By Gary Lee Stuber
Walter Hatfield is the Vice President of Training Experimentation for the Civil Military Institute (also known as CMI2) and is a retired Army Colonel who retired only a year and a half ago from the West Virginia Army National Guard.
He says of the project, going up at Lizemores at the site of the old Ben Murphy store and apple orchard: “What we are doing here is building a state-of-the-art training facility. We call it the Adaptive Experimentation Facility (AEF) which allows us to help train and outfit war fighters: Army, Marine, defense individuals with new technology and weapon systems that will help them go fight and win wars.”
He also adds, “One of the things that is near and dear to my heart is the training of first responders. We will continue to do that. We train them in ropes, water rescue, wilderness medicine. Again, it is not all about taking the fight overseas somewhere. Everyday our first responders are called to some of our worst tragedies: a car wreck, a house fire, and they have to prepare and be ready to respond to those incidents and more and save lives. In 2016 there was a huge tragedy in this state. A 1,000-year flood killed 24 West Virginians. And while Clay County lost more than 100 homes, it did not suffer a loss of life in this event. In 2016 I was the architect behind building the swift water rescue team in West Virginia.”
He gave an example of how this training could impact first responders. “A car wreck. The ambulance or firefighters need whole blood a quantity or type not on the ambulance. Blood is loaded on a drone at the hospital site and within minutes is flying toward the accident scene.”
“That is what we do.” He explains. “We have to look at next generation technologies, either on the battlefield or on an interstate somewhere. What we are going to do here will be the next generation of rescue. Trained right here in the heart of Clay County. For instance, in Clay there are a lot of hunters that use ATV’s. Typically a rollover with an ATV ends in tragedy, because they are remote, hard to get too. Even hard to find. So training people on wilderness medicine how they can pack equipment out how they can locate them with drones and other technology. We will train people how to save lives and quickly.”
He looks out over at a tree-covered mountain. “If you do any kind of research most people who do this kind of training go out to the west coast to do training. Why not West Virginia? This is the perfect place to do such wilderness training. Clay County has beautiful hillsides, waterways. But there is not a great economic base. We want to help that as well.”
Walter was raised in Milton in Cabell County. “I’m a Hatfield from West Virginia. Graduated from Milton High School in 1994 and joined the Marine Corps. Came back to West Virginia in 1998 got my undergrad at University of Charleston.” It was there he got pretty much talked back into military service by a professor at UC. Major Jim Hoyer. Talked him right into joining the West Virginia National Guard where he would eventually become General Hoyer’s right hand man until both of them retired.
His mother was Mary Alice Carte and his father was Mitchel Hatfield. Mitchel was retired Army, a staff sergeant, with three tours in Vietnam. Walter is the youngest of four siblings. The oldest brother has passed away, the older sister is still living, but his youngest sister also passed, a victim of the drug epidemic.
The 14,000 square foot facility going up at the old Ben Murphy store will be a temporary headquarters to CMI2, until the training facility and the barracks go up on the top of the hill or at the old apple orchard site on the 250 acres. The site is contiguous with the Heartland Forest, 8,000 acres of woodland. They have co-opted a contract with the forestry division to use the forest for the actual wilderness training. It is more than they could have ever hoped for. Once the site is completed the Murphy building will transition into a type of strip mall that will allow appropriate businesses to set up in Lizemores, as well as perhaps an office for the Clay County Sheriff’s office to set up a base on this end of the county.
Walter identified Shane Morton as his primary contractor. The fairly young Clay County resident is trying to keep all the suppliers, vendors and workers local. He has been largely successful in doing this. He lives in Bickmore, raised in Adonijah. He graduated from high school in 2001 and almost immediately bought his first piece of equipment: a backhoe. At the time there was lots of work in the business and he did that for three years. Then he went to work for Fola Coal. “My grandfather always said that coal mining is the best part time job you can ever do.” He discovered just how true that was when Fola closed down the mines. He worked briefly for Mammoth Coal before returining home to do work excavating again. This time he would have to venture all over the state to get steady work. But word of mouth came to him that CMI2 was looking for a local contractor. He appeared to be the perfect fit. Shane’s son Elijah also works for him.
