(Reporter's Notebook by Steven Allen Adams - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

West Virginia is a small state, and state government is not large, so the longer you cover certain politicians, the more chances you have to see the human side of the people you cover and even become friends.

That’s the way it was with Tim Armstead, the late justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and the former minority leader who rose to become the first Republican speaker of the House of Delegates in nearly 83 years.

I attended the visitation for Armstead last Tuesday in the chambers of the House of Delegates, not as a news reporter but as a friend. I have a personal stance against covering funerals of important state officials anyway.

Armstead is someone who enjoyed the love and respect of many people, and that respect crossed partisan lines. People of different stripes all lined up to pay final respects to Armstead and express their sorrow to his family.

His wife Anna gave me a big hug. I told her a couple of things. One, Armstead never failed to remind me that he started out his career not as an attorney or as a politico, but as a newspaper reporter in his home county. Armstead understood the role of the media and also knew how hard of a job it can be. He was always friendly and patient with reporters, and I can’t recall him ever getting angry at a pointed question.

When I first arrived in Charleston to cover the statehouse in the winter of 2010, I would cover press conferences held by the Republican minority, and Armstead would lay out their legislative agenda for each year. Inevitably, I’d ask Armstead how they planned to get their agenda through the legislative process and the Democratic majority at the time controlled what bills were taken up.

It’s not an easy question to answer (I ask the now-Democratic legislative minority the same exact question when they present their annual regular session agenda). But Armstead would take the question in stride. It is a question that can be treated as negative or hostile, but Armstead would provide an optimistic answer.

I worked for the state Senate when Republicans took the majority in both the House and state Senate in 2015. As a Senate communications specialist until 2017, I had the pleasure of interacting with Armstead many times in his new role as House Speaker. That is not a fun job, more akin to herding cats. But Armstead was firm but fair in that role, both to the new Democratic minority and members of the Republican caucus.

I returned to newspaper reporting in June 2018, with my first day back being when Armstead gaveled in the House for a special session to begin impeachment investigations of justices on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. I doubt he knew that day that a few months later he would be appointed to the state Supreme Court and have to rebuild the trust of the public and also instill financial discipline. But he was able to do both of those things.

Armstead was a staunch defender of government transparency and ethics. He offered many bills as minority leader to open up the state’s Freedom of Information Act to allow for more government documents to be considered public documents. In 2016, Armstead helped push through major updates to the state Ethics Act.

After the 2016 floods in the southern half of the state, Armstead established the Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding. Armstead not only cared about the issue of future flood mitigation, but he was also a victim of the 2016 floods. One of my best friends lived on the hillside across from Armstead’s home along the Elk River. They told me about seeing Armstead on a kayak paddling around his home trying to turn off the electric.

That’s another thing: Armstead was not a rich man. He certainly could have been, with his day job as an attorney. He didn’t live in a fancy house with a nice car. He lived an unassuming life along Route 119 with his wife Anna and daughter Katie. As has been pointed out by others, he took his Christian faith seriously.

It became known that Armstead had been diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of this year. An avid runner who kept fit, it was hard seeing Armstead as his treatments wore him down. But he was always still friendly, always still smiling. I think the last time I saw him in person might have been at the end of the legislative session in April.

There are very few genuinely good people in politics. Armstead was one of them. All of our lives are better because he was in state government. The laws he sponsored and his decisions as a justice will live on.

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Oh, what was the other thing I told Anna? I told her that without fail, about every other year, Armstead would butt-dial me. I’m not sure if it was because “Armstead” and “Adams” were close together in his phone’s contact list, but it happened every other year. Anna laughed and told me that he had a bad habit of butt-dialing others.