Newspaper donates to animal wellness center

Feb. 17—Organizers of the Delaney Wykle Animal Wellness Center, who have raised just over a million dollars for the project, are hopeful they will be able to break ground on the facility this year.

"We would love to be able to break ground this year. That's the plan," said Debra Berry, the secretary for the Humane Society of Raleigh County Board of Directors. "We just have to do a few more fundraisers and things to get it going."

The center is named in honor of Beckley native and animal lover Delaney Wykle, who died in a helicopter crash in the Bahamas in 2019. Berry said the wellness center will provide desperately needed services for spaying and neutering for the animal shelter and the community.

On Monday, The Register-Herald aided in these fundraising efforts by presenting a check for $1,000 to Rachel Cornett, whose initial donation to the humane society in 2021 brought plans for the wellness center to life.

Terri Hale, publisher of The Register-Herald, said half of the funds are a direct donation from the paper while the other half are from the sale of a book called "Keeping the Faith," which contains columns written by Bev Davis, who worked for The Register-Herald for more than 25 years.

The Register-Herald also donated several items collected from readers as part of a pet drive for the animal shelter.

Hale said Davis' columns have appeared in The Register-Herald for decades, even after Davis' passing in 2010. She added that the idea behind putting a series of Davis' column into a book was a result of requests from readers.

As a way to honor Davis and her years of service to The Register-Herald, where she worked as senior editor, features editor, writer and columnist, Hale said $1 from the purchase of every book is being donated to the Delaney Wykle Animal Wellness Center.

Hale said the donation seemed fitting because Davis was an avid animal lover herself. She added the newspaper will continue to donate proceeds to the wellness center from all future sales of the book, which will likely have several volumes.

Rachel Cornett said she was grateful for the paper's donation, which is helping them get that much closer to their goal.

Cornett said the idea behind the wellness center started in 2021 as a way to honor Delaney Wykle, who had dated Cornett's son Tristen since the two were in middle school.

"We just didn't want there to not be something to honor her in some way," Cornett said. "So I reached out to the (Humane Society of Raleigh County) because Tristan and Delaney were both animal advocates. They loved animals."

Cornett said her plan was to make a donation in Delaney's honor with the idea that maybe a new set of kennels would be built. However, she said one thing led to another and eventually, after talking with Berry, it was decided that Cornett's donation would be the base for a new clinic which had been needed for some time.

"We've worked on it for a couple years and we know that the community is engaged with us and just getting the awareness out of what we're doing," she said. "People care about animals here, so they wanted to be involved in something like this."

Berry said the wellness center will be a needed resource not just for the animal shelter but for the entire community, especially when it comes to getting pets spayed and neutered.

"One of the biggest problems we have at the animal shelter is getting an appointment (for spay or neuter) because we have a lot of animals," said Berry, adding that it can often take weeks to more than a month to get appointments.

"That's our main problem, getting appointments, so we take our animals to Christiansburg, Va., to down close to Huntington, to Charleston, to Oak Hill. We take them anywhere we can get appointments because we need them spayed or neutered before they leave there."

Berry said the new wellness center, which will likely cost around $1.3 million to build, will help change all that.

Delaney's mother, Paula Wykle, has also been involved in the project with Cornett since its inception.

Wykle said she sees the wellness center as a chance for the community to heal after not only losing Delaney in the 2019 plane crash but other Raleigh County natives including local entrepreneur and philanthropist Chris Cline and Delaney's childhood friend and Chris Cline's daughter, Kameron Cline.

"I have to think that this all happened, and it gave us an opportunity to give back to the community," Wykle said. "So it's not as much about Delaney as it is about this horrible thing that happened to our community and family that we found a way to give to others. and that, to me, is the most important part."

Anyone looking to donate to the wellness center can send a check with "Delaney Wykle Animal Wellness Center" on the check memo line, to 319 Mountain Lane, Shady Spring, WV 25918.

More information on the wellness center can be found at https://hsrcwv.org/wellness-center.

Email: jmoore@register-herald.com