For many physicians, medicine is a calling. For Dr. Loren Kaiser of WVU Medicine, it’s a homecoming. Dr. Kaiser is a graduate of Wheeling Park High School and earned a bachelor’s degree and medical degree from West Virginia University. She completed her residency at WVU Medicine’s ...
A modest bump in a monthly check can change the shape of a retiree's week. When the Social Security Administration announced a 3.6% cost-of-living adjustment, the math looked small on paper — a few extra dollars here, a slightly larger deposit there. But across Belmont County and the river towns of the Ohio Valley, those dollars matter, especially for older residents who count on fixed incomes to cover groceries, utilities, and the occasional night out. After the essentials are paid, retirees weigh what little remains against the things that make life enjoyable: a ticket to a local ...
On a crisp Friday night in Belmont County, the parking lot outside the stadium fills up like clockwork. But not everyone can make the drive. A grandmother in Bridgeport with a bad knee, a shift worker stuck at the plant, an aunt who moved to Columbus for work — all of them still want to see the Martins Ferry Purple Riders take the field. More and more, they are finding a seat in front of the television instead, tapping a button on a streaming app and watching the whole game live from the couch. The old routine of waiting for a cable sports channel to maybe show a local highlight is ...
Across the Ohio Valley, the way adults unwind after a long shift keeps shifting. A generation ago, a free evening in Belmont County might have meant a card game at a friend's kitchen table or a drive to a riverboat. Today, more of that downtime happens on a phone or a laptop, tucked into the recliner after dinner. And with Ohio's launch of legal sports betting and West Virginia's already-established online gaming, plenty of residents in Martins Ferry, Bridgeport, and across the river in Wheeling are asking a practical question: what's the actual difference between playing casino-style ...
Martins Ferry sits close enough to the West Virginia line that plenty of Belmont County residents have spent years driving across the Ohio River to Wheeling for a legal sports bet, back when Ohio hadn't yet passed its own law. That changed on January 1, 2023, when Ohio's sportsbooks went live statewide, and the state's numbers since then say a lot about pent-up demand in border communities like this one. In under three years, Ohio bettors have wagered close to $31 billion through licensed operators, more than any state except New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, most ...
When a Belmont County resident finishes a long workweek and finally has a free Saturday night, where does that leisure money actually go? A generation ago the answer was simple — the movies in St. Clairsville, a bingo night at the fire hall, maybe an Ohio State Buckeyes game on the tube with a pizza on the way. Today the menu of choices is longer, blurrier, and increasingly digital. Ohio's shifting attitudes toward how people spend their downtime say a lot about a bigger national tug-of-war between old-school pastimes and on-demand screens. That conversation naturally runs into the ...
