Amy Jo Hutchison addresses the crowd during the August 2025 visit of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, to the Capitol Theatre in Wheeling.

WHEELING — When it comes to caring about the community and making things happen in her community, Amy Jo Hutchison says the apples didn’t fall far from the tree.

Today, as organizer for “Mom’s Rising,” it is her role to make sure the apples are picked up and most efficiently distributed to those who need them.

She has used her skills while serving with the Ritchie Elementary School PTO, and most recently when flood waters struck the Triadelphia and Valley Grove neighborhoods.

Hutchison describes her mother Gaynelle as being “an organizer my whole life,” and the person who most influenced her volunteer spirit.

She noted both her parents were from Wetzel County and “had a very rural upbringing.”

“Sometimes I think that makes it a little different when it comes to taking care of your neighbors and stuff,” she said. “If there was a need, I think she just found a way to take care of it.”

Hutchison grew up to become a preschool teacher focusing on two- and three-year-olds. It was in 2008 during one of her training sessions titled “Bridges Out Of Poverty” that she first realized her area was considered poor.

“I guess it was because I had spent my life surrounded by people just like me,” she said. “But I sat through this entire training, and I found out why it was I made the decisions I did. I realized it was all just a poverty response, and that changed my life.”

Hutchison said she asked administration at Ritchie Elementary School if she could run the PTO, and that began her move toward activism. She saw a need for repairs to the pool area there, and she started sending emails to most all elected officials about how funding for a pool replacement project was necessary.

“That was the first time I had even attempted to speak to power,” Hutchison explained.

She noted the emails weren’t negative, but they still drew the ire of Ohio County school officials after they got notice from the West Virginia Board of Education.

“There literally was not one negative comment in that email, but just the fact I went over people’s heads made them mad, and there was a lot of backlash,” Hutchison said. “But what happened was Ritchie Elementary got $4.6 million from the School Building Authority.for the project.”

Hutchison later would go on to attend another head start training session, and it was there she met Lisa Wotring, then an organizer with the “Our Children Our Future” group in Charleston.

“She talked about a lot of things I never heard of — ‘community organizing’ and ‘grassroots (efforts),” Hutchison said. “She said the organization’s purpose was to end child poverty in West Virginia.”

The two met for a personal conversation after, and Wotring told her, “Never write yourself off, Amy Jo. You’ll never know where you’ll end up.”

“Four years later, I’m sitting in that same restaurant at the same table with a group of women telling them, ‘never write yourself off…,” Hutchison added.

She joined the steering committee for “Our Children Our Future,” and became an organizer for the group. This led to her later becoming the state director for the national group “Mom’s Rising” in West Virginia.

But it was last summer that rising water around her house and covering her neighbors’ property in Valley Grove and Triadelphia forced her to spring into action to organize for a different cause.

“I live here … my house was the only house in my community that wasn’t touched by the flood waters,” she explained. “My house sits far enough back. It came halfway up my yard and stopped.

“But I sat by and watched my neighbors lose cars and houses. The things I saw and heard were incredible.”

The neighbors returned the next day and told Hutchison they needed help with cleanup. She went online to find people with shovels to come and volunteer.

“I really didn’t do anything else but hang out in my front yard,” she explained. “I tried not to, because I didn’t know what my place was. I had this weird survivor’s guilt about it.”

Then she saw on social media that needed food and supplies for flood victims were being placed at Riesbecks, and shelter and counseling was being offered at Elm Grove Elementary School.

Hutchison realized neither spot was easily accessible by victims in Valley Grove and Triadelphia, many of whom had lost their cars.

“I thought, ‘I’m an organizer. That’s my jam. I’m going to fix this,'” she said.

Hutchison made arrangements with Mike Palmer, pastor of Triadelphia United Methodist Church, to have supplies dropped off in the church’s parking lot. She then became one of the leaders in the flood relief efforts.

“I’ve just always wanted to be with people. My retirement dream … I wouldn’t mind just working at the Convenient Store up the road where I just saw people everyday and it was low-stress but I got to touch people. That would be my retirement dream – to find a community connecting position,” she added.”