By Jack Houvouras
HQ 106 | SUMMER 2019
For this edition of the magazine, we decided to have some fun and feature the region’s most stylish women. Photographing these ladies in and around Huntington was a chance for our staff and Photo Editor Rick Lee to think outside the box, be creative and add a little glamour to the publication. But there’s more than style and beauty to the 12 women our readers selected; there’s also a lot of substance. Among those on our list are a physician, financial advisor, entrepreneur, social media marketer and two vice presidents. Looking over their impressive credentials reminded me that Huntington has produced a number of accomplished women over the years.
Perhaps there’s no better example of style and substance than Verna Gibson. The Marshall University alumna started her career in retail, working part time at The Smart Shop then The Princess Shop in downtown Huntington. In 1971, she moved to Columbus, Ohio, where she came across a women’s clothing shop that caught her eye — a fledgling startup called The Limited. She was so impressed with the store that she called owner Les Wexner and asked for a meeting.
The two hit it off immediately and Wexner hired her on the spot. Gibson quickly rose through the ranks and in 1985 became the CEO of The Limited stores, making her the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Today she is universally recognized as one of the first women to break the glass ceiling in corporate America.
Huntington native Julia Keller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author. The Marshall University graduate won the prestigious honor in 2005 for her three-part series in The Chicago Tribune about a deadly tornado that struck Utica, Illinois. Keller was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University for 10 years and later taught at Princeton, Notre Dame and the University of Chicago. She is also the author of several novels including a highly acclaimed series called the Bell Elkins Mysteries. The books focus on a woman’s return to her fictional hometown, Acker’s Gap, West Virginia.
Huntington’s Jan Rader is a force of nature. In 2017 she became the state’s first professional female fire chief. That same year she was featured in the Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary Heroin(e), which follows Rader and two other women as they battle West Virginia’s opioid epidemic. In 2018 she was recognized for her relentless and innovative efforts to save lives in the midst of Appalachia’s substance abuse crisis when she was named to the TIME 100 — a list of the 100 most influential people in the world. As of July, her TED Talk had been viewed more than 1.5 million times. Today she is easily Huntington’s most famous citizen and for all the right reasons.
These are just three examples of women with ties to Huntington who have made a difference in the world. In doing so, they have paved the way for future generations to make their mark in whatever field they choose. And that’s as it should be.
