Pino, edged out of election, reflects on life, work, political career

By Mannix Porterfield

(Editor’s note: When the polls open for Election Day voting at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow, one familiar name will be missing from the list of candidates for seats in the 29th District House of Delegates race. Veteran lawmaker John Pino was edged out in the primary election in his pursuit of an 11th term. Pino doesn’t rule out a return to politics in the future, but for now has taken some time to reflect on his life and his work with Mannix Porterfield of The Register-Herald.)





OAK HILL — Confucius once issued some sage advice for the young contemplating a lifelong vocation:

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

If the old Chinese philosopher was correct, John Pino earned money by having fun, and, at 77, he’s still just out there having a grand old time, puttering around with stone masonry.

“When I’m reminded of that,” he says of the centuries-old counsel, “I think I have never worked a day in my life, albeit I have had what some might say was a very successful construction career.”

Indeed, you can find Pino’s fingerprints just about all over Fayette and Raleigh counties.

Consider the masonry at the John Eye Big Sandy Superstore in Beckley. A bell tower at a Baptist church in Oak Hill. Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church towering above U.S. 19, and the school affixed to the sanctuary.

And who knows how many homes over the years within the region.

All that has changed in recent years is the color of his hair and the abandonment of a pre-dawn, 3-mile walk that shifted his metabolism into high gear for another day on the job.

Pino might have gone to West Virginia University and earned a degree in law, as some high school advisers once strongly intimated he should do, but a summer job with a construction outfit forever altered the 10th grader at Mount Hope High School. Anytime a task was available, so was Pino — even on Saturdays and holidays.

Actually, he came by his trade honestly.

Pino’s father, Petro, a Sicilian immigrant, had been trained in masonry back in his native land, but when he emerged from the boat in Ellis Island with a sponsor, word had spread about available work in the coalfields of West Virginia — an occupation that lured many a foreigner to the Appalachians decades ago. Witness the little towns that bear Scottish and Irish handles. Without delay, the senior Pino repaired to his first American job at the Tamroy mine just above Oswald, a nearly hidden hamlet just beyond Mount Hope’s corporate limits.

Petro settled his growing family in Mount Hope, on West Virginia Street, in a home that lent itself to much frustration over constant flooding in the small, but bustling coal town.

When his mother, Santa Briguglio Pino, baked fresh bread, tempting aromas wafting across the little town drew in neighborhood children by the droves. Mrs. Pino happily dished out samples of her culinary handiwork, generously bathed in olive oil, salt and pepper.

“She would give bread to anybody who wanted it,” son John recalled.

Growing up in the aftermath of the Great Depression when America was engaged in a global conflict, Pino pitched in to help cultivate fresh vegetables, as many an American child did in response to FDR’s call for “victory gardens” to raise produce as a means of helping the war effort. Many was the occasion he hand-delivered food to his father’s friends in Kilsyth, just beyond Mount Hope. Even today, part of his backyard is devoted to a garden, bursting with a healthy array of vegetables.

Pino was born 21 months after the stock market crash of 1929 but remembers the feel of the Depression era.

“Everyone was trying to recover,” he said.

“My father tried many things to provide for his family. It wasn’t easy. Jobs didn’t pay very much. Coal mines were running what they called ‘slack runs,’ one or two days a week. There was much unrest. I remember all that.”

Not only did he ply his newly acquired skills in a garden, but the young Pino pocketed the princely sum of 25 cents a night working at Mount Hope’s only bakery, wrapping cakes and pies. Even with mines producing less than a full week, Mount Hope was alive and kicking. Especially on Saturday nights. Townspeople packed its winding main street four to five deep, making it difficult to navigate the full length of the business district.

Every Saturday found Mrs. Pino with young John in tow.

“You could barely get down the streets,” he said. “It was sometimes a chore to get to the 5-and-dime store.”

One of his more memorable days in the growing years came with a 20-point victory over heated rival Woodrow Wilson High School on the hardwood court, where Pino started for the Mustangs as a power forward, in 1949, facing the legendary Flying Eagle coach Jerome Van Meter, just a few years from the Dwayne Wingler era.

Pino didn’t play football, which eased the fears of his parents, although he once sneaked away to try out for the team, but decided the slow pace of the gridiron didn’t match his own speed.



Stone masonry — life’s calling

Never did Pino succumb to the typical childhood dreams of becoming a professional athlete or Hollywood star, but as graduation neared, his thoughts turned to a possible legal career.

Some encouraged him to go for it, telling him he possessed the tools to become a lawyer and even now, he says, “I think I could have done that.”

In fact, when he earned his diploma at Mount Hope High, transcripts were sent to West Virginia University to lay the groundwork for possible admission.

“My teachers were encouraging me to go to Morgantown,” he said. “That could have been a career path I could have pursued.”

But at that time, his father was stricken with sciatic rheumatism and became bedfast. Once again, the Pino family had to pull together — an Italian version of the Waltons.

“I had this opportunity to go into construction, so I jumped on that, and let go of the opportunity to go to college,” he said. “I never really regretted that.”

How could he, for in his travels around this region, it’s hard for Pino not to get a reminder of his life’s work. Even the base of the LaFayette statute on the Fayette County Courthouse is part of his bulky masonry dossier.

Pino picked up some pointers on drafting from a former Mount Hope coach, Henry Danner, and this experience proved useful in his assistance with planning the construction of Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, directly across the street from his Oyler Avenue home.

“I was asked by the bishop to build that church, which I did do and I’m real proud of that,” he said.

Pino likewise speaks with a measure of accomplishment about the John W. Eye building, saying, “If you look closely at that building, that is a very intricate building from a masonry standpoint.”

Military duty was out of the question, since he suffered a knee injury in basketball, and still wears a knot as proof of a collision with a teammate he suspects to this day might have been intentional.

“He was probably trying to get my starting position,” Pino suggested. “I don’t know.”



Moving into politics

Pino was moving up rapidly within the ranks of the Catholic Church, heading up the Dawson Council of Catholic Men, and was active in the Lions Club, when some Democratic leaders decided he should be the party’s Fayette County chairman. This was back in 1972, when Jay Rockefeller first ran for governor.

His initial response was to beg off, explaining, “I know nothing about politics, other than I never failed to vote.”

Despite his misgivings, Pino filled the role, and within a few years, an opportunity surfaced to run for a seat in the House of Delegates. Pino went for it, losing by a mere 128 votes, to school teacher-football coach Carol Bumgardner.

Two years later, after refining his campaigning techniques, in 1984, he won the first of 10 terms in the House and got on the good side of Joe Albright, who was gunning for the speaker’s job. Albright won the gavel by a scant three votes, and the speaker didn’t forget Pino’s loyalty in the close contest.

Lawmakers passed a near $1.5 billion budget in that session, and about half — some $750 million — was earmarked for public education.

Although he was a novice in the House, Pino was chosen to be the lead sponsor of the legislation at the insistence of Education Chair Lyle Sattes in an era when bills could contain no more than two members as sponsors.

“It was the largest expenditure in the state budget that year and I was the leading sponsor — the biggest bill of the session,” Pino said.

Pino ultimately would serve under three more speakers — Chuck Chambers, Bob Kiss, and Rick Thompson. It was during the record-tying, 10-year tenure of Kiss that Pino was chosen as speaker pro tempore, the delegate who fills in when the speaker is away.

“That was a great privilege,” Pino recalled.

One of his more memorable nights came when Kiss, Minority Leader Charles Trump IV and Delegate Otis Leggett were honored by the entire House.

“I suppose there were a lot of funny things that happened (as speaker pro tempore) when I missed a comment,” Pino said.

“Sometimes I found myself laughing after the fact.”



Pro-life, older juries, and Hank

Owing to his faith, Pino has always been a steadfast proponent of anti-abortion legislation, and his role as a member of the pivotal House Judiciary Committee afforded him the opportunity to push his pro-life values.

One of the major strides he took in that direction came with his rewrite of a bill known as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, meant to impose double punishment for maiming or killing a pregnant woman, and inspired by the sensational Laci Peterson slaying in California. Pino championed the cause and rewrote the bill so that it became known as “the Pino amendment.”

Pino once ascribed his strong pro-life sentiments to his role as a spokesman for his Fayette County constituency, but his stance goes far deeper than the matter of practical politics.

“That’s inherent in me,” reflected the father of eight children.

“I think, many times, too often, I think, people may be encouraged to take the easier course and often that might be to terminate a pregnancy, rather than carry it to term. I’m thinking back that if that attitude prevailed when I was not here, who knows how many people wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be part of the process now. If we don’t speak up for the unborn, who will? They have no voice.”

Not long ago, Pino said he examined legal papers and was struck by the references to the unborn in wills and the like. To him, it is reflective of the historical care for the unborn, the pursuit of happiness.

“We say that in one breath, and on the other hand, I’ve agonized when I see unborn children that are eliminated inside the womb,” he said.

“Someone said that currently the most dangerous place for a child now in America is inside the mother’s womb as a result of the change in attitude toward abortion.”

Pino counts among his accomplishments as a delegate the elevation from 65 to 70 years the age that a registered voter is obligated to answer the call to jury duty. Another milestone came with passage of his bill to provide emergency leave pay for being called out to help in a natural disaster. Pino played a key role in the Wolf Creek project, one he feels holds vast economic potential for his home county.

One regret was the feud over Hank Williams that put him and Sen. Shirley Love, also D-Fayette, at odds over the latter’s effort to name old W.Va. 16 after the Alabama country-western legend who turned up dead in Oak Hill on a New Year’s morning in Oak Hill.

Pino heard from one constituency adamant that Williams shouldn’t be so honored, largely in deference to his celebrated drinking binges, and Love was representing another faction, not only diehard Williams fans but many who viewed a potential museum in Oak Hill as an economic plus.

For a decade, the battle raged, until a compromise was worked out so that Williams was given part of the road, and Pino’s choice, the late Rev. Shirley Donnelly, long the chaplain at the Beckley VA Medical Center and well-read newspaper columnist, got his share.

“That was one of those things I would have preferred not happened,” he said of the long-standing impasse.

Pino blocked the Williams naming for many years inside the powerful House Rules Committee, and this year, the Senate, in a measure of what Pino viewed as revenge, held up his proposal to name the West Virginia Turnpike after its chief promoter, the late Gov. Okey Patteson.

As a youngster, Pino at times sang Williams’ tunes in a family where the patriarch insisted each child learn to play a musical instrument. For Pino, it was the accordion. In church, he often sings so loudly some think he is flying solo.

“It was Bob Kiss who finally resolved the issue,” Pino said of the Williams dispute that, at one stage, found the Senate holding House road and bridge naming resolutions “hostage” over the House’s refusal to budge on the singer’s road naming.

“Everything was getting backlogged. I was really anguished when Congressional Medal of Honor names were being postponed or not put on bridges and highways. I tried to represent the people who were talking to me, and I guess Shirley was representing the people that were taking to him.”



Political comeback?

Pino barely held on to his seat two years ago in a disputed election that took a recount to settle, but in this year’s primary, was eliminated by the same rival — veteran lawmaker Tom Louisos.

Even now, Pino harbors no acrimony toward the Oak Hill fast-food merchant, saluting his opponent as a gentleman throughout the election process and attributing his loss to an 11th hour mass mailing by a union he says misinterpreted his opposition to a bill it was pushing.

Absent a concrete commitment for now, Pino is keeping all political options open for 2010, saying he has been given much encouragement to re-enter the arena. So much, in fact, he intends to form an exploratory committee for 2010.

For now, he is content with life.

“What I try to do is count my blessings, and I do that on a daily basis,” Pino says.

“I think what makes me the happiest is my wife (the former Mary Hayes) and family. My wife is the glue that keeps us all together. And she does that well. She puts others before herself. She has always had to do that. Seems to take great joy in it. We’ve been married 56 years this December, the good Lord willing. So, I’m extremely happy.”



— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com

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