Appalachian Heritage

As I said in the introduction to the previous article about Blaise Pascal, I recently dug up a box of old floppy discs and used a USB floppy drive to read them and save what I thought was worth saving for my own personal reasons or to pass some of it on either here in this blog or as ideas for writing to be published in more traditional formats.  Below, I have inserted a brief, less than 400 words, article I wrote many years ago about my thoughts of the importance of having native Appalachians acknowledge and believe in their heritage as Appalachians.  It is instructive to me both from the point of view of looking back on how my opinions and ideas have developed over time and from the point of view that it still ties in strongly with much of the other work on this blog about Appalachia and Appalachian Studies.  Here it is!  

**********************************************************************************

Appalachian Heritage

            For this little writing exercise, I will examine an issue that has been important to me for many years, Appalachia and Appalachian Heritage issues.  Many, if not most, of the students in Eastern Kentucky today are natives of Appalachia.  Yet the issues involved in living in the region and being of Appalachian Heritage mean little to most of these people.  They are not unique.  Most of the natives of Appalachia spend far more time forgetting than remembering their heritage.  Appalachians are a genuine American minority.  We have a unique culture, history, sociology, and lifestyle.  Yet we are ignored by mainstream society at best and ridiculed at worst.  The literature of the region is unique, as are the music, customs, art, and history.  Appalachian natives should seek to learn about, preserve, and promulgate our heritage.  There are several good museums, colleges, and community cultural centers in the area.  The Highlander Center in New Market, Tennessee, founded by Don West and Miles Horton is such a place.  The Appalachian Studies Program at Appalachian State University is another.  The graduate school there is named for Cratis D. Williams, a native of Louisa, Kentucky, and graduate of Morehead State University who has written several important Appalachian books and served as an educator and administrator at one of the best small universities in the region.  The Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia, a second institution founded by Don West, is another fine center dedicated to the preservation of Appalachian culture.  All these institutions and several dozen more work on a daily basis to further the Appalachian way of life.  Writers such as Don West, James Still, Albert Stewart, Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, Edwina Pendarvis, and Gurney Norman have all spent years writing about the Appalachian way of life.  I have studied and learned about Appalachia since I was in my early teens.  I work constantly to learn more and to pass that information on to other natives of the region.  Like any cultural minority, Appalachians must strive to avoid being assimilated out of existence.  We have many things to be proud of and we should show off that pride constantly.

Connie West Art Exhibition--Loyal Jones Center--Berea, KY

Photo By Roger D. Hicks

On September 7, 2017, my wife Candice & I traveled to Berea, KY, to see an exhibition of art by Connie West at the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College.  The exhibition is the first to my knowledge of Connie West's work since her death in 1990 at the age of 81.  Connie West was the wife of my professor, mentor, and friend Don West, the Appalachian poet, preacher, teacher, union organizer, and social activist.  She was also the mother of the late folk singer Hedy West.  Connie was a highly accomplished woman in her own right.  She held degrees from Lincoln Memorial University, the University of Georgia, and the Baltimore Institute of Art.  She had met Don West at Lincoln Memorial University when they were both undergraduates there in the 1920's.  Connie was also always active in the social justice causes which Don worked to accomplish.  She had been active in the founding of both the Highlander Folk School and the Appalachian South Folklife Center.  Connie was also a brave example of the thousands of women who fought against cancer in the 1960's through the 1980's, a period when successes against cancer were rare and treatments were not nearly as well developed or effective as they are today.  

Photo By The West Family

It is sad that many of the paintings of Connie West were lost in a fire at the Appalachian South Folklife Center in 1974. At that time, many of her paintings were exhibited in the dining hall of the Folklife Center and an accidental fire destroyed the building along with many of Connie's paintings and a sizable collection of artifacts from the lives of both Don and Connie West many of which were also historic items in the progression of the field of study known today as Appalachian Studies.  Don West made a dangerous and heroic attempt to save as many of Connie's paintings during the fire as possible.  He did manage to save a few and suffered minor burns and smoke inhalation in the attempt.  I was living and working at the Folklife Center at the time and attending Antioch Appalachia in Beckley, WV.  When the fire occurred, three of us who lived at the Folklife Center were in class in Beckley and received a call that the building was on fire.  We left class and raced over the mountains to arrive after the building was a total loss.  It was the only time I ever saw Don West cry in the twenty years I knew him.  I will never forget standing beside Don and Connie with Connie crying openly, Don with silent tears streaming down his cheeks, his eyebrows and much of his hair singed from the fire, and openly weeping at the loss of both Connie's paintings and much of their lives work.  

Portrait Of Don West By Connie West Photo By Roger D. Hicks

As a result of that loss to the fire, the exhibition at Berea is of high quality photographs of many of Connie's paintings taken by Wes Harris.  Her surviving paintings are scattered through the collections of Wes Harris, her daughter Ann West Williams, and a few individuals who were lucky enough to own some of her work.  Even though this exhibition is of photographs and not the actual paintings, it is well worth seeing especially for the student of Appalachia and Appalachian Studies. This may well be the only chance many will ever have to see Connie's work.  Connie West painted primarily portraits of persons she knew and considered to be worthy of memorializing.  Subjects include her husband Don West and a sizable number of native Appalachians who had accomplished lives of distinction.  Attend the exhibition and make note of the fact that the online web page to which I provided the link above states that the show ended at the beginning of September 2017 but it is still hanging as of September 20, 2017.  I have been informed by personnel of the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center that the exhibition is likely to remain open to the public until December due to the lack of another scheduled exhibition in the Long Wall Gallery.  I would also suggest that my readers find time to obtain and read the works of Don West and the James Lorence biography of Don.  Don't collected poetic works have been published twice.  The first book is called "In A Land Of Plenty A Don West Reader" which was published by West End Press in 1982.  The second collection of his work, published posthumously in 2004 by the University Of Illinois Press and was edited by George Brosi and Jeff Biggers under the title "No Lonesome Road Selected Prose And Poems".  The James Lorence biography is an excellent work with highly detailed scholarship and fine writing.  It was published in 2007 by the University Of Illinois Press under the title "A Hard Journey The Life Of Don West".  All three of these books will give the reader a deeper understanding of the many accomplishments of Don and Connie West and their joint importance to Appalachia and the field of Appalachian Studies. 

Appalachian Quilter Pipestem WV by Connie West Photo By Roger D. Hicks