Joan Weisberg helped her husband build two national companies in West Virginia while making major contributions to both Huntington and Marshall.
By James E. Casto
HQ 129 Spring 2025
The late Art Weisberg started with little in the 1950s and built two large national businesses headquartered in West Virginia — State Electric Supply Co. and Service Wire Co. But he didn’t do it alone. In Call Me Art, his 2011 autobiography, Weisberg wrote that he considered himself “the luckiest guy in the world — lucky to have won the hand of a wonderful woman who has been my partner in everything I have done and achieved.”
A great many people remember Art, who died in 2012, but not that many realize the vital role that Joan Meyer Weisberg played — and continues to play — in the family business and in the community.
Joan’s grandfather, A.I. Polan, came to West Virginia from Lithuania in 1885. At age 15, he traveled alone across the Atlantic, landed at Baltimore and, like many other immigrants, became a pack peddler, selling what he could carry on his back. He traveled throughout southern West Virginia, graduating from a pack to a mule and then a horse and cart, learning English as he went along. Ultimately, he moved to Charleston.
“Art’s family also came to this country, escaping a harsh life in Ukraine,” Joan said. “Think about it — if our families had not been able to leave Europe behind and find a welcoming home here, we would most likely have all perished in the Holocaust.”
Joan, who’s 94 years old, was born in Charleston, the daughter of Simon and Ida Polan Meyer. A native of Texas, Simon graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in chemical engineering. He went to work for Union Carbide, which sent him to West Virginia. When he saw World War II coming, he left Union Carbide to buy a manganese mine in the little community of Sweet Springs in Monroe County. Manganese is essential in the steelmaking process, and Simon knew that the coming war would make West Virginia manganese a valuable resource.
In Sweet Springs, Joan went to a two-room elementary school and then to Gap Mills High School. After the war, Simon moved the family back to Charleston. Joan graduated from Stonewall Jackson High School and then from The Ohio State University, where her mother had also studied. After college, Joan helped her father run the home-building business he had started.
Meanwhile, Art had left his home in Brooklyn and made his way to West Virginia. After serving in the U.S. Army during WWII, he used the GI Bill to earn a degree in electrical engineering from City College of New York and was hired to work at a new steel plant under construction at New Haven in Mason County. On weekends, he would drive to Charleston and attend services at the synagogue. It was there he saw Joan for the first time. The two were married in 1953.
The year before, Art had started a little business. With a bankroll of $2,500 and a big dream, he had hit the road, traveling around southern West Virginia and calling on mom-and-pop grocery and hardware stores, selling light bulbs, extension cords, fuses and the like from the back of his truck. The fledgling venture was by no means an overnight success. But Art, with Joan’s constant encouragement, kept at it — and before long, the business was growing.
Today, State Electric, headquartered at 2010 Second Ave. in Huntington, is one of the nation’s largest and best-known electrical distributors, with 41 branch locations and hundreds of employees across seven states.
In 1968, Art and Joan started Service Wire, manufacturing electrical wire and cable in Huntington. The company moved to Culloden, which straddles the Cabell-Putnam county line, in 1981. Today, Culloden serves as the corporate headquarters and one of Service Wire’s three locations, each with a manufacturing plant, distribution center and sales office. The company’s other locations are in Houston, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. Service Wire remains family owned and managed.
“Art always had a vision,” noted Joan. “From the time we met, he was determined and focused and worked hard. Some people thought he was wrong because he was so driven to achieve his dreams. But his vision and hard work paid off.”
That vision always included a strong commitment to West Virginia and to Huntington.
“Art never lost his New York accent, but in his heart and soul he was a West Virginian,” Joan said. “This is our home. Art had many chances to move his business away from West Virginia but always stayed here.”
Art knew that a business wasn’t just about location — it was about the people who helped the business thrive.
“Art used to call our employees ‘my people,’ and I think that’s a great way of describing them,” Joan said. “They’re the ones who talk to the customers, the ones who order the material, the ones who stock the warehouse, the ones who keep the books. Without them, nothing would happen. And I want all of them to know how much we value them and what they do.”
The couple’s success in business led them to become generous donors to Marshall University.
“When I came to Huntington in the early 1950s, the city’s population stood at about 80,000 people,” Joan recalled. “Today it’s closer to 48,000. Over time we came to believe that Marshall was one of the keys to revitalizing Huntington. Strengthening the educational opportunities it offered would attract students to the university and employers to seek out those students. Early on, Art saw the importance of computers, and in 1992 we endowed Marshall’s first chairs in software engineering.”
Long missing from the Marshall campus, the school’s engineering program was revived in 2004, a move generously supported by a major donation from Art and Joan. In 2008, Marshall awarded both Art and Joan honorary doctorates. Today, two impressive engineering buildings at Marshall are named for the Weisberg family.
“To be honest, I didn’t set out to be a businessperson,” Joan acknowledged. “I was a stay-at-home mom until my youngest child was in high school. Then Art encouraged me to learn about real estate from my father. I thought he was crazy — but I tried it, and the more I learned the more I enjoyed it. My father and I first built a small office building in Charleston and slowly built up a successful portfolio of commercial properties in the region.”
Today, Joan works with her daughters in the business.
“The more I became involved in the real estate business, the more I worked with Art to understand his business — I really enjoyed the challenge,” Joan said. “I truly believe that to be successful in any endeavor, no matter your age, you need to have persistence, luck, encouragement from family and friends and a certain amount of smarts — be it book learning or not. Let me offer an example: I never played any sports as a girl, and I was 45 when I began to play tennis. I was never a great player — but through persistence, hard work and encouragement, I kept playing until I turned 87.”
That same perseverance and dedication extends to the most important part of Joan’s life — her family.
“Art and I have five children, and I’m enormously proud of all of them,” she said. “Pamela is an attorney in Los Angeles. Martha is retired from Service Wire and now lives in Houston. Louis, who lives in Charleston, is the president and CEO of Service Wire. Seth is retired from Service Wire and now lives in Denver. Charlie is retired from Service Wire in Phoenix. And I’m proud to say I have 11 wonderful grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.”
Something else Joan is very proud of is her role in Huntington’s Women’s Caucus. She, Cheryl Henderson and Christie Kinsey started the group several years ago with the goal of encouraging women to learn about the political issues facing our area and to run for local office. Elected officials and candidates regularly speak with the group.
“We have grown significantly, and our group now includes women of all ages and from all walks of life,” Joan said. “Our voice is being heard.”
Over the years, Joan has long served on the boards of B’nai Sholom Congregation, the Federated Jewish Charities of Huntington and the Huntington Museum of Art — “and both my head and my heart have caused me to be a generous contributor to each of them,” she said.
“My family and I have been blessed — blessed that America and West Virginia provided us with a welcoming home and a place where we could grow, prosper and share our success with our employees and the community,” Joan said.
