Author Archives: Elizabeth Gaucher

About Elizabeth Gaucher

I founded Longridge Editors LLC in 2011. We provide professional services to both large and small business, with a special focus on the needs of authors, artists, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs in the areas of content development and editing.

The #PowerofMany: Confronting Cancer as a Community

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There are many statistics that paint the picture of cancer’s advance on the people of West Virginia, but this is one of the most powerful:

Patient Visits to David Lee Cancer Center at CAMC (2004):  17,000
Patient Visits to David Lee Cancer Center at CAMC (2011):  39,000

When I was a little girl, “cancer” was a whispered word. I didn’t really understand at the time, but now I appreciate that people are loathe to say out loud the things they fear the most. There is good reason to fear cancer, especially if you live in southern West Virginia. The reality is that most residents of our region will either be diagnosed with some form of cancer or see someone they love diagnosed with the disease.

A few decades ago, that meant a lot of whispering.

Philosophers say that courage is not absence of fear, but mastery over it.Today, the fear is still real, but the courage is growing. The courage is growing because our knowledge is increasing, and our awareness of prevention as well as treatment options is growing exponentially. This time of year, for example, it’s common for friends of my generation to wince in mental anguish remembering how we used to slather ourselves in baby oil and lie on light-reflecting blankets to “tan” ourselves as teenagers. We know now how dangerous that is, and how it damages skin cells often to the point of abnormal growth. We have friends who received a melanoma diagnosis, most of whom survived with the outstanding treatment of oncologists and first-rate cancer care facilities.

At Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC), the most common cancers seen in women are breast, lung, uterine, colorectal, and kidney; in men, it is prostate, lung, colorectal, kidney, and urinary/bladder. There is a dramatic need to increase and improve outpatient services to these patients, and CAMC is rising to the challenge with its campaign to build a  new state-of-the-art facility for patients in our region.

The odds are, if you live in southern West Virginia, you or someone you love will be served by this center one day. If you are reading this from another part of the world, you may face similar odds for a cancer diagnosis. We all need to get involved in turning this ship around.

We don’t whisper about cancer any more, we say it out loud. We speak its name and we write about it to call it out of the shadows where we can see, as a community, what we plan to overcome.

Receiving a cancer diagnosis and pursuing treatment will, in most ways, always be about the power of ONE. One person’s body, one person’s choices, one person’s courage. Holding the hand of that patient, strengthening her in the process, increasing his choices, and improving treatment availablity is about the power of MANY.

During the social media awareness week (May 27 – June 2, 2012), information about the new cancer center and the Power of Many Campaign will be shared by the CAMC Health Systems and CAMC Foundation social media accounts.  You can simply repost or retweet from CAMC social media accounts, or create your own personal messages. Esse Diem invites you share your thoughts on this blog if you do not have your own; simply comment here or email me at edg@longridgeeditors.com and I would be pleased to send you some post ideas and stats.

(If you want to do something extra easy, just use the social share buttons here and pass this post along to your network.)

Thank you for any support you can lend to the cause. You can make a real difference in this community effort to change the course of a cancer diagnosis.

Why the Capital High School T-Shirt Debacle Was Lose-Lose-Lose-Lose

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Recently, my community witnessed an event that, in the scheme of things, was a tempest in a tea pot. Some graduating high school seniors defied the authority of their principal in the last few days of school, lost their right to march for their diploma, then regained the right to march. This was all over some t-shirts.

I don’t struggle much to define what I think about local events, but this one threw me for a loop. The butterfly effect of a series of choices by students, school leaders, parents, school board, and the chattering class kept the whole thing a moving target.

What went wrong?

In short, everything. There were so many bad decisions in play it was almost impossible to form an opinion as it went along. Today, the kids are graduated, the graffiti is scrubbed from city property, and we have all moved on.

The problem is, we may not really be able to start over as easily as we might hope.

My eyes were opened to some of the serious issues facing any administrator at Capital High School when I attended the funeral of its first principal, Mr. Clendenin. Clendenin presided over the consolidation of two power house schools in Kanawha County — Stonewall Jackson and Charleston High — into one school with strong identity and sense of pride. Many people thought that it couldn’t be done, that bringing together these long-standing rivals was too difficult.

In short, the Sharks and the Jets just don’t get along. Mr. Clendenin and the merging student bodies had a mighty task at hand.

What I learned at Clendenin’s memorial service is that we need to never take for granted the creation of a new and successful high school out of two former enemies. The very existence of one functioning school filled with academic achievement and student pride is a gift to our community. But from a historical perspective, it just happened.

From my armchair, I think the principal at Capital High School picked an odd battle to fight to the death. There is not much public disagreement about that. There are, however, a few more issues worthy of review.

A friend of mine put it well when she said, “You know who my parents would have been angry with over this? Me. If I were told five times not to do something by the principal and then I did it and encouraged others to do it, losing the privilege to march for my diploma, they would have taken it up with me.”

Requiring 18 year olds to face the consequences of their choices did NOT happen here. Parents and community members pitched a fit and asked the school board to intervene. Never wanting to miss a chance to lead a charge into an inappropriate drama, the school board asked the county superintendent to overturn the principal. Though phrased as a compromise, the principal lost. The kids marched, and then in an entirely predictable final act of defiance threw their victory in the principal’s face on stage. The adults in the audience erupted into wild applause.

It is a good thing when conflict can be resolved in win-win situations, but that didn’t happen here.

The principal lost: He was stripped of all respect and authority by the superintendent.

The parents lost: They can expect to get several phone calls from college and beyond asking them to come clean up their kids’ messes when they disregard life’s rules because they “just don’t agree with them.”

The kids lost: Not understanding the long-term consequences of what they did, they see themselves as heroes, and to many today they are. The sad thing is they learned the wrong lesson here, and leave town with an image of immaturity and privilege.

The community lost: The adults here tore down a good man. I can’t help but wonder how many people taking jabs at the principal would survive one day leading Capital High School. Though he may have made a tactical error, it was his to make.

Adults need to get a clue and rally around each other when the stakes are high. There were so many other ways this could have ended, not the least of which could have been an after-party for the kids where they wore their shirts and celebrated on their own terms.

I applaud the students for their willingness to take risk for their beliefs. The problem is, at the end of the day, the adults took back their real glory by erasing the consequences of their actions.

Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote letters from the Birmingham jail. As the saying goes, I’m just sayin’.

In a Man’s Voice: Daddy Used to Whistle by Steve Alberts

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Steve writes faith-based stories about “God’s grace throughout (his) life.” He dabbles with song lyric writing, is attempting to write a novel, and enjoys acting, photography, hunting, fishing, and woodworking.

Born in Charleston, West Virginia, raised and educated in Spencer, and having Bachelor and Master Degrees from WVU Steve says, “I now live in Tennessee and love it here, but West Virginia is my forever home…until I get to the other side.” Visit his blog, On Steve’s Mountain.

Daddy Used to Whistle | by Steve Alberts 

I love wakin’ up in the mornings!

It’s just starting to break dawn, but I‘ve already been up here for an hour or so… I was way up on top of tHis mountain before I ever woke up this morning…could hardly wait to visit the past…up on my mountain.

Lookin’ down on the little community of Speed…near Spencer…Roane County…West Virginia.

Moved there in ’47.  I was just barely two years old at the time.

We lived there until we moved to town in ’56.

It hasn’t changed much since we lived there in the late forties and early fifties.  O.O. “Double O” Casto’s horse show arena and barns are gone from the field beside Charleston Road, but our old house still stands on up the hollow… it’s the next to last house.

My bedroom was on the left just at the top of the stairs.

When I was real little I didn’t sleep there often ‘cause most nights I had dreams that would awaken me. Most nights I would slip out of bed, sneak down the hall and into the bedroom that Auntie and, my sister, Roylene shared…slip to the sanctuary of Auntie.

Never did figure out why Roylene got to share a bedroom with Auntie and I had to have my own bedroom.  After all, I was the one who woke up every night imagining the bears and wolves from Grandpa’s stories coming to hunt me down. Even the Roy Rogers bedspread with its six shooters and lariats woven into the fabric wasn’t the sanctuary that Auntie provided.  But, that’s another story.

When I was perhaps 5 or 6 years old … and sleeping in my own bed more frequently, early summer mornings I would often awaken … bedroom windows open…the humid summer air barely stirring…and just listen to the sounds.

…songbirds

…the grey fox barking up near the barn in the hill meadow

…the rooster crowing

…the feed buckets clanging

…the barn cats meowing for their breakfast

…and, daddy whistlin’.

It was comforting to hear the sounds of those routines being repeated.  It meant my world was safe and solid.

I could tell when daddy had just fed and milked the old Jersey ‘cause I knew the sound of the stall door opening and the gentle lowing from her little bull calf as he was “turned back in” to nurse the last of her milk.

I knew the barn cats would get a portion from the milk bucket as daddy made his way back to the cellar to set the milk to cool before he finally made his way back to the house.

If daddy stayed with his normal routine next would be the sound of the chickens contentedly clucking as the grain was scattered and then the sounds of the trace chains clinking along the floor of the barn as he began to harness which ever work horse he was going to use to skid logs to his sawmill across the run.

The little grey horse was more tractable, easy to drive, stood well when being hooked, but was lighter framed and best when skidding the logs down the mountain.  If there was to be a long haul or if the logs had fallen in the bottom of the cove and had to be skidded up hill the bay was used as he was a little stouter ‘though a little more difficult to handle.

Lying there in my bed in the early morning I could even tell which horse he had harnessed just by listening to the rhythm of the trace chains as the horse pranced across the barnyard…then I would know whether daddy and Bud were cuttin’ on top of the mountain or somewhere around in the cove … in case I decided to test my resolve by hiking up the mountain later to share his cheese sandwich and drink from his water jug at lunch.

I guess it was part of my growing up to leave the sanctuary of the house, wander up the mountain through those scary woods, find daddy, sit with his arm around me as I ate part of his sandwich, then have to return down the mountain by myself.  I knew each end was safe, but the journey in the middle was sort of scary… at that age.

Once I got near the top of the mountain I always knew what final path to take through the woods by listening for the gentle rhythmic sawing of the cross cut, the sound of the horse skidding the logs toward the landing, or …daddy whistlin’ his way through the day.

The little sawmill is long since gone, but I can clearly see it in my mind’s eye sittin’ on the bank at the south side of the run…the motor and drive train from some old truck providing the power…the large circular blade slicing through the white oak and red oak…the sawdust piling up beneath…the slab pile…the ricks of lumber being air dried…Daddy and Bud Nichols using the peaveys and cant hooks to sort and align the logs to get the greatest yield, the straightest grain… and daddy whistlin’.

Cuttin’ red oak and white oak logs with a two man cross cut saw, skiddin’ it to the mill, sawing and stacking was all hard work.

Most days the routine was the same except for Saturdays when we went to town or Sundays when we went to church, visited with neighbors and rested in preparation for another week probably just like the last. 

And, … most days … daddy would whistle all day long.

Daddy used to whistle

…as he wandered through the day.

‘Till now I hadn’t even realized I had heard him

…I’d been young … busy with childhood play.

Whistlin’seemed to make daddy happier

as he made up a brand new tune.

The tunes were seldom ever alike

Whether ‘twas in the early morning, or

late

…in the afternoon.

Except that “Rock Of Ages”

or

“Amazing Grace”

would sometimes just appear.

I guess those hymns were thrown in to keep him grounded

…humble,

…grateful

…to help keep Jesus near.

‘Till lately I hadn’t realize just how much that whistlin’ stuff

had stuck there in my mind.

But, now I think of daddy’s whistlin’

often

And,

…now

I whistle

…from time to time.

I see daddy when I whistle.

I see him driving his old truck.

I see him working at his little sawmill,

…skidding timber

…and,

…doing other stuff.

But most times when I see daddy

He’s standin’ in the creek

…waiting,

…white shirt,

…dark tie,

Easter Morning,

…lightly snowing.

Standin’ up with his friend Carl

… the Reverend Raymond Straight’s just startin’ to speak.

Daddy “standing up” with his friend Carl Cutright – Roane County, Spring Creek along US 219 south of Spencer – “out Charleston Road” – an Easter baptizin’ – probably around 1950 or so.

Friends and neighbors from the church

were watchin’ from the bank.

Most had already been baptized

but, some were waitin’ their turn.

And, still a  few others were dunkin’

…for a second time

…just to reaffirm

…the cleansing of an Easter baptism

at the shoal along Spring Creek

between Watson’s barn

and the Hickman place

with the neighbors lookin’ on.

I see daddy when I whistle.

It puts a smile upon my face.

Don’t know if it’s seein’ daddy,

the baptizin’

or,

if it’s the whistlin’ that’s takin’ place.

But, more important,

Whistlin’ taught me

at an early age

…to listen

…by now, I guess you knew.

That whistlin’ reminds me of daddy,

…of Jesus,

…of life’s lessons,

the ones we should daily do.

And

…every time I whistle

whistlin’ make me a little happier, too

There’s a whole lot more to this whistlin’ than a man would have ever thought

First there’s

…the whistlin’,

then there’s

…the listenin’.

that leads me to

…the thinkin’

about the sanctuary of my earthly and heavenly homes

…the sometimes scary journey in between

about grace and faith along my path

in things I have not yet seen

I think about my daddy

standin’ in the creek

I think about the cross

about

…our eternal sanctuary

that through God’s gracious act of love

our savior, Jesus, bought.

Thank you Lord for another dawn, thank you for giving me another beautiful sunrise, thank you for those memories of growing up, thank you for a family that taught me Your ways, thank you for not giving up on me when it perhaps would have been easy to do, and Lord, thank you for a daddy that whistles…today up on tHis mountain.

Steve Alberts

                                                                                                            Bethpage, TN

 September 3, 2007

© 2007 Steve Alberts

You can read more about the 2012 Essays on Childhood writers here.

In a Man’s Voice: Self-Portraits by Steve Alberts

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Somehow the pundits had milked the year 2000 for all it was worth with stories about the end of the world, crashing computers, and other cataclysmic projections that never took place.  During the last days of 1999 many of us had looked into the mirror hoping to see a face that had made some positive profound difference for all of humanity before eternity replaced the present.

Then January 1, 2000 turned out to be just another day.

None-the-less, that was the day that I earnestly began trying to document my history.

But, since then I have grown to believe that facts and figures are for the engineers and scientists.  Since then I have grown to believe that the feelings and attitudes which guide us through life are so much more important than the fables that have been repeated enough to become accepted as fact… to be accepted as history.

Now, some dozen years later, with my 67th birthday behind me, as I think about Essays on a West Virginia Childhood, I realize that I wish to paint a portrait of my childhood rather than try to provide you with a photograph.

Yes, a portrait, not a photograph.  And, since I am the artist I can apply the colors and hues with strokes that compliment the caricature I wish to portray.

I do not share the fear that those who believe themselves homely have for a great painter.  My essays will be self-portraits.  Warts will be removed.  Wings and haloes will be properly hung.  Only the scars that reveal great character will be left uncovered.

Then I will unveil myself to you.

You can read more about the 2012 Essays on Childhood writers here.

In a Man’s Voice: Life and Love, the Inseparable by Robert S. Boone

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Rob Boone

After a stint in the Navy, Rob began a nearly decade-long career in sales. Since relocating to St. Albans, West Virginia, from Tampa, he’s turned his sights to more creative pursuits: writing, acting, and designing.

When he’s not doting on his seven-year-old daughter, Jessica, he spends his time reading, writing, learning, and generally questioning the norms of the world at large. You can find him at RBoone.com.

Blogger’s note: This essay deals with first love, but it is not that simple. It takes you on a journey over many years, and asks you to live and then relive with the writer one of the most agonizing events and its aftermath that a young life can know. I believe this essay allows a unique view into the way young men can internalize their emotional world to such an extent that it causes them harm. I am awed by Rob’s courage, both in sharing this story and in the way he lives his life today. I am reminded that we so rarely get a glimpse into the private pain and triumphs of our fellow human beings…thank you, Rob, for sharing yourself with us.

Life and Love, the Inseparable | by Robert S. Boone

What follows is a story as yet untold to the blank page, and yet in the narrative of my life, is perhaps the only story deserving of being penned.

I was twelve when I first met her, standing on my front porch with Justin, debating a potential trade between Andre Dawson and Ken Griffey baseball cards.

Engrossed as we were in the possible trade, we didn’t hear the two girls walking towards us on the pavement, finishing a walk around the neighborhood block. When I looked up, I saw an amber-haired girl of about my age with a mischievous smile ask Justin if he wanted to climb trees later that day. He confirmed as I stood, mute. Soon they walked around the corner and disappeared. I asked Justin the name of the tall girl, and Justin replied, “Jess.” I kept repeating it. It rolled off of my tongue.

I spent much of the rest of that day in anticipation of seeing her again. Annoyed by my constant questions about her, Justin finally packed up his baseball card collection and led me to Nikki’s house.

There was a lone tree in her backyard, majestic if a bit weary, and a group of five bright-eyed conquerors  would spend the next five summers abusing its branches in our race to the top. The finishing order was always the same: Nikki at the bottom, egging us on, Jess midway up the tree, Justin a smidge above her, Heather weaving her way from top to bottom and back, unable to maintain one position- and I perched on the top, heaving back and forth with all my might, begging the tree sway to my command, a combination of childish exhilaration and the adolescent urge to impress the girls.

Inside of me, something was happening, the significance of which no twelve-year-old boy will ever understand. I wanted to be around her, to be with her. That much I knew. I didn’t realize until much later that I was falling in love.

This love overtook me. At first, I resisted a bit, eventually succumbing completely on a cool spring day. I led her on a walk to the Front Street bridge, just a mile or so from home. We talked, though all the while I was desperately trying to summon the courage to kiss her. After what seemed like hundreds of attempts, I finally concocted a plan.

“I have to tell you something.”

“Okay. What?”

“It’s a secret…”

She shot me a puzzled look, and I told her to lean closer, as if, though no one was around, secrets cannot be uttered unless whispered in close quarters. When she leaned in, I raised my hand to her cheek, slowly tilted her head towards mine, and I kissed her. I believe to this day that, for just a few moments, the world actually revolved around us. Taking its cue from my heart, time stood still, until she pulled her lips slowly away from mine, and she smiled.

“I’ve been waiting for that all day.”

From that kiss, as I was hers, she was mine.

I realized then that I knew nothing of happiness before I saw the smile on the face of my Jessica Rose. The winds shifted a bit when she smiled, giving the world a moment to catch its breath.

Years later, on a blistering Valentine’s Day, just a few months after she had moved out of the neighborhood to Belpre, I looked outside my window and cursed. A blizzard was overpowering the town, and I had yet to see my beloved. I hopped on my bike and weathered the storm, arriving at her doorstep some fifteen miles later, with no feeling left in my fingers or toes. I knocked on her door with a single rose between my teeth, again cursing the cold that made my teeth chatter so hard I thought I might bite through the stem. I sat on her doorstep for thirty minutes, laughing, talking, and loving. Then I straddled my bike and set off for home.

She died the following winter. On November 9, 1997, she ran a red light, and was broadsided by a semi truck. She was killed instantly, as was one of her passengers, while another girl, a mutual friend, was badly injured.

Nikki called me that Sunday morning. Still asleep, I felt a slight alarm at Nikki’s sobbing, but was too groggy to attach any significance to it. She told me that Jess had been in an accident. My neck stiffened a bit as I sat up on the edge of the bed. Still, nothing registered. So she had been in a wreck? So what? This was Jess, after all. The idea of her being so much as injured was beyond my comprehension. I waited somewhat impatiently for the rest of the story, going over in my mind the idea of calling Jess soon to make sure she was okay.

And so I was unprepared when Nikki’s words came through the receiver:

“Robby… she’s dead.”

I don’t know what I felt in those first few seconds. Perhaps it was numbness. I suspect, though, that it’s more likely that I felt every emotion that had ever manifest itself coursing through me, until I couldn’t stand the weight of it, and I put my hand through the nearest wall in an attempt to somehow give the terror a chance to escape into the recesses of that wall. I dropped to my knees,  and I sobbed (much as I’m doing now).

An hour later, still sobbing uncontrollably, we were in the hospital lobby with Jess’s parents, who gave the doctor permission to ask me if I wanted to see the body. They never doubted what Jess and I had shared, and they knew, somehow, that I needed to see her. I nodded. When they pulled her from the freezer, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her mouth. That very mouth that had breathed life into me so many years before was frozen in a look of horror, agape and stiff. That image is still very fresh in my mind.

That was my junior year in high school. If I ever so much as picked up a pencil for the next two years, I have no recollection of it. I was made to see a psychiatrist, who put me on anti-depressants which I pretended to take. Friends and family worried about me constantly, and had every right and reason to do so. My world had been shattered, and I saw no reason to participate in what was left of humanity, for she was the only member of it who had mattered. She had been my life, my love, my Rose.

I mourned with reckless abandon, as if grief were my only skill. If I loved her as much as I claimed, then I must grieve with the same intensity. To do otherwise was to tarnish not only her memory, but our love itself. I must not succeed in anything, for to succeed would be an admission that life could go on without her. I must not experience joy, much for the same reasons.

I adhered to this philosophy for longer than I thought possible. I did not succeed in anything. I did not experience joy. Indeed, I took a certain pleasure in my misery.

See, Jess?

Do you see how much I love you?

I am not willing to participate in life without you.

Aren’t you proud?

See how faithfully I am honoring your memory?

My negligence bore many side effects: wrecked relationships, strained ties with family and friends, and a descent into severe, and frequent, binge drinking to numb the pain. For years, I sabotaged every chance I was given at happiness.

Then I realized what a schmuck I’d been.

She wouldn’t be proud of me. She wouldn’t even recognize me. In fact, I no longer recognized me.

As I write this, I search for a moment- a singular place in time in which this epiphany struck, an external circumstance that would serve as a metaphor for the awakening. There is no such moment, however. The truth is much simpler: it was a choice. All that had been raging inside me dimmed to a dull flame, finally allowing for new growth, and the change had occurred, not through the influence of the world around me, but despite of it. I recall stumbling upon a quote from Carl Sagan:

“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”

The universe was not standing still because I had lost my love; in fact, it did not care at all. Incredibly vast as it was, and the lives of two such tiny creatures so insignificant, the universe was completely indifferent. How amazing, then, was the fact that I had known her at all? If we are but a speck of dust in an inconceivable existence, how spectacular that she had walked by my house that fateful day and invited me to climb trees with her? I had known a love that most desperately seek their entire lives, and the odds against that happening were, quite literally, immeasurable. If rarity begets value, I had stumbled upon the most valuable piece of knowledge in existence, and that value resided inside of me, by way of her mere existence.

Not a day goes by that I don’t miss her. There are days, less frequent now, that still terrify me, because those are the days when I cannot for the life of me conjure the contours of her face. She sometimes appears as nothing more than a blur when I close my eyes. I carry her with me everywhere- to the grocery store, on my morning walk. Her memory is now a source of infinite wonder and joy, and those sentiments serve her memory much more faithfully than sorrow and misery ever could. As with any struggle, any misstep, any divergent road, the change came from within, because only by living is life truly honored.

Robby and Jess

My childhood began as if on a hot-air balloon ride, and Jess was the flame that thrust me into the clouds. The view from on high was magnificent, and the world looked as it does from dizzying  heights: sparkling, orderly, a perfect grid. That fateful November day, my flame died, and I watched my childhood come crashing back down to earth at a paralyzing speed, thrusting me into the mud and the muck so long forgotten. It was years before I had the courage to lift my head and look at the messy, chaotic world around me.

Once I lifted my gaze and began the slow walk back to reality, though,  I realized that the love that we shared was still with me, and I walked (and still do) with the purpose of a man who has known the strength of love.

You can read more about the 2012 Essays on Childhood writers here.

In a Man’s Voice: Three Silver Dollars by Terry Gillispie

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Terry Gillispie was born in South Charleston, West Virginia. The only son to a single mother, he spent most of his formative years residing in various locales within the Kanawha Valley before a period of stability landed him at South Charleston High School, from which he graduated in 1986.

Blogger’s note: Terry was in my class in junior high school. I never knew where he went, or what his life at home was like. What I did know was that he was one of the most well-liked boys in our class, and yet he seemed to have a secret. I was too young to notice what were probably tell-tale signs of a stressed economic situation at home. Until this year, I never knew what happened to him. I had no idea he graduated just a few miles from me, probably the same week, from another local school. For sure, I never knew he had the heart of hero. Now I do. Thanks for finding me on Facebook, Terry, and for sharing this amazing story. You are someone special, and I’m privileged to be part of making sure everyone knows it. — EDG

Three Silver Dollars | by Terry Gillispie

Of all the stories I have regarding my childhood in West Virginia, the following tale stands out the most, and reflects an incident that had profound impact on my life.

I had an uncle I was close to during my childhood.  Uncle Shorty.  I never fully understood how he came to have this nickname.  From my earliest memories as a young child, to the day I towered over him by at least five inches, Shorty always seemed larger than life.  He was the kind of man represented by the popular cliché, “When God made him, he threw away the mold.”

Christmas 1978 wasn’t particularly memorable for me.  I do not remember the toys or gifts that that year, save the one present I received from Uncle Shorty.  In a tradition between him and me, every year shortly before Christmas morning I would visit his house and give him a “present,” of a tin of cashews.  Invariably, on Christmas morning, I would find an empty cashew tin containing some sort of treat.

In 1978, that treat was three silver dollars.

Silver dollars to an eleven year old were pretty special, and in typical eleven year old fashion, I hid them in the same tin under my bed.

The following year, 1979, was a particularly tough one for us.  It was just me and Mom, and like most single parent families, she had to cut a lot of expenses just to get from one month to the next.  Mom typically spent her days working several jobs and was gone throughout the day and late into the night, so I learned responsibility at a young age. I learned these lessons partly because one of the expenses that fell to the wayside early on was babysitting fees, and mostly because, well, I had no other choice.

Despite Mom’s expense management, spring 1979 was very tough.  I can remember short periods where money was tight and Mom was frantic with worry over how she would pay a bill.  There came stretches where we were without food for several days between paychecks from Mom’s various employers.  Now a parent myself, I can only imagine the worry Mom felt then over how she was going to feed me, keep me decently clothed for school, keep utilities on, and several other worries and fears a parent endures.

During this time, for whatever reason, I came to be playing under my bed as eleven year old boys are prone to do.  I happened upon the tin I had placed there on Christmas morning and quickly remembered the three silver dollars.

As I crawled out from under the bed with the tin in my hands, I knew instinctively that I needed to give the silver dollars to Mom so that she could use the money in whatever way she needed to get us through until her next payday.  I was torn over giving the money to my mother.  Yes, I wanted desperately to help, yet at the same time the thought of giving up my “treasure” from Uncle Shorty sickened me.

In the end, my eleven year old sense of duty prevailed.

Terry with cousin Kurt

Of course, Mom was ecstatic to discover that I had not spent the silver dollars and immediately went to the store to get us some items to get us by for a few days.  I recall a few days diet of milk, potted meat sandwiches and Cheerios.  My treasure, as it were, had gotten us through a very rough patch, and lifted Mom’s spirits enough that after this “between paycheck” crisis, she took some steps to ensure I was never that close to going without food again.

Most prevalent on my mind, though, was the heartbreak I felt over surrendering my treasure, even if for the welfare of Mom and myself.

Luckily, the local food mart in the South Hills area where I grew up in was owned and operated by a very friendly man, one who was always telling stories to the local children while negotiating menial chores for candy or small dime store variety toys.  His name escapes me after all these years, no doubt removed from the recesses of my brain responsible storing names and replaced with something more import to my early adulthood, such as the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody.

The following day I entered this store and approached the store keeper nervously, trying to keep a grown-up face as I related my story and my desire to buy back the silver dollars at a later time.  I was delighted to discover that he was well aware of my mother’s purchase and actually had set aside the silver dollars.  I’m not sure if it was my sad expression, his generous heart, or perhaps a combination, but he told me I had an opportunity to earn back the silver dollars.  All I had to do was sweep the store and the store’s parking lot early every morning before the store opened for a month.  At the end of that, he would return the silver dollars to me.

Perhaps he thought this was a fair exchange.  A month’s worth of free labor in return for three dollars.  Ha!  I would have swept his store and parking lot for a year.  It was not until years later that I discovered one of the silver dollars in question had a slightly higher value than the other two.  I am sure this fact escaped my mother’s attention, but I’m fairly certain the shop keeper would have been aware of this fact.

Flash forward to 2003.  Shorty’s 70th birthday party.  Sadly, I was unable to attend and was at a loss as to what kind of present to send in my absence.  Cashews had lost their luster years prior.  I sat down and decided to write the story you are now reading, events that had never been relayed to anyone else in my family as Mom was a very proud and private woman.  In the letter, I detailed how three silver dollars had taught me a lesson about life, family, and duty.  I also included the three silver dollars.

Reports I received from my cousin suggest that the story and the present were very well received.  My cousin read the letter aloud to my uncle at the height of the party, and Shorty was so moved that he described me to other party-goers not privy to the family dynamic as his “second son.”

Needless to say I was moved by this, and felt very much at peace with the silver dollars’ legacy in my life.

A few years after that, we lost Shorty to a long and difficult fight with lung cancer.  I was blessed in that my schedule afforded me the opportunity to drive home and visit Shorty in the hospital prior to his passing.  Even throughout his sickness, and his incapacitation to a hospital bed, he managed to look so much larger than life. I was amazed, and I told him so.  He couldn’t reply, but his eyes passed on to me that he had heard and understood.

As I left his hospital room and went into the ICU’s waiting room to seek solace and comfort with other family members, my aunt approached me and gave me a long embrace.  As she pulled away, she pressed a plain unmarked envelope into my hands.  She looked into my eyes, “From Shorty.”  As I left the hospital and sat in my car, I opened the envelope.

In my hand were my three silver dollars.

You can read more about the 2012 Essays on Childhood writers here.

Essays on Childhood: Pick a Little Talk a Little by Susan Byrum Rountree

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Susan Byrum Rountree has been telling stories ever since she understood the power of the Show & Tell stool in kindergarten. Words have always held a sense of magic for her, and she parlayed that magic into a 35-year career of bending them this way and that. She is the author of Nags Headers, a regional history set on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and In Mother Words, a collection of essays about family life. Born and raised in Scotland Neck, N.C., a tiny town in the Tar Heel State’s northeastern corner, she studied journalism at UNC Chapel Hill. She is now Director of Communications for St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, in Raleigh. The mother of two grown children and two very precocious granddogs, she has written for a number of national and regional newspapers and magazines. These days she blogs about the magic of daily life on her blog, Write Much.

Pick a Little Talk a Little | by Susan Byrum Rountree

My father was an amateur magician. With a sleight of hand, he used to pull coins from the ears of grandchildren, use his nimble fingers to shuffle a deck of cards into a magic trick. He could separate inseparable rings.

He was a busy man when I was growing up. One of only three doctors in my hometown, he was up and out early, and though he most always was home for supper, often in the middle of it, the phone would ring, or people would show up at the back door, and he was gone again. My mother, brother, sister and I shared him all those years, waiting at home as he delivered babies (12 in 24 hours once), treated hearts — both broken and diseased — mended bones and emotions, nurtured families as they took root, grew old, died.

Susan on her mother’s lap

I’m child #3, so my alone time with Daddy was limited when I was little. I remember him teaching me to bait a proper hook with a blood worm while the waves of the Atlantic lapped at my feet. A walk in the woods one day (with my brother and sister), I think because my brother was working on a merit badge. A day he came home from work to sew up a tiny injured rabbit my sister found in the yard. And a day he pitched the softball to me in the back yard so I wouldn’t embarrass myself during recess. (It didn’t work.)

But one of the many things Daddy shared with me in those times when he was home was a love for banjo music. We watched the Arthur Smith Show and Hee Haw and Porter Wagoner, Daddy tapping his size 13 wing tips against the ottoman as I clapped along.

Daddy loved Earl Scruggs. Somehow back then I felt like Earl and Lester Flatt were neighbors, they came so often into our family room. I’d watch as their fingers flew, coaxing sweet music out of those strings, and it was pure joy.

Daddy had a banjo, too, and every now and then he and I would sneak away into the living room while my siblings were bent over homework, and I would sit beside him on the dressed up sofa — my feet not yet touching the floor — and he would play for me. I’d watch as those same magical fingers that shuffled the cards and stitched up that rabbit plucked the stiff wire strings until Bill Bailey filled up the whole room. Joy again, to have Daddy all to myself, for him to be singing just to me.

My kindergarten class performed a play when I was five. It had something to do with Valentine’s Day, and I played the role of “a girl.” In the picture, I stand next to a boy wearing a cowboy hat and a sly grin as big as the waxing moon. I don’t remember a thing about the play except one of the boys played Pinocchio, and that I wore a pink dress my grandmother had made and white cotton gloves. I hated that I had to stand next to the boy with the grin, who sang the theme song to the “Beverly Hillbillies” because he told our teacher Earl Scruggs was his cousin.

Susan’s kindergarten class

When I learned that Earl, the sweet man who used to visit with us often and played his five-fingered magic had died, I remembered that boy, and my Daddy playing for me, and how much banjo music meant to me once upon a time.

Wouldn’t you know that the brother of that boy is a Facebook acquaintance? So the news hound in me couldn’t resist asking if the story was true.

Not true, exactly, he wrote to me. But his uncle played in a band with the father of Bluegrass when Earl and Lester Flatt performed live for the radio. And wouldn’t you know? He and his sly brother, along about the time of our kindergarten play, sometimes sat on the stage with Earl and Lester when they performed. If I imagined them as neighbors, to be sure to a five-year-old, sitting on stage with the performers meant you were kin.

I’ve thought a lot about my banjo memories since then and have even played a little Foggy Mountain Breakdown as I worked. Though I thought my father’s banjo long gone to history, come to find out that my brother has been keeping it safe for awhile, and two years ago gave it back to Daddy, all cleaned up and ready for picking again.

“Get him to play you a song,” my brother told me.

Well, I just believe I will.

What would this world be like, if every single one of us took the time to coax our gifts out and into the world —  like the unassuming Earl, or Daddy with his magic for healing, with medicine or music? Small gestures can become great magic, when shuffled with the right hands.

You can read more about the 2012 Essays on Childhood writers here.

In a Man’s Voice: Happy Again by Douglas Imbrogno

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Douglas Imbrogno is an exceptionally creative man, someone who can tell a story both in words and in pictures.

His essay here tells of a pivotal dynamic in his childhood, and of the night his emerging adult identity intersected his parents’ stormy marriage.

Something has broken in me. I quiver head to toe, shaking uncontrollably for minutes. I do not to this day have the words to describe what broke, unless it was something like the compact between parent and child. It had something to do with the fact that never again could I look at my parents without complicity, a knowing and direct participation — both embarrassing and far too personal – in the magnitude of their estrangement.

Please watch the first 25 seconds of this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ta3jFvl3gU, and then take some time to read Doug’s essay. He does here so well what I believe many writers want to do: Engage, tell, and reflect without expecting to understand or catalog.

Sometimes the telling is enough.

Happy Again | by Douglas Imbrogno

Tommy Helms ranges into the pocket at second base. He dives, nabs the ball then pops onto his knees, scooping it to Darrell Chaney. The shortstop foot-taps second base then whipcracks the ball to first base, inches above the head of an onrushing Dodger. A picture-perfect double play. The Dodgers are done for and the win at Dodger Stadium vaults the Cincinnati Reds back into first place in the National League West.

Then, several things happen at once.

In the time it takes radio waves to travel 2,400 miles across the better part of America, a triumphant fist punches upward from beneath a blanket decorated with trains in a Cincinnati bedroom. My 13-year-old fist. The punch upsets the applecart of my bed in the musty basement bedroom of our house at 707 Waycross Road. My G.E. transistor radio tumbles onto the floor. It is past 1:30 a.m. on a school night and I should be sleeping, but true-blue adolescent Reds fans sneer at the three-hour time difference between here and L.A. The radio crackles to life down on the blue throw rug beside the bed: “And this,” says Reds announcer Joe Nuxhall, signing off with a signature line that recalls his own pitching days, “is the old left-hander, rounding third and heading for home.”

Thump! Upstairs a door slams open. Light footsteps can be heard tramping downward from the third floor, then again, down a short flight to the family room above my head. Moments later, heavier footfalls trod the same path. My mother. With my father following. “Leave me alone!” I hear, muffled through the ceiling. My mother. “What! What is it?” I hear my dad say, in a furious strangled whisper. I grab the radio off the floor, retreat back into the cove of my covers.

The author's dueling parents in better days from a photo taken eight months after he was born.

“You think sex is something …” I don’t hear what he says after that. I don’t want to hear. Please, I really don’t. But the house is made of plywood and plaster. It rests in one of the fast-built subdivisions north of the city, at the edge of the country where the cornfields start. There’s not much you don’t hear when someone shouts the next floor up. Or cries. No, my mother isn’t crying. She’s weeping. I doubt I knew the distinction back then, though now I do.

Through my basement window, which I keep open on all but the coldest nights, I can hear cows lowing on quiet nights as their exclamations carry from the hilltop farm a mile away. I hear overnight trains hoot-hooting through the valley on their way somewhere else. On nights like these, which are all too common, I dream I might hop a train like the hobos do.

Be gone.

Far gone.

This time, the shouting, the weeping, it just won’t stop. Fierce words from my father. He doesn’t hit her, I know that. He never has. He never will, though I hardly know that this night. Nor has he ever hit us, the six of us kids. We will later come to know how his own Italian father beat on him and his brother. Finally, my dad escaped, decamping to the Merchant Marines, floating off at age 17, across the waves of Lake Erie and Lake Superior. Free at last. It would take me decades, with the usual succession of therapists, to grant my father this award of fatherhood: He stopped the forward progress of physical beating in the family line. Right in our family. He stopped it.

But words, the rageful, out-of-control, spitting words frustrated fathers and anguished mothers fling at each other, these are a kind of transmuted violence. Not for nothing do we say the words he spoke ‘cut like a knife.’

I curl in a tight fetal ball beneath my covers. We curl like this – the thought comes to me four decades later – because of an unwilled body memory, an abiding recollection of what it was like when we felt utterly safe. Before we are born, that is, with a shout and a cry into a world that is anything but.

The volume upstairs rises. What is happening? Is he going to do something to her? Why can’t they be quiet? I have to stop this. Shouldn’t I do something? Aren’t I responsible for doing something? I am 13. In olden times, boys at 13 worked farms. They shot dinner. They banged a drum in civil wars. They stood up and they did things. I can’t take it anymore. Can’t take the shouting. The terrible pain in the voices, in my mother’s cowering voice, which sounds like a cornered animal. I fling off the covers, sending a hundred black locomotives flying into the dark.

I stand up. My feet miss the bunched-up area rug, hit the cold concrete floor. I shake my head as if to clear it of marbles. I don’t really know what I’m doing. But my feet seem to want to stride across the bedroom. They take me up the five or six basement steps. I see my right hand, as if seen in a movie, reach for the brass basement door handle. Twist it. The door opens. I round the corner into the family room, the sofa against the wall to the right, the TV on the left where we all watch “The Ed Sullivan Show” together each Sunday. Much later, I’ll note the ironic resonance in this scene unfolding in the ‘family room.’ The lights are off, but it’s a moon-filled night. A pale, milky aura pours through the room’s glass doors, which open onto the backyard where a tall weeping willow dominates. In summer, my brother and I can earn a quarter from my dad for rounding up the scores of thin dead branches it routinely drops.

My mother sits scrunched in a corner of the sofa, hugging herself. My father is on one knee on the carpet in front of her. As if proposing. Is his arm raised in the air? Or is he just gesticulating in his pained raged? My feet again, with a life of their own, advance me into the room. I now stand six feet from this tableau. I am probably standing there in a white t-shirt, pajama bottoms. Their voices die off. An eternity takes place between the second my parents’ eyes unlock from one another and my mother’s head turns. Turns, like a rusty gate. Towards me. My voice is talking. What will it say?

“I can’t believe,” I utter in a breathy gulp, “two people would treat each other like this.”

My arms. Where are they — at my side? Akimbo, on my hips? I don’t recall. And were those my exact words? Something like it. What I recall most clearly is the next moment. A kind of a cry, but not a cry, rises from my mother’s mouth. It’s a grieving sound beyond the ability of language to translate into vowels and consonants. Not a wail, not a moan. Something in between which drew from both.

Then, I swivel on my heels. Am gone, back down the blackened stairs. Back into my redoubt, which on train-haunted nights full of the moo of cows can be a real sanctuary. Not this night. I grab the flung-off blanket, rebuild a hidden cave of covers. Crawl in. I huddle there. Something has broken in me. I quiver head to toe, shaking uncontrollably for minutes. I do not to this day have the words to describe what broke, unless it was something like the compact between parent and child. It had something to do with the fact that never again could I look at my parents without complicity, a knowing and direct participation — both embarrassing and far too personal – in the magnitude of their estrangement.

These many years later, I am aware that given the littered landscape of shocking memoirs of household terror and abuse, my story is small potatoes. Kids with deranged, unstable, unloving, physically and sexually aggressive fathers or suicidal mothers – their lacerating wounds are the big leagues of lifetime anguish.

My remaining wounds are mostly cauterized. I know both my parents deeply loved us. Plus, I was granted the grace of telling them both directly, several times, I loved them and hearing the same back at me. Yet there is another story I have been trying to write of how I think my entanglement in their troubled relationship – and it went far beyond that night – helped upend my own life later on. The result was self-violence, bloodshed, a trauma that also rippled through the household. Those days are behind me. Yet in a sort of symbiotic blowback, I terrorized them both – back at you, mom and dad! – via my own emotional breakdowns years after those interminable fighting nights on Waycross Road.

My mother died first, after an excruciating bout with Alzheimers (is there any other kind?). My father, a man who did not make close friendships in life, was truly left behind, bereft and alone, but for us kids and a rare visit from a brother or sister. Despite the fact that they hailed from two different planets, if not galaxies, my father loved my mother, loved her beyond the words he was never good at formulating. She was – and this is no exaggeration – his all. He had trouble sleeping in their marital bed after she died. On my visits from West Virginia to Cincinnati, I would arrive to find him snoring on the sofa in the TV room of the big house to which they later moved, John Wayne astride his horse on the blathering screen.  “I saw your mother in this room,” he said one time. “I saw her just as clear as day, standing right there.” He pointed to the spot. He often slept in that room, we think, in hopes of seeing her again.

But the house was too big for him to keep up. I had come to help him find an apartment at a retirement home.  One day, we checked out a place called The Seasons. The place seemed empty of staff, so I poked around. A doorway bore the sign ‘Driving Range.’ When I looked inside the room was full of mops, rags and Spic’n’Span. “This is too much,” he said, as we inspected a showcase, two-bedroom apartment on the third floor. “All I need is an efficiency apartment.” Later, over a lunch of chicken fajitas for him and a halibut sandwich for me, he said something that reminded me of how lonely he was in the world.

“Soon enough,” he says, putting down his cup of unsweetened black coffee, like he always drank it, “I’ll be joining your mother.”

A pause. A rueful, sad smile.

“Then, I’ll be happy again.”

You can read more about the 2012 Essays on Childhood writers here.

Essays on Childhood: The 2012 Writers

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The Essays on Childhood project is pleased to introduce you to the writers for 2012.

They are, in a word, strong.

They are all skilled writers, but they are also individuals who exude a quality best described as simply iron. I know many of these people in some way: Some are social media friends, some are “real life” friends in my community, and some are even people with whom I shared a part of my own childhood experience. Their strengths come from intellect, and physical power, and emotional fortitude. They are special.

As a third year editor in this project, I’ve come to appreciate the different types of essays people write about their childhood experience. Every type is valid and good, but one can tear at your heart while another sends you into gales of laughter. Others may leave you reflecting on the mysteries of life, or convinced it’s time to reconsider your own story.

The word essay means a trial, or an attempt. Essay writing is personal writing, and it  requires courage.

This year I’ve seen a few drafts, and I have a good feeling about this group. These writers have plans to open their worlds to us.

I’m ready. I hope you are!

Gentlemen first:

Douglas Imbrogno

Douglas Imbrogno is a writer, editor, web video producer and musician. He is also a master of brevity. See some some of his words and videos at http://westvirginiaville.com




Terry Gillispie

Terry Gillispie was born in South Charleston, West Virginia, the only son to a single mother, he spent most of his formative years residing in various locales within the Kanawha Valley before a period of stability landed him at South Charleston High School, from which he graduated in 1986.

After a brief stint with the United States Army, he left West Virginia to attend Indiana State University, from which he graduated in 1993 with a degree in Insurance and Business Administration.

After leaving a lucrative profession in claims management, Terry now resides on the north side of Dallas, Texas, and stays at home managing the welfare of his three children while his wife circles the globe as a software trainer for John Deere.  This affords him the opportunity to work on a teaching degree via online studies while also volunteering for various duties at his children’s elementary school.

Brent Aikman

Brent Aikman was born and raised in Charleston, West Virginia.  He tried to leave the mountains twice, but always found himself back in the heart Appalachia.  At the age of 7 he was sent to play outdoors, and he never fully came back inside.  “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” – John Muir



Steve Alberts

Steve writes faith-based stories about “God’s grace throughout (his) life.” He dabbles with song lyric writing, is attempting to write a novel, and enjoys acting, photography, hunting, fishing, and woodworking.

Born in Charleston, West Virginia, raised and educated in Spencer, and having Bachelor and Master Degrees from WVU Steve says, “I now live in Tennessee and love it here, but West Virginia is my forever home…until I get to the other side.” Visit his blog, On Steve’s Mountain.

Jeremy Paden

Jeremy Dae Paden was born in Italy and raised in Latin America. He teaches Spanish at Transylvania University, He is published in Calíope, a critical journal of poetry of Spain and the Americas during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.  He is also a member of the Affrilachian Poets and a collaborator in Rose Tree Writers.

Vernon Wildy, Jr.

Vernon was born in Richmond, Virginia on June 6, 1971.  After being schooled in the Henrico County school system, he went to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and received a degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering in 1994.  After college, he returned to the Richmond area and entered the workforce and worked in the transportation industry, mostly in operations.  During that time, Vernon discovered a poetry group in the area and began to read at open mic events around the city of Richmond.  He also was able to have some of his works published in Fantasia magazine, a local literary magazine.  While continuing with poetry events, he began taking graduate classes at Virginia Commonwealth University.  He finished his Masters in Business Administration in 2010. He self-published his first novel, Nice Guys Finish Last, in 2011. Visit his blog, I Got Something to Say.

Rob Boone

After a stint in the Navy, Rob began a nearly decade-long career in sales. Since relocating to St. Albans, West Virginia, from Tampa, he’s turned his sights to more creative pursuits: writing, acting, and designing.

When he’s not doting on his seven-year-old daughter, Jessica, he spends his time reading, writing, learning, and generally questioning the norms of the world at large.

Mary Lauren Weimer

Mary Lauren Weimer is a writer and professional blogger (www.my3littlebirdsblog.com) from Huntington, West Virginia. Her writing has appeared in Sleet Magazine, WV Living, and many popular websites. She writes daily for the parenting website Babble and is a regular contributor to Moonfrye.com.

She serves as a group leader for Education for Ministry, a four-year theological course of study through the Episcopal Church.

She is writing her first book which explores motherhood and identity.

Connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.

Susan Rountree

Susan Byrum Rountree has been telling stories ever since she understood the power of the Show & Tell stool in kindergarten. Words have always held a sense of magic for her, and she parlayed that magic into a 35-year career of bending them this way and that. She is the author of Nags Headers, a regional history set on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and In Mother Words, a collection of essays about family life. Born and raised in Scotland Neck, N.C., a tiny town in the Tar Heel State’s northeastern corner, she studied journalism at UNC Chapel Hill. She is now Director of Communications for St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, in Raleigh. The mother of two grown children and two very precocious granddogs, she has written for a number of national and regional newspapers and magazines. These days she blogs about the magic of daily life at Write Much.

Melanie Jones

Melanie Bartol Jones lives in Raleigh, North Carolina,  with her 3 girls, dog, and husband. Growing up, Melanie and her family moved every two years because of the Navy. This constant moving taught her how to notice details about people, places, and things, and mostly about herself. Constantly showing people who she is became an art and an opportunity to edit her story. Sports became a natural way for Melanie to fit in wherever she was, and she went on to play lacrosse at Brown University. Melanie’s life continues to be filled with details, physical activity, and change. One role she never imagined was becoming a preacher’s wife. But her husband is an Episcopal priest so the label stuck. On a daily basis she can be found volunteering for her kids’ school, reffing lacrosse, teaching pure barre, whipping up meals for 20, and realizing she may never be on The Today Show. Melanie’s writing focuses on the daily struggles of who she is going to be when she grows up and other faith questions. Check out her latest escapades and thoughts at Not Your Preacher’s Wife.