West Virginia University alumni

Jack Ward Thomas (September 7, 1934 – May 26, 2016) was the thirteenth chief of the U.S. Forest Service, serving during the Clinton administration years of 1993–1996.
He was born in Fort Worth, Texas. His undergraduate education and degree (a BS in wildlife management in 1957) was from Texas A&M University. He worked for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for ten years. Then while working as a USFS research biologist at Morgantown, West Virginia, he received an MS in wildlife ecology from West Virginia University. He headed a Forest Service research unit at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He received his PhD in forestry there in 1972. In 1974, he moved to La Grande, Oregon, working as the chief research wildlife biologist and program leader at the USFS Forestry and Range Sciences Laboratory.
On December 1, 1993, he was appointed Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. During his time as head of the USFS, the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted. Jack became a member of the Boone and Crockett Club in 1994. After retiring from the Forest Service, he accepted a position as the Boone and Crockett Professor of Wildlife Conservation at the School of Forestry of the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana—a position he held until 2006 when he officially retired.
He died on May 26, 2016, after a battle with cancer, at his home in Florence, Montana.

Melville Davisson Post (April 19, 1869 – June 23, 1930) was an American writer, born in Harrison County, West Virginia. Although his name is not immediately familiar to those outside of specialist circles, many of his collections are still in print, and many collections of detective fiction include works by him. Post's best-known character is the mystery solving, justice dispensing West Virginian backwoodsman, Uncle Abner. The 22 Uncle Abner tales, written between 1911 and 1928, have been called some of "the finest mysteries ever written".Post's other recurring characters include the lawyers Randolph Mason and Colonel Braxton, and the detectives Sir Henry Marquis and Monsieur Jonquelle. His total output was approximately 230 titles, including several non-crime novels.

Virginia Mae Brown (November 13, 1923 – February 15, 1991) was an American civil servant, government official, and lawyer. Among her many "firsts", she became West Virginia's first female assistant attorney general by working for Attorney General John G. Fox. She was later named West Virginia's insurance commissioner, the first female to hold this position in the United States. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Brown a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the first female since its inception in 1887, and later promoted her to be its first female chair.

David Lynn Selby (born February 5, 1941) is an American film, television, and stage actor. He is best known for playing Quentin Collins on the daytime soap Dark Shadows (1968–71) and Richard Channing on the prime-time soap Falcon Crest (1982–90). Selby also had prominent roles in the television series Flamingo Road (1981–82) and the feature film Raise the Titanic (1980).