Click "here" to see a timeline, videos and more on Robert C. Byrd.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. --  When asked about U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd's contribution to economic development in Southern West Virginia, Judy Radford didn't quite know where to start. 

"The question just leaves me tongue-tied," said Radford, who heads the Beckley-based 4-C Economic Development Authority.

But after a deep breath, Radford talked about Byrd's appropriations to build four-lane highways, the Erma Byrd Center for Public Higher Education, Mountain State University's library, health centers, water lines, dams, the federal prison in Beckley and a technology business center in downtown Hinton.  

"It's just on and on," said Radford, whose agency promotes economic development in Summers, Raleigh, Nicholas and Fayette counties. "He just touched so many different places trying to help. He helped create all kinds of different jobs."

And not just in the region where Byrd was born.

Bob Steptoe, chairman of the Steptoe & Johnson law firm, rattled off a list of projects that have created jobs from Clarksburg to Morgantown.

There's the FBI center with its 3,000 employees, of course. Plus, the NASA facility in Fairmont, Robert C. Byrd Institute for Flexible Manufacturing in Bridgeport, West Virginia University Health Science Center (Byrd secured funding for a trauma center named after his teenage grandson, who died in an traffic accident in 1982), Blanchette Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (Byrd appropriated $30 million in construction funding for the center, which is named after Sen. Jay Rockefeller's mother), and the West Virginia Coal and Energy Technology center in Morgantown.

Steptoe also noted the ongoing highway projects along Corridors H and D, which were funded through Byrd appropriations.

"He's clearly the most significant and instrumental person in north-central West Virginia economic development -- ever," Steptoe said.

Steve Roberts, executive director of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, said that influence also stretches to the eastern Panhandle (the Coast Guard's National Maritime Center in Berkeley County and Customs and Border Protection's training facility in Jefferson county) to the Northern Panhandle and to Huntington and Marshall University.

Byrd also has helped numerous private companies across the state that have contracts with U.S. Department of Defense and the federal facilities that Byrd helped to create, according to economic development leaders. 

Byrd recognized that West Virginia needed jobs to grow and prosper, Roberts said. 

"Senator Byrd was always looking for opportunities for West Virginia," Roberts said. "He was always thinking about ways to make things happen, always thinking about economic development and job creation. He was the billion-dollar senator."   

Reach Eric Eyre at erice...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-4869.