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This is an interview with Mr . Hal Eaton , February 19 , 1976 .
is Jane Effird with Mike Evans through the Appalachian Oral
History Project .
This
Q.
We want to talk to you about the Virginia part in the New River
fight , and what you ' ve had to do with it .
A.
Yes . Uh , well , I ' ve been a resident here for four and a half
years . And when I came here I knew nothing about pump storage
and had never heard of the Blue Ridge Project . And when I came
they said there was a possibility that dams were going to be
built and uh , my first reaction was uh , as pastor of the church ,
it wasn ' t a moral issue , not something you talk about right or
wrong, but then I gradually came to realize that , of our church
membership uh all but one family would have to be relocated by·
the Appalachian Power Company if the dams became a reality . Uh ,
the few families who would be living in areas that would be uneffected by the dam would be separated from the church by miles
of water . So uh I got more and more . involved and learned more
and more about what the proposals were . Uh , I found that uh the
state of Virginia, at least at the higher levels of government
had proved and worked with the APC in the task of uh , making preparations to build the dams and then uh I found out that North
Carolina was gradually going the other way until finally uh there
was very strong feelings in North Carolina against the building
of the Blue Ridge Project. Uh , I have
corresponded
with the governor uh and gotten one letter in which he uh, uh said
in effect that there were alot of people in Virginia in favor of
the Blue Ridge Project . I presume he ' s talking about the people
that he goes to cocktail parties with . Uh, APC and other politicians . The uh , in the state the thirteen congressional representatives uh, theoretically at first were all in favor of the
Blue Ridge Project , but those who began to look into it , who asked
for information about it , who request attitudes from the local
people about it, uh are apt to switch their allegiance . Congressman Whitehurst has gone all the way the other way. He ' s from down
the other end of the state , but he has written to the Secy of the
Interior and urged him to accept the New River into the Scenic
River System . Uh , Bob Daniel , another congressman , is asking for
information and a letter has just come back toady . I uh - it
wasn ' t addressed to me , it was addressed to Peter Crow from Farum
College, who ' s on the Virginia Committee and uh I hope that he's
going to come out in favor of Scenic River status for the New
River . Uh , Our own 9th District representative is Congressman
Wompler , uh, his original stand was that he would do what he
could for the people of this area and he went off to Washington,
lobbied actively in favor of the Blue Ridge Project and hasn't
been back in this part of the country since . There have been no
public meetings , uh, our representatives act as if everybody down
here is in favor of the dam but they have not had any public
meetings . They have not sought the opinion of the people. Uh,
Congressman Wompler put out a newsletter to all his constituents
�-2Hal Eaton
Tape 1, Side A
I think he got 20,000 replies, uh asking our advice about what
out attitude ought to be about China, and what it ought to be
toward this and that and the other thing, but he did not ask
what our attitude was about Scenic River status for the New River .
Q.
Why do you think that is?
A.
Uh, I think he has an opinion about it and he ' s not willing to be
swayed . And since the governor of the state has agreed with him
on it, and the attorney general has gone along with the idea, uh
I think their attitude is "Don ' t rock the boat" .
Q.
Well,
is Mouth of Wilson the only place ,
or Grayson County the only place that will be effected by the River.
By the Project, I mean .
A.
Uh, the Blue Ridge Project would uh innundate 40 , 000 acres of
land and take about another 12 , 000 for other purposes . Uh, most
of that acreage is in Grayson County . None of it is in any other
Virginia county. The rest of the Project is in Ashe County and
Allegheny County in North Carolina . So Grayson County is the only
county that will have acres and acres of water .
Q.
Well, has the governor changed his mind , sort of , or is the state
as a whole still for the Project?
A.
Uh, as far as, uh, the state as a whole doesn't know much about
it . Uh, there are dams all over the state of Virginia , uh Virginia
Electric Power Company, VEPCO plans to build an even larger pump
storage project than the Blue Ridge Project up in Bath County .
And uh, there ' s been very little opposition to that . There ' s a
plan now to build four more dams on the Roanoke River above Roanoke .
All of these will be , theoretically , recreation areas . There are, the
reservoir is not too far from
us , the ,
of course the Holsten Reservoir, down toward Bristol, Virginia .
The Smith Mountain Lake, Flater Lake . We have huge lakes all
around us that are supposed to be great recreational places but
they have not made uh , uh, real great economic impact on the
counties in which they are located . APC wants this project , they
have given us newspaper articles , and expensive advertising . You
know of course about the double page ads in the New York Times ,
the Washington Post , Time Magazine , The Wallstreet Journal . Uh ,
the advertising alone has cost them about $150,000 . 00 . And all of
the talk they have done , they talk about what a great thing they
are doing for the country . They never once said we are going to
make a buck out of this project , if we can get it built . And they
talk about the truth , but they never talk about the financial uh
boon that it would be to APC . Of course , one of the big problems
is that in the area that will be covered up by water annually ,
there is produced 13! million dollars in agricultural products .
APCO , the one figure that I heard is that they plan to sell the
electricity for about $39 million a year and that will be profit
to APCO , no profit to the local situation . The next alternative ,
the next uh possible alternative to building the Blue Ridge Project
would be to build another highly effecient coal fired electrical
generation station . And that would cost APCO $3 million a yea~ .
more than it would cost them in the long run to produce electricity
�-3-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1, Side A
by the Blue Ridge Project. So, for the sake of saving APCO
$3 million on their already $39 million profit, but to save them
$3 million, we sacrifice $13t million in agricultural products
off this land. One of the things that they offer as an inducement to Grayson County is that they will pay $1 million in taxes
annually, which sounds good, but its very similar to the deal
the United States made with Cuba, when we rented, on a 99 year
lease, Guantanamo Bay as a naval base. We said we'd give them,
I forget the exact amount, but it looked like alot of money to
the Cubans. Well, at the time we made the agreement, uh, back
at the turn of the century, a few hundred thousand dollars was
great to them, and now of course, Castro doesn't even cash the
checks we give him because he says the land is far more valuable
than that. Uh, the Isthmus of Panama, when we built the Panama
Canal, we made a deal to give so many million dollars annually
to the country of Panama, and they were glad to get it. But that's
been 70 years ago and now they are crying that what we are giving
them is a mere drop in the bucket compared to what that land is
actually worth. Uh, APC, and I read the papers on this just
today, uh, the deal is that once you assess the value of the land
and put it under water, the value does not change and so fifty
years from now, they could, Grayson County could be receiving
a million dollars from the land - a year, from the land that's
covered up. But fifty years from now, with a six or eight or ten
percent annual inflation rate, that million dollars is not going
to pay the salary of the mayor of the town. Now that's just one
of the things that they make it sound like "We're going to give
you a million dollars a year'' Well, that's not even tied to the
inflation rate. It's not tied to the increased value of the land.
Q.
One of the questions that alot of people are asking the committee
at school is what are the people at the Mouth of Wilson going to
do, I mean, not just
where are they going to move,
but uh is the APC making some kind of arrangements for the people
that are going to be moved?
A.
In the advertisement that the APCO or that American Electric Power
Company, which is the parent company of Appalachian Power Company,
in the advertisement that they put in all the newspapers, they
stated that they would, and there's quite a little list of things
they would do for the people who would be displaced. They would
give them the fair price for their land . . They would help them
locate a new place to live with an advisory service. If there was
an increase in interest cost on mortgages, they would supply that.
There was a list of seven or eight things that they woul~ do. And
it sounded great until you realized that the law requires them to
do every
one of those, if they run people off their land.
This is not something that APC is giving to anybody, out of the
goodness of their hearts. Its a requirement of the law. Now, one
of the requirements was that if tenants on the land here were to
be relocated, that APC were to be responsible for the cost of relocating tenants, not landowners, but just people who rented homes
on the land that's going to be inundated. The law further stipulated
�- 4-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1 , Side A
4
that that maximum in moving costs could go as high as $5 , 000 . 00
because they had to put some ceiling on it , but it had to be some
ceiling that would cover all the possibilities and potential of
costs of a move . And so , when Appala chian heard this , they immediately quit renting houses . And up and down this valley , for
three years , houses were left vacant and let go to ruin because
they did not want to anticipate having to pay the cost of moving
renters from one house to another . And now that they have rather
recently started renting these houses out again , many of them are
in a sad state of repair and that ' s another problem that the whole
county faces , because they bought the land , allowed the houses
to go down without renting them and now they ' re - uh they ' ve begun
to rent them again just recently . Uh , one other point in their ad
they said that all of the people who would be moved off the i r
land would be cared for by APC . And I have yet to find any red
blooded American who wants to be cared for by a power company
(laughing) . The wording of this thing is just atrocious .
Q.
Why , besides making so much money , the power company , is there
some other reason that they particularly want this project to go
through, that ' s been going on for so many years?
A.
Yes .
Q.
And they have spent sornuch money on advertising •..
A.
Yes . Uh , I I think there may well be a feeling on the part of APCO
and American Electric Power Company - American Electric is a conglomerate of seven large power companies that control most of the
electricity in about a six or seven state area . I ' m not sure about
the details on this , but they know that if in their desire for
power , if they are blocked in their desire to get a dam built on
a river to make power , then it ' s going to be a whole lot easier
for them to be blocked again in the fut ure if they want to dam a
river . And so this is a uh , in a sense , maybe a uh test case . Uh
darns have been blocked before , but never with as much publicity
and as much uh uh involvement of politicians , as is the case here .
And if this uh becomes a reality , that the people , that the voice
of the people is heard before the voice of a uh a private pow ~r
company , then that will certainly will be a boost to any , any group
of private citizens who desire to hold out against the onslaught
of a a power company who wants to come in and condemn their land
and take it away from them .
Q.
Well , how do you feel , r ight now at this point as to how i t ' s
going to go?
A.
Uh •..
Q.
I ' ll tell you why I ask this because last night another student
that works with us interviewed a lawyer in Sparta , I believe Mr .
Adams ••. ?
A.
Yes , uh huh .
�5
-5-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1, Side A
Q.
And he said he wasn't worried at all.
would win this.
A.
Yes. Uh, one of the principles of any battle like this is that
you've always got to be optimistic. Uh, every campaign manager
for every presidential candidate says that's their group is going
to win. Any time he begins to poor mouth himself and say we don't
stand a chance, he's going to lose votes. And I think it's good
to be optimistic. I know that APC is optimistic. Uh, the man
named Kirkland, who is head of the Pulaski division of APC, has
been hosting dinners all over this area in the past two weeks,
inviting all interested citizens to a free meal and then a speech
in which he says that we are going to build this dam. We need
it and we'll take it clear to the Supreme Court. Well he doesn't
dare say we may lose. Because it's part of the psychology of
battle that you uh, well, as an old Spanish proverb puts it, we
are running out of ammunition and the food is getting low and
everybody is wounded, run up more flags.
(laughing) And both
sides of course, have a tendency to do this and I'm not as optimistic as some because I know that APC is not going to give up
easily. I do know that is the New River is accepted into the
Scenic River System by the Department of the Interior that APC
will go to court in an attempt to overthrow that decision. But
I do maintain that uh it's better for APCO to go to court to get
a profitable power situation out of this valley than for the
people who live here to have to go to court in order merely to
hold onto what's already theirs. But that's the way it is now.
These people are contributing money, in the cause of court cases
in order to fight off the power company and if they win, they've
lost their money because they've spent it only to hold onto what
they've got. If they lose, they've lost their land and their contribution to the battle. That's just not fair. And I'd rather
see APCO have to go to court than for these people to go to court.
Q.
Well, do you think there's any one thing that we haven't tried
yet or that hasn't been tried yet, that maybe could stop the
power company?
A.
Uh, there are three things going on right now, you know, to stop
them. Uh, uh, when you said trying things, it reminded me that
uh APCO has often said that, and the Roanoke Times has echoed it,
the Roanoke Times I think is the only newspaper I've seen that has
shown support for the Blue Ridge Project. But the Roanoke Times
has said that the state of North Carolina has dipped down into
their bag of tricks to find some method to block the building of
the dam. Well, bless their hearts, the whole purpose of the Scenic
River System is to block dams. That's the primary purpose of it to retain the beauty and the natural setting of rivers. And it's
to block dams. That's what it's for. And to say they reached
into a bag of tricks to block the Blue Ridge Project, they simply
took one of the avenues that the voice of the people established
for the purpose of blocking dams. And so it's no trick, it's
simply a uh a way to block dams. And that's what it's for. Uh,
And he thought that we
�-6-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1, Side A
if the Scenic River - uh acceptance of the New River into the
national Scenic River System works , that ' s fine . Now, if it ' s
accepted into the system and APCO goes to court , their claim is
that they got their license first , you know . It was granted by
the Federal Power Commission , with an effective of January , 1975 .
And so they say if the River goes into the Scenic River System
in 1976 , they got there first , that they have a right to it . Uh,
one of the things that the lawyers for APC said that was really
hilarious - he said that since APCO owns already some of the land
that they want to put under water , that he just thinks it would
be terrible if the federal government should designate it as a
scenic river and keep them from developing that private property
that is their ' s . And I about fell out of my chair when I heard
that (laughing) . It ' s private property that they claim to have
acquired by condemnation proceedings . And that ' s just , just an
insult (laughing) . But the , the one item there is that , to say
that , that the license has been granted and therefore it is inviolate is rather stupid . To say that simply because a license
has been granted you can't fight it is silly . And I think it is
only inviolate if it has been subjected to every possible attempt
to overthrow it and when all attempts clear the Sup reme Court have been brushed aside and the license has been upheld, then
they have got an effective date . But they can ' t argue that they
got there first . If that ' s the argument , we ' ll give it back to
the Indians . Uh , but the logic that you see in this thing is
just - it gets to be hilarious . Now the second thing , to block
the construction of the dam is the court case that North Carolina
took to the Court of Appeals , uh , suggesting that when the Federal
Power Commission gave the license to APCO , that APCO had not provided all of the information to the Federal Power Commission
which the law required . Specifically with regard to archeological
sites and findings . And that is exactly what happened . Uh , they
are required to do it , when somebody brought it up and said you
didn ' t do it , they said we did too . And this was uh uh direct
quotes. The man in charge , Paul Johnson , said "We did give them
that information ." And they pressed him further and asked him
when did you give it to them and he said "Well , we had it and they
had access to it ." And then when pressed further he said "Well ,
it ' s in our files but it was never sent to them ." And that ' s the
way it rested . Uh , so that the second thing is that uh , the
Court of Appeals has heard the case andthere are three judges and
from all appearances , it looks like they are going to say the
license is invalid because you disobeyed the law when you granted
it , you must go through the whole process with re - hearings again .
Now , that will throw it back to the Federal Power Commission .
That ' s the second which may halt the building of the Blue Ridge
Project . The third thing is that if both of those previous steps
fail , the third thing that can be tried is that there are at
least a half a dozen if not more , bills already prepared and just
waiting to be put through the uh , through Congress . Uh , all of
them uh , stating various things, but all of it coming down to one
thing - to block the building of the Blue Ridge Dams . Some of
them - one of the bills is simply to - by Congressional action
to put the whole :tk±Jl1g New River in the Scenic River system .
�-7-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1 , Sice A
Or various sections of it . One is simply , just says no dams will
be built on the New River in the Blue Ridge area . Uh , I have
forgotten how they have worded the other bills but there are half
a dozen just waiting , so nobody can say uh well you ' ve reached
into your bag of tricks and found another one . This is not
reaching into a bag of tricks . This is foresight on the part of
Representative Stephen Neal , who followed the lead of , of Wilbur
Mizel , whom he replaced . Mizel started it and Neal took right up
where Mizel left off and uh followed the voice of the people in
North Carolina . And will push the bill through Congress if that ' s
the next step . Uh , one of the things that APC is fond of saying
is that the attempt to block , or to study the New River on a two
year basis for inclusion in the National Scenic River System uh
that was voted down in Congress and of course it was . Of course ,
it got a tremendous majority vote for the study in the Senate .
When it got to the House of Representatives , it got bottled up
in a committee by an eighty- some year old senator who said that
since some other people didn ' t do what he wanted with the Indiana
sand dunes , he wasn ' t going to do what they wanted with the bill
for the New River . And he blocked it and bottled it up until our
Congressman Wompler went before them with a , uh a resolution
from the Virginia State Farm Bureau which said that they thought
we needed the electric power more than the uh agricultural products
of the valley down here . Well you know , getting a resolution
passed in a state meeting like that is uh - if you have ever been
to a state convention , all you have to do is submit one and it ' ll
get passed . Uh , there was tremendous disruption in the local county
farm bureau meetings when this came out . In fact , there were
statements printed in the newspaper that uh , uh , by the local
state farm bureau representative saying we will have no part of
that . We want it understood we had no part in that . But Wampler
used that to get the bill to study the New River for inclusion in
the Scenic River System uh , voted down in the committee . So then
it was placed directly on the floor for a vote by the congressmen
in the House of Representatives . If it ' s been bottled up in a
committee and does not go through the committee for passage of a
bill like that , it takes a two - thirds majority . That ' s one of the
technicalities of running the business . The bill, as I say, passed
by an outstanding majority of the Senate . When it got to the
House of Representatives , it passed by a simple majority . But
not by a two thirds majority . So by actual vote of Congress , the
voice of the people , demo - democracy in action . they said " Let ' s
study the New River for inclusion in the uh the Scenic River
System ." But their own technicalities let it fail , ev ~ n though it
pass ed by an outstanding majority in the Senate and by a simple
majority in the House of Representatives . So when APC blindly
says it was voted down in Congress, that ' s not the whole truth .
So that ' s the , that ' s the third channel in Congress where this
thing could be blocked . So there are three - if we win one battle
we ' ve won the war . But if we lose a battle , we haven ' t lost the
war . There are still other ways to go about it . And I ' ve often
said that that the last~is to arm some of our old widow ladies
on these farms with a shotgun and let them sit on their front porches .
�- 8-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1 , Side A
And uh , it ' s been done before , but you need national attention
for a situation like this where uh so much is to be dest r oyed
for actually so little . It ' s not l i ttle when you think about
the money that APC might make off of it . But it ' s ver y l i ttle
compared to the life of the Blue Ridge Project . It ' s got a
fifty year license and they anticipated fifteen years that the
thing they ' re talking about - the need being peak power pr oduc tion , will have diminished . Far below half of what the requirement is when it ' s first in operation . So even the reason they
are pushing it is a reason that ' s going to be out of existence
in ten to fifteen years .
Q.
Uh , can this be compared to the Tennessee Valley Authority , to
what happened there?
A.
Uh , yeah . The Tennessee Valley Authority , I think most of those
are not pump storage projects . They are just dams which provide
power directly .
Q.
But I mean , that ' s what happened to the people?
A.
That ' s right . Very similar , yes . Uh , the land is condemned,
the people are moved off . Uh , as always happenes , the people
who a r e uh uh the first ones to knuckle under , if you please ,
to sell , take a beating because within three or four year s , the
people who sell are making - getting twi ce as much money as the
people were earlier in the game . And that causes bitterness .
And then with all of the promises that APC has made about how
valuable the land is going to be around here , alot of people have
gone into speculation . And therefore land prices have jumped
around here . Just - you can ' t buy a farm and farm it profitably
because it costs too much for the land now to farm it properly .
Because of the speculation about how valuable the land is going
to be if the dam comes . But uh we have alot of feelings that all
the pr omises that Appalachian makes are not going to be fulfilled .
I said
to somebody today I almost wish we ' d let them go
ahead and build the dam so we could say " I told you so " when
things don ' t work out nea rly as gloriously as they seem to think
they will .
Q.
Have alot of people around here sold out already?
A.
Uh , Appalachian has figu r es on this . I think they ' ve bought a
third of the land they will require, but I ' m not sure of the
figures on that . They have bought some of the land that they
will ultimately require . Now they are not pursueing it right
now . They haven ' t bought any land for three to four years e 2~ cept
when somebody has gone to them . But they are not going around
making offers as they did up until about four years ago .
Q.
Why is that?
A.
Well , I think they have uh considerable doubts about whether or
not this thing is really going to be built . Uh , another item
The same thing .
�-9-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1, Side A-B
of course, is the rebuilding of Highway 58 between Independence
and Galax. That's a tortuous route that goes along the river and
uh, for years now, they've not rebuilt that highway because uh, if
the dams come it's going to be flooded and they'll have to rebuild it somewhere else. They have two routes - a high one and a
low one. And so, just last week, the uh, all of the Grayson County
Board of Supervisors and the school boards and some other people
went before the State Highway Commission and they said "What are
you going to do?" And after all these years they said "We've
waited long enough, we're going to start building that highway.
If Appalachian will pay us," I've forgotten the figures but it
was something like, it will cost them, uh several million dollars
more to go the high route away from the water. So the State Highway Department said "We'll build the low route unless Appalachian
provides us the money now to build on the high route, uh, out of
the water. And Appalachian said no. So they are going to build
it on the low route and then when the water comes and floods it,
Appalachian will be stuck for the bill for rebuilding the whole
thing on the high route, at a much greater expense. Now these
are signals that we have that make us think that Appalachian is
not nearly sure as they -
Q.
Their two page ad -
A.
As their ads signify and as their speeches indicate. What m~ybe
ought not be on the tape is that we are now looking into the fact
that when APCO constructs a new facility, they can r±gkt write off
the cost of that into the, the cost of electricity. So they don't
to uh uh cut corners on construction or watch their eApenses. They
know they are going to get 10% back on whatever, you know. Because that's the nature of a control monopoly. VEPCO in one
place, in order to facilitate uh some of their building, was paying higher than union scale for some of their workmen. Now that
makes VEPCO look like real nice guys but the consumers are paying
for it, because that goes right to what they call the rate base,
uh, and they got caught doing that. Uh, we think and we are looking into the fact that most of APCO's construction is done by the
Solid Construction Company, based in Indiana, a state that does
not require an organization to publish its · Board of Directors or
its stockholders. So we don't know who the major stockholders
are. But most of APCO's construction is done by the Solid Construction Company without competitive bidding. Now what does that
sound like? Well, it sounds like the major stockholders of APC
could well be the major stockholders of their own, their own private construction company, just as they had the Franklin Real
Estate Company to, to hold all their land. It was chartered in
Pennsylvania, which does not require them to reveal who their
Board of Directors are. Well, it turned out it was the same batch
of guys running APCO. And they were - uh, theoretically in this
uh, uh controlled monopoly thing, they had a real estate company
working to their advantage and, and the State Securities Commission
told them to get rid of all the real estate they were holding for
profit, because it wasn't fair to be a controlled monopoly and
still have uh, burgeoning real estate values, uh, supporting their
�- 10-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1 , Side B
real estate company and making a pile of money on it . Uh ,
especially when again some of the land they got was, uh , was
acquired by condemnation proceedings . So the whole thing , you
know , I , I don ' t go around saying the r e ' s a big conspiracy , and
big business is out to get us , but there are some big businesses
who will utilize any method to make money off consumers . And
APC has proven itself not to be above doing just that .
Q.
A.
Uh , by decisions, you mean Interior or Congressmen or •..
Q.
Welll , right now I know it ' s up to Kleppe •••
A.
Yes - no, I don ' t think anybody ' s being bought off . I ' ve never
wanted to feel that way about anybody . I know the principles I know that the people who make those decisions don ' t come down
here and sit around uh somebody ' s fireplace and talk about the
problems . They go to cocktail parties where representatives of
APCO talk to them . Uh , obviously the newspaper's been full of
the fact that the various bureaucrats in Washington are invited
to hunting lodges and seashore resorts and all that sort of thing
by big business companies , who support those resorts and those
hunting lodges out of the profits of the company . Uh , APCO had
a , uh , uh , fishing lodge up on Smith Mountain Lake - I think it
was Smith Mountain Lake and it was uh , a real estate . And they
always say, well that was supported out of profits , not out of
the consumers . Where do the profits come from? Absolutely from
the consumers . They ' ve been saying that all this advertising
they ' ve been doing comes out of profits . (laughing) Profits
don ' t come from no place but the pockets of the people who pay
for electricity . So when they use that thing to say that it ' s
not costing the consumers , it ' s just not true . It takes a pretty
sharp pencil to come to that conclusion . But the money all comes
from the comsumers .
Q.
'· .
Do you think some of the people that are going to make the decision about the Project
do you think they are being bought off
too?
Well, you ' ve told us now what the power company does to talk
people into their point of view, what exactly has your committee
in Virginia , what kind of things do they do to get publicity ,
raise support ••• ?
A.
Yes . Uh , we put together a petition and asked Virginians of
voting age to sign petitions and only Virginians of voting age .
And we ' ve put together enough that there are 5 , 000 Virginians
who have signed that . Uh , we sent copies to uh all the Congressmen
to the Department of Interior and to the governor . And after
'
our copies went to the governor , I wrote to Governor Godwin and I
said , " Now , you ' ve got an honest , open expression from 5 , 000
voting Virginians who say , in effect , that you ' re speaking , uh,
when you speak in a court case about being , supporting the Blue
Ridge Project, you are obviously not speaking for an awful lot
of Virginians . And one of our goals is simply to get publicity .
�-11Hal Eaton
Tape 1, Side B
Because we feel that anybody whose studies the situation and
learns about the New River and its background, about the methods
that been utilized in the attempt to make it a pump storage
project and the wild promises that have been made to some local
people about how great it's going to be, the more you know about
this, the more you are going to be for the side of preserving
the New River. Uh, I wrote to the governor and said, "Here are
5,000 Virginians who say you are not speaking for us. Who are
you speaking for?" Well, he signed a letter - I, uh I said in
my letter that uh I hoped that he read mail like that, that it
didn't get answered by the same people who made up his policy
statements. So he did sign the letter that came back to me, but
it said that there were three thousand members of the Grayson
County Business Development Association that he had to deal with.
Now, I asked around here, what's the Grayson County Business
Development Association. Most people had never heard of them.
One man said, oh, that was a group of land speculators who put
together a petition some years ago in support of the Blue Ridge
Project. And the president of the Grayson Business Development
Association was, guess who, Fred Bennington - a full time employee
of APC. So I wrote to the governor and I said you made a little
mistake here. There aren't 3,000 members of that committee.
That's ridiculous! There were that many names on that petition
that was put together by some land speculators and real estate
people who hoped to make a dollar out of the plight of their
fellow Grayson countians. And I said even then the president
of the organization was a full time employee of APC. I said,
this is ridiculous. And the letter I got back was not signed
by the governor but by one of his third assistants or something
or other and he said uh, well they's accepted those, uh that
list of membership in good faith and maybe I knew more about it
than they did, but they didn't say that they were going to look
into it. Oh, in my letter I also said that the governor should
take a chance and have a public hearing down here on the subject.
This fella, in his answer, said he'd only been in the state government for a couple of years and he didn't know if there'd been any
public hearings or not. Well, I told him there hadn't been but
he as much as said he wouldn't take my word for it. And the
final thing he said was uh, I don't think you are going to change
the governor's mind. (laughing) So, uh, this is what we're
caught with, uh, uh, a state government that pays no attention.
Now I've said before that when we went down to Raleigh, and this
state Scenic River bill came before the state legislature, uh,
one of the legislators came to me and said "Hey, tell me in five
minutes what this is all about." He said, "I don't know anything
about it." So I told him and he said "Well, I understand." And
I said, well I apologize for all of us in Virginia, because we
can't get any action going like this. And he said, "We couldn't
do it either if it was the Duke Power Company." So he was saying
that he understood why Virginia legislators didn't dare speak
out against people like APC. And I can understand it too. But
I sure wish they would look into the matter pertaining to, uh,
their constituents in Virginia. And especially in the areas that
are going to be most vitally effected by the Blue Ridge Project.
�- 12Hal Eaton
Tape 1, Side B
f(
Q.
Why won ' t the people speak out against the power companies?
- the state government ?
A.
Well , the - now they know what kind of r estrictions they must
operate under and if a state legislator in North Carolina tells
me he couldn ' t speak out against Duke Power Company , I can understand that because Duke Power Company carries alot of weight in
the state of North Carolina . And I can understand why a state
legislator in Virginia wouldn ' t speak out against APC . I say
again , these are the people they go the cocktail parties with .
You know, I spent ~O years in the Navy going to cocktail parties
and I know how the bureaucrats work having been one . Un ,
Q.
You committee here - do you work with the committee in North
Carolina?
A.
Oh , we about have to because uh uh , I don ' t know where the committee gets its horsepower but they ' ve got alot of people - they
have an office to work with , uh I ' m the - they ' ve got Joe Mathews
and the Northwest Conservation Economic Development Council or
something . They ' ve got an office , they ' ve got office workers ,
we ' ve got me and that stack over there and a 1·i1e cabinet down
in the basement . And uh , if I want to write a letter , it means
I ' ve got to get my daughter ' s typewriter and uh , you know , uh,
working at a different level . We ' ve got a secretary- treasurer
who is 13 miles that way and uh , I haven ' t seen her in 3 months
I guess . Uh , our organization is not uh , doesn ' t have the , the
equipment , the office nor the headquarters that the North Carolina
committee does . We organized after they organized . And we did
it in response to say " Hey there ' s some of us up here who are with
you ." And uh , uh , the response , of course , all of this is put
out by the North Carolina committee . But uh , the people who are
in favor of the dam in this locality don ' t speak up . And I
wrote a letter for the first time , I saw a post office box for
the Grayson Business Development Association , this week . So I
wrote them a letter and said " Hey ~' and I did it on our letterhead
that lists all our officers, I said , " Please tell me uh where
your office is , who your leaders are , uh , tell me how many members
you've got " and I said in the letter , '' I have a letter from Gov .
Godwin and he thinks you have got 3 , 900 members ." I said "I would
just like to know a little more about you since nobody knows ."
Almost a secret organization . And I have never met anybody who
said to me I am a member of the Grayson Business Development Assoc .
I believe Robert Williams is a member ( laughing) . This is the
fella we ' ve just talked to today about clearing our land and
digging a foundation - he ' s got bulldozers . And he wants to make
money off using his bulldozers if the dam comes through . I ' ll
go along with that . To make a buck is a worthwhile motive as
long as you admit to it . And if APCO wants to make a dollar I
wish they'd say that and knock off all this fallderall about how
good they are going to be to the population of the world . And
the p eople who favor the dam, if they simply say to me I ' m in
favor because I think I ' ll be richer , that ' s the finest motive
in the world , that ' s good old American capitalism and I don ' t
�- 13-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1 , Side B
;)
object to that . But if they tell me I ' m going to be richer too ,
or that I ' m going to benefit by it , I want a little more proof
than has been offered .
Q.
Uh , we were talking about one of the ways to get the dam stopped
is perhaps the archeological studies that have been done but haven ' t
been all that publicized or whatever?
A.
They were not included in the report to the Federal Power Commission .
Q.
Well , I know one of them was done by Dr . Ayers at the school ,
at Appalachian , and uh , I don ' t know exactly what all is involved
in that . But I was wondering if someone like the Smithsonian
Institution has been contacted about it ? Or National Geographic
Magazine ? By the committee to see if they could do something
like fund a big project?
A.
Yeah , I don ' t know .
Q.
I mean , it looks like if anybody could do anything , they maybe
could .
A.
Uh huh . That phase of it is controversial , for several reasons .
One is uh , this doctor came down and made an archeological survey
which was required . APC had to fund it and they did a couple of
them at different times and they had to pay the money for it and
yet they were very cursory . You know , a couple of weeks was the
most that was spent on it . And yet they uncovered so many sites
and so many things were found and uh , one of the problems was
that Appalachian has used is that uh , this Dr . Ayers , is that his
name? He requested that those sites be kept secret - that they
not be published so that people wouldn ' t get in there and start
tearing them up looking for things . Uh , APC said the reason they
didn ' t put these in the report was that , because he had asked
for secrecy . Well , now the wholE: thing has been .
. braadcast
and everybody knows about it , but nobody knows where they are
yet . Appalachian ' s arguement doesn ' t hold water . They could
have talked about the archeological findings without revealing
the sites because those sites haven ' t been revealed yet . Nobody
knows where they are .
except that fella and whoever • s got the
report at APCO . So they certainly could have made those things ,
made the knowledge about them available without giving up any
secrets , as I say . So that ' s a little bit of a controversial
things . Some people say well if you look hard enough along almost
any river in the country you ' ll find things like this . Well ,
that may or may not be true . We know we found them here , we
don ' t know they can be found along the Adkin or
along the ,
what is up at Charleston , the Canawa .
Q.
I was thinking about , uh , a professor came to talk to us at
school from Winston-Salem or somewhere . He was telling us about
the Nile River . or course , that this is the second oldest river
in the world , well you know about the pyramids and everything
�;J
- 14-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1, Side B
Q.
along the Nile .
A.
Yes . The Aswan Dam was built on the Nile and it flooded many
ancient archeological sites and they were - they collected money
all over the world from interested people to move some of those
things . But what they covered up that hadn ' t been dug up yet ,
no telling how much . So , uh , uh , this is an important item because people do pay attention to holding onto our history and
our culture and our heritage .
Q.
Well , do you have any more questions (to Mike)? We were just
mostly interested in what you were doing here in Virginia ...
Well if you don ' t have anything more to add - I know you could
talk probably along time about the River -
A.
Well , these things go on . The best deal is to get in a canoe
and go down the River . We had at school here yesterday - I got
hold of a film entitled " A Man and the River " and it ' s done by
the Environmental Protection Agency , you know Thomas Hart Benton
is an old Missouri artist and I ' m a Missouri boy and used to see
all his paintings - he ' s great on murals and Thomas Hart Benton
died just a couple of years ago , yesterday we got the Reader ' s
Digest and there ' s a big long article about Thomas Hart Benton
in Reader ' s Digest . It ' s a pretty good article . But this film
uh , was done by the EPA uh and I don ' t know what their purpose
was but it showed alot of his works , his paintings and his
drawings but interspersed with him floating in a canoe down the
Buffalo River in the Ozarks of Missouri which is one of the
rivers that has been protected against dams by being included
in the National Scenic River System and it looks just like the
New River . Just exactly like it . And uh , uh , I was never on the
Buffalo but I ' ve been on the Current River and the White River
and alot of rivers down in southern Missouri years ago and uh ,
I was really tickled toget this film that depicts - in fact , if
our daughter didn ' t take it to high school to show it , it ' s in
there on the table now . But it ' s just a , a good emotional impact
when you see , here is this old fella up in his eighties , paddling
down the river and making drawings of the things on it because
he ' s got a real interest in keeping some rivers like they were .
The Federal Power Commission has one job and that ' s to find power.
And yet they give them , theoretically , the total say so on where
they ' ll slap dams around the country without every considering
the heritage of the people or the land or the agriculture or anything else and the ~whole history of the Federal Power Commission
they ' ve turned down ~ two applications for dams and approved every
other one . Now that ' s stupid because - and then uh uh , several
people have said , well the Federal Power Commission ought
to have the authority to say this because they were created by
Congress to do that job and Congress ought not to step in and say
no when they make a decision . Why absolutely Congress ought to .
Anytime I ' ve got a guy working for me and he botches a job I
either fire him or straighten him out , you know . You don ' t just
say I gave him a job and if he does it wrong why I don ' t have
any right to correct it . Congress established the FPC to do a
job but that job is only recently were there any requirement for
About how .•.
�- 15-
Hal Eaton
Tape 1 , Side B
I
environmental impact statement . That ' s a new emphasis we ' ve got .
Uh , did you hear that story about Moses led the people of Israel
out of Egypt right up to the Red Sea and the army of Phar oh
�
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Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Efird, Jane
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Eaton, Hal
Interview Date
2/19/1976
Number of pages
15 pages
Date digitized
9/22/2014
File size
14.1MB
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alphanumeric code
d44665da49f6e6f0e7949daa692731d1
Scanned by
Tony Grady
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Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965-1989; W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection; Special Collections; Appalachian State University; Boone; NC). Any commercial use of the materials; without the written permission of the Appalachian State University; is strictly prohibited.
Source
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AC.111 Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965 - 1989
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111_tape339_HalEaton_transcript_M
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Interview with Hal Eaton [Feburuary 19, 1976]
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English
English
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Efird, Jane
Eaton, Hal
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<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Appalachian Power Company
Blue Ridge Project
Water resources development--New River Valley (N.C.-W. Va.)
Environmentalism
Eaton, Hal--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Interview about Appalachian Power Company's attempt to create a dam on the New River, near Grayson County, Virginia and the community's battle to keep them out.
American Electric Power Company
APC
Appalachian Power Company
Bath County
Blue Ridge Project
dams
Duke Power Company
Environmental Protection Agency
Federal Power Commission
Flater Lake
Grayson Business Development Association
Grayson County Va.
Hal Eaton
Holsten Reservoir
House of Representatives
Mouth of Wilson
New River
New River fight
North Carolina
Northwest Conservation Economic Development Council
Raleigh
Roanoke River
Roanoke Times
Scenic River bill
Scenic River System
Smith Mountain Lake
State Highway Department
Stephen Neal
Tennessee Valley Authority
Virginia
Virginia Electric Power Company
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/43822d622d8bca0769c3c1f27d72ed79.pdf
837d5c49f4a22a3e203e9ecab578f57b
PDF Text
Text
•
OUTLINE
Lorne R. Campbell
Interview
I.
Beginning the New River Dam
A.
B.
C.
Sales pitch
Public relations
Enlargement of plans
1.
2.
3.
4.
D.
Opposition in Ashe, Alleghany and Grayson counties
1.
2.
3.
II.
People favored small project at first
Interior Department proposal
Curtis Bell favored project
Approval by Sec. Udall
Reasons for opposition
Environmental Protection Act
Real opposition in January '71
How Campbell became involved
A.
B.
C.
Crouse carried fight to Ervin and others
Campbell/Crouse conference
Upper New River Valley Association
1.
2.
D.
E.
F.
Formation
Downfall
Crouse's request for reorganization of UNRVA
Reorganization of UNRVA
Grayson County's opposition to project
III.
Reasons for fighting project
IV.
NEPA (National Environmental
A.
Objections filed by Campbell
EIS polished up
Environmental Impact Statement
1.
2.
V.
Act)
Environmental Impact Statement filed
1.
2.
B.
Pro~ection
Contents of EIS
Certain aspects of EIS
National Attention
A.
B.
C.
Chapter of Issac Walton League formed
.American Rivers Association
Audubon Society
�VI.
VII.
Aspects of the dam
Officials, Participants, and their input, contributions, opinions,
etc.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.'
F.
G.
VIII.
Politics
A.
B.
VIX.
C.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
Power Co. made dam seem pleasing
State support
Problems with dam in NC.
XVI.
XVII.
Franklin Realty Company
Discovery of procedure for financing houses
Appalachian Power Company land buying
Noted observations of New River Festival
Support groups
A.
B.
XVIII.
N.C. filed suit
Utilities following same path as R.R.
Investigation of Board of Directors of Power Co.
A.
B.
XV.
Power Co. unable to float bonds if allowed to proceed
Would be using 3 kilowatts to create 2 kilowatts of power
(for peak periods)
No geological studies made of effects.
Plans for nuclear reactors
A.
B.
XIV.
Appalachian Power Co. produces 33% of own coal mined by union
miners
United Mine Workers and APCo. favor strip mining
Reasons for delay
A.
B.
X.
Donald Cook, President, American Electric Power Co.
Coroso, Engineer of Power Co.
Udal
Wallace Carrol, Chief of NY Times Washington Bureau
Ned Kenworthy, did environmental writing for NY Times
Bill Moyer
Madden, Congressman from Indiana
Youth support
University support
Feelings of the people tewards the land
�Tape #312
This is Janice Young working for the Appalachian Oral History Project. I'm
interviewing Lorne R. Campbell at his home in Jefferson on August 2, 1975.
Q:
Okay Mr. Campbell, could you perhaps explain the purpose and just a little
background about the New River Project and some of the controversies behind
it?
A:
I'm an attorney and not versed in the technical reasons why they want the dam,
excepting that it seemed at the time, when it was first proposed to the people
in this area, that it was presented in such a way as to make it appear that the
people who would be effected would be very, very selfish if they didn't share
the possibilities of this river to produce hydroelectric power with the rest
of the nation.
They had a man who was in charge of the public relations who
was one of the most skillful advocates of it that's ever been.
In fact, he
was so good that they took him out of here and put him in charge of the New
York office.
But when the sales pitch was completed, the supervisors of
Grayson County and the officials of Grayson County and most of the people who
were in the area all were in favor of a small project compared to this manstrosity.
And there was very little . united opposition to it.
Then after the
power company thought they were going to get their license in a short time,
the Interior Department, through one of their engineers, whose name escapes me
for the moment, he proposed then that it would be a wonderful idea if they
enlarged it, about triple its size and use the excess water as a system to be
called upon from Charleston to flush out the lower Kanawha River and in and
around Charleston, West Virginia.
Which is so polluted there, that nothing can
live in the waters of the Kanawha River there in above Charleston.
At that time,
Curtis Bell was field solicitor and attorney for the Interior Department.
As a
personal observation I considered him to be the most brilliant and fearsome lawyer
that was involved in this Blue Ridge Project.
Interior at that time was supporting
�2
the, and was in favor of the Blue Ridge Project.
The then Secretary Udall,
without very careful study, he approved it and said it would be a wonderful
thing.
Curtis Bell stated that he had fifteen more years of service to the
Interior Department and he was going to devote all of that time to cleaning
up the Kanawha River.
This seemed the most logical and best way to do it.
I believe at that point that the attention of the general public, especially
in Ashe, Alleghany, and Grayson County, started to crystallize in opposition
to the project for the simple reason that we were being called upon to do
something, which the power company and which the big industries in Charleston,
West Virginia, wouldn't help themselves.
It wasn't long then, several months
of argument and one thing and another and about that time, Senator Muckie
was proposing a bill which eventually came out as the National Environmental
Protection Agency Act.
In that act the Clause provided that no water should
be used to dilute pollution.
And that was the very purpose that they had
proposed were defeated in that.
to the Blue Ridge Project.
So that is when the real opposition started
And at that time, that was in January 1971, up until
that time, there had been fragmented opposition, but no unification.
You want
some of the history, the background like this, this what you want?
q:
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
A:
Floyd
Krause, an attorney and a very capable attorney in Sparta, North
Carolina, was in declining health and he had carried the fight to Senator Sam
Ervin and to all the other state and federal officials in the state of North
Carolina.
His health became very, very bad and he couldn't do it.
I had been
gone for about three or four years and returned and had some conferences with
Floyd.
The . Upper New River Valley Association had been formed to try to unify
the opposition to the dam and, oh, it had fallen apart with no leadership in it.
Then about two weeks before Floyd died, I met him just near the Sparta bridge,
which is on the road from Independence to Sparta, and he told me that he was going
�3
back to the hospital and that his chances were very slim .
He asked me to continue
to interest myself, to fight this dam, and suggested at that time that we organize
the Upper New River Valley Association.
I told him that all the attorneys that
I had talked to in this area were all pro-dam.
They'd all done title work for
the power company or were retained or in some manner connected with the utilities
and that none of them would take the time or make the effort to arouse the
people's interest.
I asked him then who I could trust, and he said he believed
that Jim Todd was, who is cashier of the bank, Grayson National Bank in
Independence, that he was someone I could trust.
So I got with Jim Todd and we
started to reorganize the Upper New River Valley Association.
have meetings in Ashe, Alleghany and Grayson County.
We started to
Sometimes we've had five
people, sometimes ten people, sometimes fifteen people.
We met in schoolhouses,
we met everywhere that we could get two or three more of the people to assemble.
And we finally, after about a year of it • . . in the meantime all manner of other
things were going one in the courts, you know.
the FPC and everything in the world.
We were filing opposition to
We were filing briefs, the legal part
was continuing, and I prevailed on the Commonwealth attorney to let me associate
with him for the sole purpose of preparing briefs and filing things opposing the
dam, am we finally got Grayson County t:o go on record saying that they opposed
the Blue Ritlge Project.
They are formally on record to that effect and are still
of that opinion as of today.
But they were kind of playing lip service to it,
they had no, they're not taking aty active role in it.
when I got the authority to act for the
Gr~son
It was the understanding
County Board of Supervisors,
which is the governing body of a county, that I would have to do it on a volunteer
basis, I wouldn't get paid.
I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars of my own
money and hundreds and thousands of hours, I guess.
like the damn power company and I like this river.
Paul Johnson or Donald Cook (laughter).
Primarily because I don't
(Laughter)
And I don't like
It's just as simple as that, I mean
�4
it's not a vendetta or anything like that but it's just that I think their
principles are wrong if they've got any.
this country without any qualms.
I think they'll bilk and destroy
They are consummate liars, they're
deceitful, they have made promises to me, they've made promises for the
Commonwealth attorney, they've never kept or fulfilled a single one of them.
We asked them about rehabilitating the people, relocating them, "Oh, yes
we'll do that after the license is granted."
That is the most ridiculous
statement that a person . . . you know about how much rehabilitation, how much
relocation, they won't pay a damn bit of attention and time you get through
here and get up clear through Donald Cook, they'll never hear about it anymore.
That was the answer we got everywhere we went, "after the dam, after we're
licensed now, you.'.ve got to trust us."
I don't trust any of them.
(Phone rings)
Well, after the NEPA went in, then the whole thing started to turn around then .
They found out that instead of filing an environmental statement, the company
filed one.
Of all things in God's earth that you could imagine that would be
stupid, Judge Levy, who then was the hearing administrator and is now administrative law judge, he permitted the power company to file the environmental impact
statement.
And we just beat the tables and shouted and carried on, but they
wouldn't pay a damn bit of attention to us.
had a hearing before the FPC.
Then finally it went to the FPC,
We filed our objections and everything else and
when the FPC met, they sent it all back to Levy, "no that isn't complying with
the law."
The environmental statement shall be made by the staff of the FPC,
not by the applicant, by the staff of the FPC.
period of change.
So then there went another
Then all the Green county case came up and all of these other
cases came up pinpoint spelling out what had to go in to the environmental
impact statement.
So the staff of the FPC then took the old statement,
environmental statement of the power company, and just transposed it, polished
it up, enlarged it and glamorized it a little.
But it's still that the thread
runs right through it of the power companies' environmental statement.
�5
Q:
What was this?
A:
I beg your pardon.
Q:
This, this statement, what was it?
A:
Which one?
Q:
The environmental impact . . .
A:
The environmental impact statement, have you not seen that?
Q:
I don't think so.
A:
I better bring you that but if you can't, it won't, unless you have the background
What did it contain?
of those statements, you really haven't got into what this whole thing is about.
Are you familiar with what is supposed to be in the environmental impact statement?
Q:
No.
A:
Well this is . . .
Q:
. . . could you explain, you know.
A:
Yeah, this is what it's all about.
Before a federal agency can come into a
community and take property whether it's for a dam or a highway or, I'm involved
now in fighting the National Recreational Area Project up in Jefferson National
Forest.
Before any government agency can take land, they have to have public
meetings and public hearings.
And at those public hearings the government
or the agency has to tell the people the purposes for which their land is going
to be taken, what is going to be here, what's going to be affected, what the flora
and the fauna is going to be damaged.
That's the whole jist of the thing.
What's going to happen to the environment.
Then that document, after it's filed by, as
it should have been, by the staff of the FPC, that document is finalized, signed
and filed.
Then it's circulated through all the other agencies in the Federal
government that could conceivably have any interest in it.
fight out here, that's a navigable river.
You see this river
By a wierd case it was =decided in
1925, I believe it is, they concluded that any stream of water flowing into a
stream of water that was navigable, it of itself was navigable.
So this river
�6
out here is as navigable a stream of water as a canal down on Norfolk.
So
this environmental impact statement had to be circulated which, well, it went
through the Navy, you can't imagine how many damn agencies.
required by law to file a comment.
anything you could imagine.
Each agency is
Well they're just as void of prejudice as
"We see no reason to object to this project."
It's sent back, that's all that, then, oh, it's astonishing.
damnedest thing you've ever read in your life.
That's the
There '.s a young girl named
Ayers, her name also was Ayers from down in Wilkesboro, she was a student
studying environmental law down in Georgia and she wrote me a letter and I sent
her this stuff and she wrote, what do you call . . . thesis, her paper . . .
Q:
Thesis?
A:
Her thesis on this project.
That is one of the finest pieces of writing that's
come out of this whole thing .
objections in the record.
I have it, and I had it incorporated into our
Well, going back now to what happened in Washington.
Then after it was kicked back from the FPC for further review, it also provided
in there that we should have the opportunity to cross examine all the persons
who made statements that were incorporated in the environmental impact statement.
For instance, if some engineer said that no
particula~
damage is going to be
done, that the area here was nonproductive and no farming, the ridges are too steep,
and there's no productivity in the land, then we had a right to cross-examining
that person.
So he traipsed on back up to Washington again and they were all
there and Levy, as soon as we'd ask a question, he would say, "that's all in the
record, you can find it, it's in there."
And that's the way he would, and he'd
just stifle us and wouldn't let us cross-examine the witnesses.
a motion to disqualify him.
So then I filed
The motion is, oddly enough, filed before the person
whom you are seeking to disqualify.
You have to file it before Judge Levy.
Then he reads it and he says well I'm not going to disqualify myself.
Then, oh
_this is just the beginning, then you make the motion then of an appeal so that
�7
appeal then goes to the FPC.
disqualified.
The FPC then rules on whether or not he should be
Well that's just like asking the president of the bank whether
or not his cashier's honest.
Well, the FPC says, "Why, he's a wonderful man."
He made a statement that Levy is familiar with his territory, had been here
several times.
When an administrator of law does a hearing, something like this
river, they are cases that say that he cannot come here independently and observe
this area, unless he notifies council who are opposing the project.
the proponents.
And also
In other words, he's got to have both, the pros and the cons
have to be with him when, he can't come make an independent observation of the
Which is a dam good law.
thing ~
Well -(laughter) it got so some of the things that then
I argued that he was prejudice and dogmatic, arrogant, abrasive, abusive council
and all these other things put in the record and I'm a very gentle and mild
person in court and I didn't like to do these things but I did, had to get them
in the record.
Well, then a funny thing happened, after I did all this then,
of course, the newspapers jumped on it.
(laughter).
Oh, they had an awful time with it
The first time I met Judge Levy in New York, I mean in Washington,
I walked out in the court room and he's coming up and I said, "Good morning
Judge," and stuck out my hand and he said, "I don't know whether I should shake
your hand or not after the way you've been talking about me."
I thought we were professionals."
I said, "Judge,
He stopped a moment and looked and to his
credit he sort of grinned and stuck his hand out and said, "I guess you're right,"
(Laughter)
The whole theory of this, of the way the FPC conducts these hearings
that, you've got to see this environmental impact statement.
They have taken out
of some encyclopedia, I'd say twenty-five to thirty-five pages of descriptive
words about all the plants and the wildlife and everything in the world that grows
and is native around here, with the Latin names and just copied it into the report,
just boiler""P. lated it..
(There are) some things in there that I think are, as I
recall, not native at all.
They're indigenous to, I forgot where in the hell, up
�8
in the Artie nearly.
was no
study made.
But anyway, that is the type of thing they did.
~hat
There
is the very point that this man who was talking about
-
the way they ignored the archealogical studies and background and history of
this river that this was a stream that was used by the Indians and by the
early traders.
It's the only North and South flowing stream and you can go
from here to Pittsburg for that .DRtter and this was their route and very interesting enough, the crossing up here above, around Chestnut Hill and they went
from here back out into Lebanon and Tazzel in that section.
One of the last
pitched battles between two major Indian tribes, the warriors crossed through
this river and went down near Austinwille and went back up towards Tazzel,
I can't think of the name of the little section over there, and that's where
they had their Cherokee and the Sioux, I believe it was.
But anyway it has
tremendous interest and we have tried now for all these years to get national
attention directed to this.
Finally at one time it occurred to me to, if we
could get a chapter of the Isaac Walton League formed here.
so we could get some national attention.
And (we) went ahead then and formed
the New River Chapter of the Isaac Walton League.
That started building up,
generating interest and we got international publication.
fine pieces, wonderful pictures.
Get something
We had some very
We got the attention that we're looking for,
then the American Rivers Association and the Audubon Society and all these other
organizations.
I've got, in my office I've got I guess four by six foot, five
foot, stacks of all the letters, you just can't believe that all the helpful
people are interested in this river.
And mostly it's because, now, they have
used the idea that this, the power that they will generate here is for peaking
purposes.
And by the time they could get this thing built, it would be as
obsolete as buggy whips.
Having that, the peaking power process.
The reason
they want it now, Appalachian power company, American Electric Power Company,
�9
they practically own this river.
From Boone down to the Golly bridge.
What is the pass where the bridge fell down, that's the one I'm trying to,
Point Pleasant, yeah, point down to Point Pleasant.
it.
They have twenty-one dams on the river.
as their personal property.
this is theirs.
They practically own
And they just consider this river
They've exploited it for all these years and
It's not economically feasible.
It's not as feasible.
It's
not as a practical engineering thing, even their own people will tell you that.
They had a engineer in Charleston, West Virginia, off the record, told me in
Charleston, said this is by--this is the
~ost
stupid plan we have ever had
presented to us but it has come down from Donald Cook and we gonna implement
the damn thing.
Q:
Now, who is Donald Cook; . .
A:
He's the general president, he's President of American Electrical Power Company.
Outsider: Tell 'em about Donald.
A:
He's a very powerful man, he's a very brilliant man.
President Johnson.
And when back during the real
He was a great friend of
perio~
of need in Appalachia
area, for relief and government help, they also came up with the idea if they
could clean up the Kanawha River, they could provide 3600 additional jobs by
having the name of the company, could expand its
oper~tions
down there and bring
it back up to its hundred percent pollution again if they could get this
additional water down there.
So was the idea of putting their thousand more
jobs available in the Charleston area.
That germinated on their minds and
Johnson had brought Cook down to Washington to ask him to become Secretary, or
President rather, of United States Chamber of Commerce.
And Cook told him that
hell, that he had a better future with, this is all in the records, with the
American Electric Power Company.
And then he went back and when they started a
plan to clean up the Kanawha River, Johnson called Cook again to Washington and
said we've decided that your company is the one that should be given this job of
�10
building a dam and flushing out the Kanawha River.
That was the inception of the thing.
This is back in 1962.
Coroso, C-0-R-0-S-0, Coroso I think
that was the name of the engineer, a very young man and brilliant, he's magnetic and very interesting and entertaining too.
He is the one that came
up with this plan to flood this vast area and flush out the Kanawha River.
It's his baby.
Then after tqat, after all that planning, Udall then retracted
his statement, former Secretary of Interior, Udall, retracted his statement.
He said after reflecting on it, he decided that it was the stupidest thing
that he had ever done as Secretary of the Interior, was to okay the Blue Ridge
Project.
Of course that got national attention.
Then that helped us some.
Then by luck and by chance, Wallace Carroll> who had been editor, had been
chief of the New York Times Washington Bureau, came down and took over the
editor and publisher of the Winston-Salem Journal, and he knew Ned Kenworthy,
who was at that time doing the environmental writing for the New York Times.
And he asked Ned to come down.
Well, Ned came down and stayed with us for a
week, as did the chief of the Washington Bureau, he and his wife stayed here
and Ned stayed here.
We ran them up and down the river, I did but every nook
and cranny of it and they really got sold on it.
beautiful spot they have ever seen.
in the area trained.
They think it's the most
And you'd think that we had the wildlife
I'll swear, the first thing the woman saw was a pilerated
woodpecker, is that what they call those things?
Outsider:
A:
Pileated?
Yeah (laughter) was the first thing she saw, she's been looking for one for ten
years, you know.
went on like that.
That's the first thing she saw. (Laughter)
Everything just
And she was absolutely fasinated by everything.
Well then
Ned knew, Ned had been around and did some politicing with Johnson and Ned met
Bill Moyer.
He told Bill Moyer about it.
we set up this thing to do the documentary.
So Bill, he got in touch with me and
That's the history of how these
�11
different little things fitted together.
Well we got Wallace Carroll, we
got Ned Kenworthy, we got Bill Moyer, and we got Senator Helms and we got,
of course, Sam Ervin's, (who's) been with us for a long time. And . . .
Outsider: Mizell.
A:
Mizell was very, very active with it . • . but when Mizell started out, that's a
rather odd thing.
I couldn't get any response from anybody in North Carolina.
They have done a one-hundred.
END OF SIDE ONE
A:
• • . at the time.
there does.
He had about as much influence ±n Washington as my puppy
He didn't have any, they wouldn't pay any attention to him.
When
he called up, he said that's none of your damn business, that's something
connected with the, this is the truth now, actually what they told him.
Interior Department told him none of your damn business, said we're running
this, this is not in your baliwick.
Outsider:
A:
This is our business.
You mentioned Bill Moyer, is he the sometimes a guest editorialist for Newsweek?
He's out in Aspen, Colorado, this summer attending a school out there and I got
a letter from him this past month.
But those people are the one's who, when
they finally saw the project as it really is, each one then started reaching out
in his sphere of influence.
That's what finally got the national attention.
I've got editorials from the St. Louis dispatch, the Chicago papers, Philadelphia
papers, and just last week, my daughter in Penn State said that the school paper
up there had a big long thing, had a quotation of mine in the thing, and she
had just got back from Bermuda and said she felt like she was going to be a
celebrity.
All young kids . . . (laughter).
But that's what can be done.
And what
is being done and what has been done, but when you get up to the threshold of the
bureaucracy in Washington, it's all the frustrating you can't imagine how sickening
�12
it is to find out how everything that you've ever believed in and trusted
throughout your life in the form of our government, what can happen to it when
those rascals get a hold of it.
The most horrible thing in the world you
could imagine is, what's the name of that congressman from Indiana?
Outsider:
Oh, that rascal.
Q:
Madden.
A:
Madden, yeah.
Outsider:
A:
1
Madden, Madden.
He wouldn't report out his bill on the dunes.
That's got absolutely nothing to
do with this, of course, but it was in the committee that Roberts, not Roberts.
Is it Roberts?
Was the co-chairman of it.
were just starting.
But they hadn't finished it, they
And of course it's a slow process, but we've gone all
through that, Taylor's comittee.
Outsider:
A:
Roy Taylor.
Roy Taylor was sub-chairman of it.
was just finally filtering through.
But we had gone all through that.
His bill
And he said he wasn't going to do a damn
thing about the Blue Ridge Project until Roy Taylor turned loose his Punes bill.
Outsider:
Janice, are you on tape?
Lorne doesn't have a nephew that's attorney to the
Federal Power Commission.
A:
Outsider:
A:
I don't know.
Madden, I think he does.
Probably does.
But that's just one of the nauseating things you're into and
the power that these men have is just unbelievable.
The congressmen and the
senators, they are so totally dependent upon their staff.
Now a member of A's
staff, to get something done, has to be scratching the back of Mr. Senator B's
staff.
So it's a, which is proper, it's a complete composite of compromise
and I'll rub your back, you rub my back and then we'll get through and some how
�13
or other bungle it, and that's . . • But it's no more responsive to the wishes
of the people.
For instance, over in Grayson County, Virginia, we're part of
the fifth congressional district, ninth congressional district of Virginia.
The congressman from over there I went to see.
his father.
I've known him for years, knew
I knew his political background, know all about him, belongs to
the same party as I do, e.verything.
I went to see him.
I'm gonna keep my hands off this thing."
He said, "I was there at the inception
and I'm not going to be there at the crucial moment.
participate in the thing."
I'm not g@ing to actively
I.t went on a while, .a year or two, bang, all of a
sudden, Bill Walker favors the Blue Ridge Project.
Walker in Washington.
He said, "Now LQrne,
So I went up to see Bill
Went back in his private offi.ce. and he said, "Lorne,
I just migp t as well tell you this, but anything that Appalachian Power Company
wants in my district, I'm gonna support."
Outsider:
Now . . .
W.hat was his reason?
Q:
What, yeah, why is this.
A:
Because he.
Outsider:
A:
The back scratching.
For the £irst time, no, he for the first time was having unified opposition.
New, about politics making strange bedfellows, lhited Nine Workers has been at
logger heads with the Duke Power Compaf¥ and American Electric Power Company,
Appal..achian Power Company for years and years and years.
But the Appal.achian
Power Company produces thirty-three percent of its own coal that it uses.
That coal is mined by union miners.
strip mining.
The United Mine Workers are in favor of
So they made you deal.
we'll contribute to your campaign.
Walker, if you'll favor strip mining,
So that was the unholy alliance.
United
Mine Workers, Appalachian Power Company, and then the construction of unions.
Well there's not a United Mine Worker to my knowledge lives in this whole damn
basin.
If he is, he's got, poor fellows got black lung.
But that is the
�14
representation that you have in Congress.
When the bill was finally smothered
in Congress and caine up for a vote, we had to pull it out of committee, which
took a two-third vote which is killing committee.
So we had to get two-thirds
vote of the full Congress to get it out of the committee.
impossible and we knew it.
And we got the majority.
Of course that was
But what we wanted to do was at least get a majority.
We got the majority of the Senate through Jim Ervin,
and .we got the majority in the Congress in the ·House of Representatives.
So a
majority of Congress has, is opposing the Blue Ridge Project.
Outsider:
A:
Lorne, tell about the North Carolina Legislature, unanimous.
Again.st it.
Yeah, the entire Legislature, both the Senate and the House in North Carolina
and all public officials with republicans and democrats alike are all opposed
to this project.
Of course, they all look at it one way and say that North
Carolina's being very, very selfish about it.
It's a bad program.
But that's not necessarily true.
It's a bad thing from top to beginning.
absolute rape of a river.
It's just an
When you look at it, the background of the history
of this river, the very little we kn<M of the river and how much wonderful study
could be done at this river and its relationship, not only to the development
of this country . . . but this very, the most interesting article, when the
glacier moved back, the effect of the Tease River that was originally drained
this whole basin, the whole bit, flowed into the Mississippi.
And then as it
carved its way through West Virginia, and the the New River came unwound, that's
the reason it winds around here, flows North and goes up
~~~~~~~~
Q:
Well the re's so much opposition to it then, why, how many years has this been
going on?
A:
Been, oh, about twelve.
Q:
And it's still not s~ttled so . • .
A:
It's a long way from being settled, yeah.
�/
15
Q:
What are the major, you've talked about some of the reasons with the politics.
Is that the major reason?
A:
You mean for the delay or for.
Q:
Yeah, for not being settled if there's so much opposition to it.
A:
Well, first of all, look (at) the inept ways the power company undertook to
come in here and just bull right through.
and just sweep all opposition aside.
Just through like a big bullddzer
You see, they're in a hell of a predi-
cament here because they're already spent around thirteen million dollars buying
land around here.
They own a tremendo.us amount of land.
That's money out of
their pockets on which they're paying ten percent interest, which is a million
three hundred· thousand dollars a year, you quickly figure out on interest alone
that they have had tied up here for all these years on the bad advice they got
from their council and from their engineers and everybody else.
so damn sure that they's have the Federal Power Comn.ission.
comprised the Federal E ower Connnission?
That's who are on the FPC.
They were just
You know who
For~r heads of utility companies.
·And now, as a little ploy, they're taking out
the man who was the head of the p.ark system under the Department of Agriculture,
which is with the Interior Department.
Outsider:
A:
Second
Outsider:
Now they' .re putting him in the FPC.
Outdoor Recreations.
And it's t.mbelievable what goes on.
Well that sounds like that they're taking this guy out of the parks system, that
it would be for the Appalachian Power Companies advantage.
A:
Well that's what they're doing.
That's why it's being done.
Outsider:
He was in charge of the outdoor recreation.
Second
Outsider:
Right.
A:
Outsider:
He's. . .
Part of the Interior and he's been appointed as the
~~~~~~~~~~~-
�16
A:
Second
Outsider:
And he's in favor of the dam.
Well then if this thing were to go through, the Appalachian Power Company
would own the whole lake, wouldn't they, and that would give them the
revenues off the land they sell and. . .
A:
Outsider:
A:
Oh ;. yeah.
--------things
like that.
It's the American Electric Power Company by no stretch of the imagination is to
be considered
---------institution.
They're out to make money.
That's as cold-blooded as a snake.
And how they do it is no . . • if you have any doubts
about that, you should go in the coal fields of West Virginia where they get the
coal and where they get the raw power out of the earth.
Back during the
depression, the power companies always had money in credit.
brought the land and the coal out then from the people.
And they have
They own West Virginia.
American Electric Power Company, Duke Power Company, and North and Western
Railroad. · They're all tied in.
I don't know how to better express it than it's
almost facism control, eorporate control of the state.
years and years.
It's been that way for
It's completely dominated by the big utility companies, the
Du Porc.s, American Electric Power Company, North and Western Railroad, C and O,
L am N, all thesa tremendous, powerful. . .
Outsider:
A:
Ane.rican Electric and
Po~r
Company is the biggest utility in the United States.
T.here's m way in the world you can just. . . the pleasure you get out of
figi_ting them is the same· pl.easure. you get out of runn:in.g and butting your head
aga:in.st the wal.1.
But you do get the inner satisfaction of makhg i t just
as .difficult for them to accomplish.
And now I honestly believe that dann thing
is not feasible, economically or any other damn way.
T.hey couldn't possibly, in
my opinion, if they were told to start building this dam tomorrow, they couldn't
float the bonds to build the damn thing.
H.alf a billion dollars to, when they will
�17
use three kilowatts to create two kilowatts of power because they'·ll have it at
a peaking period.
peaking power.
Now in all probability, there is going to Be a change in this
They'·re going to have to do it. In other words, they are going
to have to adjust itself.
England, you know, after the World War II, went
through a period of austerity where there was a lot of self denial, not only
by the poor people, who, the poor people win your war and the poor people pay
the taxes, so the middle class and the upper middle class and the rich people
can survive.
But anyway, the austerity got so severe that even the nobility
and the upper bureaucracy in England had to draw in their belts.
I honestly
believe that within the next five years, something of that nature is going to
have to happen in America.
They're going to have to bide not having this
peaking power 'cause they've gonna have to level it off in to a constant flow
so they won't have the surplus power.
For instance, if you take an airplane,
fly it now, up and down the east coast, you see these damn dust-to-dawn lights
all over the eastern seaboard running.
off.
Nobody goes out there and cuts them
Everyone you see out there is paying the power company three dollars and
seventy-five cents a month to run that thing out there.
Now that is taken float,
dust-to-dawn is their low power demand comes around, I think it's seven thirty
in the morning and one in the afternoon and five in the evening.
the peak power
Those are
That's where this dam is here available much as
a battery, storage battery.
When these tremendous demands are made, whether
it's made here or up in Ohio or out in Illinois or in New York or wherever
it might be that is fed by the American Electric Power Company of any of it's
allied grid connections.
They have a breakdown up in Duquesne, they get the
power from down here and this is here constant.
motors to heat up.
They don't have to wait for the
They don't have to wait for the reactors to start.
don'·t have to work for, wait for, a damn thing.
It's right here.
They
It's instant.
�18
It's ready.
'Cause hydroelectric, that's why they want that thing.
they level off this
pe~iod
But if
of peaking and the way the government is going to
do it, Ford'•s fooling around with this gasoline bit now, put the gas so
high that people won't use it, that's crazier than hell.
That won't work.
But they can make industry change its peaking power demands by taxing.
And that's what-they'll do .it.
now.
That's what's really stalling the energy crisis
They're programming it now, and that's directly connected with Blue
Ridge Project here.
And as soon as that abates, soon as that, they will
come up with one or two different solutions.
Either you're going to have (to)
use the new system of some · nuclear fission system that . . . what do they call
that, they say it's a breeding reactor, I can't think of the name of it.
Out~i4er:
A:
Breeding reactor.
The breeding reactor, so they're gonna use that for the peaking power instead
of this.
So, and there in the record it shows that this, in twenty years,
will be obsolete.
Outsider:
A:
That's what it is.
Do you know that not a damn word in this.
They're already obsolete.
Do you know that in twenty years from now that, and there's nothing in the
Environmental Impact Statement about this, they have got no record of the situation
that's going to take place.
There's nothing in this record to show the effect
of the fogs that are bound to come by reason of this lake.
close, every
morn~ng
Living as we do so
here at, you almost have to feel your way out of this
holler because of the heavy fog.
Imagine what it's going to be like being so
near to the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, that warm air coming over on to
the big reservoir of 44,000 acres.
Qc
There's no study made of that.
Were there no geological kind of studies made?
A: . No, not a damn thrng.
Outsiderc
~~~~~they
refused Janice. They refused to do these things.
�19
A:
And then it means that
we~re
gonna have our road systems from the west end of
this county going to Independence, are going to nave to go back µp in to the
mountains and skirt at an elevation of about 300.0. feet to get in to Independence.
Q:
Would the power company not have to pay to have these roads redone?
A:
No, well the relocation of the roads is a matter that, now if you think, if
you're naive enough to believe that the American Electric Power Company doesn't
control the road building in Richmond, I don't know what class you need to go
to. (Laughter)
They control it.
It's supposed to be that this is, in theory,
what happened.
The Appalachian Power Company's engineers sit down with the
highway engineers and the Board of Connnissioners in North Carolina and the
Board of Supervisors over here.
They map out and rearrange the roads.
Then a
certain percentage of the cost of building, relocating those roads, will be
payed by the power company.
This is in balance, of course, by the highway,
by the respective highway connnission.
Q:
Well, does the power company, that you know of, does it have any plans to
start any kind of nuclear reactor since there's such a large body of water there?
A:
The only thing we know about that is Paul Johnson made the statement in Kingsport,
Tennessee, to the effect that the Smith Mountain Lake down at Roanoke, a mistake
they made there was not building it big enough.
They couldn't put in a cooling
system for a nuclear plant, and that the long range concept of the Blue Ridge
Project was for a nuclear installation.
After that was made, there were a
dozen people made affidavits to the effect that that is what he said.
makes a statement that he didn't say it.
piece we did one night.
a surmner at
Outsider:
A:
Madis~n
He denied it.
Now he
I ask him that point blank on the radio
He denied it when I was at a seminar at
College, and then another one at Sweet Briar.
He denied it at Shatley Springs when I asked h:tm.
And each time in front of the student body I posed the question to him.
he'd say well I didn't say it 'cause I didn't make the statement.
Each time
I hated to do it
�20
but I told them that I thought Paul Johnson was a very fine gentleman but
I wouldn''t oel ±eve a damn word he said about the Blue Ridge Project.
meant it.
I
wouldn ~ t.
And I
I would believe a . . . That's kind of a rambling way
to tell you but the feeling now in this community ±s this, as I see it now.
The idea that this lake was going to be a tremendous bonanza for these people
is gone by the board.
in.
I mean, the reality of this thing is beginning to sink
For instance, now you take a peninsula of land coming out, you just
imagine this being the water and this peninsula of land coming out here that
is not within the need of the power company for its purposes.
The road at
this time goes away around out here, another road comes down through the
man's farm and the land's been taken.
Now the cost of building a road down to
him here is prohibited so the power company will buy that land.
the land cheaper than it can build a road down there.
to go up by him.
It can buy
So the road's going
There'll just be no access to the . . . Do you know where
the school is, Oakhill Academy?
Is that it?
to be sitting on a peninsula out here.
Well, the Oakhill Academy is going
It's going to be, now the highway goes
right in front of the door and if this thing were built, it would be out in the
peninsula, way the hell gone out here.
They'd have to build seven miles of road
to come back into the main road. And the power company went up there and told
them that we will install a new water system.
road built in there."
"We will see you have that
But the thing they didn't tell them was how in the devil
they were ever going to get a doctor in there, in ease of an emergency.
He'd
have to come forty-three miles and seven miles, nearly fifty miles to get in to
that now.
Where as he could come from the hospital in Jefferson, hospital from
Marion, the hospital at Sparta in thirty, forty minutes.
And those are the things
that you knew after the first b.lush, they are beginning to think about it and
realize that we
(~ere)
going to have some of the most isolated . . . This Cox's
Chapel over here, it's going to oe a little isolated community in North Carolina,
�21
but it's Virginia, but it's going to be in North Carolina.
maybe four or five
acres stuck over there.
tho~sand
It's going to be
No way in the world that
the children over th~re can come to school in Virginta.
They won't have any
way to get here unless they go way up to Lancer and came through
--~-----
or go the other way, they have to go down to Balewo0d and come aroup.d, that
way.
Outsider:
A:
They're going to be so isolated there won't be any way in the world.
They would gonna be cut off.
Yeah, so, I mean those are things that, those hard realities are now beginning
to be impressed on the people.
Q:
What were some of the things the power company was promising the people so that
it seemed pleasing.
A:
Were they promising jobs or . . .
Yeah, what they told them was that it would . be seven years building it and
that they paid the highest wages and all that you know, and there would be a
period of prosperity.
I think one of the funny things that happened, I asked
them, "What do you foresee after it's built and all the transient labor leaves.
What are we going to have?"
restaurants."
(Laughter)
Outsider:
A:
"Oh, he said, "you'll have filling stations,
He stopped there and said, ''Well, barber shops, I guess."
That's in the record.
Barber shops are gotng out of business.
That's just unbelievable.
But that's in the record.
Then the priceless line
in the environmental, what was once bucolic will now be busy.
line that's supposed to bring you to your feet.
But you must reach that to get
really an understanding of the concept of this project.
a copy of it because itt.s most interesting.
That's the final
I'll see that you get
It's a most concentrated form, the
whole concept of this project is concentrated in that thing.
'Cause, see in
it is our comments, our opposition to it, and we spell out and criticize and
take in apart.
all in there.
Then the comments of the other agencies and everything else are
Statements of the school board and the Board of Supervisors.
�22
North Carolina '·s oppos·ition to it.
Everything, all that is in it.
And then
Judge Levy paid just about as much attention to it as he would te those katydids
out there.
Q:
What aoout the different states that are involved, are they working together on
this?
A:
Not as closely as
they~~~~~~~-
For a long time Virginia was, or Grayson
County, was just almost standing alone because of • . • in this section, because
West Virginia saved our necks.
Way back from 1968, '69, when they made a big
drive and bought up all this land, the governor of West Virginia had received
a letter from the Federal Power Commission, and he decided not to circulate
it.
They play rough politics in West Virginia.
it in his desk drawer.
to be granted.
He took the letter and slid
This is on Thursday and on Monday the license was going
One of the secretaries found it and she was a member of the
Isaac Walton League.
They didn't expect them to get this letter but she
thought it was going to be made public so when she saw what had happened, she
snuck it out and gave it to the Isaac Walton League, got a chapter chairman
up there.
Levy got ahold of Ed Burlin who was head of the Conservation Council
and General Council for the Isaac Walton League of America and the West
Virginia Wildlife Association.
On Monday morning at nine o'clock a brief,
you see there's no opposition to this thing, on a Monday morning before ten
o'clock or was it nine o'clock, they filed the brief that held it up.
how close it was.
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
Lorne, did you ever find out that girl's name?
I wouldn't tell it if I knew it.
Well, I never did find out.
A:
But she did it though.
Q:
Now what was in the letter?
1 asked and !never did find it out.
That's
�23
A:
The letter from
Q:
Yeah.
A:
Well, app·i :oving the whole p-roj ect and giving him notice that on Monday the
tb~
governor?
project was going .to be
l ~censed
down opposition in West Virginia.
and thanking him for his help and keeping
''Cause Virginia was just laying back and
North Carolina was laying back and nobody was doing a damn thing.
Then when
that went in to it, I guess it probably . . • Irvin Berlin was the ablest of all
the young environmental lawyers.
At the time he was probably the smartest.
Then a funny thing about this thing, Berlin filed these briefs and they were
very, very capable briefs, very fine briefs, and that was opposing the pollution
dilution theory and that stayed and stalled the thing and during that period
when they had a back up and fight off, file the Environmental Impact Statement,
all those things just falling one behind the other.
But if we hadn't stopped it,
I mean if it hadn't been stopped by West Virginia at that time, we'd have been
under water here right now.
That saved it.
That one act.
PART THREE
A:
Q:
water damming up here and then it just flushed it out.
Well, is that one of the main reasons why they still want this project today or
is that.
A:
Well, you see now that was eliminated from this project by an amendment that
was introduced by Mizzel.
Now what I know and what anyone who
thin~s
about
it a little while knows, is just as damn soon as they got this dam here they would
repeal that amendment.
That's ABC, that's elementary.
because of the attention being focused on it.
is off of the books and they cannot do it.
It is as of the moment
The pollution dilution theory
But just as soon as they get the
thing here,then who in the hell is going to take any interest in what the water
is used for?
They '·11 simply pass a lot of.
�24
Q:
Well, i:s th_at the reason. why th.ey still want the dam, l mean i f it is going to
take three kil0watts of
A:
~ower
to produce. • .
That is one of the, you see when they do that, then when they get that, they
will get a sufisidy from the federal government.
cost of operating everything.
Which w±ll help towards the
We went so far, I never had given up hope,
I never thought it was going through but we met with the attorney general of
Virginia and West Virginia and North Carolina in Roanoke, Virginia.
And then
after that meeting, we met with the attorney who prepared the compact or the
pact, rather, between Nevada and California about Lake Tahoe Company which is
the jointed administration of both states.
And that attorney came down and we
met with him in Richmond and the Governor appointed me on the committee and the
Governor of North Carolina appointed Ed Adams.
But we still weren't getting
much attention, but we still weren't getting much from North Carolina at that
time because they, the people up in Ashe and Alleghany hadn't began to fight.
The governor didn't pay a bit of attention to it, and then when we got the
compact outlined and ready to fund and anything else in case that they did
come here.
Because you see, there is a tremendous responsibility here.
You'·ve
got three counties involved, and you've got two states involved, you got the
policing you have got the sanitary problems, you have got the zoning problems.
Who's going to be responsible if someone starts dynamiting fish in North
Carolina, vice-a-versa or something like that?
We have got to police it and
those things take months of preparation and we had started on the nucleus of the
thing and that's how certain the officials in North Carolina was, I mean in
Virginia, that this thing was going through.
Q:
What's holding it up now?
A:
Why? What is holding up the project at the moment?
Q:
Yeah.
�25
A:
Well, there is a sui:te filed and th.e suite filed by. the state of North Carolina
in the fom:rth d±str:i:ct, and a suite fi:led in the Wash±ngton district to enjoin
them because of tlles-e faila:i;es to comply with the NEPA is mainly the reason.
And then attacking it on various other technical defects in the procedures that
they have followed.
They-'·ve b.een so high handed and so sure of themselves,
that they just overreached themselves.
You can't imagine . .
Q:
Lorne, the Appalachian credit rating has dropped tremendously.
A:
Oh, yeah.
Q:
And so that is a big factor.
A:
There was an article in a Business Week, I have it down in my office, of a
biographical sketch of Cook.
And a young man, like yourself, would read that
and if it doesn't stir you to your core, there's something wrong with America
because he is antipathetical to every damn principle and concept of a
democracy.
He's a complete dictator.
Q:
This is Donald Cook?
A:
Yeah, he, it is just incredible how arrogant.
Q:
Is he about ready to retire, Lorne?
A:
I beg your pardon.·
Q:
Isn't he about ready to retire?
A:
He retires this month.
Q:
He and his board can't get along right now can they?
A:
No, they are having a hell of a racket.
No, next year.
I talked to Ned Kenworthy about him and
he said, of course he was very • . . He'd have to be, he is as intelligent as hell.
But he is just a old predatory power baron just like the railroad.
follow the same cycle.
the
ut±l±ti~s
are
ga~ng
They all
We went through it with the railroad before and now
th.e same route.
It won't be many years till the utilities
will l}e leani'tlg on th.e gove1mment, just as the railroads are leaning on the
government, tl'tat is the next cycle.
Then as the oil, as our oil
depeats ~
the oil
�26
companies will then D:e leaning on the government, and all of the little rapists
who have been in the o±l and all of the other exoti-c energy sources, they'·ll
collapse, but tfiey are going to be retired in these beautiful mansions they
have.
Did you ever read anything about the L & N railFoad?
directors, they have a
you.
The board of
. . let me tell you something here (that) might interest
I got interested in finding out what these electric homes that Appalachian
Power Company has been advertising to build.
They would loan the money and all
of this, so I decided that I would investigate it down here at Blacksburg, VIP :
They have an apattment complex down there, tremendous thiqg, tremendous investment.
They have one at Pulaski, tremendous investment.
in the hell the money came from.
And I wondered, where
So I found out that the attorney for
American Eleetric Power Company is the Vice President of this holding company,
called Franklin Realty Company, and the Franklin Company is wholly-owned
subsidiary of the American Electric Power Company.
borrow, how they get their money?
Power Company's School Fund.
Now, do you know where they
They borrow it from the American Electric
It is money that they have diverted and put. into
a fund for scholarships so it will be tax free.
And from that tax source, they
are borrowing money to build all electric apartments.
a shopping center out in Texas.
I noticed that they have
Their general council is vice president, the
same old shell game that the railroads used.
They would move two or three
hundred miles out in the West and stop, this was as far as we're going.
They get
a little coDll!lunity started and go on another two or three hundred miles, got as
far as Denver.
end though.
We can't cross the Rockies.
No way in the world.
This is the
We 1 11 have to use these portages and all of this business to go
across mountai'lls· and finally th.ey decided well, the government said, "We '·11 give
you fifty.
m~les·
of land on the other side of these railroads all the way from
Albuquerque S•
t'l'ai-ght on d"wn through, across the pass go±ng into Needles and
then to California."
Robber barons, predators, and this is right here with us today.
�27
Another leaneI? on th.e government.
They ''re broke an<! I
utilities· w:i:-11 go th_ same rol!-te
e
How on earth can they- pay- the interest,
ruil
convinced that the
their bc;,nds are now eleven point , nine per cent inte,r est th.e y are having to pay.
Now that doesn '·t mean that they· are having to pay.
switch on a light, you are pay·ing the thing.
It means everytime you
This thirteen million dollars
that was spent ouying up land here is a bad investment.
changed.
They got the law
It used to oe that only an investment directly connected with the
creation of energy could be used as a basis of competitional rates, so they
put a little sentence in there and it says now that any investment for the
present or future development of power may be included in the basic rate
standard.
So this thirteen million dollars that they have up here is already
in the rate system.
Q:
Did this money come from the school fund too?
A:
No.
This money come principally from the Franklin Realty Company.
The holding
own subsidiary.
Q:
We have heard or we have seen some of the houses that the power company has
bought and there is nothing left now but the outside shell.
A:
(Laughter)
Q:
What would be the purpose in this?
A:
Well, most of that is vandalism.
seen easily from the highway.
They do not improve anything unless it can be
And we have raised so much hell about them.
They ouy them, you see they buy a piece of property, well there '·s two right
up the road here.
They buy them and then the man who owns the adjoining land,
they let th±s go down and deteriorate and the weeds and the grass and the briars
and every·th±ng grew up en th.at piece land.
This reduces the value of his land.
Who would want to ouy a piece of land next to a bramble briar patch?
Q:
Well, have you D:een
conf~onted?
�28
A:
What l·s tbat?
Q:
Yeah.
A:
Oh yeaft, it has' been a,rguedl that'•s in the records as Levy would sar.
used that argument,
We have taken pictures.
We have got pictures on file
showing the houses that have been abandoned and preperty.
up this creek.
We have
There is one right
The>re''s an old, one of the most • . . belonged to a doctor, a
beautiful old seven room house, right up this creek, beautiful place.
barely standing up now, it is all grown over with weeds.
It's
The bridge going
across the creek is torn down and it's worthless and then the land around it,
where they tried to farm, of course, this reduces the value of it.
Q:
Well, what I was getting at was, have you been confronted by the power company
to sell your land?
A:
This doesn't belong to me.
Q:
Oh. okay.
A:
This property has been sold,
on it.
I lease this.
The
~~~~~---
easement rights have been sold
Thing about the easements, (they) are worthless now.
thing, another stupid thing they did.
They bought easement on this property
and it goes about . half way up that light pole.
That means that when they flood
it they give us six months notice and you get out if you can.
actually belongs (to) the owner.
That's one
This house
He can move it if he wants to.
But the sea,
the land and sea still belongs to the owner, so because they didn't dream when
they got the
-------easement
the modified project.
here that they were ever going to go into
They just went pale, male, hell what ever.
of this land acquisitioned, scaring people to death.
bought the land and that
they ~ re
Told them that they had
going to condemn it if they didn't sell it to
them, and that ''s all th,e y would get,
about pirates.
Getting all
Oh 1 Lord you have never heard, talking
�2.9
on~e
Q:
What right will the. power company have
A:
Well now they' h:aYe to turn around and buy the sea of this. p'I'operty 1 all th.ey have
is easement.
Now then 1 that money they have spent for easement is wasted, just
down the drain, every n±ckel.
Outsider:
it gets, :i::f :H does. get, its license?
They have got to
re~egotiate
now.
Lorne, Janice sa±d I could ask some questions if I wanted to.
Would you like
to comment on the Fest:i::val on the New?
A:
Outsider:
A:
I have heard coIIDI1ents from all the country about that.
Every ·bit of it favorable.
You won't there.
One of the most interesting things !heard down at the circuit court here in
Grayson County, someone made a remark down there and the judge said, "Well
what was it like, the rest of these music festivals?"
And this friend of mine
said, "No," he said, "I didn't see any sign of drinking, I didn't see any vulgarity, everything was conducted as a family picnic, ' 1 that's the way he put it. ·
Out3ider:
You were there, weren't you?
Q:
Yeah, yeah.
A:
I didn't hear a curse word all day.
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
I was there.
I was surprised too!
I really was.
And that was a lot of people to get together in a rural area.
What do you think was there?
Six thousand?
I was guessing around five, or four or six.
Five or six thousand?
Yeah.
The highway patrol told me that they didn ••t have a bumper hit, they didn't have
one incident.
do anything,
The local
r said,
sh~riff
11 Well
I
have on incident of any·thing.
A;
Were there . . .
•'In
up there said you didn't need us.
glad you were th.e re. l'
Not one t
We didn't
l'hey- said they· didn't
That • a good reco,rd.
·s
By the way, di'd you know what Ken Heckly has been doing this summe-r?
�Outsider:
A:
Huh?
He ts· a congressman from West 'Y;Crgi:ni:a and he ;ts pa·r t of thi.s constituency on
the New River up tl'tePe.
He was a teacher in New York and he decided that he
would go somewhere and Tun for Congress, and he heaTd so much about the conditions in the Appalachia area and West Virginia that he decided that he'd just
come there and would relocate and run for Congress.
So he came from New York,
came down (to) a little town, I have forgotten the name and where it is now,
up on the Kanawha River and stayed a couple of years and ran for Congress.
And he just went from house to house, canvassed all through the district
and to his ama?.ement and ame£.ement of all of the politicians up there, he was
elected.
My wife is just infatuated.
I think she is really, I think she is
really, she really thinks he is a marvel, and he is.
He's unbelievable.
This summer he decided that he didn't know enough about how this present
economy was affecting people so he scheduled his, the month of August he worked
a week as a waiter, and worked as a week as a field hand, worked a week in the
coal mine, and worked a week at something else, and he was on television this
morning.
Ott: sider:
A:
Did you happen to see him?
No, I didn't see him.
· He said that was the way he was going to get acToss to the people.
When he came
down to, he was there at the festival, but he came down to Raleigh and he made
one of the best talks down there that was made.
But he is a very, very fine
person.
Outsider:
A:
Ot.tsider:
Q:
He did.
"Keep your cottonpicking hands off of our river. 1'
('Laughte~
I'll never forget that,
Well, what other kind of support do you have besides, like, d? you know any
,
conservationalists or anything like that.
do you notice any youth groups, kind a.
Well you have mentioned some, like
�31
Yeah, that is one
t~~ng t~~t
interest that the
A:
y~ung
has been very hearting especially to me, is the
people fyave taken in
just kind a, you know., they h_ ve
a
~een
th~
p:r:oject.
The older people
used to having their noses rubbed in
the dirt so long they j us-t k;ind' a gave up.
But this new awakening of the
younger people and the interest they have taken in conserving what we have
got here is never more clearly evident than it has been in the last few years
on this project.
I never dreamed that we would ever get any support from, well
take Furman University.
Dr.
He came up with nearly 35, he and his group, a
I'm so bad about names it's pitiful.
Q:
Peter Crogg.
A:
Dr. Peter Cragg, ·F urman University, he up with 35,0.QO names on a petition
opposing this project, all solicited by the students at the University.
They are the ones that went out and got them and talked to people.
Now in
VPI, Blacksburg, they have organized a service club down there and they have
28,000 signatures to a petition now at VIP.
We have had scattered, not
crystallized support from Appalachian University.
How about State University
and Wake Forest, three or four years ago a young man down there, head of the
environmental study group, I went down and talked to them.
wonderful help
fo~
us and he happened to be a
particula~ly
They did some
close friend of
Congressman Martin from Charlotte, North Carolina, and he worked during the
summer as an interim aide in Washington.
He and I became quite close, the
young man and myself, and through him we really made a disciple out of
Cn~gressman
Martin and then down at the University of North Carolina, we
have several down there,
several groups and o:r:ganizations· there, and a Koury
down the'I"e f,s, th-e General Council for the North Carolina Association.
He has got a group down
2..4 hours·,
t~re
and I imagine we could get
That '•s· how· fas.t they can work.
25,a:oa letters in
�32
Outsider:
Janice, T want to ask one 'more question.
one night and
th~ ~e
he asked me if
r
w-as
ae-o~t
could get,
sixteen people up there on a little petition and
th~y
were for the Blue 'Ridge Project, he as.ked me
if I could get some people agains.t it.
A:
Outsider:
Lorne called roe from Washington, p.c.,
I just had, was it .36 hours?
Yeah.
Thirty-six hours l thinlt.
sign that petition.
I get over 3000 members, I mean to join.
I mean to
If I had a had another week T would have had ten thousand.
And that went in to the Raleigh, it went into Hamilton Horton Winston.
Sixteen
against about three thousand wasn't it?
A:
Outsider:
Yeah.
And he called me, I didn't know where he called from, but he give me a call.
The only thing I know, he and Ed Adams was in Washington, D.C.
to call Ed Adams' wife, I calJ.ed Nancy and she didn't know.
I think.
She said I don't know.
It's a hotel.
operator and I said, give me the Mayflower, I want Ed Adams.
all I know, just Ed Adams.
f ingers).
Outsider:
A:
She was with them
I called Ed Adams' wife, she said they are in the Mayflower.
I said, well where is that?
A:
Well, I tried
I called the
I said that is
Boy, she put me through just like that (snaps
Connect, it came right back didn't it?
You know the a.
Sixteen, and we had 3,000 in about 36 hours.
It's the amount of energy that you want to put into it that -is what your results
will be.
There are some people I can go to today or tomorrow who will almost
take up arms in defense of this river.
a little lti:t carri:ed away-.
river.
You know, it is hard.
Sometimes you get
You get emotional and you get sentimental ab0ut a
Well, i• one of the a-;rgument;s I was making ±n Waslli ngtcm :E told them
n
that i:n my opini on th'at unless you arouse the emotions of t he people, it was
only through emoti onal ism and arousi ng the emotions of the people that we were
�33
able to create eneugh
to fight a war.
str~ngth
and rationalize about whether
OF
If we let everybody stay
ho~e
not they went to hell er Korea, Vietnam, or
some damn place to get killed they would stay at hpme.
But if you get their
emotions sufficiently aroused, make them think that ±n
going to be, come over here and get us.
so~e
strange way they are
It doesn't 1llake any difference what
kind of deception you use, as long as you get their emotiQns aroused.
Get the
flag and the apple pie and the mother loving and everything into them and they
will go and that is the same holds true here . .. You just sit back and be a little
bit cynical and smart about it.
Hell, it is just a river.
I don't want to, I live somewhere else.
about it?
Why should I spend my time?
What the hell?
We could move out,
Why should I worry
Why spend my money and effort?
is soU£thing here, something bigger than all of us.
But there
Not that I am endowed with
any special gifts or anything, but if you just sit down and talk to people
they will see it very quickly.
There is a lady down here, Mrs. Cox, lives
down below Bridle Creek; her husband, the Superintendent of Education in
Grayson County for forty some years, and she has a love of her property.
Her husband's dead --and the land, not in a acquisitive way, not in that
grasping sense.
She has a sincere love of that land.
to share it with you.
She is perfectly willing
You can go down and pitch camp on the side of her and
she wouldn't care how long you stay there but she wants to be there because
she loves that land.
And she has a great big old dog and in Bill Moyer's film
she is there and she tells her story.
Just like last Thursday I was in federal
court in Abbington and these three brothers, they all have been fighting and
opposing the government get.ting their land up there.
Well, these government
attorneys iive in 'Rome and they have no sense of ownership, no sense of pride,
no sense of possissiveness in belonging to the
ea~th.
They don't understand
that, and these men are almost violent over the government coming up there.
What the hell do they need my land for?
My fatheT and mother are buried right
�34
Th~ gove~nment
up there.
a~~
,,nen c0me up here and they
going to bury me up
thei;e but they.',11 be some government men on the othe·r side.
they talk.
That is the way.. th.ey- feel.
One of them had b-een shot over in the
European tlteatei; of the war and the other one had
fight.ing for tl\ei'I" home.
of it and
mayb~
That is the way
~een
sh0t in the Philippines
N'ow t .hey are going to came and make a damn park out
no one will ever . go there.
That is a mute question but what I
am talking about is the love of the land that whether it is on top of that
mountain or whether it is down here on this New River Valley.
But the strange
thing or what ever was that the government had no appreciation atall.
They had
a little cut and dry formula, how they would put a price on his - land.
And
then the argument that they are using to.
Wi 1d talking about
. . the most famous line of Oscar
, I th :Ink it was end he t old him, he said he
knew the price of everything but the value of nothing.
And that is my feeling
toward the American Power Company, they can put a price on anything, but they
den 't know the value of it.
I told the judge that their land to them, that
soil was like black blood flowing through them.
very
An.d you will find that in a
.people are ashamed to say things like that for some reason.
They didl' t used to be, but of .late they think that it is old fashioned, they
think that it is sentimentality, and they are afraid, they are afraid to say
that they love the land.
But you go down and talk to old Ellie Reeves who
has got three hundred acres of land, that land was given to her great-greatgreat grandfather by a grant.
'!bat land has be.e .n sold, she has never sold an
:in ch of it off within the family.
There has never been a mortgage on it.
There has never been a dept against it.
They have lived on it, farmed,
prospere.d, and their sons are scattered all over.
Air Force, Commander at
Rig~
Randal~
One son was a colonel in the
Air Base, came from
r~ght
down. this river here.
off a piece of land right on up the river here and there had been about
�3i
I figured out one time th.at there were seven doe tors and I lye fo.rgotten how
many · school teaehers and everything else in one generation, right up from here.
Now when
peo~le
start talking about that they th.i nk, oh, they·'·re sentimental,
that is all, that :f:s,
not modern thinking.
1
t~e
B
·ut
That is
old people will tell you, and now the funny thing
is, it has come full circle now,
a generation gap in there.
that has gone by the board.
Now the young people are the ones.
There is
But then the young people picked up the telephone
over there and they called all of the high school students in this part, and
W1 at was it?
OU: sider:
A:
Sixty~ight
per cent.
Oh, gosh yeah.
Sixty-eight percent were opposed to the dam.
And then children out of
families that were just violently in favor of it, they opposed it.
So they
have an appreciation and they realize that something has been taken away from
them, or is going to be taken away from them, and that there hasn't been any
exchange of ideas in the home because people are, they are too reserved to
talk about it.
They'll talk maybe about all kinds of other things that they
used to do years ago but they don't talk about the very elementary things.
It's that love of that little piece of land they live on.
have.
Freedom that they
And I guess something has been taken away out of their lives.
They see that and they are not going to let it happen.
The entrepreneurs and
the fast buck people, the contractors, the land speculators, the heavy
equipment users, they all think they are going to get rich, they have heard of
money being made
lost down there.
down~~~~~~~-
We are
tal~ing
There has been a hell of a lot of money
about an area heTe where the only recreational
time would b,e pirob-ably- fotJr months out of the .year.
And I'd say that all during
the month of Augus.t and Septemb;er you won't be a'ble to see from one side of
the lake to the other cnyway, because of fog.
�36
Outsider:
Janice, can I ask one more question?
A:
No!
Q:
(Laugh)_
A:
Yeah, go afiead.
Outsider:
I want to ask you one more thing Lorne, and I think I know what your answer
will be.
When this thing first started, people thought very little about it
because they didn't know much about it.
opposition?
What really started?
What really started this great, shrewd
I don't believe you call it opposition,
what really started this dedication, we don't want this thing
because~--~--
END OF TAPE
A:
Outsider:
A:
Outsider:
This is what your ancestors- - - -No, there is a turn around .
Oh,
th~re
certainly was.
I think.
At first everyone was "Okay, good, something new," and then it juse flipped didn't
it?
A:
Then I think they saw it demonstrated two or three instances of people who have
sold out, took the little bit of money that they got and it was gone and they
had nothing.
A man and his wife lived down the river, oh about thirty miles
from here, and they are both on Social Security. ·They have a little garden,
they have a cow and they have a couple of pigs, hogs.
talked to them, this Spring in fact.
And I stopped by and
And they own about, I think eleven acres
of land, or just something like that.
But they are on the side of the r a ad
where the mail comes by, and after I got to talking to them I asked, "Did
the Appalachi,an Power Company try to buy it out?"
"Yeah"
"Six thousand dollars-"
"Tha t sounds like a pretty good price. ''
(Jus·t to see what he would say.)
�37
"What could we do w::bth six thousand dollars?
much les·s. buy.- any, land to l :hye on.
We couldn't [tuy a trailor,
We haye li-ved here all of our lives.
Our children we:i:e rai'Sed and b,orn here.
We want to liye here until we die."
Now those are the people, and I can tell you instances the people b.egin to
see them.
Wl'lere people have sold out for twenty and thirty thousand dollars
and went into town and built fifty, twenty-five thousand dollar homes.
Took fifteen thousand dollars of the money and a ten thousand dollar mortgage,
lost their jobs, couldn't make the payments and lost them.
self-sustaining on their little farm they had.
Where they were
Those things, a couple of
general, more knowledgeable understanding of what the hell was going to happen.
I don't know whether any of this will be any good to you or not but I was
giving you a background anyway.
But there is so much of it, I will see that you
get those tapes and I will see, but I want you to have a copy of the
Environmental Impact Statement.
Outsider:
A:
What is this
You should have it.
no~?
Environmental Impact Statement, it was filed by the FPC.
END OF INTERVIEW
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Young, Janice
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Campbell, Lorne R.
Interview Date
8/2/1975
Location
The location of the interview.
Jefferson, NC
Number of pages
39 pages
Date digitized
9/17/2014
File size
24.8MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
e30aa253b6fe10d9736212957b1b6b15
Scanned by
Tony Grady
Equipment
Epson Expression 10000 XL
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965-1989; W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection; Special Collections; Appalachian State University; Boone; NC). Any commercial use of the materials; without the written permission of the Appalachian State University; is strictly prohibited.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
AC.111 Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965 - 1989
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
111_tape312_LorneRCampbell_transcript_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Lorne R. Campbell [August 2, 1975]
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Young, Janice
Campbell, Lorne R.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Campbell, Lorne R.--Interviews
Blue Ridge Project
Water resources development--New River Valley (N.C.-W. Va.)
Environmentalism
Appalachian Power Company
Description
An account of the resource
Lorne Campbell discusses the battle to preserve the New River in Grayson County, Virginia, in the 1970s, by opposing the building of a dam.
Blue Ridge Project
Grayson County Va.
Jefferson
Lorne Campbell
Lorne R. Campbell
National Environmental Protection Agency Act
New River
New River Project
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/eba170932a6b808a18f08378e9843e55.pdf
63af78b3ec77db12150419c09136b4f9
PDF Text
Text
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1915
New River Light & Power Company was formed. A 10-foot wooden dam and power plant
constructed of native stone were located at the lower end of the Edminsten Farm on the South
Fork of the New River. The power plant produced 75 kilowatts. The company had 3
employees, served 6 customers along with Appalachian Training School. David Shearer, an
Electrical Engineer and Consultant, was hired to supervise the building of the dam, placing the
machinery, construction ofthe power lines and maintaining operations.
July 12, 1916
A flood weakened the wooden dam and destroyed all the machinery, leaving Boone without
electricity for two weeks.
1922
Mr. S. McKinley Ayers ofthe Tennessee Eastern Electric Company came to Boone to begin work
on a new power plant, and soon became the first Superintendent of NRLP.
March 23, 1923
A fire destroyed the power plant and machinery, but not the dam. Boone lost its power again.
The original structure was repaired and resumed operation on July 12, 1923. During the same
time, work began on a new plant located on the Middle Fork of the New River that would offer
a constant water flow and thus provide more consistent electric current to better serve the
growing Appalachian Training School and town of Boone.
1924
A steam plant with a generator was built on campus.
October 30, 1924
The new power plant with a 26 foot concrete dam located on the Middle Fork of the New River
began operation. The complex was located three miles outside of Boone near the Old Blowing
Rock Road at Devil's Gate. This power plant remained in operation through 1972.
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NRLP was able to switch to the campus Steam Plant as a back-up power source. Electric ranges
were introduced in Watauga County.
1926
The first steam engine (Chuse) began operating and produced 180 kilowatts. It was located on
campus and used 5 tons of coal per day to operate. Meters were placed at all outlets through
Boone.
1935
17 year old Grant Ayers came to work at NRLP and began an apprenticeship under his father.
1937
An Erieball 250 kilowatt generator and engine was installed on campus (in addition to Chuse
engine).
1938
A Skinner 260 kilowatt generator and engine was installed on campus (in addition to Erieball
and Chuse engines).
August 13, 14, 1940
A major flood strikes Boone, the worst in town's history at the time. While there was damage
to the dam and machinery, adequate electric service continued due to the operation ofthe
Erieball and Skinner engines located on campus. It took one year to repair the dam. It was
measured that 8 inches of rain fell in only 48 hours.
Fall1940
NRLP gradually started an association with Blue Ridge Electric Corporation.
1945
Erieball and Skinner engines were replaced by a 1,000 kilowatt steam turbine generator and
engine.
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Q _
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�1946
Grant Ayers came back to work at NRLP from his absence during World War II. He also earned
his electrical engineering degree from the Chicago School of Engineering a few years later.
December 1954
IBM electronic clocks were installed to control the power plant machinery, replacing the plant
operator. A hydro induction generator was installed on the Appalachian State Teachers College
campus and produced a 10 percent increase in power efficiency.
1955
There was tremendous growth within Boone, the Oak Grove Substation was built, some rerouting was done and the Physical Plant was enlarged.
Fall1963
The 1,000 Kilowatt steam turbine generator was replaced by additional voltage from Blue Ridge
Electric.
1966
Nearly 3,000 customers were served by NRLP. A fire destroyed ASU's Administrative Building
which contained the administrative records for NRLP.
1967
S. McKinley Ayers retired and Grant Ayers became the Superintendent of both NRLP and the
Physical Plant.
1972
NRLP stopped generating power and started bringing in electricity exclusively from Blue Ridge
Electric Membership Corporation. Renovations were done to the campus steam plant.
1974
The boilers at the steam plant were converted to coal-oil.
1978-1981
Grant Ayers left NRLP to become Director of Utilities for Business Affairs and Head of the
Physical Plant.
�1989
Hurricane Hugo
March 12, 13 & 14, 1993
The Blizzard of 1993
1993
Relocated ASU's substation
December 25, 2009
Christmas Day Ice Storm
�New River Light & Power
General Managers
Ed Miller
Rick Presnell
Greg Taylor
2010 - present
2008-2010
2006-2008
Don Austin
Grant Ayers
McKinley Ayers
Circa 1967- 1978
Circa 1922-1967
Circa 1978- 2006
�River
Liaht and Power Co. Plaut. located I>'
BOONE. . C.
New River Light & Power Plant
July 18, 1923
MISS JENNIE COFFEY'S STOR
.
BOO
. N.
miles from
��Boone, N. C.
Altitude 3,332 ft.
Highest County Site East of the Rockies.
�Newland Hall. AppoiAchirm T rainin~ Sr.hrml.
B ONE.N .C
1923 - Hydro Plant
Middle Fork Station
�1926 Chuse Engine
Steam Plant on campus
ASU Steam Plant
L to R: Stanford Berry, LH Timmons,
Ray Estes, S. McKinley Ayers
1927 Chevrolet
�Steam Plant- Early 1930's
1931 Automobile
�Late 30's or Early 40's
L to R: McKinley Ayers,
Stanford Berry, Earnest Hartley,
Clyde Hollars, Grant Ayers
�1940 Middle Fork Flood
McKinley Ayers & Charlie Hartley
�1940
Middle Fork Flood
�1946 or47
L to R: Voyne Edmiston, Claude Miller,
Ross Hollars, John Hollars, Austin South,
Grant Ayers
Late 1940's
�,
1
-~-' ....,
•
1958 Truck
L to R: McKinley Ayers, Grant Ayers,
JB Clawson, Norm Greer, John Hollars,
Late 1950's
L to R: JB Clawson, Norm Greer, Grant
Ayers, Ross Hollars, John Hollars,
Austin South, McKinley Ayers
Len Stokes, Austin South
�Late 1950's
Grant Ayers
r-
~
Circa 1950's
�Circa 1950's
Grant Ayers & McKinley Ayers
�Circa 1950's
�Circa 1960's
New River on campus
�Circa 1960's
Voyne Edmisten, Lorn J. Harrison,
Ed Culler
�Circa 1960's
Grant Ayers on Right
Circa 1960's
L to R: Grant Ayers, Bobby Denton, Bob Brown, John Hollars, Cecil Proffitt, Austin
South, Joe Proffitt, Grayson Trivette, Norman Garland, Rodney Adams,
Bill Wellborn, Blaine Miller,?, Bobby Greene, Len Stokes, Lank Craig, David Clawson
�Circa 1966
Middle Fork Stone Power
House & Substation
�Circa 1973
Steam Plant
�Circa 1973
Steam Plant
Circa 1975
Steam Plant
�'
t
,,
•••
��1988
Lto R: Margaret Greene, Stuart Shook,
Jewel Thomas, Janice Walton, Tony Mccann,
Tony~~ Woods, Janice Jackson, Don Austin,
Vlralnia lyrd, Mike Stanley, Marlene Coffee,
L"" N~n, Charlie Smith, Sallie Swift,
�1988
Pete Wilson
..
�1988
~Baldwin
•
j
�1988
.~ ..!!"!.Adams
�1988
Lawre~,!!-!~
j
�1988 Safety Newsletter
�-
1988
Frank Butler
1988
Blaine Miller (last day -lost pant lep),
Janice Jacbon I& Lawrence Greene
1988
Joe Proffitt
�1988
�1988
Kathy Woodall (Hamby)
1988
Len Tester
1988
Lto R: Stuart Shook, Tonya Wood,
Lori Beane & Marpret Greene
�1988 Scholarship Recipie nts
L to R Front: Genia Payne, Brandy Gray, Tracy Norris,
Donny McCaulley, Scott Cameron, Christy Smith,
Diana COffey, Ja mie Goodman
l to R lack: Jerry Moretz, Jerry Dancy, Ken Shull,
Cirllc""'-..._ Greene, ~ Vannoy
�1988 Christmas Party
McKinley Ayers a Don Austin
1988 Christmas Party
Grant Ayers a Don Austin
�1988 Christmas Party
John Hollars, Austin South,
Lank Crail& Don Austin
��1988 Christmas Party
�1988 Christmas Party
�1989 Scholarship Recipients
L to R: Don Austin, Herb Geozos, Heather Roberts,
Mandy Untback, Jeffrey Cornelison, David Shockley,
�1989 Scholarship Recipients
�1989 Scholarship
Recipients Reception
�1989 Scholarship
Recipients Reception
Janice · _..
:t:"
1989
Lori Warren (...ne)
··''·
'"'"""
.. 4>·
.,
'·~
1989
J
........
��1989
�1991 Scholarship Recipients
Lto R: Don Austin, Julie Moretz, Erica Slate,
Chris Jones, Ann Griffith, Dr. John Thomas
�1991 Scholarship Recipients
L to R: Don Austin, Akram Barghothl, Matt Arnold, Joe
Greene, Jeff Wilson, Emory Malden, Meredith
WI
, Dr. John Thomas, Robert Bare
�1991
Janice Jacbon • Lwn H
�1991
Community Christmas Tree
T...,
���1991
NRLP lamplishters
,·
T
.···.
J
�1991
Marlene Coffey
�1992 Scholarship Recipients
L to R: Don Austin, Rebecca Weaver, Matt Raymond,
Stephanie Beach, David Jamison,
Melanie Morrinaton, Grec Smalllnc, Casl Norris,
Dr. Harvey Durtww
�1992
�1992
I
f
,,
~
��Oct.1992
321- 105 Intersection
•'!
Oct.1992
Andy Wood operatlnc tension
. . . . . . . . , . .,,:
'·~
;_.<f_
'
,J
Oct.1992
Terry Ward
�Oct.1992
Terry & Bob anchoring
fiber optic cable
. ...
�1992
\
\
\
\
�1992
Charlie Smith
1992
Len Tester
1992
GC Bryan
�Dec.1992
Charlie Smith's
Retirement
��Dec.1992
Charlie Smith's
Retirement
�1st Day of 1993 Blizzard
March 12, 1993
�April1993
�April1993
Wayne Winebarger &
Eric Norris
�April1993
Arrival of Switchgear
April1993
Frank Butler
April1993
Len Tester
�Tearing down old "H" stand to
replace on single pole- May 1993
Tearing down old "H" stand to
replace on single pole- May 1993
l
�May 6,1993
Tie in jacket to line.
May 6,1993
Switch lines to be tied to
Stansberry lot.
May 6,1993
Switch lines - ready to make pull for 3
phase wire to new substation.
May 6,1993
Pull being made of wire to new
Substation "3 Phase"
�May 6,1993
Pull being made from Stansberry lot
to Substation "3 Phase"
May 6,1993
Jackets being cut off so wire can be
wrapped with electrical tape until used.
May 6,1993
Wire turned into pipe until
ready for connection.
J
May 13,1993
Cone connecting to transformers.
�June 30, 1993 - Dedication of Switchgear
L toR Standing: Len Dollar, Don Austin, Andy Wood, Bob
Baldwin, Terry Ward, Joe Proffitt
Kneeling: Wayne Winebarger, Eric Norris, Bill Wellborn,
Frank Butler, Len Tester
�1993
Elaine Moody
1993
Jewel Thomas
�June 30, 1993
Dedication of Switchgear
L toR Standing: Don Austin, Len Tester, Dr.
John Thomas, Joe Proffitt,
Squatting: Wayne Winebarger, Bill
Wellborn, Erin Norris
�1993
Terry Ward
1993
Tim Carroway
�1993
Wayne& Eric
�1993
New Transformer
�1993
New Transformer
�Dec.1993
Standing from L toR: Frank Butler, Len Dollar, Pete
Wilson, Andy Wood, Joe Proffitt, Bill Wellborn, Len
Tester, Don Austin
Top Row L to R: Eric Norris, Bob Baldwin, Wayne
Winebarger, GC Bryan, Terry Ward,??
�1994
Len Tester accepts 1993 Safety Award
From Royce Lyles
�Jan 1994
Bucket Truck at corner of NRLP
..
Feb.1994
Bob Baldwin pulling wire
Through conduit.
r
�Feb.1994
Frank Butler & Eric Norris
�Feb.1994
Eric Norris
�June 1994
Underground- Bodenheimer Dr.
�June 1994
Underground- Bodenheimer Dr.
���June 1994
Underground- Bodenheimer Dr.
1994
Stuart Shook, Tonya Wood,
Margaret Greene and Lori Beane
�1994
�1994
�Circa 1995
Tonya Wood, Mike
Stanley & Lori Beane
'
Circa 1995
Circa 1995
Mike Stanley
TonyaWood
�Circa 1995
Janice Jackson
�Circa 1995
Tim Carroway
�Circa 1995
Circa 1995
wava Hodges
Bill Wellborn
Circa 1995
Bob Baldwin
�Circa 1995
Len Tester
Circa 1995
Eric Norris
�Circa 1995
Joe Profitt
Jan.1995
Seated: Elaine Moody
L to R: Tonya Wood, Sallie Swift,
Stuart Shook and Lori Beane
Len Dollar
�Jan.1995
Rick Presnell
Jan.1995
Kathy Hamby &
Wilba Brannen
\.
Jan.1995
Elaine Swieter &
Tim Carraway
�Jan. 1995
Margaret Greene
Jan.1995
Sallie Swift
Jan.1995
Sheila Gentry
�Jan.1995
GC Bryant
Jan. 1995
Wayne Reese
�1995
�July 25, 1995
Strawberry Circle
Major Storm Damage
�Nov. 30, 1995
Oak Grove Substation
Installation
�Nov. 30, 1995
Oak Grove Substation
Installation
��Nov. 30, 1995
Oak Grove Substation
Installation
��Nov. 30, 1995
Oak Grove Substation
Installation
�Dec.8,1995
Oak Grove
Substation Installation
�Dec.8,1995
Oak Grove
Substation Installation
r
�1998
Margaret Greene
1998
Kathy Hamby
�hom \eH- -\n ~6\-.-\- :
J\ \\o.V\ ~rcl) llin Ooox.- <:\~ J.R. E1l l56\')
' Vq~
�1998 Crew
L to R: Frank Butler, Pete Wilson, Eric Norris,
Wayne Winebarger, Wayne Reese, Joe Proffitt,
Terry Ward, Andy Wood, Len Tester,
Bob Baldwin, Jamie Bledsoe
�March 2000
Repainted transformers
after fire (NR Substation)
�r
2007
Admin Building
Repairs & Remodel
�·.--
~:-····
2007
Admin Building
Repairs & Remodel
Greg Taylor
�2007
Admin Building
Repairs & Remodel
�Debra Greenwell
�Teresa Isaacs &
Amy Moody
�Mike Stamey
�Robert Holder
TonyaWood&
Stuart Shook
�Diana Wilcox
�2007 NRLP Staff
L to R in Back: Debra Barr, Len Dollar, David Walls, Alan Byrd,
Len Tester, Pete Wilson, Wayne Winebarger, Terry Hale, Dan
Cook, Jamie Pennington, Jason Herman, Lori Beane, Eric Norris,
Amy Moody, Mike Stamey, Stuart Shook, Mike Combs, Debra
Greenwell, Diana Wilcox, Marlene Coffee, Robert Holder
L toR Seated in Front: Teresa Isaacs, Tonya Wood, Joey Bledsoe,
Philip Hiatt, Scott Eggers, Frank Butler, Greg Taylor
��March 2009
�October 2009
�Christmas Day Ice Storm
December 25, 2009
�Ice Storm Clean Up & Repairs- Dec. 2009
�Ice Storm Clean Up & Repairs- Dec. 2009
�April2010
�New Generator - 2010
From L to R: Scott Eggers, Alan Byrd, Bo Henson, Len Dollar, Terry Hale,
Joey Bledsoe, Frank Butler, Wayne Winebarger, Dan Cook & Jason Herman.
�Wayne Winebarger's
Retirement -July 2010
Standing L to R: Bo Henson, Jason Herman, Len Dollar, Dan Cook, Terry Hale,
Jeremy Walsh, Jamie Pennington, Joey Bledsoe, Ed Miller, Rick Presnell.
Seated L to R: Scott Eggers, Philip Hiatt, Eric Norris, Wayne Winebarger,
Frank Butler, Alan Byrd.
�Rick Presnell's Little Burger Redemption!
Fond Farewells from Frank Butler & Greg Lovins
�Scholars Reception
August 2011
NRLP Nissan Leaf
July 2012
��NCAMES Lineman's Rodeo
May 16-17,2012
Joey Bledsoe
Scott Eggers
�Ed Miller as the MC and Diana Wilcox
preparing to sing the National Anthem.
�Jeremy Walsh competing in the Conductor Tie-ln .
�Terry Hale competing in the Conductor Tie-ln.
�ASU & NRLP Support Team
Jeremy Walsh in the Hurt Man Rescue.
�Terry Hale in the Hurt Man Rescue.
�Terry Hale in the Hurt Man Rescue.
Terry Hale in the Underground Elbow Installation competition.
�December 2012 - NRLP St aff
L to R on truck: Philip Hiatt, Travel Wilson, Bo Henson, Jason Herman, Joey Bledsoe, Terry Hale,
Dan Cook, Jamie Pennington, Scott Eggers & Alan Byrd (seated).
L to R on ground: Ed Miller, Stuart Shook Mike Combs, Robert Holder, Mike Stamey, Heather
Davis, Rachel Safrit, Tonya Golds, Torrey Tye, Lori Beane, Len Dollar, Jeremy Walsh, Sorina
Mcinturff, Eric Norris, Frank Butler, Diana Wilcox, Joe Piazza, Teresa Isaacs & Elaine Moody.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
New River Light and Power Scrapbook
Description
An account of the resource
The Dougherty brothers established the New River Light & Power Company in 1915 to provide hydroelectric power to Appalachian Training School and the local community. The original 10-foot wooden dam and power plant constructed of native stone were located at the lower end of the Edminsten Farm on the South Fork of the New River. NRLP still serves the Boone area today. This scrapbook documents NRLPs evolution and nearly 100 years serving Watauga County and the Boone community.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Number of pages
145 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
New River Light & Power History Scrapbook
Subject
The topic of the resource
New River Light and Power (Boone, N.C.)
Hydroelectric power plants--North Carolina
Description
An account of the resource
This scrapbook documents the history of New River Light & Power (NRLP) through historical documents and photos.
Blanford Barnard and Dauphin Disco Dougherty established the New River Light and Power Company in 1915 to provide hydroelectric power to Appalachian Training School and the local community. On March 23, 1923, a fire destroyed the power plant and machinery. The structure was repaired and resumed operation on July 12, 1923. On October 30, 1924 a new power plant with a 26 foot concrete dam located on the Middle Fork of the New River began operation. The complex was located three miles outside of Boone near the Old Blowing Rock Road at Devil's Gate. This power plant remained in operation through 1972. In 1972, NRLP stopped generating power and started bringing in electricity exclusively from Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
New River Light & Power
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1915-2012
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
All rights are retained by New River Light & Power.
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Image
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
NewRiver_A
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Boone, N.C.
Appalachian Training School
Blanford Barnard
Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation
Boone
dam
Dauphin Disco Dougherty
Hydroelectric power plants
New River
New River Power & Light
North Carolina
scrapbook
Watauga County N.C.
-
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Text
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Text
Feb. 18.-- The weather is very fine. The sun shines. The air is cool enough to be pleasant. In
fact it is an ideal winter day.
There have been many things on hand. The most urgent matter is the reports. It seems that all
have an incentive to finish the job at the earliest possible moment. We have been very careless in
regard to being prompt in making reports.
The most interesting thing that I have observed recently is the variations in a person' s moods in
a single day. On every angle something new comes to us. During the first part of the day I am at
peace with all the world. In the afternoon I am nervous and am not able to stand the jar. There is
such a thing as a man working to the limit. A man's physical condition has much to do with his
disposition. The sick man is not able to advance the world.
Feb. 19.-- The day is fine. It is spring weather in the winter. The mud is going rapidly. On
every hand glad surprises meets. The thought that winter is coming to an end pleases us.
In the afternoon I make a study of unemployment. It is appalling how expensive it is. It is not
only costly in dollars and cents, but it is very expensive as to morals. From every viewpoint it is
destructive to the country.
There is one thing that I am bent upon, and, that is, to become a great scholar. Each day I am
sriving to get something that is good for me. I am trying to learn the things that will be good for my
spiritual nature as well as my intellectual.
Feb. 20.-- This is one of the best days that I have had in a long time. In body I have not had a
pain. I have not felt so well in a long time. This is due to food and exercise.
The thing that I have given thought today is the Negro Problem. It is one that we are not apt to
approach with a free mind. We must not censured [sic] the man of color with too much severity.
Do we know just why he can't avoid many of the things that he does? He come[s] from an ancestry
that has been in drakness [sic] for ages. He does not have the background for the highest
development. It will take time for him to develop.
Feb. 21.-- Many things come our way. It is a day full of history for our school. We have a
committee from the Legislature to visit us. There are four senators and two representi ves [sic] . They
come at noon and have dinner with us . At two o'clock they address the student body in the
Auditorium. They show their good sense by making their remarks brief. The student body gives
them a hearty response.
At night the Junior reception for the Seniors comes off. This is one among the most swelled
affairs of the year. There is not any occasion that affords more excitement or give[s] a better
oppportunity for display of dignity. Much work is put forth on these occasions. I question whether
they are worth all the effort put forth.
I escape all the above thrill and go to my home at Vilas. After a rest and a good supper I go to
a play at the Cove Creek High School. The play is fine . I enjoy it immensely. The crowd is lively
and full of good life. Such occasions as this are good for the community.
960
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Greene Diaries
Feb. 22.-- This is a fine day. We never see any better weather than we are having. It is as good
as we ever have in the spring and early summer.
At Sunday School we have a fine crowd. Without doubt we have a very fine spirit. I see nothing
to keep us from going onward and upward.
We have an invitation to Uncle John Smith's for dinner. I must confess that I want another real
soon. We had a real fine time. Uncle John is a little stubborn at times, but he has many fine
qualities.
Late in the day I engage in letter writing. At one time in life I enjoyed this real well, but I have
allowed the press of duties to rob me of this pleasure.
Feb. 23.-- At an early hour the rain commences to fall. Much of it falls during the day. Just at
dark we have a thunder shower.
Before noon I go to Clyde Mast's store and conduct a law suit. A young man is in court for
dealing in liquor. It seems that it is hard for some people to refrain from committing crime.
At noon I start to Boone walking. I do not go far until I catch a truck. It is not long before I am
in Boone. I remain in town a short time. I come to my room. I have some work that needs doing.
I never am even. The older that I get, the more I have on me. I suppose that a man would be in
misery if he had nothing to demand his attention. The busy man is the happy man.
Feb. 24.-- There has been a variety of weather. There has been some rain, some wind, and much
fog. This is a kind that keeps us guessing what is going to come next.
In school we have had many interesting things. In our history class we use much time in talking
Geography. This is a fine basis for history. All of it has a beautiful geographical background.
We have a fine faculty meeting. All are not present. Some forget and come late. I am sure that
meetings of this kind are good for the teaching force. We can understand each other much better.
Mr. Downum is real happy.
Feb. 25.-- The weather is so fine that we can afford to write about it. Just a few day[s] like thgis
one will bring forth the buds. The frogs are already making spring melody. One of these days they
will look through ice windows.
At chapel today Mr. Rankin talks on using time. The trouble with so many students is that they
do not use their time to a good advantage. Many students do not make any serious effort to prepare
their lessons.
In the afternoon I take an examination on Education Sociology. This is one among the hardest
subjects that I have ever tried. The reason for this is that I have had only a little preparation for this
course. It is a new field, but it is exceedingly interesting.
On every hand I meet with things to do. A teacher must develop some culture on the side. Some
good book must be near for use. I want to use all my time for improvement. A man has no time to
waste. I want to be in the harness all the time.
Feb. 26.-- The day is rough. There is a high wind. The temperature falls. The frogs that have
961
�been singing are in winter quarters again. The weather has been so warm that a little cold wind
almost pierces us through. This is a winter that has had very little snow.
Last night and today I have been sick. I did not sleep much. I have been in a very nervous state.
A man can get in a bad condition in a very short time. At this season of the year I am prone to have
some sickness.
This is one day in which I have not done much book work. I have done what I think is essential
and let the remainder alone. Our work does not amount to much unless our bodies are in good
condition.
Feb. 27.-- The greatest event in school is a game of basketball and Davenport College. The
visitrs won easily. The cause may be assigned to superior training. There is much psychology in
playing ball. Success arouses our spirits, but defeat puts a gloom over us. On the sight of defeat we
are depressed. I have come to the conclusion that games during study hours are too expensive. We
have an element that does not want to work. Players expect to be put through whether they do any
work or not.
At noon I go to town. There is something new here all the time. New people are coming and
going. New business is going up. In all Boone is a moving little town. Her streets are in a bad
condition. Cars stall in the public square. There [is?] mud on every hand.
Feb. 28.-- The day is fine. The air is some cooler. It seems that we are to have some winter late
in the season.
This has been one of our tough day[s]. I have hardly been able to do my work. It seems that I
must be troubled on every hand. All the day I am in distress.
In the afternoon I go home. I am not long on the way. I love to catch a car on the way. Mrs.
Greene and I go to the store. We do not do much trading. We want the trip more than any thing else.
By night I am tired enough to rest. I am too restless to get much done. I try to rest the best that I can.
By some means I am in bad condition.
MARCH
Mar. 1.-- Today we have several kinds of weather. A man can never tell about March. There
is likely to be several changes in one day.
After studying the lesson I go to Sunday School. We have a good crowd present. It is a pleasure
for us to work when we realize how well we are getting on. I think that we are moving on in good
style.
In the afternoon I go to J. J. Mast's and spend a part ofthe afternoon. We have much fun. There
are a number of subjects up for discussion. Some are serious; others are light. On every hand
pleasure comes to us.
962
�A ] Greene Diaries
Mar. 2.-- This is a great event for me. I pass my forty-second year. I am not able to say how fast
the time does go. In just a few days and another year has passed. Time does fly with the busy man.
The Lord has been good to me. All the year His blessings have been upon me. For all this I have
not showed the gratitude that I am due. For the next year I have one resolution that I want to carry
out. Here it is: I want to be more spiritual rnind[ed]. Unto this I may add that I want to read more
good books and to study the Word.
Today we have had some snow. It has been light. The wind sifted it in the air and drove it from
place to place. I think that it has been one of the roughest days that we have had this winter.
I come to Boone on the mail. I visit an educational meeting at the court house. There seemed
to be many people interested in the consolidation movement, but the most of them are against a
forward step.
In the afternoon I come to my room and work. I have several jobs on hand. I drive away until
a late hour at night. I find much pleasure in searching for new things to think about.
Mar. 3.-- I have had a splendid day in school. There seems to be a spirit of work among some
of the students. We live in hope of getting rid of some of the rubbish, but I suppose that we shall
always have it with us.
The finest thing that I have read today is extracts from the writings of Benjamin Franklin. By
some means I believe that he is the most practical of the writers. He endeavors to be practical on all
subjects.
The one thing that I have studied is the causes of poverty. Why is it that some men have too
much and others not enough? By nature some men are not able to cope with the situation. On the
one hand it is poverty; on the other it is luxury. Some men have the ability to bring things together.
Mar. 4.-- It seems that we have had unusual March weather. This morning the sun shines. It
appears that good weather has come to stay. By night we have the deepest snow of the season. It
is one of these warm snows. The trees and buildings are wrapped in it. The earth has a splendid
blanket.
Today I have been in the best fix for work that I have in a: long time. I can move along smoothly
and without any friction. I feel like working.
There are many fine things that occur in a school. At chapel we have some singing by six young
ladies. All of us love for a program of this kind to be given. We have to hear so many dry speeches.
It is awful to be dignified on all occasions. A man needs to relax at times.
Every day at noon I make a trip to town for my mail. All of us are fools about our mail. We are
not satisfied unless the postmaster chums the bottom of the box for us. If I wanted to have trouble,
I should interfear [sic] with the mail of some one.
Mar. 5.-- This is one of the whitest days of the season. Some of the snow has melted. It is too
late in the season for it to be on the ground long.
By some means the lessons are poor. Some of our folks attend a game and do not make any
preparation on the assignments. This is the hardest work that any man ever engaged in.
963
�After school there is a meeting of the faculty. Meetings of this kind are good from several
viewpoints. The teachers know the general policy of the administration. The general policy of the
school must be known before the teachers can act.
Mar. 6.-- The weather is much better. The snow is all gone. The wind is chasing the mud. In
reality it is real March. It will be so pleasant for the mud to go.
In the school there is being installed a radio. This is a wonderful age in which to life. There is
something new all the time. A man must be amaze[ d] it makes no difference what may happen.
In the evening Mr. and Mrs. E. N. Hahn, of the town, give a dinner to the teachers of their
children. This is one among the best dinners that I have had in a long time. The dinner is one of the
best that can be cooked; the social hour is great. This is one of the pleasant spots in life. It delights
me to know that there are so many good people in the world. Often I fear that our good people will
not reproduce themselves. Doubtless I am too prone to look upon the gloomy side of life. We do
not possess all the virtues.
Mar. 7.-- The day is fine. Better weather could not be desired. It is so pleasant that we do not
need fire.
In school we meet all our classes. I do my best to meet all duties that are imposed upon me. I
love to pull my part of the load.
In the afternoon I go to the courthouse for a law suit. The parties are not ready and it has to be
set for another day.
I go home. It takes only a few minutes to make the trip. I rest a short time, and then I go to the
store. I have a pleasant hour at this pace. At night Mrs. Greene and I visit Uncle John Smith. We
have a splendid time.
Mar. 8.-- I do some reading. I review the Sunday School lesson on Sunday morning. A man
loves to be in good condition for the class. We have a fine school. Many people are coming to it.
In the afternoon I visit in the home of Mr. Mast's. We have a fine time. The best way for me
to rest is to talk with a few friends. I am not able to relax in a large crowd. The noise and the jar are
too great for me. This is one day that I have not read very much. A man needs to refrain from
reading at times.
Mar. 9.-- At an early hour I am on my way to Boone. I am anxious to get to my work. I stop in
town long enough to attend to some business.
From town I come to my room. I soon dive into paper work. I use the greater part of the day at
this work. It takes all the nerve that I have to keep at this work.
At night I attend a reception given in the Gymnasium by the Societies. The program is fine, but
the eats are better. This is one of the best things that I have attended in a long time.
From this I go to the Auditorium in order to hear a radio concert. I must confess that I am
disappointed. At a late hour we are in the bed. I must confess that I do not enjoy late hours.
964
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Greene Diaries
Mar.10.-- It seems that summer is at hand. The frogs and the birds ard singing. On every hand
the signs point to spring. Even the boys and the girls have joy in their bones. After the shut-in of
winter, we enjoy the balmy air.
In our classes we have much pleasure. We enjoy working with a crowd that tries to do things.
After school we work at making out some grades. This is a job that is unpleasant. On every
hand we do not meet with pleasant jobs. A man may do the best that we can, and then some one will
say unkind things about him.
Mar. 11.-- The usual round of school work comes our way. We always have more than we can
do. I suppose that the busy man is the happy man.
At noon I go to town for my mail. I make this trip each day. I need the exercise, and it is a time
that I do not loose [sic] any from my work.
In the afternoon Prof. Smith and I go to my home. This is a good trip to rest. We remain until
after supper. I certainly do enjoy greens. This is the first of the season. It seems that I do not have
the pleasure of staying at home all the time. I must remain away from my family. By the time that
we return to Boone it is almost night. I plunge into my work. Before I am aware of it, it is time to
retire for the night.
Mar. 12.-- This is not an exciting day with me. It comes on smoothly. A man loves to have
something to arouse him, but the usual routine comes to us.
I am trying to do something that will improve my usefulness in the world. I am doing a course
of reading in Literature. It is a course for every day of the year. In addition to this I am trying to
carry a University course in Social Affairs. I am busy all the day and far into the night. I get much
joy out of my study.
Mar. 13.-- Many of our teachers are out sick. There has been some one sick for a long time. The
most of them have some form of cold.
In the afternoon we get the reports ready to send out. The 131 is one of the hardest jobs that a
teacher has to contend with. It consumes all of his time and he seems to be doing but little.
The finest days that any one ever sees in the month of March. It seems that summer has come
to stay. We fear that all the fruit will be killed. We must expect some cold waves in the near future.
We shall be disappointed if they do not come.
Mar.14.-- There is some new history in the school today. We run with almost half of the faculty
absent. A part of the members go away for the week-end, the others are on the sick list. Sometime
we think that certain men must be present, but we can go with any one away.
Just after noon I go to town. I soon find a way home. It does not take long to get home in a car.
I find that Ralph has a well-developed case of the mumps. This is a disease that I fear much. About
131
This?
965
�fifteen years ago I had a severe attack. I have not been so well since. It is a disease that requres
careful attention.
Mar. 15.-- The weather is much cooler. The fire feels good. For the past few days it has been
too warm for the time of year.
At Sunday School the Juniors give a program. We are having a good lively time. Many of our
people are interested in the better things of life.
I take dinner with Hill Trivett. We have a pleasant time. It is fine for neighbors to visit each
other.
In the afternoon I visit the home of W. H. Brown. We exchange wisdom. It is to be regretted
that the whole community could not hear the choice sayings of the sages. Alas, it is the common fate
of the race. Many good things go to waste.
Mar. 16.-- I read for some time and then I start for Boone. I do not go far until I catch a truck.
It is a cold ride into Boone.
I manage to rid myself of one burden. I resign as Justice of the Peace. There are so many little
sorry cases to be hear[ d]. I do not have the time to give the office.
In the afternoon I remain in my room and work. It seems that I am not able to get even with the
things that I have on hand. My work is pressing me.
Late in the day we have some rain. This will put down the dust. We may look for a cold wave.
Mar. 17.-- During the morning there is the appearance of rain, but in the afternoon there is fine
weather.
In school there is a scacity [sic] ofteachers. Some of the teaches are sick and others are absent.
There are not enough to meet all the classes.
At the chapel Rev. Mr. Smith of Arkansas leads in the devotional. He is a Baptist of the
Landmark variety. His conduct on the platform is admirable.
At night I work on a lesson on crime. This is one of the big subjects of the day. The progress
of our civilization is measured to a great extent by how we treat our criminal class.
Mar. 18.-- There is much weather today. We have summer, spring, autumn and threatened
winter. It appears that we are having an early spring. Vegetation is coming rapidly.
By some means I have been in distress. There are many things to cause the human heart to ache.
It is the common lot of the race to see much trouble. At times there is a mixture of joy in it. On
every hand we see the race going to ruin. Evidences of misery are near us. Perhaps we bring all our
troubles upon ourselves. We are too easy to show the white feather.
Mar. 19.-- During the past night we had a thunder storm. There is some rain. This tells us that
summer is coming. In a few more days the flowers will be blooming.
Today we have done much reading. In fact we commence before day. I try to read some in my
Bible each day. This year I am reading it from cover to cover. A man must make it a part of himself.
966
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Greene Diaries
I, also, am giving a little time each day to some good Literature. If a man does well in life, he must
study his job. A person must be a student alllthe time. The idle fellow never gets any where.
Mar. 20.-- At breakfast the lady had failed to put any soda in her bread. Thhe truth of the matter
is that the biscuits have a sad look. The good woman takes her ill-luck seriously, and this gives us
this gives us the comic side of it. As all good women are prone to do, she soon has some better
bread on the table for us.
In school the day has been a little hard on me. There have been several things to vex me. We
have a number of boys who never look at their lessons. They expect to go on with their lessons and
make the course. Doubtless they will be disappointed.
Mar. 21.-- This is a fine day. The good weather continues to march on. In all time we have
never seen so much good weather in March. I do my school work and then I start for home. I do not
get far from town until I get a ride. Long before night I am home. I am almost too tired to rest. A
week in the schoolroom almost puts me out of business. I have some papers to read, but I am not
in a condition to do that. I want to ramble. I am not content to work quietly. I want to be on the go.
In the run of a day we are into many things. We can hardlky tell what an hour may bring forth.
Mar. 22.-- I have had a great time tiday. This morning I go to Mabel. I visit my father a short
time. I attend Sunday School at Union. The school is not large. It does not seem like the Union of
old. I spent some of my happiest days at this place.
I have a fine dinner at W. M. Thomas'. We have some good company. A part of the afternoon
is spent in lively conversation.
Upon my return home I find the folks looking for me. I put in my time reading and having the
best time of my life. On every hand I have no scorn for life.
Mar. 23.-- I am on my way to court at an early hour. I am there long before the hour for court
to commence. I put in some time doing business over the town. The crowd is immense. It seems
that almost the whole county has turned out. The folks sure have a good time.
Judge Harding, of Charlotte, is presiding. He delivers a fine charge to the jury. In many respects
we think that he is a very fine judge.
By the late afternoon I am very tired. I do not think I want much court during the coming week.
I have other things that I must do. At night I am too tired to ret. Deliver me from the crowd.
Mar. 24.-- At an early hour I am in my room at the school building. I soon have things in
readiness for the business of the day.
At chapel we have Mr. J. K. Perry, of Beaver Dam, with us. He makes a short address at the
conclusion of chapel.
Prof. Wilson reports for duty. He has been at Peabody College for Teachers. We certainly do
need his help.
Today I went to court for a short time. The room is crowded too much for comfort. In a short
967
�time I return to my room and put the rest of the day in working.
Mar. 25.-- The work goes on as usual. There are many things for a teacher to do. Something
is demanding his attention all the time. He has not a moment that he can call his own.
Just after school we have a meeting of the faculty. The greatest item for the calendar is "The
Annual". It takes much work to get it out.
At night I attend prayer service at the Methodist Church. The leading feature is an address by
Judge Harding, of Charlotte. This is one of the finest things that I have heard in a long time. His
conception of the duties of citizens is most excellent. He shows how we grow by being obedient to
organized government.
Mar. 26.-- We are into the picture business. The groups are being made for "The Annual". We
have the least noise and friction that we have ever had. This is the day that I have been dreading.
It may be that we shall get by easily this time.
Today I have worked all the time. I have tried to do all my school work and prepare a lesson in
my course. This keeps me going until a late hour at night.
Late in the day we have a light shower. The thunder sounds like summer time. The shower puts
the grass to growing. Spring is here.
Mar. 27.-- Today we have had many kinds of weather. There has been at least two snow storms,
much rain, and the most violent wend. This is real march weather. We are forced into winter
harness again. Overcoat and overshoes are good companions. It may be that we shall need them
often for the next few weeks.
At chapel today Prof. Wilson talks about being in Mammoth Cave. He seems to have developed
a sense of humor. Every few minutes he makes a break.
In the afternoon and at night I work. I am trying to get ready for a trip tomorrow. A man must
do extra work when he goes off.
Mar. 28.-- The weather is much cooler. At times there is a little snow. It seems that we are to
have some real winter yet.
I remain at school until noon. I go home for a meeting. I wait in town for some time in order
to go out to Willowdale with Brother F. M. Huggins.
Our Fifth Sunday Meeting is organized with L. C. Wilson, Chairman and A. J. Greene, Secretary.
We have a fine session in the afternoon and at night. The discussions are animated, but the best of
feeling prevails. Uriah Farthing almost runs over in his zeal to start something. He does not make
much headway.
Mar. 29.-- Today is a big one for Willowdale. We have a big gathering. In Sunday School we
have intense interest. All the classes are full. On every hand we have something of interest to us.
At eleven o'clockRev. J. E. Brendle, ofTodd, preaches from the theme, "The Need of a National
Revival". It is a powerful presentation of the subject.
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One of the attractive things of the day is the singing of the Boone Quartett [sic] and the class
from Middle Fork. All people love good music. They will go for miles in order to hear it.
The meeting goes on until night. Notwithstanding the cold the interest is good until the close.
This is one of the best meetings I have attended.
Mar. 30.-- After attending to some business I start to Boone. It does not take long for us to arrive
in town. I attend court for a short time. I do not care to remain for a long spell. I attend to some
business and then I go to my room. I take a bath and retire for a rest. I do not sleep much, but I
manage to rest.
At night I attend a musical program in the Auditorium. There is much variety. As a whole I
think well of the program. Music is one of the things that helps us on in the world. It has a tendency
to lift us out of ourselves. It arouses the best in us.
Mar. 31.-- Two great events come our way today. The first is an address in the Auditorium by
Judge Harding. He talks to us for one hour. I have not listened to such a fine address in a long time.
It is full of practical wisdom. Such men as he is are able to do much good in the world.
The second event is memorial exercises in honor of Capt. E . F. Lovill. The following men
spoke: W. C. Newland, F. A. Linney, J. H. Bingham, Johnson Hayes, E. S. Coffey, Ed Bingham,
John E. Brown, Judge Harding and Prof. B. B. Dougherty. I have never heard finer tributes paid to
any. I feel that he deserved all that is said in his memory.
APRIL
Aprill.-- The weather is some warmer, however there is some wind yet. It seems that is is harde
for the air to become warm again.
This is Fool's Day at the school. Some of the scholars decorate themselves and make a show at
chapel. It surprises a man how little sense he has on certain occasions. As a whole the day has
passed off well. The students have not done many fool acts.
In the afternoon and at night we try to do some work. It seems that we are not able to do all that
we desire. We are pressed for time every day.
April2.-- This is a day full of events. Many things come our way for discussion. Sometimes we
decide wisely and sometimes it is otherwise.
It seems that we are not able to get much work done. I do not find much time to read and
meditate. There is some job just ahead of me.
In the evening I am invited to dinner by Prof. J. A. Kent. This is one of the finest dinners that
I have had in a long time. It is well-prepared and served in style. After the dinner is over, I spend
a social hour in this good home. After all it is worth all that it costs to have a social hour. It relieves
us from strain of work.
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�April 3.-- There are two events of first magnitude in our school. The President makes it plain
to the boys at chapel that all rough conduct that is of an unruly nature must be eliminated. This is
a place for study and progress. All that come to this school must deport themselves in the most
desirable way. At a meeting of the faculty he gives in detail the mission of school. One of the great
things for the school to advocate is economy. We have a tendency to waste and to get things that we
can do without. We are prone to live beyond our income. This is what we are apt to do.
April 4.-- The weather changes a little. There is an overcast and late in the day there is some
rain. It will seem delightful for the dust not to be flying.
The work in school goes on well. It seems that the week goes rapidly. The time is never long
enough for us to do all that we wish to do.
In the afternoon I go home. I find that potato planting is the order of the day. A man has a hard
time to get his crop out. It is such a job to get help. On every side there is a demand for help. The
farmer is hard rut in order to make ends meet. The outgo is high; the income is low.
AprilS.-- The day has given me a varied experience. I try to study the Sunday School lesson and
entertain visitors at the same time. I do not make good at either. At the propler hour we attend
Sunday School. We have a splendid crowd. The adult ladies give us a splendid program.]
In the afternoon I try to rest. I manage to sleep just a little. This is no place for a man to rest.
There are too many people stirring. In fact I must record that tills has been a tough day for me. I
have scarcely [been?] able to go. How I do long for a place to rest!
April6.-- At an early hour I rise in order to arrive in Boone early. When I come to town, I do
find that many people have not had breakfast. Soon I go to my room ready for the work of the day.
We have the honor of teaching the April Fool girls. This is hard on a man who works all day.
In the afternoon I go to town and attend to some business. It seems that I do not have aminute
that I can call my own. I am giving all my time for the benefit of others. I suppose that this is the
only life that is valuable. At night I do some writing. By the time that it is done I am ready to sleep.
April 7.-- The day is full of events. Rev. Mr. Allen, of North Wilkesboro, came to chapel and
entertains us. He giv[s] a reading, an essay on "The Hen". In many respect[s] it has much humor.
Doubtless this is a good way to become acquainted with a student body. In the afternoon I hear Rev.
Mr. Allen preach at the Methodist Church. He is a thoughtful and plolished [sic] speaker. He
give[s] a man something to think about. From this I go to my work. I am too sick to do many great
things. I do the pushing work and then I retire for the night. I do not rest well.
AprilS.-- I am out at an early hour. I try to finish up what I left undone last night. I go through
the usual routine. There are two thlngs that come our way. The first is the reading of one of Henry
Van dyke's poems by Rev. Mr. Allen. He teaches it to the entire student body. The next event is
a game of ball between our school and Mountain View College. The visitors carried off the day.
It seems that our boys do not have any pep in them. I think that they do not practice enough. A man
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must have endurance in order to win on the athletic field. The soft man never gets any where.
April9.-- I am out early. I do much work before breakfast. This is the best part of the day for
work.
Rev. Mr. Allen tells of his experiences in obtaining an education. This is an encouraging
message for the young man that has to work his way through school.
At the close of the school day there is a meeting of the faculty. Plans for the commencement are
discussed. The work of the school is gradually changing.
Supt. Franklin, of Avery County, is at the school. He is a pleasant and likeable gentleman. He
is with us in our faculty meeting. He does not talk.
Aprill 0.-- The weather has changed just a little. We have had some rain. It does seem good for
the dust to be laid.
At chapel President Dougher5ty talks to the school on the old town of Bath. He tells many
interesting things about it.
In the afternoon I attend church at the Methodist Church. This is a program for the children. By
some mean many of them are taken into the church. This way of doing things does not appeal to me.
On the athletic field there is a game of ball between our boys and Cove Creek High School. Our
boys win. The interest is not high.
Aprilll.-- This is a day long to be remembered. Many events come along that stir us. At the
school we follow our duties until the work is over for the day. One of the imposing things is having
a picture made. At 2:10 Mrs. Greene and Mrs. Jenkins come for me. In a short time we are at home.
The great event of the day is an egg hunt at Uncle John Smith' s for the children. There are about
seventy-five present. Many of the older people come to see the fun. We feel sure that the children
had a real fine time. It is almost night when the fun subsides. This is a day for the children to long
remember.
April12.-- This is a day in which I have had a varied experience. I read some in order to be
ready for Sunday School. At the usual hour we have our School. There are one hundred ten present.
Rev. Mr. Trivett preaches. He gives us the usual doctrinal sermon. At the close of service we go
toW. Y. Perry's for dinner. We have a splendid time, although I am too sick to appreciate the good
things that are in store for me. As we are coming home, there is a shower of rain. I go to bed
immediately and try to rest. I feel some better after I doze a little. I must confess that this is one of
the toughest days that I have had in a long time.
April 13.-- My cold is using me tough, but I have been busy all the day. I go to Mabel on
business. I do not remain long. I return home and remain until the afternoon . I have trading in land
too much to rest well. We make up our mind that we are going to purchase a farm. In the afternoon
Miss Florence Bumbamer, who took Easter with us, go to Boone with Mr. J. H. Mast. After I arrive
in town I complete my land deal. This may be the wrong thing to do, but I feel that I am acting
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�wisely. I come to my recitation room and spend a part of the afternoon at work. I have many things
just before me.
April14.-- Today I am not able to talk much. I have to take it quietly, and then I do not move
along well. This is one of the hardest days that I have had this year.
Rev. Mr. Allen comes to chapel. He makes some fine remarks on how to get the most out of life.
The religious life is the only life that is worth while.
In the afternoon I come to my room to rest. This is the hardest day that I have had this year. I
sleep and rest just a little. My voice is in a condition that I cannot talk much. Never before have I
been in this condition. Otherwise I am not suffering. A man can hardly function without talking.
AprillS.-- I go through the day without talking much. I do my class work on the board. I do it
much better than I expected. I can not talk so I can be heard. In the afternoon I take my bed for a
rest. I feel that I need it.
To-day at chapel we have Supt. F. C. Dougherty, of Johnson County, Tennessee; and Supt. Smith
Hagaman, of Watauga County, North Carolina. Both of these gentlemen make remarks from the
platform. There is hardly a day but what some man of note is in our midst. Many of them talk.
April16.-- There is an overcast as to the weather. It has threatened to rain for several days. One
of these day[s] it will come, and we shall be glad to see it stop.
My voice is some better, but I am not able to do much talking on class. This is the hardest lick
that I have had in a long time.
At chapel we have Dr. J. H. Highsmith, State High School Inspector; and Dr. James H. Hillman,
DirectorofTeacherTraining and Certification. Both make addresses of some length. Dr. Highsmith
grew somewhat eloquent in his remarks on the wealth of the state.
April17.-- Today we have some rain. The ground has not been wet in a long time. The weather
has been unusually dry for this season of the year.
My ability to talk has been limited this week. I expect that I ought to be in the bed. I have
managed to keep going.
At chapel we have some singing. This is a period that all enjoy. It gives us a rest from the
tedious grind of the class room.
I am a little melancholy today. It seems that something is going to happen to me. I am unwell.
My spirit is cast down. A man must not expect to be in high all the time. Some days are sad.
April18.-- This is a fine day. It seems that summer has come to stay. It has been a long time
since we have had so much pretty weather at this season.
In school we have some good work. There are many things for us to adjust. On every hand some
new fact is coming up.
Just afternoon I start for home. I spend a short time in town. Soon I catch a car and go home.
I do not remain here very long. Mrs. Greene and I go to Gordon Hodges to have a deed probated.
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Mrs. Hodges is a very sick woman. We remain with her a little while. By the time that we return
home it is night. I think that I have had enough activity for one day.
April19.-- This is an unusually hot day. The heat has been as severe as midsummer. I have
never felt so warm a time in April.
At Sunday School we have a good crowd. It seems that our interest in the work is good. After
school I go to Mrs. J. B. Elliott's for dinner. We have one of the best dinners that I have eaten in a
long time. At the middle of the afternoon I return home. I am too sick to rest. I do the best that I
can, but I am not able to rest. Late in the evening Mrs. Greene and I visit in the home of W. J.
Mast's. By the time that we return home and get ready to rest we have a thunder storm.
April20.-- The shower during the night refreshes everything. The dust is put down. This gives
us much relief.
I come to Boone in order to finish my land deals. Trading is a hard thing for me to do. The least
little thing throws me in a bad mood. I do not care to do much in the dealing line.
Today Mr. William Hardin is buried in Boone. He is an aged man who was born and raised in
Boone. The most of his life was spent near this place.
On yesterday Mrs. Margaret Sherrill-Hagaman was buried. I am sure that no better woman lived
in our town and county. Her life has alwways been very consistant. She has gone to her reward.
April21.-- The weather is much cooler. It is the first morning that the fire has been pleasant in
a long time. It has been unusually warm.
Miss Hall from Banner's Elk is at the school. She makes a talk at chapel on "Truth". This is one
of the finest talks that we have had in a long time.
In the afternoon I do much work. I have more than I can do. A man never knows when to stop.
Graydon Eggers came in from Gaston county where he has been teaching for the past six months.
April22.-- This is a day long to be remembered in my family. We move from the Brinkley place
to the Yate's place near Vilas. At this place we have a small farm. We think that we are going to
be pleased with our new home.
In school we have had a hard day's work. There is not a moment that I can call my own. I am
pushing my work all the time.
Just after school I take an examination on a University course. I must confess that it is no light
job to do an examination in good style.
At night I have Graydon Eggers with me. He has been teaching in Gaston county and is on his
way home in Tennessee.
April23.-- Today at chapel we have Miss Watters of the Lyceum Festival that is coming to town.
She recites two pieces for. In the midst of one Prof. J. M. Downum claps her. It is one loud clap out
of a clear sky. It has been a long time since I have been amused so well.
At noon I eat with the Cooking Class. It is a three course dinner. The guests are Mr. Rankin,
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�Mr. Greer, Miss Todd and the writer. We have a lively time.
This is one of the warmest days that I have felt in a long time. It is warm enough for the middle
of the summer. The sun is beaming down in our midst.
Apri/24.-- This is one of the hot days of the season. It is very dry. It seems to me that it is a
dangerous time about fire. On the Rich Mountain just north of Boone a forest fire is raging.
At chapel today we have Prof. Treemain, of Winston-Salem, Prof. Loy, of Tryon, and Prof.
Reese, of lllinois. Prof Reese makes a thoughtful address before the student body.
Today I make two trips to town on business. I soon expect to have all my deeds on record. The
making of deals in land is a very trying affair. It takes a long time for a man to become use to a new
place. I think that I have a home that I can enjoy well.
Apri/25.-- At chapel we have Miss Watters, who is director of the Festival that is soon to come
to our town. She reads two selections to the delight of the student body.
We have a hard day in school. We have so many thing[s] to look into. I am tired enough to rest
by the time that the day is over.
I go to town in a hurry in order that I may get a way home. It is not long until I get a car and am
on my way. I have the pleasure of going to my new home. I think that we are to have a gay time in
our new place of residence.
April 26.-- The shower during the night has left all vegetation in a prosperous condition. It is
a fact that spring has never been so early in this part of the world.
I go to the Cove Creek High School building. The whole community has Sunday School. There
are three Sunday Schools; Henson's Chapel, Cove Creek and Willowdale. There is a fine interest.
Rev. Arthur Sherwood, of Erwin, Tennessee, preaches the Annual sermon before the graduating
class. It is a fine discourse.
In the afternoon I remain at home. I do my best to rest. We have some rain. It is not enough to
wet the ground. The ground is very dry.
Apri/27.-- This is a day full of action. I come to Boone early. It is the day for the great outing.
All the classes in the High School have a trip to some point. I go with the Freshmen to a point on
New River just below the old power plant. We have much good sport. Some wade in the river;
others ride in a boat. We have a fine lunch. On every hand we are delighted with the trip.
Just before the appointed hour we are at our homes. The youngsters pronounce it a great day.
I think that we have had enough travel for one day. Some cannot stand more.
Apri/28.-- This is one wet day for April. It has rain[ed] almost all the time. The farmes will
admit that the ground is wet. Many of them can plow. This will be fine for the grass and meadows.
Miss Watters came to the chapel and recited for us again. She knows how to put things over in
good style.
At noon I make a trip to town in the rain. This is the first rain that I have been in for a long time.
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By some means it is a little cold.
I must confess that I have been a little blue for a long time. I have many things to disturb me.
My work is too heavy for me.
April29.-- We have another day that is not very favorable. Besides some rain a little snow is
reported by some. The extra rain is good for the grass and crops that have been planted.
Rev. F. M. Huggins comes to our chapel. He makes a talk on "Going the Second Mile". The
idea set forth is that we must do more than it is necessary for us to do.
Today we have a meeting of the Faculty. There is a resolution passed that none but honor
students can hold offices in Socities [sic] and class. We feel sure that this is a step in the right
direction. We have had too many loose things. We need closer supervision.
April30.-- There has been some snow today. The weather is a contrast to what we had a few
days ago. The air certainly does pinch after so much summer weather.
This is a day that we have many things on hand. It seems that it is necessary to bring great
pressure to get work out of some students. There are not many students who work to the limit.
There are many requests that are made of a teacher just at the close of a school. Many fail to do
their work and expect to be put over at the last moment. The best thing that a student can learn is
that he must do his work on time. The dragging way of doing things must be left out.
MAY
May 1.-- At an early hour the highest points of the mountains are covered with snow. This seems
odd at this season of the year. Just after daylight there is a snowstorm. Almost every year we have
some snow at a late hour. The air has been chilly. It has been so warm of late that it pinches a man.
To-day has been busy. I do not have a minute that I can call my own. There is something to do
each minute. The end of the term is near and we must get every thing in readiness to leave this place.
The last week is the one that is hard on the teacher.
May 2.-- This is a day that is to be remembered. The end of the week is upon us. It seems that
I have more than I can do. I hope that I am not able to do less work than formerly.
In the afternoon I go to town in order to make a way home. I start on my way walking. I go
almost two miles before I get a way to ride. I arrive home long before night. It does seem so good
to come home in such a quiet place. I believe that I have the ideal place to make a good home. I
long to fix the place the way that I wish it. It takes time to make a desirable place to live.
May 3.-- I attend Sunday School at Willow dale. We have a large number present. Many people
in the community do not come to this or go to any Sunday School.
975
�I travel over the fann a little in order to see what we have. The more that we see of it the better
we like. I think that we have an ideal place to live. It delights us to see our friends come. It pleases
us for our neighbors to come.
In the evening I put in some time reading some literature. On every hand I find something that
is interesting and lively.
May 4.-- We have had weather that is almost like March. It has been varied. There has been
some sunshine, some rain, and some cold wind.
I remain at home until noon. I put in a part of the morning reading examination papers. I do not
feel well enough to do much work.
At noon I start for home in Boone. I am caught in a storm. Smith Hannon picks me up and
brings me to Boone in a car. I remain in town for a short time and then I go to the school building
and do some work. I have several jobs on hand.
May 5.-- We start on the final week of school. This is always a strenuous time. One person
about does the work of two. The final examinations and the commencement season come upon us
at the same time.
Today I give one final examination. I wish to get History out of the way. The class has been
small and we have done some good work.
At night I use my time in reading. I have a course in reading that I enjoy very much. There are
new things that come my way each day. I regret that I have such a short time to enjoy the good
things of life.
May 6.-- The end is on the way. We have some more finals . The reading of papers there will
be no end. I hate to have so many on me at once.
After school Mr. Ruppe and I come to my home at Vilas. I need my Sunday clothes for the
Commencement. We remain until after night. We have a fine drive to Boone. I find many papers
waiting for me. This trip is going to delay me in making my final report. I have much reading to do
before it is time to go home.
May 7.-- The last examination comes today. I read papers and make out grades until I am hardly
fit to do real good work. At night I continue my work in order to get my final reports in on time.
Late in the day I am delighted to get a box of strawberries from Elizabethton, Tenn. I am so
selfish that I ate them by myself.
At night the Senior Class of the High School Department give a play in the Auditorium. There
is a large crowd in attendance. I find that I am not able to get my report ready and go.
May 8.-- This is the final day at school. This morning I send my things home. I transact some
business in town before the hour for commencement comes on.
At ten o'clock the graduating exercises for the college are held. The address is delivered by Dr.
W. R. Harper, of Elon College. His theme is "The Christian Philosophy of Life". It is a fine
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presentation of the finest ideals of life. In the class there are fifteen to finish at the close of the spring
term.
In the afternoon the High School has its graduating exercises. There are seventy to finish this
spring. It is the largest class in the history of the school.
In the afternoon I collect my things and make for home. I am longing for some rest from breaks
and school. There are many things that demand my attention. I see no way for me to get a rest.
May 9.-- My store clothes are put away and my work clothes are put on. I try some ditching for
the first round. It does not take me long to put the water out of the road.
In the afternoon I go to Mast's store at Sugar Grove. I do not remain there long before I return
to the church house. There are only a few people. It seems that preaching on Saturday has lost its
charms for the most of people. It takes a fight to bring some of them out.
The last job of the day is doing some hauling. It is a hard job to pack a bunch of plunder in a
wagon and get any load. By night I have enough of work to do me for a long time.
May 10.-- The day comes to us with all its charms. Life seems to be worth living. The lesson
is prepared and we are off to Sunday School. The lesson is the story of Phillip and the Eunuch. This
is one among the finest that we have had in a long time.
After all the chewers of the weed had satisfied their appetites, the people reassembled to have
preaching. This is known among church people as Communion Day. It is usually in May and
September. The first is the time when we come from winter quarters; the latter date is just before
many people hibernate for the dormant season of the year.
The afternoon is spent at home many of the neighbors come to see us . We have a pleasant time
with all who come.
May 11.-- I make a trip to the cheese factory. We are selling some milk. Doubtless it is a paying
proposition. We hope to increase our herd. The finest business in the world is one that brings an
income each day in the year.
I commence to hoe my potato crop today. I must confess that they are looking well. By some
means I am sure that I enjoy working and seeing this crop grow. In our county this is becoming a
great industry. Some are raising for seed while others are raising for the market. The seed potatoes
industry is in its fourth year in our county. It is going to succeed.
May 12.-- This is a dark and gloomy day. During this entire month we have not had much
sunshine. It is cloudy and foggy. Such weather depresses a man ' s spirits and he is not capable of
doing things and corning on in the world.
Today I have been reading examination papers. This is one of the hardest jobs that I have ever
tried. In every respect it is a hard job to do justice to all parties concerned. There is one thing that
is evident and that is so many students are doing no work and are trying to get by without real study.
May 13.-- I suppose that a man will never be truly happy this side of the Great Divide. It is one
977
�thing just after another that comes along to mar the enjoyment of life. Sometimes I think that a man
needs to own nothing. A little of this world's goods has a tendency to annoy a person.
Today we plant some com, but the rain soon stops us. This kind of work brings old memories
to us. In my mind there is no doubt but farming is one of the finest things that a man can do. It is
an occupation that is not crowded.
May 14.-- Rain prevents us from planting more com. We work at the examination papers. This
is a trying job. There are so many who are on the border Fne. A man does not know what is right
in each individual case.
In spirit I am much depressed. It seems that so many troubles hover about me. Perhaps some
time I shall be able to surmount and overcome all the trials of this life. A man must have some
bitter, so that he will be able to enjoy the sweet. Ah, we must be a hero in the struggle of life.
May 15.-- The sun comes forth in all his glory. It has bee some days since we have enjoyed the
sunshine. The vapor goes before his strength.
Just as soon as the ground will do we begin planting com. We do not stop until our crop is put
in the ground.
The more that we see of our place, the better pleased we are with it. There are some fine things
to commend us.
In the afternoon we retire to our potato field and do a little hoeing. The ground is getting right.
We are not able to work all day.
May 16.-- This is a fine day. The ground has been in fine condition for working. We have used
the day in cutting some of the weeds out of our potatoes. We do not have much help, hence we do
not hoe a large patch.
Late in the day I go to Uncle Thos. Yates' to buy a pig. I find that he has a large number. In fact
he has almost any kind that a man wants. I find that he is a pleasant man to deal with. I return across
the hill and find that I am not very far from home. I must confess that I am tired.
May 17.-- The day is fine . It is one among the best that we have had in a long time. It does seem
so good for the sun to shine.
At Sunday School our crowd is a little small. Some of our people have gone to the singing;
others have gone to other places for preaching. It seems that it is hard for our people to be loyal in
every respect to their own community.
In the afternoon W. J. Mast and I sat on W. H. Brown's porch and told our troubles. We think
that we have many, but the most of them are purely of the imagitation [sic], and very few are real.
May 18.-- This is a damp, cloudy day. The sun does not make his appearance. This kind of
weather is depressing. A man is always looking upon the dark side of life.
Today I labor in my potatoes alone. It seems that I do not get help when I stand in need of it.
There is always something for me to do withoug help.
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The sorrows and the troubles of life come upon me. It seems that I have to suffer for others.
Some people will not allow a man to be good to them. The more that is done for them, the more that
they expect.
May 19.-- This morning we lie in the bed to a late hour. It does seem strange for us to be late
in eating breakfast. When a boy I became use to arising early, and I have not gotten over it.
I finish hoeing my crop of potatoes at Glenn's. The comment of the people is that it is a fine
field of spuds.
In the afternoon I go to Uncle John Smith's and hoe some in my crop at that place. I find the
potatoes large and healthy. It seems that it is a growing season for all vegetation. Late in the day
I have to quit because we have a shower of rain. The ground is in good condition to work.
May 20.-- This morning we have one among the densest fogs that I have ever experienced. It
is several hours before we can work. This appears to be the beginning of some pretty weather. It
will be pleasant for the sun to shine.
Today we have dinner served in the field. I must confess that I enjoy it very much. There is
nothing so delightful as being out in the open.
Before the middle of the afternoon comes upon us the second crop of potatoes is hoed out. I
must confess that I can see no time when I can have a few days that I can call my own. It is move
all the time.
May 21.-- Today has been hard on me. During the night I did not sleep well. I have taken cold
in my chest. I am so hoarse that I can hardly talk.
I spend the greater part of the day at home. I read some and try to get something that will help
my cold. I find that I am not able to do much.
I have been thinking some about Literature. I try to rest some each day. There is much rich
thought in the mass of the world's literature. We have the experiences of the race to guide us during
life. Many rich things are for us.
May 22.-- I have not been well. My cold is still clinging to me. It seems that it is difficult for
me to be free from one.
A part of the day has been spent in reading. I have a course in reading in literature. I am
enjoying it very much.
In the afternoon I go to a lumber yard with Mr. W. L. Henson to purchase some lumber. I must
confess that I have never felt it so warm in May. The papers report it one among the warmest days
on record. Before the lunber is at home, I am very, very warm. My lungs seem to be conjested [sic]
in such a way that breathing is difficult.
May 23.-- This is another hot day on record. It is almost too warm for working. The shade is
the most comfortable place that I can find.
My cold is still with me. It seems that I cannot rid myself of it. I feel so tough that I am not able
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With Wiley Walker, as a helper, we build a toilet. At noon it is almost complete. We think that
we have done a good job.
In the afternoon I go to Gordon Hodges' for my saw. I remain some time at the store. It is
almost too warm to travel.
May 24.-- Sunday morning comes again. We spend two hours in reading. A man has a long time
for study before it is time for Sunday School.
At school we have a good crowd. The most of the school is composed of children. It seems that
the old folks have fled. Mr. John E. Brown, of Boone, comes to our school and makes an address.
It has many happy thoughts in it.
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Moody take dinner with us. We also have Mrs. J. B. Elliott and her
famous granddaughter, The entire afternoon is spent at home. I read and rest.
May 25.-- This is a cold day. It is almost cold enough to snow. We hoe just a little corn in the
garden. In fact a good fire is the most enjoyable thing that I can imagine. Truly this may be called
"blue" Monday. Some of the day is spent in preparing some wood.
My cold still clings to me. It seems that I am somewhat inclined to take violent fits of coughing.
On every had I find that I am easily irritated. A man that is not well is not capable of doing the work
of the world.
May 26.-- This is a morning of history. We have a very heavy frost. The whole country seems
to be in distress. The potato crop is damaged. The com and the beans are biten [sic] down. Really
all vegetation is more or less damaged. Many of the people say that they have never seen any thing
that is equal to this, but we must remember that our memories are short. We forget so easily. Of
course it looks as if we are ruined, but I am going to tum prophet and say that we shall make good
crops this year. We are usually scared before we are hurt. We are always blessed with abundance.
May 27.-- Another great event to record. There is another heavy frost. It does seem that we are
in for heavy losses. As it is usually the case, we are scared much worse than we are hurt. Many
people are trying to recall when they saw more destruction wrought than at this time. Many leaves
on the trees are killed. The frosts seem to have covered a large area.
We hoe some corn, or in other words we hoe where it ought to be. It is killed to the ground. The
very nature of corn makes it an easy plant to survive a frost like the one that we have just nad. It
comes from within.
May 28.-- This morning I start to Boone on business. I notice there there [sic] is scarcely any
frost. Doubtless it is all over for the present. I am picked up and carried into Boone by a car. Really
I am in town before many people have breakfast. I make several trips to various places in order to
get some business transacted. Finally I get all things arranged and I am ready to come home. I come
out with Wiley Stanberry. I am home before the noon hour. I remain at home the remainder of the
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day. I always have much to do.
May 29.-- The weather continues warm and dry. We do not have rain often. The land is
becoming very dry. Many of us think that rain would help vegetation that has been biten [sic] by the
frost. Some of the people think that we are not going to make any thing, but we expect to see much
made this year.
In the afternoon Dough ton and I dig some weeds out of our potatoes. The ground is rich and we
do not want the weeds to have an advantage of us. It seems that it is hard for me to get even with
my work. Something is opressing me all the time.
May 30.-- I am out early and off to the Fifth Sunday Meeting at Beaver Dam Church. I walk the
most of the way. I stop at Uncle George Sherrill for dinner. At the proper hour the meeting is
organized. L. C. Wilsn is elected Chairman and A. J. Greene Secretary. In a short time we
commence the program. The discussions are good. Many brethern [sic] are interested in the success
of this program. After the session I go to J. R. Wilson's for supper. The session at night is good.
Perhaps it is the best that we had at all. At the conclusion I go to J. R. Eggers' for the night.
May 31.-- This is the concluding day of our meeting. The first thing that we have is Sunday
School. The writer teaches a class of ladies. We have an interesting discussion. Rev. Wagner A.
Reese, of Kentucky, addresses the school.
Rev . Walter E. Wilson, the Pastor at Cove Creek, preaches a sermon from the theme, "The
Atonement". In many respects it is a very able sermon. It is in the field of controversy. Some of
the precise brethern take violent exceptions to the remarks.
After dinner is served on the ground, we have the concluding session. We do not have much
enthusiasm. As a whole it is a good meeting. I return home by night.
JUNE
June 1.-- This is a fine day. The weather continues warm and dry. It has been a long time since
we have had so much fine weather at one time. Today I remain at home and do odd chores. I am
waiting for rain before I commence working my crops. There are many things to repress a man. A
man has a fight on his hands all the time. At every angle some annoying being is coming at you.
Life is one terrible struggle for existence. The older that I get the more I have to contend with.
June 2.-- Still I wait for rain before I commence my crop. I wait at my home. I try to content
myself with the little thngs that I can do about my home. A man can do many little things and yet
not make any show. In the afternoon I try to take a nap of sleep, but I do not succeed well. A fellow,
I suppose, will never reach a perfect stage of contentment in this life. There will be something to
disturb his peace and repose. Often I think that it would be well if we could depart this life and cease
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�to know its troubles. On the other hand it is a good world to abide in.
June 3.-- I have decided that rain may be many days off, therefore I enter the working of my
crop. The ground is dry, but it works easily. I work the most of the day. The potatoes are a
discouraging proposition. The frost and the dry weather give us much anxiety about the success of
the crop. A man must try to overcome these things that come in his way. The best lessons that a
man can get are those that disappoint him. We are prone to lay our plans and then we are hurt if they
are not fully carried out.
June 4.-- Today we are in our potatoes again. The ground is dry and the dust is stiffling [sic] .
There is very little to encourage us. Perhaps it is best for us to carry out our part of the work. I am
free to confess that I have done all the work that I am able. My strength is almost gone long before
night. A fellow who does not do manual labor for years is not able to be on the job for a full day
until his muscles are strong enough to endure. I find that a man can not rest so easily as a boy. We
have lost the fine art of relaxing.
June 5.-- The crop of potatoes at Glenn is finished this morning. They are in good shape for
growing if we could have some rain. The sun is corning down with much power. A person will
enjoy the shade today.
Our tenant who has given us so much trouble made his departure today. This has been a great
source of anxiety and remorse. There are so many angles to it. It is difficult to believe that a human
being will come so low that he will not provide for his companion and his offspring, but such is the
case that we have before us.
June 6.-- Today I have more on my hands than I can do. I have to do some fencing. At this
season of the year it is hard work. I wish that I had nothing, except farm work on my hands. Beside
this we have the building of a flue on hand. It takes some of us to help with this.
At noon we have a sprinkle of rain. We are made to rejoice, but in a short time we meet with
disappointment. The clouds break away and there is not enough rain to do us much good. How we
do long to see the ground wet, so that vegetation will revive and take on new life.
June 7.-- At Sunday School our crowd is rather small. It seems that many of our people are
careless in regard to their attendance. The least little thing in the world keeps them away from
School.
At noon we have a little rain, but it is not enough to wet the ground. Our hopes soon fall to the
utmost and we must still look for relief from the drought.
In the afternoon I visit the home of Will Ward. We have a splendid time. When I return home,
it is almost night. There seems to be a moral gloom over me.
June 8.-- This is a day in which I do but little work. I still wait for rain in order [to?] work my
crops, but it is so dry that I am not able to do much. On every hand I meet with disappointment. It
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seems that gloom has come over me. I am not content. I need to work, and I have a longing in my
bosom to do other things.
In the afternoon I get some sweet potato plants and put them out. Of course it is no season for
plants, but by some means we have good success when it is dry. We put out about three hundred
plants.
June 9.-- It is densely cloudy until noon. It looks as if it would rain any minute. Just afternoon
the clouds break away and our hopes for rain is gone. In the distant [sic] there is a thunder shower,
but this fails us also. The drought will soon become fearful.
I hoe potatoes until two o' clock. I finish my crop. In case that we have rain soon. I am looking
for some fruit. A potato is a plant that needs much moisture. The nature of this soil will stand
several more days of dry weather. It is black and damp.
June 10.-- I have been at home all day. I have put in the most of the day reading. I have a course
in Literature that I am trying to finish this year. The most of the time I enjoy it much. I find many
new and interesting things in it. There are many fine piece[s] of humor.
Late in the afternoon Prof. A. R. Smith, wife and two babies come down from Boone to see us.
They do not stay only a few minutes. What a pleasure it is to have our friends to visit us! It is an
oasis in a desert. It is meat in a famine. It is light in the darkest of gloom.
June 11.-- We do not feel well today. In fact we are too sick to do much work. I do not engage
in much work during the whole day.
To-day we have Mr. Brinkley, the brick layer, with us. He is a real jolly fellow when every thing
is going well with him, but he can get the lowest when disaster comes upon him.
The Klu Kluck Klan [sic] has a blow-out in Johnson City, Tenn. Some of our people go. It
never gets too hot nor too cold for some people to make trips. In fact all of us are wanting to be on
the go too much.
June 12.-- The weather is still dry. There does not appear any sign of rain. In case it is dry much
longer it is going to be alarming. Pastures and some vegetable crops are suffering for rain. As a rule
dry weather scares us worse than it hurts. Our trouble is that we do not prepare for it. As a usual
thing we do not have long dry spells.
Today we have spent much time in reading. We have a course in literature that we are enjoying
this year. We have put much time on it today. In many respects it has many rich thing[s] for the
mind to feed upon.
June 13.-- This morning it is densely cloudy. It looks as if the rain is going to fall every minute.
The expected shower makes our hearts glad, but our joy is soon returned to sorrow. The clouds
begin to break and the sun comes out in all his glory. It seems now that it never will rain. It is a time
of gloom.
This morning we hoe the corn in the garden. We rush in order to escape the rain , but the weeds
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�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Andrew Jackson Greene Collection
Description
An account of the resource
The Andrew Jackson Greene Collection consists of more than 160 diaries written by Greene who describes Watauga County's education system, including Appalachian State Teachers College, cultural and religious life, and agriculture from 1906 to 1942. <br /><br /><strong>Biographical Note.</strong> Andrew Jackson Greene (March 2, 1883-August 12, 1942) was a life-long resident of Watauga County, North Carolina and instructor in several Watauga schools including Appalachian State Teachers College (A.S.T.C). Greene worked as a farmer, public school teacher, and college professor. Greene was an enthusiastic diarist maintaining regular entries from 1906 to the day before his death. He also recorded A.S.T.C. faculty meetings from January 9, 1915 to May 3, 1940. He married Polly Warren, and they had three children, Ralph, Maxie, and Lester.
Contributor
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Greene, Andrew Jackson, 1883-1942
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/190">AC.105: Andrew Jackson Greene Collection</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1906-1942
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No Copyright - United States</a>
Document
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Number of pages
64
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Diary of Andrew Jackson Greene, Volume 53 [February 19, 1925 - June 12, 1925]
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Greene, Andrew Jackson, 1883-1942
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Andrew Jackson Greene Collection, 1906-1942" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/190" target="_blank">Andrew Jackson Greene Collection, 1906-1942</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1925
Extent
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48.8 MB
Language
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English
Identifier
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105_053_1925_0219_1925_0612
Description
An account of the resource
This is an Andrew Jackson Greene diary recorded from February 19 through June 12, 1925. In this diary Greene wrote his daily activities such as cutting wood, visiting with neighbors, or spending a day studying. He also included information about his work at Appalachian Training School. He wrote about the students, the weather, and current events in education.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Baptists--Clergy--North Carolina--Watauga County
Greene, Andrew Jackson, 1883-1942
Type
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Text
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No Copyright – United States</a>
Format
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Diaries
Is Part Of
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<a title="Andrew Jackson "Greene collection" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/39" target="_blank"> Andrew Jackson Greene collection </a>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Watauga County (N.C.)
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
<a title="https://www.geonames.org/4497707/watauga-county.html" href="https://www.geonames.org/4497707/watauga-county.html" target="_blank"> https://www.geonames.org/4497707/watauga-county.html</a>
Avery County
basketball
Beaver Dam
Boone
Brinkley Place
Clyde Mast
Commencement
Communion day
Cove Creek High School
Davenport College
Fifth Sunday Meeting
Justice of the Peace
Lyceum Festival
Mabel
Mast’s Store at Sugar Grove
New River
Peabody College for Teachers
Smith Harmon
Sunday School
Vilas
W.H. Brown
Watauga County N.C.
Wilkesboro