For its ninth Reunion, the Welfare Team met on July 20, 2013, at the Erickson Alumni Center on the WVU Evansdale campus.  The Team consists of employees of the West Virginia Department of Welfare from the years 1969 through 1975. During that time, the group accomplished many groundbreaking achievements under the leadership of Welfare Commissioner Ed Flowers. This was the first Reunion which was not held at the Flowers Morgantown residence.

This Reunion was dedicated to honoring the service of Jimmy Luster and Ward Nicklin who were present with family members and 44 survivors from the Seventies.  A surprise awaited the guests who encountered life-sized images of the two honorees at the name tag table. The rationale for having clones of the honorees present was that if one Jimmy Luster and Ward Nicklin were good, two were better.

Following serious words of tribute to those two colleagues and many personal accounts and stories from their work days colleagues, the commissioner presented, on behalf of Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, certificates proclaiming Jimmy and Ward as Distinguished Mountaineers.  All guests were then invited to pay tribute to the honorees by affixing a paper “medal” with signatures or messages on the clones.  

At the conclusion of the program, Dr. John Yankey who was presiding, called Jimmy, Ward and their families to surround their clones and then awarded the children custody of the clones and announced that a “reverse adoption” was effected and they should take the clone home with them.