One great way to get young people interested in Wheeling history is to make them an active participant in preserving it.

Wheeling Park High School’s machine tool technology class is currently refurbishing the “OVGH” letters that hung on the old Ohio Valley General Hospital/Ohio Valley Medical Center building for decades. Those letters were taken down and preserved as the old OVMC was torn down to make room for the upcoming WVU Cancer Institute St. Joseph Regional Cancer Complex.

The WPHS students are making those letters look the best they can, as they will be displayed elsewhere in the city, possibly the new Robrecht Park.

It’s wonderful to see Wheeling’s youth get involved in helping with the city’s history. It will give them even more motivation to learn about it, and perhaps dive deeper.

Mary McKinley — a retired OVMC nurse, member of the OVGH History Group and wife of former U.S. Rep. David McKinley — said she saw that firsthand.

“One of (the students) told me how impressed he was that they will be hung on a tower,” she said. “He told me, ‘I will be able to see them and say I worked on those letters.’ Another generation has a reason to care about those letters,” McKinley said.

And the partnership with the OVGH History Group and Wheeling Park High will make sure that happens.