MORGANTOWN — Sometimes we forget what this college spirit stuff is really about, especially those who have come and gone, building careers and families away from old alma mater.

There comes a time when you find yourself in need of something special, a time to put on the school football jersey, gather with other graduates and hoist a few beers, watch a game, reliving yesterday and forgetting about the troubles of today.

Meet Kim Webster.

“Webby, to other Mounties,” she would say.

 She’s an actress, far off in Los Angeles, and has lived through some tough times and some wonderful times. You may have heard of her. She had a recurring role on the television series “The West Wing”, appearing in 57 episodes.

But that is getting ahead of ourselves.

Right now, at this moment, just make note that on Saturday night she and number of other WVU fans gathered in an L.A. bistro called “The Beanery” for WVU’s battle with LSU.

“It’s nothing like the Boston Beanery in Morgantown,” she said. “Still, it does feel good to say.”

Life in L.A. is not what it was in Morgantown, rest assured.

“L.A. is a totally different place than Morgantown,” she said. “I don’t want to totally trash L.A. but the people are … well, it’s very plastic. You don’t have a feeling like you do in Morgantown.”

It is too big, too focused on things that don’t really matter in the overall scheme of things, too much a Hollywood set.

“Country Roads has never been more poignant than when you are out here, so far away,” she said. “It’s really hard to meet genuine people out here. I’d rather be alone for 365 days in a row than hang out with some of these people.”

The journey to Los Angeles was a roundabout one for Kim Webster.

She is originally for New Jersey, the central part of the state, “farm country” she calls it in an accent that can’t be mistaken for anything but “Joisey.”

“I didn’t plan on going to West Virginia. My guidance counselor made me apply there because she knew I was big into football and it was a big party school at the time and she didn’t think I’d get into the schools I was applying to with my grades,” she said.

“At the time it wasn’t all that hard to get into West Virginia. It’s harder now.”

If first impressions were lasting, her life would have been totally different. She recalls her first visit.

“I was, like, I wasn’t really feeling it. It was so spread out. I wanted to go to a smaller school. The PRT, two campuses ... it was too much. But then I got in school and, well, I bleed blue and gold.”

Her first semester was a disaster. She was an aimless teenager caught up in the party whirl, not knowing where she was headed except into trouble. That first semester, her grade point average was 0.8.

“My parents, they knew I had a little bit of a party history, they said that they would pull me out of school if I got bad grades. So I hid my report card and only told them a few years ago what really happened my first semester,” she said.

After that first semester, she knew she had to do something.

“I came back and said I need to find some classes to boost my GPA. I took an acting class and the rest was history. I fell in love. I felt I had to make it my major. By my last year, I ended up with a full scholarship, got some 4.0s and ended up graduating with a 3.66.”

That is not to say that she didn’t party and when she did there often was a football game involved.

“I tailgated at every game. I’d be up at 7 a.m. in the Blue Lot or in the Pit. I even made it into plenty of games. A lot of times I’d come out at halftime and start drinking and not make it back in. If we were playing Miami or one of the good games, I’d be there the whole time,” she said.

And when West Virginia won, which they did often during her time there, she was down there on the field.

“I tore down the goal posts, all that fun stuff,” she said.



o Kim Webster learned that just because you graduate it doesn’t mean you are  ready for the real world. She left school for Pittsburgh and a modeling contract, but found she was back in Morgantown four or five days a week, sleeping on the sorority’s couch and partying.

“I should never have moved to Pittsburgh,” she said.

After an opportunity to go to New York fell through, she just shrugged her shoulders and, like the Beverly Hillbillies, loaded up the truck and headed to Los Angeles.

“I just went. I didn’t know a single person. No agent, no friends, nothing,” she said. “My mom had a friend from high school who I stayed with a couple of weeks, but then I was on my own.”

That didn’t work out so well and she moved back home for a year because things were going so badly.

Upon her return she went after her Screen Actors Guild card, which she figured would help her get her foot in the door. In the meantime she was doing extra work, which was frowned upon by real actors.

“On St. Patrick’s Day, 1999, I got the card. I said, ‘I’m not going to do extras work”.

A couple of weeks later, on April 1, she received a call that offered her a job in a pilot they were filming.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to do that, I’m a real actor now … blah, blah, blah.’ I was stupid and naïve. My friend was like, listen, you’re starving. It’s 120 bucks for the day. It’s a pilot. No one is going to remember the show. Just go.”

So she went, almost turning and leaving as she got to the studio.

The show was “The West Wing.”

“I’m looking at the cast, right, and thinking they’re not going to pick this show up? Martin Sheen, Rob Lowe, so many stars,” she said.

So she took the job.

“I knew within two hours, I was meant to be there. It was destiny. By the third episode they gave me my first line. The next day one of the actors couldn’t be there so they asked me if I could come in there and read the part. I’m there in front of Alan Sorkin, John Welch, who produces E.R. and our show, Rob Lowe and Martin Sheen.

“Here I am as an extra. People were staring at me, like what is this girl who is an extra doing in our read through? Strange looks like you wouldn’t believe. I didn’t get to read the script beforehand. It was cold. But apparently I nailed it. They were all coming up to me afterwards. They were so impressed.

“I felt like I’d just won the lottery.”

And so it was for seven years that she was a regular on the Emmy-winning show, her role increasing.

“I got to go the Emmy’s. I got to go the SAG Awards. I got a certificate saying I was a cast member on an award-winning show. I had all that, and more money than I knew what to do with at the time. And I would have done the show for free.”

After seven years, though, the show stopped production, the family was broken up.

She was getting some work, doing what you do in L.A., which wasn’t really very much until a year ago this week when her apartment building burned.

“While the fire was happening — and it burned about 6 hours — I was posting the pictures on Facebook. I didn’t have to say a lot. The pictures told the story. Everything was burned or smoke and water damaged. I got a totally fresh start … not the kind I was looking for,” she said.

She spent a night in a shelter and then three nights in “a shady hotel” that the Red Cross had provided.

Her brother put his work address on line for people to send donations to and number of WVU friends helped, but no more than an unlikely angel who stepped forward.

“Shannon Tweed shows up at my brother’s office with a bunch of stuff,” she said. “My brother was like, ‘Shannon Tweed is here, do you want to talk to her?’ I didn’t know her. I knew of her, but I’d never met her.”

Shannon Tweed, of course, is a former Playmate of the Year, one of Heff’s girls, who went to have a movie career and got into a relationship with Gene Simmons of KISS, leading to two children and the reality show “Family Jewels.”

She’d heard of Webster’s plight from Marley Matlin, the actress who overcame deafness and had been on the West Wing with Webster.

“She got on the phone and asked where I was staying. I said I had this hotel for three days. She asked where I was going. I had no idea. She said, well come over and if you’re cool you can stay here for a few days. She ended up putting me up for a couple of months.”



o Recently she came across some people who, like her, were Mountaineer fans and they began gathering for games.

“The first week there were like 10 of us. The second week it was probably 20. Now it’s about 90, people from 30 to their 50s and some just out of school,” she said. “There’s even a couple of former players.”

One is Tim Agee, a defensive back from the early 1980s.

“Most are graduates, some went to Fairmont State. We even had people who went to Marshall rooting for WVU in the Marshall game. I screamed so loud in that bar the last nine seconds, I almost fainted. They had to hold me up,” she said.

It’s taken time and a law suit is pending over the fire, but it appears she took the right country road West.

“I’ve been meeting more Mountaineers now and in like 10 minutes it’s like we’ve known each other our whole lives. We talk about places in Morgantown, things at WVU … it’s like universal for Mountaineers,” she said.

And as for L.A.?

“I fantasize about dropping out of life for a year and moving back to Morgantown,” she said.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.