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Then and Now
Reflections on a Journey
Garland Elmore
My first memories of Athens are from the Holroyd house on South State Street. My family rented that classic home when we moved from McComas in 1950.
Part One: GOING HOME
Interstate 77 crosses Bluestone River close to Athens. Coming from Indiana, where I lived for over 40 years, the view from the I-77 bridge is a reminder that we are just about there—almost to my home town. On the West Virginia Turnpike, at 70 mph, the fleeting glimpse of the gorge sparks a memory of an equally impressive perspective from below.
Interstate 77 crosses Bluestone River close to Athens. Coming from Indiana, where I lived for over 40 years, the view from the I-77 bridge is a reminder that we are just about there—almost to my home town. On the West Virginia Turnpike, at 70 mph, the fleeting glimpse of the gorge sparks a memory of an equally impressive perspective from below.
Below, hidden from the Turnpike traffic, the tree-lined lane leading to the Bluestone River reminds me of a special time and of many sanctuaries that a boy with a new driver’s license could discover within a few miles from Athens.
This point on Bluestone, with bridge infrastructure constructed along its banks in the early 1960s, was a favorite destination in high school and college.
We enjoyed playing along the banks of the river and exploring the woods around the foundations of the bridge. It looks about the same today.
Old Athens Road hasn’t changed much either. The rolling farmland just before Ray Austin's parents' house is as I remember it when standing by this fence 50 years ago.
In a few moments I arrive in Athens. From a few hundred feet above the streets as viewed from an aerial photograph, it’s just another place. Churches, a school, a water tower, a few businesses, homes and a college.
To a young person growing up in Athens, Concord, “the friendly college on the campus beautiful,” offered more than classes.
Living as we did on the edge of campus, Concord was a playground for my good friend David Baxter and me. I recognize now that David and I grew up in a park! The campus was ours! We enjoyed discovering different aspects of it and sharing it with other friends. We always felt welcomed. The faculty and students were kind to us.
David and all my closest friends were good kids. We had parents who cared and trusted us to do the right things. But as we approached adolescence David and I pilfered Viceroys from my sister and learned to smoke cigarettes under these trees.
Later, many of us received a good education at Concord, then sometimes called “little Dartmouth” because that was the President’s alma mater and he was advancing controversial restrictive admissions and higher academic standards. Some worried the new requirements would keep many local students out of the academy. The publicity about it made me wonder if any of my family would have been admitted under the proposed terms.
I graduated with a bachelor's degree during the Vietnam War era to an uncertain future. I moved to Huntington to attend Marshall University in 1968. Another park, and Marshall offerred financial help. With a teaching assistantship, I had my first serious brush with tragedy …
… when three of my students died, along with the entire Thundering Herd football team and cheerleaders, as well as Marshall supporters, in a plane that crashed into the mountain short of the Huntington airport.
Soon thereafter, the Army called and I moved to Louisiana for basic and advance military training.
I returned from Fort Polk to my first full-time teaching assignment at Southern West Virginia Community College. I was on the Logan campus and Jean was on the Nursing faculty in Williamson, having just graduated from the University of Michigan. I met her in a television studio I managed on the third floor of this building on a visit to Williamson in March of 1974, but didn't see her again until May.
Jean caught my attention the second time at the graduation ceremony held on the Logan campus, in the gymnasium of what used to be an elementary school before the college acquired it.
At the end of the ceremony I asked if she would join me for lunch. We picked up hot dogs from the Dairy Queen and had an impromptu picnic at Chief Logan park. We agree to meet on campus the next day.
Three days later we were planning a June wedding. While talking through the details we drove to Pipestem, near Athens, to explore a few acres of property I had purchased a year earlier.
During the discussion of scheduling and making family meetings, including visiting Jean's brother in Ohio shown here, we caught a little misunderstanding in our plan for a June wedding. Jean imagined that we would marry in three weeks but I assumed next June. We compromised with a December wedding.
After the wedding, Jean joined me in Athens, Ohio where I had moved the previous summer to begin my doctoral residency. Ohio University provided yet another pastoral setting.
After finishing course work at Ohio it was time for Jean to complete her graduate studies. That took us to the Indiana University School of Nursing in the fall of 1976. Our friend Ray Austin drove the moving truck, I was in my Celica, and Jean took the lead with our rescue dog Banjo in her 1971 red Corolla.
While Jean studied I completed my dissertation, working mostly from home. We had planned to stay in Indiana for three years and then begin our "real" careers. Instead, we both accepted faculty appointments at Indiana University and the three year stint lasted over 40 years!
Our daughter Erin was born in 1982 and was raised in Indiana. She met Austin in North Carolina after graduating from Wake Forest University. They married in 2008.
Erin had a good education at Wake Forest and then at Harvard. Austin's degrees are from Colorado, Gordon Conwell, and Duke. They settled in West Salem North Carolina and started to raise their family.
We moved from Indiana to Bermuda Run North Carolina, about 15 minutes from West Salem, to be a part of these kid's lives as they grow. From youngest to oldest, Blaise (who I call Craftie Doodle Dandy), Marco, Lucy, and Silas. Each child has a sleep-over with us on rotating weekends. As I'm writing in 2023, they're still at the age they believe the experience with us is cool.
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