That is when Vickers learned of the position of program coordinator at Parks and Rec in Marlinton. A friend let her know and before long, the family was moving to the county they would retreat to on the weekends.
“We moved here in June,” she said. “I basically set up an interview with Lauren before I told Steven. We did a phone interviews and had conversations. She asked if I wanted to do an in-person interview and I said yes.”
After that interview, it was official, and the family waited for the children to finish out the school year in Huntington before packing up to move here. Steven found a job at Snowshoe, utilizing his welding and mechanic skills and the kids were enrolled in school.
Then almost a year later, Bennett retired, and Vickers found herself moving in to her position.
“I always had my eye on parks because we traveled and used the parks and playgrounds where we went,” she said.
With her background of past job experience working as a property manager at the Huntington mall and Huntington parks, Vickers found her niché and even found she could use her art background in the job.
“I can express my artist side – not through actual art – but there’s room for creativity in parks,” she said. “I can combine all these weird things and it makes sense.’”
Although she hasn’t taught any art classes through Parks and Rec, Vickers said she might fit it into the schedule one day.
While Parks and Rec is about wellness and enjoying all the parks in the county, it is also about enrichment and working with local artists to provide classes at the Community Wellness Center in Marlinton. There are also several partnerships with other organizations in the county that help offer programs for the community.
“We have a lot of things in the works for the summer, partnering with other organizations, that I’m pretty excited about,” Vickers said. “We are having a day with the forest service on June 14. We will be working with 4-H Camp. We work well with the libraries. Those are the types of things I’m most excited about.”
There are also plans to partner with the Green Bank Observatory to open the pool again this summer.
The Parks and Rec calendar is chock full of activities for the summer and Vickers is excited to get the communities involved in having fun.