The W.V. Hellbender

12/18/2025

12/16/2025

It sure was chilly about 6a.m.

12/16/2025

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It’s time to get your tickets! You can win this awesome Harley Davidson motorcycle!! Go to www.backpacks4veterans.com and go to the hellbender hootenanny tab!!

12/12/2025

Here is your chance to win a custom Harley-Davidson motorcycle! This is a 1989 Harley-Davidson Heritage Classic dressed up like a 1960's classic bike with custom paint, badges, apehanger bars, fishtail mufflers, and a great sound. The Evolution "EVO" motor is often considered one of the best that Ha...

12/11/2025

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12/11/2025

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Webster County Weeps: Local Soldier Laid in Sacred Ground...

Under a cold, gray December sky, 20-year-old Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom was laid to rest with full military honors at the West Virginia National Cemetery in Grafton.

Sarah grew up in Webster Springs, a quiet place where everybody knows everybody. She was the kind of kid who checked on people, the one who talked openly about mental health when a lot of folks still wouldn’t.

She graduated high school with honors in 2023, joined the West Virginia Army National Guard right after, and dreamed of one day working for the FBI.

Friends say she had a soft heart but a backbone of steel.

Two weeks ago, on the night before Thanksgiving, Sarah was working as a military police officer near the White House, part of a National Guard team helping keep Washington, D.C. safe.

She and another soldier, Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, were ambushed near a Metro station by a man who had reportedly spat at Guardsmen earlier that night.

Sarah fought for her life in the hospital, with her dad holding her hand the whole time, but she passed away the next day—Thanksgiving morning.

Today, the cemetery was packed. Her mom, dad and other family members sat in the front row. Fellow Guardsmen in dress uniforms. The governor of West Virginia. Both U.S. senators. The top generals of the National Guard. Even people who never met her drove hours just to stand in silence as the casket, draped in an American flag, was carried past.

A chaplain told the crowd, “No one can buy a place in this cemetery. You have to earn it. Sarah Beckstrom earned hers.”

The bugler played Taps. The rifle volley cracked through the bare trees. A soldier knelt in front of Sarah’s mother and handed her the perfectly folded flag.

Afterward, people lingered in the cold little groups, hugging, crying, telling stories about the 20-year-old who always volunteered for extra shifts, who wanted to protect people, who was supposed to have her whole life ahead of her.

She was buried today, but the people who loved her say her kindness, her courage, and the unfairness of how she was taken will stay with them a lot longer than the grief.

Farewell Specialist Beckstrom... thank you for your service.