By Stephen Smoot
“When I started being a parent volunteer for EACHS Head Start in 1988, I never dreamed of where it would take me.”
So said Edna Mullenax, director of the Pendleton County Family Support Center, who will soon retire after decades of service to the community.
Within a year, Mullenax took an assistant teaching position that became less of a job and more of a true vocation. “My passion has always been working with children and families,” she explained.
That did not start with employment, however. Mullenax shared that her grandparents, Grant and Ruth Long, had more than 100 grandchildren with her born second from that group. Understanding the sometimes natural orneriness of farm and country kids, she noted that “someone had to lead the children in activities so we didn’t all get into trouble.”
“So that was me, taking the lead for our family get-togethers.”
Handling the responsibilities for keeping kin in line led naturally to looking after the welfare of children in Mullenax’s work.
Roger Dahmer, Pendleton County commissioner, shared that “I’ve known Edna for a while. She is a very Christian lady. She has a heart for helping people.”
A decade after taking on the role of assistant teacher, Mullenax ascended to a full teaching position at EACHS Head Start. “Teaching children for eight years was one of the best experiences of my life,” she stated. Yet she always aimed to do more through learning, taking classes from Shepherd College’s Petersburg branch and earning an early childhood development associates’ degree.
With many years of teaching experience and an intuition for leadership, EACHS Head Start promoted Mullenax to a supervisor’s position. She remembered that “it was a very hard decision to leave my children and families to support them in a different role.” Those who have experienced and enjoyed leading a classroom and directly cultivating young minds will understand the dilemma for her at that point.
No one who has ever enjoyed being a teacher stops missing it when they move on to a non classroom role. Mullenax remembered that, “I had a great staff and we worked well together in our services to children and families.”
The C. S Lewis Institute shares that one definition of “vocation” lies in “a summons from God to an individual or group to undertake the obligations and perform the duties of a particular task or function in life.”
Mullenax’s vocation led her from the Head Start into a new realm of service. As she explained, “Sometimes God opens other doors and you should always take the door that He opens.”
The next door opened in 2010 when Mullenax enrolled in the AmeriCorps VISTA program. In that role, she established the first Pendleton County Community Emergency Response Team as a VISTA worker with Curtis Crigler at the Pendleton County Office of Emergency Management. In that role, she supported disaster preparedness programs and also supported efforts from the American Red Cross.
That led to an administrative role with Region 8, but work there did not match “the passion I have for working with children and families.”
Then God opened another door.
“One day I decided I was taking a day off,” Mullenax remembered. While relaxing on her well-earned day off, Rick Smith, chief executive officer of Eastern West Virginia Community Action rang her up to inquire if she would be interested in another job.
“I started two weeks later,” she said.
Mullenax started her “journey,” as she put it, with EWVCAA, now known as Eastern Action, in October 2013. In her decade of work there, she helped families find access to fundamental needs, such as those facing electric or water shut off, locating supportive resources, and “working with community partners to provide other funding support.”
Part of her time in that role was spent working out of Petersburg three days a week and an hours’ drive from her home, “but building relationships with the customers in Grant County was a wonderful experience.”
Three years ago came the emergence of the Family Support Center program that has helped many thousands across the state. Eastern Action applied for and received grants to fund county-based centers in Pendleton, Grant, Hardy, and Hampshire. Many more emerged statewide.
Mullenax shepherded the Pendleton FSC through establishment, then a move into a Franklin storefront for easier access. One of the remarkable stories from the evolution of these centers has come in how each county facility has evolved its own slate of programs tailored to the people and culture of the area.
No two family support centers in West Virginia are alike and therein lies their strength. They rely on both the vision and the creativity of directors like Mullenax to build the most effective possible opportunities for their clients to gain the most as they work to first survive, then to thrive.
Dahmer, who also serves on the board of the Family Support Center, shared that Mullenax “is a big part of the reason why that support system is as successful as it is.” He added that “she’s innovative. Some of the projects and activities they do, she comes up with them.”
Mullenax adds that “the success of the center wouldn’t have happened without the support and partnerships with our families, friends, and community partners.” That success currently resides under a shadow of uncertain budget moves going forward. Centers are only funded currently through Sept. 30 with no word on the future.
“At Christmas time,” remembered Dahmer, there was a year in which staff worried that not enough presents would be available for the kids on the day of the giveaway. “She put out the word and bang! They had more than enough.”
Dahmer explains that the trust that the community has in Mullenax, that she always does the right thing, helps her to garner the donated support that she does. Also, he stated, “she knows where the need is.” Additionally, those in need, he said, often hear the advice of “Go see Edna.” Dahmer added that’s how a lot of the clients get involved.
Though moving into retirement, Mullenax has no plans to slow down, much less stop. After taking “some relaxing time for sure,” she intends to go back to “working with children and families.”
“I have applied for a few jobs and I hope when they see my passion and hear of the work that I have done, they will consider hiring me.”
Mullenax shared a Bible verse that she felt encapsulated her vocation.
In Romans 15:14, Saint Paul as minister to the Gentiles stated, “I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge, and competent to instruct each other.”
No better words could describe the decades of service from Edna Mullenax.
