West Virginia can be diverse. Where in West Virginia? If they can grow apples (Which they do with appropriate pest control), I assume they can grow quince:

https://www.gardenguides.com/1.....ginia.html

I opened up a very dusty copy of Sunset Western plant encyclopedia that covers everything east of Colorado state. There's no mention of fire-blight that we should worry about. On the other hand everywhere else in continental US is of great concern to almost impossible.

So this link ranks pears and apples verses 6 fruiting quince clones for fireblight resistance;
  https://www.ars.usda.gov/resea.....blications
; and the news does not compare favorably in the quince tree department.

One such person living on the east coast could try and become creative using some of the **pears that are listed as the most resistant. They are easy to find ratings. But it involves lots of talent users back east don't much have. Like establishing a scaffold tree of a very resistant rootstock such as some betulafolia or other species clones are supposed to be. Then if your pear does get blasted it only destroys the branch to the point of attachment to the scaffold branch.

**I purposely omitted taking about grafting quince to pyrus stocks because it is not recommended due to incompatibility

Pyrus betulafolia rootstocks are not producing pear trees with early production. So an asian/japanese pear (syn: nashi pear) must be used. At any rate I had great results at home using nashi pears on betulafolia with early cropping of which in the days of paper pictures is still a favorite of mine. So if anyone gets interested in the idea could request a copy via PM. For the rest it's a 30 inch tall young tree that stands with flowers at 3 times the height of my old cat in the picture. Such a thing is never possible with regular pear. Shinseiki is one self fertile nashi pear as listed highly resistant for fire-blight, but I would still recommend seeking out the best cultivar options for the scaffold rootstock as well.

Back to the point of my double ** on graft incompatibility. It's possible to place pear on quince but the other way is asking for trouble.
...who knows why(?) but that's way off the original topic.