Preserving Reece Legacy Celebrated at 8th Annual Society Meeting

The weather was already hot, even in the “cool” mountain region in the shadow of Blood and Bald Mountains in North Georgia on Saturday, June 4, 2011 as members and friends of the Bryon Herbert Reece Society gathered at the Reece Farm and Heritage Center just north of famed Vogel State Park for the first annual meeting held at the farm, the eighth annual meeting of the Society.

The weather did not deter the spirit, or even the comfort, of those gathered under the newly-erected pavilion on the grounds of the Reece Farm. It was a day of celebrating and rejoicing. The cool mountain breezes vied and won over the intense rays of the sun, and everyone present knew they were experiencing history—even making it—by being a participant at the first annual meeting of the Society to be held on the Reece grounds.

I heard from participants, “This is a miracle!” And so it was, as earthly projects go, to have come so far in only nine years since the initial organizational meeting of the Society in 2003. The stated purpose of the Byron Herbert Reece Society reads: “to preserve, perpetuate, and promote the literary and cultural legacy of the Georgia mountain poet/novelist, Byron Herbert Reece. In addition to enhancing both knowledge of and appreciation for his writings, efforts will be made to honor his way of life, with particular emphasis on his love of nature and his attachment to farming.” (from membership brochure).

And the miracle of Saturday, June 4, 2011, lay in the fact that we were meeting at the Reece Farm and Heritage Center, still a work-in-progress, but far enough along to be able to see and celebrate the restoration of the Reece family home as the Welcome Center, his writing studio, Mulberry Hall (in progress), the barn and corncrib and other out buildings, a parking lot, pedestrian trails, and the open-air pavilion under which we met down the former cornfield a ways from the house.

At the helm of this nine-year effort Dr. John Kay, first chairman of the Society, and his wife Patti of Young Harris were honored with an engraved plaque thanking them for their selfless and intensive volunteer service during these nine initial years. We all joined in a hearty and rousing “thank you!” At the head of every noble endeavor is a leader who is inspired with a vision, the ability to lead others, and the skill of promoting without being dictatorial. And Dr. John Kay has provided that consistent and quiet leadership, supported always by Patti who shares the same ideals and dreams of the purposes of the Reece Society. We salute and thank them.

Saturday’s event on the farm also featured as our program guests, Dr. Jim Clark and Friends, who have recorded a dozen Reece poems on disk entitled in Reece’s own lines, “The Service of Song.” This professor of Southern Literature and Writer-in-Residence at Barton College at Wilson, NC sang and played his instrument as he and Terry Phillips, guitarist, of Nashville and Katy Adams, guitarist and harmony singer, of Greensboro thrilled us with five renditions from “The Service of Song,” the words of which are Reece’s poems: “I Go by Way of Rust and Flame,” “The Stay at Home,” “Lest the Lonesome Bird,” “Monochord” (a Petrarchan sonnet), and “Mountain Fiddler.” This last poem was included in our packet as a laminated bookmark for us to take home, read and enjoy at leisure.

Prominent in the progress has been chairman of the Reece Farm and Development Committee, Mr. Fleming Weaver who has headed the effort in plans and progress of the restoration and buildings. In his presentation, he gave special credit to Architect Garland Reynolds who designed the complex and gave his time and expertise free of charge to the Society.

Bringing greetings were Mr. George Berry, former chairman of the Georgia Department of Tourism and Trade, who, in his remarks, stated that some remarked it would be a “cold day” when the Reece Center would be developed, but that it is a “hot day” (namely June 4 when we were meeting at the site) for the bold project honoring Reece, for he, his works and his memory are at the heart of the project. Dr. Ron Roach, vice-chairman of the Society, brought greetings from Young Harris College and stated that Reece can hardly be thought of apart from his association with the college and poet-in-residence/teacher there. Nephew of the poet, Terry Reece, in words akin in spirit to those of his uncle, remembered as a child being with his mother, Lorena Duckworth Reece, and his siblings Tommy, June and Connie (a baby on a blanket) in the very spot of the pavilion as they hoed the field of corn that grew where the pavilion now stands. He spoke of the rhythm and flow of Wolf Creek that meanders through the farm and of the majestic hills that form the backdrop of the Reece farm. He thanked the Society for preserving the site for posterity.

Some of the other projects of the Society in its nine-year history have been “Reece in the Schools,” headed by chairman Carol Knight. Present to read her poem was the 2011 winner of the youth poetry contest, as well as Valerie Nieman, poet and novelist, winner in the adult division, who read her poem, “Apocrypha,” introduced by contest chairman Rosemary Royston who coordinated the first poetry contest.

Union County Commissioner Lamar Paris, was prevented by another obligation from being present. His contributions were noted by Chairman Kay, who read a letter of commendation from Mr. Paris for the hard work and progress made to date on the Center, as well as the recent work of Winkler & Winkler, local contractors, who brought the project from a near-standstill when the original contractor could not continue with the project.

After lunch under the tent, served by Sodexo of Young Harris College, tours of the facility arranged by Fleming Weaver and his committee, completed the full and celebratory day. Groups formed at the barn and corncrib, and especially at Mulberry Hall, the restored writing studio Reece built for himself after he erected the “new” home for his parents (now the welcome center). At Mulberry Hall, about-to-be Eagle Scout Tucker Knight calmly and confidently explained why he had chosen restoration of the interior of Mulberry Hall as his project.

Present was Karen Deem, partner in Deem-Loureiro Productions Inc., who headed “Vocies…Finding Byron Herbert Reece,” the video recently aired on Georgia Public Television and now in nomination for an Emmy Award in the category of educational and documentary films. Ms. Deem is working on interpretive educational signs that will be on display about the farm site. Present also were Dr. Bettie Sellers of Young Harris College and Dr. Helen Lewis, a retired Appalachian Studies professor, who headed the interviews for “The Bitter Berry with Friends,” remembrances from people who knew Reece. Mr. and Mrs. John Pentecost were recognized. This couple has donated their extensive collection of Appalachian farm and home tools and household implements to the Society for display at the site.

Since 2003 much progress has been made toward “preserving, perpetuating and promoting the literary and cultural legacy of Byron Herbert Reece.” Highway 129 from the old courthouse in Blairsville to the top of Neel Gap is now the Byron Herbert Reece Memorial Highway, by act of the Georgia Legislature. I, for one, am grateful that I signed on as a charter member of the Society nine years ago in 2003. Go to the Society’s website to keep abreast of progress. In the future (not for a while, for more work is in process) plan to visit the Reece Farm and Heritage Center, or better still, find out how you can help in this bold project. And if you haven’t yet read works of this mountain farmer/poet, find his four books of poetry and two novels and become a fan of this literary genius and his works.

What a great day of celebration was June 4, 2011!

c2011 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published June 9, 2011 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Poet Reece Painted Word Pictures of Spring

One of poet Byron Herbert Reece's strongest advocates while he lived, wrote and published his poems and novels was the late Ralph McGill, former editor of The Atlanta Constitution. He wrote this accolade of Reece and his work which appears on the back cover of Bow Down in Jericho, published first in 1950 by E. P. Dutton and Company of New York and republished in 1985 by Cherokee Publishing Company, Atlanta:

"The mountains were in his poetry and ballads. They, and the Bible,… colored all his poems. The skies, the clouds, the cold lakes, the tumbling rivers, the forests, the cold, keen nights when stars looked green as ice, the winds of summer and winter, the wild flowers, the corn and cattle—all these were in his poems as were the prophets and peoples of the Old and New Testaments."

It has been fifty-one years since Poet Byron Herbert Reece (1917-1958), beloved son of Juan and Emma Lance Reece, ended his life on the campus of Young Harris College in the same room where his beloved professor, Dr. Lufkin Dance, met his demise years before in a similar manner. Reece's emaciated, pain-racked body could not hold on to life. On June 3, 1958, he reached a point of no return.

The literary legacy he left us is contained in four published volumes of poetry and two novels. These, first released by E. P. Dutton between 1945 and 1955, were all republished by Cherokee Publishing Company in 1985, and are now available again to those wishing to purchase them.

In the past six years, the Byron Herbert Reece Society, under the capable leadership of Dr. John Kay of Young Harris, other officers, a Board of Directors, an Advisory Board and a growing membership have sought to make Reece and his literary works known. Call their efforts resurrecting Reece, for the members of the Society, like his ballad based on Ezekiel's Valley of the Dry Bones, are breathing new life into the life and works of Union County's premiere literary genius.

May 30, 2009 will be the annual meeting of the Society to convene at the Goolsby Center, Young Harris College. Within the day's program will be the viewing of the introductory video produced by Karen Deem. With interviews from several who knew Reece, the film will be used as visitors to the Reece Farm on Wolf Creek begin their tour when the facility opens to the public as a cultural center. Members of the Society have worked hard to ready the farm as a memorial to the farmer-poet.

In spring, especially, those who love and appreciate Reece and his works turn to his published pages for inspiration. Through his well-crafted lines, the reader can see in the mind's eye the scene he paints, feel the emotions his words convey. His words speak for themselves. Explication would be redundant. Read any of his poems about Spring (or any other season) aloud. Allow the beauty and rhythm of the lines to speak their poignant message. You will come away from the reading with a greater appreciation of his poetry and its ability to move the reader and engrave a memorable image in the mind.

NOW THAT SPRING IS HERE

Now that the year's advanced to spring
And leaves grow large and long
Forget each sorry and rueful thing
Hearing the wild bird's song.
The leaf will fall, the bird will fly
And winter close the year,
But O, put all such knowledge by
Now that the spring is here!

WE COULD WISH THEM A LONGER STAY

Plum, peach, apple and pear
And the service tree on the hill
Unfold blossom and leaf.
From them comes scented air
As the brotherly petals spill.
Their tenure is bright and brief.
We could wish them a longer stay,
We could wish them a charmed bough
On a hill untouched by the flow
Of consuming time; but they
Are lovelier, dearer now
Because they are soon to go,
Plum, peach, apple and pear
And the service blooms whiter than snow.

Both the above poems by Byron Herbert Reece appear in his book Bow Down in Jericho published by Dutton in 1950 and republished by Cherokee in 1985. We invite readers to consider attending the annual meeting of the Society on May 30, 2009.

c 2098 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published May 21, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

James "Jim" Berry, the Last of the True Mountaineers (Part 2)

Last week we saw Jim Berry as an employee of the Pfister- Vogel Land Company that had purchased large tracts of mountain land. Jim Berry was hired as a security guard for the land company and had moved into the old Brewster house on Jack's Gap Road.

About this same time a rather crude telephone line was installed in the Choestoe-Town Creek community. A switch at Mr. Hayes Hunter's house near New Liberty Church could connect the community line to the forest service line. Jim Berry's telephone that kept him in touch with the Bald Mountain line could also, through the switch, be connected to the line to the Jesse Washington Souther house, also just off the Jack's Gap Road. In that house lived Varina (called "Tib") Souther. A romance began between Tib and Jim.

She was a daughter of Jesse Washington Souther (04/23/1836 - 09/12/1926) and Nancy Sullivan Souther (03/22/1858 08/12/1936), her father's second wife. Varina was the thirteenth of fifteen children of "Wash" Souther and the sixth of eight born to her mother, Nancy Sullivan Souther. This "second" family of Jesse Washington Souther had these children: Thomas Souther (1877-1937) who married Mary Lou Kay; Albert Galloway Souther (1879-?) who married Mae Pinkston; Lydia Souther (1881-?) who married Charlie Jones; Lina Souther (1883-1915); Benjamin Souther (1885) died in infancy; Varina Souther (1887- 1963) who married James Berry (1896- 1982) on August 13, 1913; Harvey Allen Souther (1889-1984) who married Fannie Collins (1895-1972); and Hardy Souther (1892, died in infancy).

Thanks to the "on line" switch that connected the Souther home telephone to the one the forest service maintained for Jim Berry, this couple could "court" by telephone.

With her full siblings and her half-siblings scattered, Varina Souther Berry took the responsibility of caring for her aging parents. She and her husband Jim Berry lived with them in the old Wash Souther house. One son, Glenn, was born to Varina and Jim, and they adopted a second son, J. T. Berry. Her father died in 1926 and her mother in 1936.

Varina "Tib" Souther Berry was nine years older than her husband, Jim. She died October 15, 1963, leaving Jim a widower. He continued to live on in the old Wash Souther house, with few conveniences. He graduated from a fireplace to a wood heater to heat his house and had a Roman Eagle wood cook stove in his kitchen. After his wife Varina died, he lived alone for almost nineteen more years in the old house.

Jim Berry was steeped in the knowledge of local geography and folklore. He could recount the names of all the mountains surrounding Georgia's highest peak, Brasstown Bald (also known as Enotah). He knew the names of valleys between the peaks, the creeks and rivers. A good marksman with a gun, he got his quota of deer each hunting season well into his seventh decade of life. In his later years, people beat a path to his door to hear his stories and listen to his wit and wisdom.

He learned to play the fiddle from his father. He tells about watching his father play, and then taking up the fiddle himself, finding that he, too, could make music from its strings. He and his brother began to play for and call square dances throughout the mountain region. He once told a visitor that if he had his father's old fiddle, he wouldn't take a thousand dollars for it.

In a finely woven basket hanging from Jim Berry's ceiling, he once kept the medicines he swore by. In individual paper bags were the herbs he gathered from the mountains to give him robust health into his eighties. Dried ginseng root he chewed during the winters with the firm belief that it "cured most anything." Then he had a bag of golden seal. This treasure from the wild cured anything ginseng didn't touch, Mr. Berry believed.

On a spring day, June 26, 1982, Jim Berry, true mountaineer, lay down his head and died. At 85 years, 10 months of age, he had packed a lot of living into his life. He was about the last of the true mountaineers who had a close affinity with the land and its topography, the forests and its inhabitants, and people who came seeking his stories.

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published September 25, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Byron Herbert Reece Interpretive Center receives boost

Those of us who are avid Byron Herbert Reece fans and who appreciate his poetry and prose were elated over the recent grant of $671,072 to be used in development of the Byron Herbert Reece Interpretive Center on the farm about a mile north of Vogel State Park.

For one who struggled both as a farmer and as a writer, the amount, no doubt, would have seemed magnanimous to the humble poet. To make use of the grant from the Department of Transportation Enhancement Funds, money on the local level amounting to 20 percent of the allocated grant must be raised. The Byron Herbert Reece Society is in the process of achieving that goal. Members are confident that people will contribute so that a beautiful center at the former Reece farm along Wolf Creek just off highway 129 South will become a reality.

Thanks to those who worked hard to secure the grant. Reid Dyer and Joy Still representing Hayes, James and Associates assisted with writing the grant proposal. President of the Byron Herbert Reece Society, Dr. John Kay, has exerted time, effort and enthusiasm to the task.

Thanks are due Senator Chip Pearson and Representative Charles Jenkins for their interest in and advocacy of the project. Those from the Georgia Department of Transportation supported the application for the grant and seemed happy that Union County received the money to apply to the Reece Center. These were Harold Linnenkohl, DOT Commissioner, DOT Board member Bill Kuhlke Jr. and DOT Deputy Director Larry Dent. Members of the Byron Herbert Reece Society Executive Board which include Union County Commissioner Lamar Paris, Fleming Weaver of the Forest Service and Ben Hulsey were likewise elated over receipt of the grant.

I can envision the future when the Reece Interpretive Center is completed. Visitors can go there to walk the quiet trails along Wolf Creek and experience some of the ambience Reece himself enjoyed in the invigorating atmosphere of mountains, streams, sky and land, commodities held dear in the mountain farmer’s heart. Perhaps inspiration akin to that Reece had when he wrote his poems will happen again to a promising bard.

I thought of a mutual friend of mine and Reece’s, Mrs. Marel Brown, a Georgia poet and writer. I met Marel Brown through the Georgia Poetry Society of which we were both members. We became good friends. One of the links we had in common was our acquaintance with Poet Byron Herbert Reece. In 1979 Mrs. Brown published a book entitled Presenting Georgia Poets. One of the chapters was about Byron Herbert Reece.

Mrs. Brown tells about meeting Mr. Reece first in July 1940. She was spending a week at Vogel State Park because she had won first place in the Georgia State Parks Poetry Contest for her poem, Sonnet to Indian Springs Park. The reward was a week’s lodging at the state park of her choice. She chose Vogel because she had been told that Byron Herbert Reece lived “about a mile north” of that park. She wanted to meet him because she had read with great interest his poem, His Eye Is on the Sparrow published in the North Georgia Review.

Without a phone at the Reece house for her to make an appointment to see him, she drove from Vogel to the farm. There she met first Mrs. Emma Reece, the poet’s mother.

Mrs. Reece was delighted that another poet had sought out her son, and urged Brown to wait until her son and his father Juan would be in from the fields.

Mrs. Brown writes: “The first time I saw Byron Herbert Reece he was coming over the top of a hill, walking home from an afternoon of farm work on the far side of the ridge. Even silhouetted against the brown earth as he and his father made their way down the furrowed land, I could see he was a tall, slender young man. His pace was the slow, careful gait of the farmer who knows how to walk steady in uneven, plowed ground. He reached the almost level barn lot and approached, a question in his dark eyes.” (p. 60)

From that meeting in July of 1940 until the poet’s untimely death in 1958, Marel Brown and Byron Herbert Reece were steadfast friends. With her connections in literary circles in Atlanta, she engineered several invitations for him to read his poetry publicly with the Atlanta Writer’s Club, at the Druid Hills Baptist Church in “A Night with the Poets,” and at other venues. She tells in her brief biography of Reece how adverse at first he was to reading his own poetry, and even asked her to read for him. She encouraged him, and saw a marked improvement over the years from a shy, almost apologetic reading of his poetry to a voice that undulated with the movement and power of his poems.

With poetry in her prose account of Reece, Mrs. Brown wrote: “To me the pattern of Reece poems reveals the wise farmer in him; he guided his plow against the lay of the land, always. Where the furrows should hug the curve of the hill, they hugged; where the contour changed, his furrows swerved to the natural heave and dip of the uneven soil of what he called ‘God’s Country.’ His variation of rhythm was always in conformity to the underlying substance— never any conscious effort to be bizarre or different. His are true lines, in true rhythms, against the uneven hills of life as he knew it.” (pp. 65-66).

As a member of the Byron Herbert Reece Society, I am excited to think that many can learn more about the mountain farmer Mrs. Marel Brown met that late afternoon in July 1940. It will be good to have a place to visit where he worked the land and experienced the creativity that came from his brilliant mind to produce masterful poetry and prose. Marel Brown ended her chapter on Reece with these words: “Time will surely assay the inevitable truth: Byron Herbert Reece was a farmer first, but a poet always.” (p. 69).

(Note: If you can find a copy of Marel Brown’s book, Presenting Georgia Poets, in a library near you, I recommend that you read it. You will enjoy her keen insight into this mountain farmer/poet whom she called her friend. While you’re looking for her book on Georgia Poets, you might like to check on some of her own books. She wrote nine. A collection of her most noted poems is entitled The Shape of a Song.)

c2006 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Feb. 2, 2006 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.