Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 21, 1993 TAG: 9302190076
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PATRICIA FAIN HUTSON
DATELINE: PEMBROKE LENGTH: Long
`JESSIE STORIES' SURVIVE MOUNTAIN MAN
The lone figure of Jessie Luke Williams, 77, was often seen, wearing a miner's cap with a lamp attached, walking along the highway that winds through this small Giles County town.His death on Feb. 6, following surgery for removal of his feet, which had been infected with gangrene after being frozen, shocked many people.
The chapel of the Williams-Jamison-Kendall Funeral Home in Pembroke, rarely needing more than 125 memorial cards for its services, provided 547 for Williams' mourners - and that was not enough for the crowd that attended his funeral.
"I think everyone who came in to pay their respects to Jessie had a `Jessie story' to tell," said Eddie Kendall, flashing a warm smile. Kendall, who owns the funeral home, also was Williams' friend, benefactor and minister at his funeral.
"I kind of `inherited' Jessie," Kendall said, referring to the time Kendall became owner of the funeral home and Williams kept the coal furnace fired. Rastus Jamison, prior owner of the home, looked after Williams as much as the mountain man would allow. Kendall followed suit, grateful for Williams' reliability.
"Many's the time when I would return from collecting a body on an icy night to find the radiators singing and Jessie contentedly sitting beside the roaring furnace, smoking that pipe of his," Kendall recalled.
In his eulogy, Kendall portrayed Williams as a "conglomeration of legends," for his character was as diverse and contrary as a day in March.
There was the "frightful" Williams, who carried a large knife and growled at children that he would "cut your ears off" and other nonsensical remarks. Yet he was as harmless as a beloved pet.
Sometimes he would be an endearing clown, standing on his head for children or performing tricks. He liked to put his pipe on his hat on the floor, spread-eagle his legs to lower himself, pick up the pipe in his teeth and return to a standing position.
Williams was brought to Pembroke at the age of 14 from his home on Butt Mountain, where his parents and their six children, of whom he was the eldest, were struggling to overcome hard times.
Ira Via, then custodian of the Pembroke school, furnished Williams with room, board and a small salary to tend the coal furnace at the school. Williams resisted all the Vias' valiant efforts to improve his rough ways and educate him, so he remained a simple mountain boy, disrespectful of society's restrictive ways.
After Via retired in the early 1950s, Williams was without a job and home. But Via had built him a one-room shack on land behind the school. That's where he lived his last four decades, working at odd jobs. He built himself a cart, which he pulled like a horse, looping a chain around his neck and prancing ahead of it.
Williams defied society's standards and would create identities for himself. He once heard the word "yankee" used in a derogatory fashion and declared himself to be a "damned Yankee, by God!" He once gave his name as "Jesse Duke" at a store in nearby Pearisburg after seeing the character on his sister's television screen.
He especially wished to be identified with the mountains and was drawn to coal mining. He loved to accompany Kendall on trips into Bluefield and told him stories about frequenting a roadside tavern in the West Virginia coalfields called The Blue Lantern. Kendall was astonished to learn later that the establishment had existed and had burned down.
Williams loved to work, and most of the paraphernalia that cluttered his shack - to the point where he could use neither the stove nor bed - was his collection of tools. He is remembered as once having carried a large scythe on his shoulder all day when no job awaited him.
His only regular income was a small check from Supplementary Security Income, which was acquired for him by O.J. Caldwell, a clerk of the Circuit Court of Giles County in the 1970s. Caldwell also started Williams a funeral fund from what he earned at odd jobs. This totaled $300 at the time of Caldwell's death and had grown to $500 by the time Williams died.
The rest was donated by some of the people of Pembroke, so the basic costs were covered for a decent burial.
As a young man, Williams owned geese, ducks, chickens and, at one time, a small pony. He was a comical sight riding through Pembroke on the pony, his long legs nearly dragging the ground as he sat astride.
Kendall once went to Williams for advice on securing chickens at night, having been told, "Jessie has no problems with his."
Kendall tells how Williams, obviously proud of his expertise in poultry, threw his shoulders back, thrust out his chest and drew forth a large whip. Cracking it loudly, he cursed and shouted at his brood of fowl, every one of which immediately scuttled into the cages and waited until he fastened the doors.
Kendall also recalls a day when a swarm of honeybees settled on a barn behind the hardware store in Pembroke and someone suggested sending for Williams to capture them. It was an astonishing scene, he said, Williams parading through Pembroke proudly, puffing his pipe, him and his cart covered with buzzing bees as he transported them to a preselected spot.
Williams was the recipient of much compassion from his family and many Pembroke residents and had his choice of several options, including living with his sisters, offers of a rent-free apartment in the senior citizens' building and an offer of a home built for him by Eddie and Fern Kendall.
But he refused help from anyone, even after it became apparent that "something is wrong with Mr. Jessie," as Kendall began to hear from worried folks around Pembroke and had noticed himself.
Kendall, agonizing over not being allowed to help his old friend in need, turned to his Bible for guidance and found Jesus' words about the woman who washed his feet and was criticized by the other people present. "She did what she could," and Kendall decided this was his only recourse.
Kendall began delivering hot coffee and food each morning to the ailing Williams, even though he suspected that after he left, Williams probably fed most of the food to the 15 or 20 cats he had given a home to, cats that some people credited with keeping him warm in the unheated shack in the months preceding his death.
Kendall was enormously relieved when Williams finally let him take him to his "people," as Williams called his immediate family.
Two days later at his sisters' home he was finally persuaded to remove his boots, and it was discovered his feet had been frozen. They were black.
Kendall realized he could no longer protect Williams' independence and privacy. He called Larry Falls, the sheriff of Giles County, and the Giles County Mental Health Department. Williams had to be declared incompetent to force him to go to the Pearisburg hospital, where doctors discovered he was suffering from anemia and a bleeding ulcer, in addition to gangrene in his feet.
After Williams' feet had been amputated, Kendall assured him that any wish or need he might have would be fulfilled if only he would ask.
The old mountain man's indomitable spirit flashed out; he replied: "If I need anything, by God, I'll get it myself!"
He added that he would be coming home to Pembroke, ending with, "You'll see!"
The next day Jessie Luke Williams was dead, but he "came home to Pembroke" in the hearts of his friends, or those who tried to be. He will live in the legends told through the "Jessie stories" as they undoubtedly will be handed down through coming generations.
Kendall remembers the "disarming innocence" of the sometimes-cantankerous mountain man, and in his eulogy he chose to quote from Psalm 90:
"We spend all our years as a tale that is told and as a watch in the night."
Patricia Fain Hutson is an artist and free-lance writer who lives in Newport.
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