Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 2, 1992 TAG: 9112310240
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
WOMAN OF COMPASSION
It's hard to believe that Nannie Hairston was a coal miner's daughter.A stylish 70-year-old who doesn't look a day over 55, Hairston carries herself with the pride and elegance of royalty.
But perhaps growing up in a large coal mining family in West Virginia gave Hairston more wealth than money could buy - love and compassion.
This fall she was given the first community service award by the Montgomery County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for her volunteer work in the community. Chapter President Oscar Williams described Hairston as a woman with a "most tender heart of pure love and gold."
"It was exciting getting the NAACP award, but the award that has meant the most was the 1986 Mother of the Year award from my church [Shaeffer Memorial Baptist Church in Christiansburg]," she said. That's because "that's where you start, at home."
Hairston credits her parents for her desire to help others and her love of volunteering.
She was raised by "parents who spent very little of their life in grade school but believed in God and was blessed with wisdom and common sense," she said.
Hairston, the oldest child, had seven sisters and two brothers. Her parents insisted that all their children finish high school.
Now, herself a mother of four and grandmother of eight, Hairston has turned her attention to today's young people.
"When people retire they should put time into the kids because it's our responsibility," she said. People talk about saving the children, "but the only way they can be saved is through our strength and experience, teaching them how to survive."
Hairston, who retired from the Radford Army Ammunition Plant's production department in 1983 after 20 years, saves everything for her grandchildren: newspaper clippings, magazines and even signatures and notes written on Christmas cards.
Saving pieces of the past is something African Americans need to do, she said. "Blacks haven't had a tradition of keeping and preserving the records that can be useful to the community . . . We must learn as we make history to record it."
And it's not always major events by prominent people that are important to remember. It's the small family events that need to be passed through generations, she said.
Hairston is a perfect example.
Her shelves are stacked with photo albums and scrapbooks. She even keeps a guest book of all the people who have visited her home.
"You don't have to be the president of the United States to have a guest book," she said.
She doesn't remember why, but in the late 1940s or early '50s she decided to start one. She flicked through the pages of the second book beginning in 1976. Each page was filled with dates and names.
Some of the more notable things Hairston has done include two visits to the White House.
The first visit was with her husband, John, who received the National Volunteer Award in 1971. The second invitation came as quite a surprise, she said.
Hairston was a delegate for the Democratic National Convention to a reception for Zimbabwe Prime Minister Robert Mugabe in 1980.
She was surprised that her husband hadn't been invited, too. She even called asking if he could go with her, but he couldn't.
"I griped about it for about five days. . . . One night I woke up and said, `I think I'll go,'" she said.
Hairston's life is filled with interesting places and people, but 1991 stood out as one of the best: she and her husband celebrated 50 years of marriage.
Their daughters - Catherine, Edwina, Dy-anne and Colette - organized a celebration at Virginia Tech's Donaldson Brown Center in June. Hairston fondly remembered the family and friends who attended, including two Army friends the Hairstons had not seen in 40 years.
As the years go by, "good friends and relatives will be our special treasure."
Hairston and her husband were married on John's 21st birthday because his mother wouldn't let him get married sooner, Hairston said.
They both attended Excelsior Negro High School, sang in the a cappella choir together and graduated in 1939. But there was no high school romance. It was after graduation that they fell in love.
They moved to Christiansburg in the summer of 1953 when the coal mines closed, she said. Because her husband refused to drive back to West Virginia every weekend for Hairston to see her family, "my parents packed up and came with us," she said.
They moved into a farmhouse off U.S. 460 and have stayed there ever since. Over the years her house has been filled with family and friends.
At one point almost every room in the house had someone sleeping in it, including a 10-year-old girl her daughters had befriended at school and brought home "so we could wash her hair and give her better clothing. This was almost like a community center."
Because of the girl's unsettled home life she stayed with the Hairston's for a year.
"If you can't live inside of your own walls, then you can't go into the community and teach sharing and compassion," she said.
Her first venture into the community to help others was in 1945 when she learned of a family working for nothing on a dairy farm in Tazewell County.
"They were still in slavery. . . . They smelled like horses and cows," she said.
She and her family eventually helped them to leave the farm and threatened the farm's owner with exposing him to the community if he protested, she said.
She also helped the Mary Montgomery Nursing Home that was established by a black woman in Pulaski more than 25 years ago.
"So few people would help her," Hairston said, so she and her mother donated linen to the home and helped where they could until the home closed about 12 years ago.
Now, her pet project is the Christiansburg Community Center on High Street, where she helps motivate young people to be better citizens and offer them positive role models.
Children suffer in today's society because both parents are forced to work and the child is neglected, she said. Children need more than food, clothing and shelter.
"Complete motherhood includes first setting an example of living in harmony with Christian principles; second, encouragement to gain knowledge for its value toward a higher and better life" and third, to teach young people an "unselfish devotion" to humanity.
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