 "Photo: Kristen Footo")
 "Photo: Photo courtesy of Heritage Farm")
On a wall adorned with framed photographs and newspaper articles hangs a decoration reading: “All because two people fell in love.”
It is a quote that encompasses the history of Heritage Farm Village in Huntington, a five-acre lot dedicated to the state’s ancestors by Audy Michael Perry.
Perry was the first of two sons born to Austin and Virginia Perry in Huntington in 1936.
“They were like many parents of my generation,” Perry said. “They were wonderful, hard-working people who believed if you worked hard and did the right thing it would work out and believed very much in the education of their children.”
His mother attended school until eighth grade and worked at a glass company in the West End called Owens-Illinois, Inc. His father graduated from high school and worked for International Nickel, now Specialty Metals.
“I was not born with a proverbial silver spoon in my mouth,” Perry said. “I was blessed with wonderful parents that loved me and showered me with encouragement and support.”
He said in fifth grade he had delivered a report card to his mother. When she looked for the grades, she saw that in place of letters there were question marks. She asked Perry to walk back to school with her to see his teacher. He protested for a moment, but then walked back to school with his mother at his side. His mother addressed the grades and the teacher answered that Perry did not deserve bad grades because his work was sufficient, but he could do better.
He said his mother told him, “Son, you’re expected to do the best you can do, not just try to get by, but to do the best.”
After that, he said, he always made good grades.
In that same year, Perry met the love of his life. He said he went home and told his mother he had met a young girl with long, brown hair and was going to marry her. Perry and that little girl, Henriella, have been married for 51 years.
Perry graduated from Huntington High School in 1954, what he calls the peak time in Huntington.
“It was a great time because there were plenty of jobs,” Perry said. “So if you graduated from high school, you could’ve gone and had a career in the Army, as many of my classmates did, or there were many wonderful jobs here locally where you could get a good job and raise a family and buy a home and retire, as many of my classmates did. Or you could go to college.”
Perry chose the latter of the three, attending Marshall University as a political science major and graduated magna cum laude. Upon graduation in 1958, he attended West Virginia University College of Law and graduated first in his class.
“My father was a much smarter man than I was,” Perry said about why he attended law school. “He encouraged me after I graduated Marshall to go get one of those other things, meaning a master’s [degree], or in my case, a law degree.”
After law school, Perry went to work for Huddleston Bolen law firm and practiced there for 20 years. He then moved into banking, becoming the chairman of the first Huntington National Bank.
“I got a chance to work with a lot of wonderful people, to get the laws changed, to modernize the banking laws in West Virginia, to create branch banking and ATMs,” Perry said. “Even ATMs were illegal in 1980. You couldn’t have but one branch and you could have no ATMs off premises.”
Perry said he joined a group effort to change the banking laws from some of the most archaic in the U.S. to some of the most progressive. He also helped the Huntington National Bank grow from a $150 million bank to more than $3 billion through acquisitions and mergers with more than 20 banks throughout West Virginia. In the end, the bank was sold to Bank One, which is now a part of Chase Bank.
After his banking days were over, Perry retired. In 1999, he was the interim president of Marshall University, which he said was a wonderful time.
Since then, he has been the chairman of the Marshall University Board of Advisors, chairman of the Marshall University Board of Governors and a member of eight search committees for university presidents.
“You have to pick and choose,” Perry said. “You pick things that you think will be interesting and could conceivably make a difference.”
Perry and his wife have three children and eight grandchildren, all of whom help with and enjoy Heritage Farm Village.
They moved their family into a log home when their children were young, near what is now the Heritage Farm property.
“It enabled us to go full blast in our collecting of our heritage,” Perry said. “It gave us something to do together as a family, to go junking every Saturday and to look for the things that we have now accumulated in over 30 years.”
The buildings on Heritage Farm have been built within the past 13 years and extend over five acres. The whole family is involved in some aspect of the farm.
“We’re fortunate that it looks like the next generation will be able to carry on what we’ve tried to get started,” Perry said. “We have lots of people who help, so our dream has become the dream of a number of others.”
He also said some of the most gratifying moments of the farm are those that he has shared with his wife.
“I’m fortunate enough to have married the love of my life and to have her love me madly and me love her madly; it doesn’t get any better than that,” Perry said. “The farm was something we could do together.”
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