Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 17, 1993 TAG: 9303170161
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Medium
MOUNTAIN LIFE PROVES SEDUCTIVE TO STUDENT VOLUNTEERS FROM MICH.
Jennifer Schaaf came to Pearisburg from Michigan last month, looking for Appalachia.What she found was grits, hospitality, Southern accents, sausage and biscuits, and bluegrass music.
And she found the Cascades.
Schaaf and 10 other Western Michigan University students had come here on spring break - fortunately, weeks before the Big Snowstorm of '93 - expecting to do volunteer work in a disadvantaged area.
They worked, all right. In the week they were here, they painted a whole auditorium in Pearisburg.
They also had their attitudes adjusted.
You might say they were seduced.
"It's so amazing," said WMU student Manuel Hock, a native of Germany. The students are staying with Pearisburg families. "The atmosphere is so intimate. . . . We sort of feel like adopted by our host families."
"Many of us are considering moving back here, maybe going to grad school," said Jason Lott.
You might have to live in Michigan to understand why.
But the students noticed people in Pearisburg they didn't even know waved at them sometimes. In Michigan, they don't do that.
And the night after they arrived, the Pearisburg Lions Club held a party with a Dixieland jazz band, to welcome the kids to town. One hundred and fifty people showed up.
"We just sort of got sucked in," said Becky Miazek of their reception. "It was like a big hug."
The Pearisburg project grew out of a well-known project in Ivanhoe - an economically depressed former mining town on the line between Carroll and Grayson counties.
The Ivanhoe project is college students spending their spring breaks working in the mountain community instead of baking in the Florida sunshine. It has attracted so much attention since it began several years ago that more students want to come than the little town can handle, project officials have said.
Awhile back, the Ivanhoe-based Volunteers for Communities began trying to match the students up with some other localities that needed volunteer workers.
Pearisburg, meanwhile, had put together a community spruce-up program called Pride in Excellency in Pearisburg - or PEP.
"They had heard that we had some things going on that we really needed some volunteers for," said PEP Chairperson Linda Tawney.
In fact, the town was in the process of turning its dilapidated old high school into a community center. Free labor was hard to turn down.
Truth be known, the students actually paid for the privilege of working here - $100 apiece. The money goes toward their upkeep for the week and toward work materials, Tawney said.
"When I grew up everything was taken care of," said Becky Miazek, explaining the trip's appeal to her. "I always had everything I needed. As soon as I heard about this, I said `I want to do this.' "
How much did these Michigan kids really know about where they were going?
Consider that Miazek packed a bathing suit.
In February.
"I thought I was going to get a tan here," she said.
They got a quick education.
For starters, Tawney taught the Northerners a few critical Southern words, including "yonder," "reckon" - and, of course, "y'all."
They also had to revise any preconceptions about Appalachia after a close-up view of Pearisburg - a town with a struggling business district, but also several attractive churches, a historic courthouse and lots of well-kept homes on tidy streets.
"We have our problem areas," said Town Manager Ken Vittum, "but we have a lot to be proud of."
"Appalachia is as varied as the Midwest, the Deep South, the Southwest," Tawney said. "There's poverty, there's great wealth, there's middle class . . . . When people stereotype Appalachia, they're incorrect. We're very proud of these mountains and the beauty of this county," she said.
The area's natural beauty was represented by an afternoon hike to Cascades, the spectacular waterfall in Jefferson National Forest. The students also heard bluegrass music. And they saw people flatfooting.
"All 11 of them jumped up and said, `I want to do that,' " recalled Tawney. The result was a little more like a polka than the traditional mountain dance step, but never mind.
Time also was set aside for the students to socialize, learn some Pearisburg history - the cupola atop the courthouse still has cannonball dents dating from the Civil War - play volleyball and basketball and eat dinner out at Mountain Lake, where they had to be told what corn bread was.
Throughout, the students said they were struck by how close Giles County residents are to one another. But the deepest lesson may have been that Appalachia looks a lot like home; and poverty is where you find it:
"In any community there's a lot that can be done if you just go out and find it," said Jason Lott.
Next time, said Schaaf, "We want to go to a town near us."
"That's the only way anything's ever going to change in the United States," said Miazek, "is if we go back to our communities and help."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***