A place that was all at once a community center, university and convenience store quietly cleared its shelves and closed Wednesday morning.
The 7-Eleven in the small town of Rand, once immortalized by famous NFL wide receiver and Rand native Randy Moss as "Rand University," is no longer in business.
A store closing for the massive corporate chain normally wouldn't create much of a blip on the radar. There are more than 56,000 7-Eleven locations worldwide.
But the store at 5425 Midland Drive gave Rand a fleeting moment in the spotlight.
During player introductions for a primetime NFL game in 2012, Moss said he attended Rand University. No academic institution exists with that name, of course - he was giving a shout-out to his hometown and one of its few longstanding businesses.
The 7-Eleven was a meeting place and one of the few easily accessible places selling food and gas in the town of approximately 1,631 people. John Erby, a lifelong Rand resident, said Moss used to frequent the store. It was also used often by older people in the community without reliable access to transportation, he added.
"[The closing] happened all of a sudden," Erby said outside the store Wednesday morning. "I think it'll hurt a whole lot of older folks, there's not much else out here to go to."
Donnie "Blue" Jones, a friend of Moss, explained the "Rand University" monaker in a 2008 interview with the Boston Globe.
"Growing up in a low-income area, the one thing we had was a 7-Eleven," Jones said. "We've had all-state athletes here, but because of the environment in which they grew up, people in the community would say, 'It doesn't matter. He isn't going anywhere but Rand University.'"
Marquis Daisy, director of the ESPN documentary Rand University, which chronicled Moss' upbringing, said in an interview with Life + Times in 2014 that the 7-Eleven represents the difficulty for Rand natives to leave the area and make a living elsewhere.
"It's this mythical school of higher learning, this fictitious college, but they embrace it," Daisy said. "To a man, in that neighborhood it's like, 'What are you about to go do?' 'I'm about to hang out at the university.' I was fascinated by that."
There are few big-name establishments serving food in the area. The closest is a Dollar General store one mile away from the 7-Eleven, but it is limited to snack items. Kroger and K-Mart both have a store in the vicinity, but they are more than five miles away.
The Rand location used to be under the umbrella of 7-Eleven licensee Prima Marketing. In 2012, 7-Eleven acquired the location along with 76 others owned by Prima Marketing, most of which were in the West Virginia area.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Rand location was still listed as a franchise available for sale on 7-Eleven's website along with 53 others. It is under the company's Zero Franchise Fee initiative, meaning it waives the franchise fee for potential buyers. Stores where the initiative applies typically have lower sales volume compared to the national average, according to a news release on the company's website.
A company employee confirmed the store's closure last month and said employees at the Rand location have been given the opportunity to transfer and work at nearby 7-Eleven locations in Charleston.
Workers clearing the interior at the Rand location would not say what the future of the building is. The 7-Eleven media relations office did not respond to emails or phone calls.
Reach Max Garland at max.garland@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886, or follow @maxgarlandtypes on Twitter.