Before embarking on a career in domestic violence victim advocacy, Tina Manns says she was shot at through her closed door by a relative by marriage because she was protecting his child from abuse. She thought she'd been hit when the bullet ricocheted off the wall, and plaster hit her arm.
For some people, a similar experience might have deterred them from working in the field - especially decades ago, when the work was even more dangerous.
But after a suggestion from a friend who she had helped get out of an abusive relationship, Manns started working with victims of domestic violence at the YWCA in Charleston in 1986. Six years later, she moved to the new outreach office in Boone County, where she lived.
She stayed for 30 years.
In an interview last week at the Madison Civic Center, as about 65 of her friends, family, coworkers and other fans flowed into the room where she would celebrate her retirement and be recognized as a Distinguished West Virginian, Manns tried to explain why she waited until she was 87 to retire.
"I don't know," she said. "I guess I thought I could do something maybe somebody else wouldn't do."
It isn't because her fiery spirit is waning. Just recently, she left the courtroom with a victim and the abuser "started in on" the woman, she said.
"I said, 'You know, you didn't learn a thing,'" she said. "'We can still go back in there and do it again.' The bailiff said, 'Tina, would you get in that room and just be quiet.'"
The work did prove to be dangerous. Once, Manns said, the abuser of a woman she'd helped pointed a gun at Mann's daughter.
"I got home and I said, 'Honey, if your hair had been white, you'd have been a goner,'" she said.
It was also more dangerous because at first, police involvement was limited.
In the early days, she and other workers would drive victims to the shelter without police assistance, because they weren't sure which officers they could trust.
"The buddy plan," she noted.
Victims would even sleep at her office at night, until she could get them to the shelter.
"I might have been a little bit ignorant sometimes," she said, "but somebody has to do it."
These days, she speaks highly of many of the local police officers, who have learned more about domestic violence through training in the past 30 years.
She has also seen improvements in other areas.
Domestic violence agencies were once few and far between, and they had fewer resources. Manns would stop at the store to purchase milk and bread, with her own money, for the YWCA shelter in Charleston when she left her home in Boone County.
These days, she says agencies are much better funded.
Manns, and other domestic violence advocates, have worked to pass laws as well. She remembers when domestic violence protective orders were only valid for a short time. Recently, she has worked with victims whose abusers were prohibited from contact with them for a year.
But she's also seen that you can pass all the laws you want and change all the policies you want, but changing deep-seated sexist attitudes about men and women is a bit harder.
Manns said she knows people still say things like "It's a man. It's his castle." Or they'll say, "It's her fault. She didn't do what he told her to do." That "it's still a man's world."
Manns never saw it that way. Maybe it was because she knew of relatives abusing family members when she was growing up, Maybe it was helping that friend get out of a an abusive relationship later on. Maybe it was something inside her from the beginning - an ability to see the difference between right and wrong, and the drive to fight for justice.
Whatever the spark, because of people like her who have refused to stay silent in order to fight the belief that domestic violence is a private family affair, that attitude is declining.
And Manns has also seen that women are more willing to ask for help.
She noted that it's easier for them to leave now, because protective orders can require that the abuser leaves the home.
But it's also because of advocates like Manns, and others throughout the state, who are there every day to help victims when they are ready to ask for it.
She had to take off work for a time, after a severe accident in which she almost lost her life.
"In the emergency room, I was telling them I have to work a double tonight," she said. "I've got to get out of here."
Manns now leaves the work to those she mentored, like Pam Gillenwater, program director at the YWCA.
In her retirement, she plans to spend more time with her grandchildren, take more naps and enjoy her rocking chair.
But she doesn't plan on quitting advocating for victims anytime soon. Maybe she won't be at the office every day. But she'll still be referring friends who need help to the YWCA Resolve Family Abuse Program. And she'll still be speaking up for victims of injustice when she sees it.
"It's been my life," she said.
Reach Erin Beck at
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