Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 4, 1994 TAG: 9412050014
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV16 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: RINER LENGTH: Long
Her possessions are modern and well-cared for: a two-bedroom trailer on an acre of land, a 26-inch television in the living room, a 1989 Nissan Sentra in the driveway.
But it's not what Slate has that reflects her personality.
It's how she's earned it.
"Yeah, I work hard for things," Slate said, massaging the arthritic hands she still puts to work every day. "I've always lived that way."
In the spring, Slate typically spends her days roaming the woods and roadways of the New River Valley, picking up the soda bottles and beer cans that others throw away.
With the money she earns collecting recyclables, Slate makes pies, and then stakes out the predawn hot spots of the Little River in the chilly spring weather to sell them to trout fishermen for $1 a piece.
With whatever time is left, she makes and sells crafts, paintings and quilts, usually gathering just enough money to pay her bills.
"I've never known that woman to just sit and do nothing," said Susan Walton, a community service worker for New River Community Action. Slate will do whatever needs to be done to survive, Walton said.
Surviving takes more than recycling cans and making pies for trout season.
In the summer, Slate collects food from gardens and berry patches, canning and storing nearly 1,600 cans of food for the harsh winters when she is normally snowbound and without power.
She makes all the improvements and repairs on her trailer and property herself, all the while keeping a .410 shotgun at hand to chase away trespassers from her rural homesite.
She makes tea from gathered mint and rose leaves, grinds coffee on an antique grinder and often cleans clothes on an old washboard.
And unless she is desperate, Slate won't accept help from anyone, Walton said, even though social services workers urge her to sign up for assistance programs like food stamps, the Christmas Store or welfare.
"She's one person that's kept herself off of it," Walton said. "But she's also one person that could really use it."
Slate is warm and pleasant, with a optimistic outlook and a feisty demeanor gained from 60 years of bad luck and tough times.
Born in Buchanan County in 1933, Slate grew up in Tazewell County where she cared for her widowed father and four sisters.
The family was poor, and from her earliest days Slate learned how to live the hard way - growing crops and raising livestock for food, digging wells for water and buying used feed sacks for clothing.
"We lived off the land," she said. "We raised everything we'd eat, whether it was hogs or chickens or crops."
By 1960, Slate was living in Richlands, with her husband and 6-year-old son, while also working three jobs to support her family.
After a flood nearly destroyed their home, Slate and her husband rebuilt a trailer and moved to Christiansburg in 1962.
She worked in the cafeterias of various hospitals for the next several years, finally getting a job at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Salem in the mid-1970s. Slate and her family moved to a house in Roanoke, and life began to get a little easier.
Until bad luck struck again.
Both Slate's husband and sister died in 1979, leaving Slate responsible for the thousands of dollars necessary to pay the funerals.
In 1980, the worsening arthritis condition in her hands forced her to take disability leave from the hospital, and Slate moved into a trailer on the Roanoke River in Shawsville.
Then came the flood of '85.
"Nannie was helping one of her neighbors along the river when it happened," Walton said. "She wasn't even worried about her own trailer."
Slate moved her trailer, which was nearly destroyed, to her current acre of land in Riner, patching the gaping holes left by the flood with aluminum siding.
"That wasn't as much for the cold as to keep the all the wild varmints out," Slate said with a laugh. "I was really low-down at that point. Things were really bad."
She had no running water, and was forced to get water from a spring near her old home in Shawsville and bring it back to the trailer.
Finally, Slate's luck began to change.
"I was too proud to ask for help," she said. "Then I went to the free clinic about my hands, and they started telling me what they could do for me."
Walton was assigned to take Slate to Roanoke to have her hand checked by an orthopedic surgeon, beginning a nine-year relationship in which Slate has received some help from her community.
She has been given chairs, a sofa and a table by her friends and neighbors. In 1989, the Rev. Bob McCoy and the congregation of Auburn United Methodist Church gave her a new trailer.
"I had never lived in nothing this nice." Slate said. "All I could do was just cry. I can't thank people enough for being so nice to me."
Generosity notwithstanding, Slate still accepts as little charity as possible, refusing to sign up for social services assistance programs.
"I could sure get it [welfare] with the income I got, but there are so many people who need it more than me," she said. "I can provide for myself."
It's that ability to help herself that has led Slate to help others. She has spoken to the General Assembly in Richmond about the importance of social services programs, she serves on the Montgomery County advisory board for Community Action and is in charge of Community Action's budget workshop.
Slate said that helping others to overcome their own obstacles is what she likes best.
"The happiest hours of my life is when I'm doing something to help someone else," she said. "There are no excuses. I hope when people read this they'll get off their butts and get to work."
by CNB