Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 28, 1993 TAG: 9303260337
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WENDI GIBSON RICHERT STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Norton is the city up the road from Appalachia, the small, aging town that once was the bustling center of Wise County.
I spent most all my days there, from infancy on Hamner Hill and puberty on Poplar Street, to graduation at nearby Clinch Valley College.
I became one of Henegar's "exports" after graduation, when I realized my chances of finding a promising career with decent pay - or just a good job I could hold on to - lay outside my small county. I moved to Roanoke.
Sure, I missed home, Mom and Dad, even their cats. But as I headed north on Interstate 81, I never looked back at the history of those mountains or the life my grandfathers endured as coal miners battling for mine reform and union rights.
When I moved to Roanoke, three hours away, I didn't even know about all that. I had never thought to ask.
No, I left figuring I'd return to Norton only to visit my family. Growing up, my friends and I had always said: "I can't wait to get out of here, and live in the real world."
I never dreamed I'd ever long to go back - permanently.
It was a warm and sunny spring day last year when my father and I sat on the front porch on Poplar Street, sorting through clear plastic bags filled with his treasured mementos. Several strips of negatives and yellowed columns from his days as our local newspaper's photographer/writer/editor were mixed with batches of old letters and postcards, and tattered black-and-white photographs of my hometown.
It must have been the way Dad so eagerly explained each picture that made me beg him to take me to the old Blackwood Coal Camp where he lived for eight years as a young boy. The camp was one of two named "Blackwood." The other one now is swallowed by the county landfill.
The Blackwood camp was one of many erected around the turn of the century to house a coal company's miners and their families. The mix of ethnic groups that dwelled in these coal towns seems unbelievable to me - black and white, Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Slavs. In fact, I've heard it said that bluegrass was born in these towns; that it is a mix of every nationality that lived there. I like to believe that.
It was a short drive to the outskirts of Norton, where Dad and I crossed a precarious bridge and a pair of rusted railroad tracks. About five old and peeling frame houses, identical and side-by-side, stood on the hill ahead.
The old company store - Dad still calls it the "commissary" - and a red brick office building where his dad and grandad were bookkeepers sat beside us to the right. Higher on the hill and to our left loomed the mine supervisor's mansion, long abandoned but still a beautiful three-story Victorian screaming for restoration.
I had been here with Dad before, but it never meant anything until this trip, when we went strolling down the tracks in search of the old swimming hole he and my aunt played in. Or when we stopped to look for the tree where he'd carved his initials 40-some years ago.
Researching and writing the story on coal camps taught me more about Southwest Virginia history than any amount of studying and cramming I did in college.
As I learned more about this place I called home for 21 years, I became angry that so little was taught about it in my school days, and that the few demographic details I did learn hinted of nothing compared to what I was learning now.
My parents always told me never to be ashamed of my small, rural hometown. And growing up, I tried not to be. But it was tough to feign pride when so many of my peers wouldn't even admit to strangers that they were born and bred in the heart of Southwest Virginia.
Never did we learn together that being mountain folks with accents was OK - and something we should be proud of.
I still wonder how I could have grown up in Norton without learning any of its history. Or how I could have attended college there without ever hearing about our own Appalachian writers and history makers.
Perhaps it took a good long look in my rear-view mirror to appreciate everything I was leaving behind. I only regret that in my hurry to move forward, I had never looked back before.
Wendi Gibson Richert, a 1989 graduate of Clinch Valley College, has worked for the Roanoke Times & World-News for three years.
by CNB