West Virginia town hopes to make Stewart feel at home

ALDERSON, W.Va. — A sign at the Dinner Bell restaurant just outside town reads: “Welcome Martha. Welcome to Alderson.”

Martha is Martha Stewart, and by today the federal women’s prison in this town of about 1,000 people will be her home for the next five months.

Dinner Bell manager Annette Kellison said she is not so sure a 63-year-old woman deserves to be at Alderson for a first offense. But “I’m so glad she’s coming here,” Kellison said.

The homemaking authority was sentenced to Alderson after she and her broker were convicted in March of lying about a stock sale.

The famous and the felonious are nothing new to the town of Alderson, where the prison that opened in 1927 has seen the likes of Billie Holiday, Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, and would-be presidential assassins Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore.

Yet none has attracted as much attention as Stewart. The media are in force here, and town residents are not averse to profiting from it.

Harold Massie declined to say how much he is charging to allow satellite trucks park in his field outside the prison’s gates.

Neighbor Jef Harris is charging about $100 a day to let one media company rent his forklift.

“It’s a little out of hand,” Harris said. Along the wall on one of his lumber company buildings, Harris has tacked a 9-by-12-foot gray tarp with the words “We love you Martha” painted in white Martha Stewart brand paint.

Harris and other residents do not expect to see Stewart when she arrives at the 105-acre minimum-security prison along the Greenbrier River.

In fact, because of her celebrity, residents do not expect Stewart will accompany other inmates who volunteer to work around town cleaning trash from the riverbank and pulling weeds.

“It’s so sad she’s so gifted and talented but we won’t be able to enjoy it because they won’t let her into the community,” Kellison said.

Stewart will be eligible for jobs that pay only 12 cents to 40 cents an hour while in prison. But Harris said he expects Stewart will profit from the experience.

“She’s Martha and she has the ability to turn things into gold,” Harris said. “She will turn this whole experience into money. It will be a good thing for her.”