Getting the mast of the USS West Virginia to Oglebay Plaza was a tall order

MORGANTOWN – Good thing Jack “The Mast” Bowman doesn’t bear grudges.

“Well, I was pretty annoyed about it back then, to be honest,” the dean emeritus of the West Virginia University College of Law allowed amiably, with a little chuckle last week.

“But what are you gonna do? The important thing was that it did get here.”

In 1959, Bowman, a quick-witted kid from Petersburg, Grant County, who was the first in his family to go to college, had just gotten elected student body president of WVU.

A WVU that was very much transformed by World War II.

“It had only been 14 years,” Bowman said, referring to the 1945 denouement of the epic, world-defining clash that spanned two oceans with two distinctly different theaters of war.

“Around here, it was still pretty fresh.”

The post-war boom in Mo