CASTO SCRIPTS DOCUMENTARY
ON THE WEST VIRGINIA CAPITOL

Over the years, James E. Casto has been a number of things – a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist; a freelance magazine writer; a public relations person, and an amateur historian with more than a half dozen books to his credit.

Now, Casto has added another title to that list: scriptwriter.

He has researched and written the script for “A Moving Monument,” a new one-hour video documentary that traces the history of the West Virginia State Capitol. The documentary, which debuted on West Virginia Public Television on March 13, was produced by MotionMasters, a film, video and multimedia production company located in Charleston, W.Va.

Copies of the documentary are to be distributed to schools and libraries in West Virginia and offered for retail sale.

“The Capitol’s colorful story is one that I’ve long wanted to tell,” Casto said, “and I was indeed pleased that when I proposed the idea of a documentary to MotionMasters, the folks there enthusiastically embraced it.”

Completed and dedicated in 1932, West Virginia’s stately Capitol is one of a half dozen buildings in two cities, Charleston and Wheeling, which have been its seat of government since it became a state in 1863. The documentary takes viewers on a tour of those earlier Capitols, and then details the construction of the grand current Capitol, designed by famed architect Cass Gilbert.

Casto was a member of the news staff at the Huntington (W.Va.) Herald-Dispatch for more than 40 years. He retired from the newspaper in 2004 and now is Associate Director for Public Information at the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing (RCBI) in Huntington.

More about the documentary, including information on purchasing copies, can be found at its web site, www.movingmonument.org.