Then and Now
About This Site
Foreword
High school friends of more than 40 years ago provided the incentive for a website that could in some way capture more than the facts about a town and its families, schools, churches, businesses and organizations. In reconnecting, many of us noted that it is difficult to describe what it was like growing up in a place where parents knew each other, and every home was an extension of our own. We remember our parents quietly sacrificed to make their children's lives better than their own. Our parents had deep-seated values and shared a collective, intuitive sense of how to prioritize around families, form communities, and support each other. They overcame substantial obstacles through commitment and hard work, having themselves grown up in the era of the Great Depression and having lived through World War II. As their children we learned more about life in Norman Rockwell's America than we knew at the time, and only now fully appreciate.
Purpose
Athens We Knew is intended to capture and preserve a small segment of our southern West Virginia heritage by focusing on life in a small town during the 1950s and 1960s. The site offers original content, contributed articles, essays, stories and photographs. It is completely free to access and has no advertisements, subscriptions, or commercial interests. See Permitted Uses below if you wish to distribute or adapt content.
Organization
The site is organized into nine chapters, and offers a galleries of photographs, special features and stories from our years in Athens.
Acknowlegement
This website was developed using the basic structure and content of an earlier version released in 2012. Two Indiana University colleagues, Eric Scull and Vince Canon, provided immeasurable technical assistance and creative advice in developing the 2012 site. For the current Athens We Knew, contributions and support offered by Kay White Monohan, Phyllis Mays Keatley, Henry Friedl and others have been very helpful. Most importantly, David Keller Baxter and Linda Hill Mann, my long-time friends and high school classmates, spent countless hours researching, discovering new content, contributing articles and proofreading each page. At the beginning, David contributed manuscripts, notes and historic photographs from his father Charles K. "Bo" Baxter, which became the impetus for the first site.
Dedication
When David passed away in 2018, the pastor at his funeral said that David’s most enjoyable activities were spending time on family genealogy and working on the Athens We Knew website. At that time, I committed to redeveloping the website using more current technology. That effort began in 2021 but it languished until 2023 when Linda stepped in to provide new content and help guide the project. The new team dedicates this site: David, this is for you.
Permitted Uses
As an informational and educational site, Athens We Knew has adopted the global Creative Commons principles that require attribution and restrict sharing to non-commercial purposes within similar media. Specifically, in the words of Creative Commons, "this type of license allows others to reuse, adapt, remix, and distribute the work for any non-commercial purpose; commercial use of the work is not allowed. In addition, if you adapt the work and share it you must give your adaptation the same or a compatible license. Attribution to the work’s creator must be provided." For Athens We Knew, attribution must include the website (athensweknew.net) and the name of the content owner or person who contributed an article or photograph you use. Learn more at creative commons.org.
Dedication
Miss Tanner's second and third grade class at Concord Training School, showing Garland (seated, center, with striped shirt), Linda (standing behind Garland), and David (peaking from behind Larry Brunk in front of the Christmas tree). Life-long friends!
Snapshots
