More on the career of Dr. N.V. Dyer

The farm mule that Norman Vester Dyer chose to have his father sell and give him the $150.00 to continue his education proved a good investment. This man, noted wherever he went as an industrious, wise and solid "school man," touched teachers and students in various parts of Georgia.

He started out teaching in Choestoe, his home community, as an assistant in the country school where he began his own first grade work. Professor Theodore Swanson, who had been the teacher for the seven-month term, wanted to leave early, and suggested to Vester Dyer's father, Bluford Elisha Dyer, known as "Bud" Dyer, a trustee of the school, that the young lad who was just finishing seventh grade, was capable of taking over the school and completing the term. Challenged and somewhat frightened by the task, Vester buckled down and was able to complete his seventh grade school year as a teacher. This was the beginning of his 46-year career as an educator.

Places, besides Choestoe, that knew the influence of this educator, all in Georgia, were Hiawassee, Jones County (Green School), Dooly County (Lily), Milner, Luthersville, Fairburn, Blairsville (Collegiate Institute), Cornelia, Eastanollee (Stephens County), Dawsonville (Dawson County), Summerville and Villa Rica. In the period of his service, the major administrator of a school within a city system was called superintendent (now called a principal). Even though he was head of the school, he also enjoyed teaching so much that he had a class he taught seniors at each school called vocational guidance, citizenship or group counseling. His class was popular with seniors and helpful to them as they explored areas of job opportunity, set goals for their future, and struggled with ideas about living lives of service to mankind.

In his memoirs entitled A Fugitive from a Georgia Schoolhouse, Dr. Dyer said he often encountered three major disturbing elements in school administrator's work: selfishness, politics and ignorance (Fugitive from a Georgia Schoolhouse, p. 65). He gave numerous examples of these three often-times negative hindrances to educational progress.

Selfishness reared its head in those who would downgrade the school and its work because of petty jealousies or desire that jobs of teaching and school management be awarded through nepotism—or making family members or special friends recipients of any jobs available in the schools. In such situations, qualifications of the teachers and administrator, or even their success in operating a school took a back seat to favoritism.

Those who suffered most from such unprofessional practices were the students themselves.

Politics often played a role in who would be elected administrator or who would keep the job. After eleven years as a successful superintendent (principal) of Cornelia city schools, Mr. Dyer was ousted because of the "political machine" operable within the city. The same was true after four years of hard work in the Eastanollee School in Stephens County.

Sometimes called "The Court House Gang," the politicians wanted to get rid of Mr. Dyer as superintendent. Stephens County citizens, who had seen the school improve greatly under his leadership, circulated a petition with over 2,000 signatures asking that he be kept on as superintendent. They even had a Professor N. V. Dyer Day, complete with a hired band, invited speakers and dinner on the grounds on March 30, 1935 in an effort to break the School Board's deadlock on his reelection. Asked to speak before the Board of Education on his own behalf, Mr. Dyer surprised all the large crowd present at the court house by arising, quoting the speech of Brutus from William Shakespeare's play, "Julius Caesar," and likening the political maneuverings to those described in the play in that ancient Roman regime.

He saw ignorance as a daunting deterrent to progress in education. He did not mean by this illiteracy, or backwardness sometimes found in a community due to a lack of educational opportunities. He saw prejudice and resistance to change for the better as enemies of education. In many of the systems where he served as administrator, he offered classes for adults that would help them to a better quality of life. He set up Home Economics classes in some communities and invited mothers to learn to care better for the nutritional and nurturing needs of their children. If men could not manage to get jobs, he offered night classes in literacy or in trades that would help them in vocational pursuits. And ever, he urged students in school to set their sights on higher education, helping them to find ways to get enrolled in college or vocational school beyond high school. Truancy was a problem in his early years of teaching. He helped to write the truancy law that was eventually enacted by the State of Georgia.

Change in administering discipline to students was one of Mr. Dyer's strong points. He initiated the idea of keeping records, turned into the office, of student's offenses. These were recorded on individual cards for each student. If a student had "demerits" equal to five hours from teachers, he/she would be assigned work around the school to clear the demerit points. In that way, many improvements to the buildings and grounds were made by students who had caused disturbance of any kind. Prior to the work to erase the offense, Mr. Dyer would have a counseling session with the student and talk about responsibility, citizenship and payment for offenses. He talked to them about taking pride in their work, and making the school grounds and buildings better than when they had entered the school. This method of discipline, he affirmed, worked much better than the old-fashioned "paddling."

In whatever town the Dyer family lived, they became a vital part of the community as well as the school. Always active in church, he, his wife Jane, and their three daughters, Sarah Ruth, Betty and Helen, were involved. He was a deacon and lay preacher. Jane was a teacher and women's worker. The girls were part of the youth program, and when they became adults, were also leaders in their churches. In Dawsonville, Mr. Dyer led in the effort to erect a new building for First Baptist Church. In most of the towns where he served as superintendent, new school buildings were erected. Active in Lions Club, he served as a local officer as well as a leader in the district and state organization.

Reba W. Roberds who was a teacher under his supervision during his eleven years as head of the Villa Rica Schools said of him at his retirement banquet in May, 1955: "I knew him as a man devoted to high ideals of service, a man of vision and perseverance, a Christian gentleman, and a true friend."

Dr. Norman Vester Dyer, born on a Choestoe farm March 10. 1885, died December 28, 1968 in Villa Rica, Georgia. Of his 83 years spent on earth, 46 of them were as an educator.

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published October 30, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Choestoe man was outstanding educator The Career of Norman Vester Dyer

Telling his father that he did not want to farm, but rather to teach, and that the mule he was given by his father would be sold and used for education proved to be a good move for the enterprising Norman Vester Dyer (March 10, 1885 - December 28, 1968).

This seventh of fifteen children born to Bluford Elisha Dyer (1855-1926) and Sarah Evaline Souther Dyer (1857-1959) found ways, besides the sale of his mule for $150.00, to earn his education.

After he graduated from Hiawassee Academy, he took the state teacher's licensing test and earned a first grade certificate. He got a position for a year teaching in the Green School eight miles from Gray, Georgia. Following that year of an eight-month school year, with his earnings $50 per month, he went to Mercer University in Macon to continue his own education. He, with his father's signature, borrowed $250 from Mr. Pat Haralson, lawyer, in Blairsville to go to Mercer his first year. Alternately teaching and going to school, he earned his bachelor's degree from Mercer and repaid all the money he had borrowed for college. Later, mainly by attending summer sessions (seven summers in all, he states in his memoirs), he earned the Master of Education degree from the University of Georgia. It was from Mt. Vernon University in Virginia that he received the doctorate degree. Mercer University, his alma mater, awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Back in the days when an educator was both a classroom teacher and a principal, Vester Dyer found himself serving in several Georgia towns. Among these towns were Lily (near Vienna), Milner, Luthersville, Fairburn, Blairsville, Eastanollee, Dawsonville and Summerville. He was principal of Cornelia High School and county school superintendent in Habersham County at Cornelia for eleven years. His retirement came after eleven years as principal of Villa Rica High School. Altogether, he served forty six years as a teacher, principal or superintendent of schools.

Other than teaching in country schools in Union County, his stint as an administrator in Blairsville was as president of the Blairsville Collegiate Institute. A school begun by the Notla River Baptist Association and supported in part also by the Georgia Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board, the school was the only high school then in Union County. N. V. Dyer's term as president was in the 1920's, prior to the schools being taken over as a public high school by the Union County Board of Education. In his memoirs, Mr. Dyer says of his work as president of Blairsville Collegiate Institute: "Since it was a church school, I was expected to visit the churches of the county, make religious talks, and fill the place of a missionary as well as carry on the work of the school. I found the students exceptionally interested in the school work, and had very few disciplinary problems." (p. 47, "Fugitive from a Georgia Schoolhouse.").

Following his term at the Blairsville Collegiate Institute, Mr. Dyer moved on to Cornelia as superintendent (or principal) of the public school there.

On June 17, 1915, Norman Vester Dyer married Ruthie Jane Self. She was a teacher at Young Harris, in the elementary and/or academy division of the college. It was there that Dr. J. A. Sharp, president of the college, performed the marriage ceremony for the couple in the college parlor. She was a daughter of Cicero Self and Sarah Lance Self.

Three daughters would be born to this couple, Sarah Ruth on March 14, 1919 in Luthersville, Georgia, and identical twin daughters, Betty Jean and Mary Helen in Cornelia, Georgia on May 26, 1926.

Dr. Mauney Douglas Collins (1885 - 1957) was born the same year as Dr. Norman Vester Dyer. Both Choestoe lads, their careers in education would parallel. Dr. Collins served as state superintendent of Georgia schools from 1933-1957, a total of twenty-five years, during times of great change. These two were friends and associates from their boyhood together at Choestoe throughout their long careers as educators. Dr. Collins wrote the foreword to Dyer's book of memoirs, "Fugitive from a Georgia Schoolhouse": "He (Dyer) has touched for good the lives of hundreds of young Georgians, and encouraged them to get the education that would make them more valuable citizens of their native state."

Is that not the aim of education— touching lives, producing valuable citizens?

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published October 23, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

NOTE: this article was originally Oct. 16, 2008 but was deferred by the newspaper.

A mule, a dream and a long career as an educator

The gift of a mule was a kick start to an education and a 46-year career as a teacher and school administrator for Norman Vester Dyer (1885-1968).

Norman Vester Dyer was a student at the Hiawassee Baptist Academy. He had gone to school there periodically, going a semester or two, as he could afford the tuition and board, and then getting a job back in his home community teaching in the country schools of Choestoe or Old Liberty. He longed to finish his senior year at the academy, but his money had run completely out.

Vester Dyer told his roommate that he planned to walk across the mountain from Hiawassee to Choestoe and have a talk with his father. It was in March, 1906 that he went back home and told his father, Bluford Elisha "Bud" Dyer that he was ready for the gift of his mule. Mr. Dyer had formed the custom of giving each of his nine sons a mule when they reached the age of 21. Vester turned 21 on March 10, 1906, and he felt the time was right for this gift from his father.

"Father, I want my mule," Vester stated at an opportune time when he arrived home.

"What do you plan to do with it?" his father asked.

"Sell it and get money to finish my senior year," the son told his father.

"And what will you plow with?" the father inquired.

"I don't plan to plow," was the young man's response. "I plan to teach."

Without further discussion on the matter, Mr. Dyer told Vester to go to bed and rest. The next morning, his father took the three-year old mule he had been keeping for Vester and was gone from home for about three hours. When he returned, he handed Vester $150.00, the price he had been paid for the fine mule.

With money in his pocket and a dream in his heart, Vester returned to Hiawassee Academy and enrolled for his senior year. The long trek by foot from Choestoe back to Hiawassee seemed much shorter than the outward journey, for he had in his possession the money that would provide for tuition, books and board for his senior year.

During the summer of 1906, Vester Dyer did not return to his father's farm in Choestoe to work the crops. Instead, he was invited by Mr. Van Burns, with whom he was boarding, to teach in summer school. Vester was assigned to teach Greek and world history, two subjects in which the young man had excelled at the academy. The contract with Mr. Burns was that he would have his board and room from his teaching, "and, according to what I am paid for the summer session, a percentage of the tuition." At the end of that notable summer, with experience in teaching the classic language and world history to avid students, Mr. Burns paid the young teacher a shiny silver dollar. This seems like paltry pay for a summer's worth of teaching, but in those days, a dollar would go a long ways toward needs.

Norman Vester Dyer had already been teaching in country schools near his home in Choestoe. He tells in his memoirs of going to the court house in Blairsville to take the teacher certification tests for licensing. The courtroom would be full, he said, of men and women aspiring to get basic certification or to upgrade their license to teach. The County Commissioner of Schools was authorized by the state of Georgia to issue three types of certificates, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade. Pay was based on the grade of the certificate. The first certificate Mr. Dyer received was a 3rd grade. This was several years before he finished his senior year at Hiawassee Academy. His earnings were $22.50 per month. He had 50 pupils in seven grades. He said of that experience, "I felt that I had been highly honored by being placed in a position to teach many of my fellow students, cousins, brothers and sisters." (p. 37 in "Fugitive from a Georgia Schoolhouse." Thomasson Publishing, Carrollton, GA, 1961.)

From his humble beginnings of attending a one-teacher school in Choestoe, to going back later to teach in that same school, to becoming a noted teacher and administrator in Georgia schools, this man who sold his mule to help pay for his education was on a roll. For a career that lasted 46 years, many students benefited from his wisdom and ability to teach.

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published October 9, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Focusing on the Chattahoochee- Oconee National Forests

Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now.

These lines from poet George Pope Morris [1802- 1864] might well have been written in protest to the widespread devastation of virgin forests that existed in the nineteenth century as trees were felled for lumber to supply the demand for building better houses. People wanted nicer dwellings than the log cabins that characterized the early-settlement period of our mountain lands.

As we saw the life and times of Jim Berry, last of the "true mountaineers" in the last two columns here, we learned that he was an employee of the Vogel-Pfister Land Company that dealt mainly in harvesting trees for timber in the Southern Appalachians.

Following the Civil War, a proliferation of timber harvesting occurred in this mountain region. The work of cutting trees and getting them to sawmills set up on streams provided much-needed employment. Very little attention was given to environmental practices and preserving the land or its forests. Large land companies, with an eye for the timber market, bought up lands the early settlers had received in either gold lots or land lots. The lands were cut over and many chestnut, oak, and hemlock trees yielded bark for tanning businesses and lumber for houses. It was a perilous time for mountain forests. The mountain landowners, many owing taxes on their acreage, sold land for as little as $1.00 per acre. Capitalists took advantage of a poverty-level situation and amassed land once rich with virgin timber. The plea of Morris's poem, "Touch not a single bough!" went unheeded. Former farmers sought refuge in the "lumber camps" that sprang up. There they found shelter and subsistence wages.

Erosion set in. Wildfires were prevalent. With forest deadenings widespread, floods came, with nothing to prevent the water from taking the topsoil in formerly productive farmlands. It was a sad and ruinous time. A voice was heard among all the destruction. His name was Gifford Pinchot, one of the first environmentalists. He urged that government and citizens do something about the "burned, slashed, and over-grazed forest." President Theodore Roosevelt stepped in, and in 1901 he ordered that "the preservation of the mountain forests should no longer be left to the caprice of private capital."

The famous Weeks Act was passed in the US Congress on March 1, 1911. In this Act, the U. S. Department of Agriculture was authorized to purchase lands that had been cut over and denuded. Gifford Pinchot's pleas had been heard. The slow process of restoration was set in motion. It did not happen quickly, for growing trees takes time. Restoring natural resources is a slow process.

Out of the Weeks Act grew the National Forest Service Reservation Commission. In 1911, large tracts of mountain land, about 31,000 acres in all, in Union, Fannin, Lumpkin and Gilmer Counties were purchased for $7.00 per acre. The seller was the Gennett Land and Lumber Company of Atlanta, Georgia. The purchase became official on August 29, 1912. A small portion of the lands acquired by the National Forest Service still had stands of virgin timber, but most of the land had been cut-over, cleared, or desecrated through careless industrial cutting and logging.

Another aspect of this era of mountain history shows a decline in population. For example, Union County statistics reveal that population dropped over ten percent from 1900 through 1910. Due to the ecological changes brought about by environmental excesses, people had to leave to find work elsewhere. The poor mountain farms could not support the population. The "westward" movement to Colorado and other western states and influx to manufacturing towns like Gainesville, Dalton and Atlanta accounted for the population decrease.

The Gennett Purchase began the stewardship of forest lands that would eventually lead to formation of the Chattahoochee National Forest in 1936. At first, these lands were incorporated into the Cherokee and Nantahala National Forests in Tennessee and North Carolina. Gifford Pinchot's pleas were being heeded. Goals were set for reforestation, planting of new trees. Management of soil, water and wildlife were incorporated into the plan.

Two important names emerge in this early period of National Forest management. Ranger Roscoe Nicholson was the first Forest Ranger in the North Georgia Region. His area was the Tallulah Ranger District. Ranger Arthur Woody of Union County also made a name for himself as he was employed by the Forest Service. They patrolled with an iron will. They used trained bloodhounds to trace down forest arsonists. The first fire towers were built by them and the men they employed—Union County's at Brasstown Bald. Ranger Woody used his own money to stock streams with trout and the forests with deer when these were not forthcoming from Forest Service funds. Ranger Nick and Ranger Woody were brave pioneers who set the pace for later practices that were expanded and enforced.

Credit is due President Franklin Roosevelt's programs to help the nation recover from the Great Depression that began in earnest in October of 1929. During his presidency, beginning in 1932, his "Alphabet Projects" tackled the job market and supplied workers for needed efforts to bring America back into competitive production. The Civilian Conservation Corps was organized in 1933. Camp Woody near Suches and the CCC Camp at Goose Creek on Highway 129 had the boys working to plant trees, check tree blights and insect infestations, build firetowers, fight forest fires, build roads and Vogel State Park. A new day dawned for the mountain forests of North Georgia.

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published October 2, 2008 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.

James "Jim" Berry, the Last of the True Mountaineers

Visit New Liberty Baptist Church Cemetery in Choestoe, stretched in front of a beautiful white country church house, with Enotah (Brasstown Bald) Mountain lifting its towering peak in the distance, and you find graves of many early settlers to that section of Union County. Today, we will focus on two graves bearing names, not of early settlers but the descendents of some of them.

These graves are of a husband and wife, James "Jim" Berry and Varina "Tib" Souther Berry. The dates tell us Jim lived from August 14, 1896 through June 26, 1982, and Tib lived from May 12, 1887 through October 15, 1963. Many who knew Jim Berry, and who wrote about him, like Charles Roscoe Collins and the roving reporter for The Atlanta Journal, Charles Salter, called him one of the last of the "true mountaineers."

Living in the old log house, somewhat updated from the time his wife Tib's grandfather built it in the mid-1800's, James was a widower from 1963 when his wife died until 1982, when he passed on at age 86. A philosopher of sorts, Jim Berry enjoyed company and was a great talker. His simple lifestyle was often an amazement to the many visitors who dropped by his house just off the Jack's Gap Road to hear him talk and to get his viewpoints on the issues of the day.

Jim Berry was not a Union County native. His wife, Varina, claimed that honor, but not Jim. His grandparents came from Old Gilmer County (a portion that later became Fannin) and from the mining town of Copperhill, Tennessee. Like settlers to that section, his forebears left North Carolina in a general migration and found land on which to carve out a new life in the mountains of North Georgia. The Berry Family moved from their Gilmer County home and got land along Fodder Creek in what became Towns County in 1856. There Jim Berry was born in 1896 to William Berry and Becky Shook Berry. Jim Berry had siblings William Berry, John Berry, Tina Berry McFall, and Martha Berry Chastain.

James Berry spent his childhood and early youth working on the family farm at Fodder Creek. He had little formal schooling because his father was an invalid. It was necessary for Jim Berry to work hard to try to make a living on the hardscrabble farm for his father, mother and siblings. They had cattle and hogs that ranged the mountains and, when rounded up and driven to market in Gainesville, provided a little extra income for the family.

When America got involved in World War I, James Berry served in the US Army. After basic training at Fort Gordon, he was selected to be in the unit that guarded German prisoners of war at Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia. He remembered those two years of his life as hard. Guarding the prisoners took great vigilance and discipline. When the Armistice was signed in November, 1918, Jim Berry was one of the guards chosen to accompany the 550 German prisoners by train to Charleston, SC, where the captives were loaded on boats and returned to Germany.

Upon his honorable discharge from the army following World War I, James Berry returned to Fodder Creek in Towns County. He purchased 80 acres of mountain land, and there continued the same life of small patch farming in the bottoms along creeks as he had done growing up.

Then another opportunity came for this World War I veteran. The Pfister-Vogel Land Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin had purchased thousands of acres of mountain land in Towns, Union, Lumpkin and White Counties. They needed workers. Jim Berry signed on, and because of his previous experience as a guard in World War II, he was assigned to the security detail of the company's work force.

Part of the land purchased by the Pfister-Vogel Land Company included the old Brewster holdings along the Jack's Gap Road leading toward Bald Mountain. An aside in the Jim Berry story lets us know that this tract of land had a history. It was sold to the land company by John Brewster. On that land, during the Civil War, Washington Brewster was killed near Jack's Gap by a roving band of Home Guard. The Brewster Place also had other families living there through time. Some were Jesse Spiva, Ben Spiva, Cornelius Spiva (who was killed in Germany during World War I, the first casualty of that war from Union County), Jim Harkins, Van Duckworth, and, finally, James Berry himself. Near the house was an old cemetery where Brookshires, Brewsters and Spivas were buried back in the era when family cemeteries were started near the old homeplace. The Land Company allowed James Berry, one of their important security guards, to live in the old Brewster house.

And that move, from Towns County to Union County, set the stage for the rest of citizen Jim Berry's life and times. Not only did he have work in the outdoors and woodlands he loved, but romance was on the horizon for James Berry. In the sequel to this story, we will learn about the life and times of Varina "Tib" Souther and James Berry. Stay tuned for the remainder of this delightful story.

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published September 18, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Awful Anniversary: Remembering 9/11

"Where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001?" No doubt you have been asked that question many times since that awful and terrible day when America and the world were shattered by deliberate and targeted crashes of four hijacked commercial jet airliners.

In the seven years intervening, we have recalled with both alarm and disbelief that date of attack which brought terrible reality, not just threats to our safe and secure lifestyle.

We know the events happened. We saw television news coverage of the billowing smoke from crashes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. We saw the Towers topple, heard confused cries, saw the devastation, observed with disbelief that such could happen in America, the "land of the free and the home of the brave."

We heard reports that a third hijacked airliner crashed into a portion of the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Our worst fears surfaced. Had this center of America's military operations been rendered completely ineffective?

With the brave action of some passengers on the fourth hijacked airliner, its direction was thwarted from its intended target in Washington, DC and the crash occurred in a field in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania near Shanksville.

There were no known survivors of the four jetliners. The 19 hijack- ers went to their deaths with a sense of accomplishment that they had done the deeds with martyrs' bravery and allegiance to their god. The passengers, no doubt, had boarded planes with confidence, with no thought that manipulations already in place would result in their untimely deaths that fateful day. Victims within the Twin Towers and others who died as a result of the travesties numbered over 3,000. Countless hours of rescue and recovery work resulted in airborne and contaminant afflictions that would follow victims the rest of their lives.

Nine/Eleven is an awful anniversary. Since that date in 2001, neither America nor the world has been the same as it was before.

We had rather not be reminded, but it is indelibly written in our history as a Day of Darkness and Doom.

To fight such an enemy as perpetrated these attacks on America on September 11, 2001 is a hard battle. Was Al-Qaeda behind it all—that dreaded terrorist regime that hides out in caves in the desert and plies its poison throughout the world? Were the enemies an army that could be confronted on a given battlefield and engaged in warfare which would eventually declare that the best side won?

Hardly so. But the battles began. And we are still in the midst of the war seven years later.

Immediately after 9/11, a surge of zeal and patriotism swept the United States. A turning again to the God of our nation was evident in songs, in messages, in websites, in patriotic gatherings, in churches, in town square meetings. America had rallied in the past to similar threats to her freedom. We could do so again. War was declared against the Taliban with forces deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Saddam Hussein was hunted and deposed, brought to trial and found guilty. The efforts to find and bring to justice the world-wide leader of terrorism continued. Osama bin Laden became the most wanted, the king of the terrorists, the person to find and depose at any cost.

America passed the USA Patriot Act, which was drafted by Representative Frank James Sensenbrenner on October 23, 2001, passed in the House on October 24, in the Senate on October 25, and signed into law by President Bush on October 21, 2001. The name of the act is an acronym standing for its major aims: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA PATRIOT Act).

Erection of memorials is under way in many places. Many, still in the building process, are geared to solemnly remind Americans of the fatal 9/11 invasion. The Freedom Tower in Manhattan, now being built, is to be one monument to the toll the day had on our sense of safety and freedom. At "Ground Zero" in New York City, pictures and memorials tell the story of the heartache that came on a bright sunny morning in September, 2001.

I'm sure you, as I, have read survivors' reports, accounts from persons who narrowly escaped with their lives, and lived to tell the story of fear and an about-face in their own lives. One such story is by Kyle Crager, who descended from the 71st floor of the World Trade Center and lived to tell the story. He described himself as having "a cushy office high over the streets of Manhattan, a view of the Statue of Liberty, a fast-track career." But all of that changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

Speaking at churches, schools, colleges and community events, Kyle Crager now quotes lines from the 17th century English poet, George Herbert: "Thou hast given me so much… Give me one thing more, a grateful heart." And one of his rallying cries uses words from C. S. Lewis, English apologist, minister and writer:

"God whispers to us in our pleasures,
Speaks to us in our conscience,
But shouts in our pain:
It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Anniversaries dredge up fearful memories at times, as is the case with 9/11. But the event can, as it did with Kyle Crager and others sharing survival, give one more thing: "a grateful heart."

c2 008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Sept. 11, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.