It's All Relative -- Part Deux

As time goes on
I realize
Just what you mean
To me
And now
Now that you're near
Promise your love
That I've waited to share
And dreams
Of our moments together
Color my world with hope of loving you

--from Suite for a Girl from Buchannon by James Pankow

John Wesley
The Man who has had the most influence over me
(other than my father)
Taken 10/8/07 in Buckhannon, West Virginia

This post is a continuation of my post of 10/10/07. Parts of it may not make sense if you have not read the previous post.

Leaving the state hospital, I saw a sign for the public library and headed that way. Faced with a spectacular Victorian building, I read the historic marker sign and learned that the Lewis County Library had been built as a private home. With the loss of father-in-law, husband and son, a fighter pilot in World War I, Mrs. Louis Bennett gave the building to Lewis County to serve as a public library and memorial son. Entering the Louis Bennett Library, I headed for the reference desk. “My great-great-great-etc. grandpappy founded this town according to family history, and I’m just wondering what you might have on Henry Flesher?” The librarian looked me over and said that they really didn’t have much of any local history or family records, but I should try the Central West Virginia Genealogical Library at Horner, a few miles east of town. Directing me past the Rite Aid and CVS pharmacies, past Walmart and McDonald’s, past the I-79 interchange, the librarian told me I couldn’t get lost unless I made a wrong turn. “Terrific,” I thought. Still, it was on the way to Buckhannon, and so I figured I’d check the place out. Since it was open until 8 pm, even on this holiday (Columbus Day), I decided to note its location and continue on to West Virginia Wesleyan College (WVWC).

Pedestrial Bridge
Taken 10/8/07 in Weston, West Virginia

Once I got to Buckhannon, I faced the choice of which exit to take from Corridor H of the Robert C. Byrd Appalachian Highway System. I trust you remember the senior senator from West Virginia, and all the ways he has of promoting his name to a grateful populace. Fortunately there was a sign directing me to take the second exit to reach the college. This I did, and spent the next half hour driving in circles looking for anything that resembled a college—or any other type of institution for that matter. Buckhannon isn’t so large that a college could hide itself easily, or so I thought.

Eventually, I looked down a side street and said “That looks like it could be a college building,” and indeed it was. The next question was where to find the bookstore so I could get some WVWC paraphernalia. Pulling into the Faculty only parking lot in front of the administration building, I asked a woman where I should go. She gave me directions, telling me to park in front of the Wesley Chapel, but warned me that the bookstore was already closed.

Parking where I was directed, I found a student and asked for further directions. He too told me that the bookstore was closed, but that I could look in the windows. Just what I wanted. I did find the store, after a few wrong turns, and it was, as indicated, closed. “You can call in an order, or use the web,” a snack shop worker told me. Looking through the windows, I can’t say that I saw anything that I couldn’t live without, and frankly, orange just isn’t my color.

Wesley Chapel
West Virginia Wesleyan College
Taken 10/8/07 in Buckhannon, West Virginia

The campus looked inviting, but most of the buildings seemed quite new. Founded in 1890 by the West Virginia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, WVWC was the college my parents attended (and Poppa graduated from) in the early 1940s. The more I looked around the campus, the more I became convinced that my parents would not recognize much of anything here today. For this I blame a distant cousin, Jay Rockefeller. (Since this is all about my genealogy, note please that the wife of John D. Rockefeller I was a Spelman from central Ohio. Family legend has it that she was my great-great-grandfather’s cousin.) In the spirit of fairness, I feel obliged to point out that the college’s website gives credit for the current look of the campus to Dr. Stanley H. Martin who served as President from 1957 to 1972. Still all the money had to come from somewhere. In 1884, John D. Rockefeller visited the Atlanta Women’s Seminary, a school for Black women, and liked what he saw. He was generous in his gifts to the school and it was renamed Spelman Seminary, and later Spelman College in honor of his in-laws who had been active in the anti-slavery movement. In 1973, John D. Rockefeller IV, known as Jay, was chosen to be President of WVWC. He served as President until 1976 when he was elected Governor of West Virginia. After two terms in that office, he was elected to the US Senate in 1984 and today he remains the junior Senator from the Mountain State.

Entrance to the Physical Education Center
West Virginia Wesleyan College
Taken 10/8/07 in Buckhannon, West Virginia

I gave up on the idea of finding any roots at WVWC and started the return trip to Parkersburg. It was now past 5 pm and I had an almost empty tank. Still I thought I could at least make a stop at the Genealogical Library to see if it would be worth my while to return when I had more time at my disposal.

The staff was very helpful, and I soon had more citations on the Flesher family than I really cared to go through. Of more interest to me was the family of my great-grandmother whose maiden name was Sarah Rebecca McCalley. I knew, or at least thought I knew, that her father’s name was Solomon P. McCalley and that he came from Lewis County, whose seat, Weston, was just a few miles west of the library. The first book I pulled off the shelves was a McCalley family history that listed both Sarah and Solomon and gave me two generations further back plus a lot of juicy gossip about the family.

Captain James McCalley was a Scottish officer in the Royal Navy at the time of the American Revolution. Instead of fighting against the insurgents, he joined them and stayed in America after the war. The sixth of his seven children was Henry who was born in May, 1790. Henry and his wife Sarah Alkire had eleven children: Solomon P. was the eighth, born in 1828. He married Jane Blackburn and they had three children, of which Sarah Rebecca was the second. I had found more family ties.

Remember where I am. West Virginia is considered a “border state” in American history. The state was created in 1863 when the trans-Allegheny counties of Virginia found a way to free themselves, not from the Confederacy but rather from Richmond, Virginia’s capitol. As folk in outlying areas often do, the mountaineers of the western part of Virginia felt that their needs were not being addressed by the state government. Taking advantage of Virginia’s secession, the people of the west in turn seceded from Virginia, forming the state of West Virginia. Sentiment for the Confederacy was high in the hills and hollers of the new state, but not so high as to keep the people tied to the rest of Virginia.

The McCalleys were Virginians. One of Henry’s nephews, Jonathon McCalley Bennett was state auditor in Virginia and his picture and signature appears on the five dollar Virginia Treasury Note issued during the Civil War. Because of his “act of rebellion,” Bennett was branded a traitor and his lands in Lewis County were forfeited. One of Henry’s brothers, James McCalley, Jr., was the attending physician at the birth of the man who would become known as “Stonewall” Jackson.

Solomon, apparently, did not share his family’s love of the South, or at least of the Confederacy, and his father, Henry, disinherited him. Henry did give a tract of land to Solomon’s brother with the provision that Solomon could live on the land, but that it was to be held in trust for Solomon’s children, including presumably, my great-grandmother.

One of the questions I asked the library staff was just what “Central West Virginia” meant. “Lewis County and those counties surrounding it,” I was told. Most of my family comes from Wood, Jackson and Roane Counties, which do not surround Lewis County. Still, the library had records from those counties as well as from several other states. I made use of what I could find in the limited time I had before the library closed for the day.

One question that had always bothered me concerned my great-grandparents on my mother’s side of the family. Family records said that Great-grandpa Stephens was born in Frederick County, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. The same records said that he married Mary Elizabeth Phelps in Wood County in the Ohio Valley. But I had death records showing that their first two children had been born and had died in Clarke County—back in the Shenandoah. It made no sense to me that Great-grandpa would cross the mountains (and the state) to marry a woman, then take her back across the mountains. At the Central West Virginia Genealogical Library I found the record of the marriage—in Wood County. I guess Grandma had that one right. Still I’d love to know the story behind the peripatetic Henry L. Stephens. This is the same man who took his young family to western Missouri only to return to the Ohio Valley within a few years.

I grew up three thousand miles away from all my blood relatives. What I find amazing today is as I drive around the state, I see family names on all sorts of topographical features. This, of course, is always the case. Bass Creek in Montana is named for the Bass family. Haight Drive in Smith River, California, is named for the Haight family. But the difference here is that when I see McKown Creek, as I did yesterday, or Alkire Hill Road, as I did on Monday, I know that the chances are good that the McKown or Alkire for whom these places are named are probably my ancestors. I’m in a constant state of awe.

Then, of course, there’s my contention that there are only fifteen family names in Jackson County and they’re all in my family tree. For the past two days I stayed at Longfork Campground in rural Roane County. As I started comparing names with the staff there, sure enough, we have lots of common names. West Virginia, it really is all relative.

Chew Mail Pouch
Tobacco Barn in the West Virginia Hills
Taken 10/10/07 in Wirt County, West Virginia

And as for that. Back in the early years of this decade, the clothing chain Abercrombie and Fitch came up with the clever idea of putting out a line of t-shirts with new state mottos. I don’t know what happened with their other mottos, but the one they used for West Virginia was “It’s All Relative.” This created quite a stir. The Governor tried to get a boycott of A&F. Nasty letters were posted on bulletin boards and in chat rooms. The t-shirts disappeared from the stores. Everyone I’ve talked to tried to get one of the shirts before A&F pulled them. Some people just don’t have any sense of humor, I guess. Deliver me from Political Correctness.

West Virginia -- It's All Relative

I'm my own grandpa
I'm my own grandpa
It sounds funny I know
But it really is so
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.

--Dwight Latham & Moe Jaffe

The Wheeling Suspension Bridge
(The National Road)
Taken 10/6/07 on Wheeling Island, West Virginia

NOTE PLEASE: All words or phrases underlined in the text below are links to pictures I have posted on www.eyefetch.com. Also, remember that you can double click on any picture below to see it full screen. Feel free to click on the link and view the pictures if you'd like, but you'll have to use your browser's "Back" button to return to the blog.

Well into my second week here in the Mountain State (I refer to Montana as “the Other Mountain State), I am ever more deeply immersed into family ties and genealogy. This may get confusing, and you may feel the need for one of those character lists they used to print in the front of long Russian novels, but hang on. I find all this fascinating, and I’m willing to bet that if you, dear reader, were working on your family tree, you’d be fascinated with what you found too.

I’ve long said that I’m my own fifth cousin twice removed. Part of that is having West Virginia roots. Those hollows (hollers) are deep and twisting, and people didn’t venture very far afield to get married. In my case, my relationship to myself all comes from a man who was born in Germany in 1734. Heinrich Fleischer moved with his family across the Atlantic, settled in the hill country of what was then western Virginia, and changed his name to Henry Flesher. In time he founded a town and a dynasty. The town is Weston, West Virginia, and as for the dynasty, let’s just say that there are still lots of folk named Flesher in these parts (14 listings in the 2007 Parkersburg phone book), and two of Henry’s granddaughters appear in my family tree.

Historic Victorian Wheeling
Taken 10/6/07 in Wheeling, West Virginia

Now let’s talk about the word “cousin.” It’s the most confusing term in English family descriptions. Last night I was in a theatre waiting for a staged reading of The Laramie Project to begin. I was sitting between Sharon, the daughter of my cousin Betty Lee, and Ron, the son of my aunt Ruth. Ron and I are first cousins, being one generation distant from common parents. It turns out that Ron and I are also “ortho-cousins” because our mothers were sisters. Betty Lee, the daughter of my mother’s brother Brady, was also my first cousin (and Ron’s first cousin, for that matter), but we were “cross-cousins” because our parents, while siblings, were brother and sister. Are you confused yet? In introducing Sharon to one of Ron’s friends, I called her “my first cousin once removed.” The friend, grasping the relationship, disagreed. “No, she’s your second cousin.” This morning I decided I was tired of being confused by these terms, so I did a search using Ask.com. “What is a first cousin once removed?” I typed into the search window. And this is what I learned.

The web site I visited drew lots of nice little diagrams designed to show levels of relationship within a family with common ancestors. Essentially it comes down to this: I WAS RIGHT! (This is all about me, remember.) The designation of first, second, third cousin refers to the number of generations BOTH sides are distant from a common ancestor. The number once, twice, three-times removed refers to the number of generations separating you from a common ancestor on only one side. In other words, Ron and I are both one generation away from having common parents. We are first cousins, as I noted above, and Betty Lee, Sharon’s mother was also a first cousin to both of us. Sharon is one generation further away from my grandparents, her great-grandparents, so since the distance is further on only one side, she is my first cousin once removed. Should either Ron or I have a child (unlikely as we are both gay men who have never been married), that child would be equally distant from grandpa and grandma Stephens as is Sharon, and would then be her second cousin. Are you having fun yet?

I certainly am. And I’m learning a lot. Not just about genealogical terms either. In the past ten days I’ve become comfortable driving around a city with a confusing maze of one-way streets, most of which date from horse and buggy days so they’re not really car friendly. I’ve crossed the Ohio River four times, and visited Wheeling to the north and Buckhannon to the east. I’ve learned about “The National Road” and I’ve been to Big Isaac, a town that isn’t even on any of the West Virginia maps I have with me. (Foolishly, I left my West Virginia Atlas in Montana, and I’m not about to buy another one at this point.) I’ve driven Interstates, two lane state highways, one and a half lane roads that are designated “Emergency” routes, and winding country roads where I feared being obliterated by a speeding coal truck. And I’ve driven two different stretches of the “Robert C. Byrd Appalachian Highway System.”

The Jarvisville Road
Taken 10/8/07 in Big Isaac, West Virginia

West Virginians sent Robert C. Byrd to the US Senate in 1958. Every six years he is re-elected. The joke around here is that West Virginians will still be voting for Byrd twenty years after he dies. And why not. There is probably no one more responsible for bringing money into West Virginia than the state’s senior senator. Got a government office you want to get out of the District of Columbia? Byrd has an answer—send it to West Virginia. The Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt is right here in downtown Parkersburg. It struck me that having your name on a blue highway information sign is like having publicly funded campaign advertising. You see the name everywhere you go in West Virginia. The man was first elected to the West Virginia legislature in 1946, at which time he was also serving as a Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan. He now says this was a youthful indiscretion, but he was twenty-nine at the time. Now at age 16 I was fascinated with fascism. That was a youthful indiscretion. By twenty-nine I had learned enough to know better. Still and all, you can’t deny that West Virginia today has a lot of people working whose jobs can be tied directly to funding that Byrd has sent to the state.

One highway that Byrd can’t claim is The National Road. That route through the Allegheny Mountains was first authorized by Congress in 1806, well before Senator Byrd’s time. Construction on the road began in 1811 and by 1818 the route had been completed to Wheeling on the Ohio River. When I left for Wheeling last Saturday, Sharon told me about a bridge that I should photograph. That bridge turned out to be the Wheeling Suspension Bridge, built in 1846, as the connector for The National Road. Today that bridge with its original towers and cables (but with a “new” deck built in 1854) is still in use. For those of you not from this area, the National Road is now known as US Highway 40. It was the first highway in the nation built with federal funds.

After spending a pleasant couple of hours walking through the historic area of Wheeling, I headed back to Roseland Resort for the only weekend of the year when clothing is required. It was family and friends weekend—the only time that women and children are allowed on the grounds. I met up with cousin Ron at his camper trailer, and we talked into the night, taking breaks to watch the Richard Gere/Edward Norton movie Primal Fear and also going down to Friendship Hall to dance a bit. OK, I danced. Ron talked with friends. We also grabbed our cameras (my Nikon, his Canon) and did some night time shooting.

Sunday evening, back in Parkersburg, Sharon and I headed over to Ron’s home where his partner Derwin had prepared a minor miracle in getting some of Ron’s siblings together to meet their crazy Montana cousin and their almost equally crazy local first cousin once removed (you do remember that term, I hope). When Sharon and I walked into the room, my impression was that we were walking into a wake. Sharon’s impression was that the cousins were relatively normal. And I say that with love. For whatever reasons, the Stephens family members rarely get around to visiting each other. I used to say that the only way my Parkersburg relatives learned any family gossip was when they called or wrote my mother in California. Sunday evening was the first time in three years that Ron’s siblings had gotten together—the last time being at another of Derwin’s productions, Ron’s fiftieth birthday. Wake or no, we had a pleasant evening chatting about our lives and our relationships, and enjoying the extravagant desserts Derwin had prepared.

Mount Olive UMC
Formerly the EUB Church
Taken 10/8/07 near Jarvisville, West Virginia

On Monday, even though my horoscope said to kick back and relax, I hit the road again—this time heading for Buckhannon, home of my parents’ Alma Mater West Virginia Wesleyan College (WVWC). Driving east on US 50 (Corridor D of the Robert C. Byrd Appalachian Highway System), I drove across Wood County, Ritchie County, Doddridge County and had just entered Harrison County when I saw a sign for the Jarvisville Road. Turning right off US 50, I found myself on a narrow mountain road that wound its way through the countryside. I took this fork because while my parents were attending WVWC they were also serving a circuit of six rural churches, one of which was in Jarvisville. I don’t think I ever knew the names of all six towns, but I did remember that one. Along the road I passed a large brick structure that was a United Methodist Church, but it had a name I didn’t recognize and it wasn’t actually in Jarvisville. Driving through that unincorporated wide spot in the holler, I saw nothing else that might be a church, but I did catch a glimpse of a faded old sign pointing to the Mount Olive UMC. Up the dirt road we headed, my faithful Volvo and me, until we came out on top of the ridge by a lovely little old white clapboard church. This looked like something my parents would have been part of, so I parked the car, got out and started shooting pictures of the church and attached grave yard. The gate in front of the church wouldn’t open, and as I examined it more closely, trying to figure out why, I saw the letters on the gate “EUB.” Oh darn. This wasn’t my dad’s church after all. In the 1940s, when my dad was serving Jarvisville, this church was part of the United Brethren—cousins to the Methodists, but not yet a real part of the family. Still it was a lovely church, and I’m particularly proud of the picture I uploaded to Eyefetch.

Continuing down the Jarvisville Road, I began to wonder if I’d find my out of these runs and hollers. I was no longer sure that I was even on a road that showed on my map, and I was using blind faith alone to lead me safely onward. Soon I found myself in Big Isaac (unincorporated) which wasn’t on my AAA map, but was on my family history map as it was the location of another of the six churches from Poppa’s college days. Eventually, after several miles of narrow, winding road, I came out on US 33 just west of the town of Weston (you do remember Weston and great-great-great-many times great-grandpappy Henry Flesher, don’t you?). In Weston I came across the largest empty building I’ve ever seen anywhere—one with an historical marker noting that the West Virginia State Hospital was first authorized by the Virginia Legislature in 1858, but construction was interrupted by the War Between the States. Today the building sits abandoned and empty, although I heard that a man has bought it with the idea of renovating it and turning it into a destination casino/resort/hotel. I hope he has lots of money.

The (Former) West Virginia State Hospital
This shows less than 1/3 of the structure
Taken 10/8/07 in Weston, West Virginia

I will write more about Weston in my next blog posting when I will also talk about Buckhannon, WVWC, and the Central West Virginia Genealogical Library. But for now, I’m getting ready to leave for several days of a gay old time visiting Longfork Resort and returning to Roseland with Ron and Derwin.

Those West Virginia Hills

Oh, the West Virginia hills! How majestic and how grand,
With their summits bathed in glory, Like our Prince Immanuel's Land!
Is it any wonder then, That my heart with rapture thrills,
As I stand once more with loved ones On those West Virginia hills?

--Verse One of the West Virginia State Song, Lyrics by Mrs. Ellen King

Those West Virginia Hills
View from the Pool Deck
Taken 9/30/07 at Roseland, West Virginia

In 1944, my parents, both West Virginia natives, left the mountain state so that my dad could attend seminary. While my parents had every intent of returning to their birth state, in 1946, upon graduation from Boston University School of Theology, my dad was lured west to Montana, and that was that. In 1949, I was born in Montana. Although we made several trips back when I was an infant and toddler, the last trip we made as a family was in August 1953. Some of my earliest memories stem from that trip. When my grandmother was hospitalized in October, 1953, Mother returned to help care for her own mother, and spent the next six weeks in Parkersburg, her home town. After Grandma’s death, Mother’s siblings chipped in to upgrade her ticket, trading her train ride for an airplane flight—undoubtedly on a DC-3. As they saw her off, they said “We know we’ll never see you again.” And they never did.

I made my first trip to West Virginia in 1987, for an extended weekend after presenting a paper at a literature conference in Cincinnati. Gary and I returned in 2000 on our way to a conference in Lexington, Kentucky. Until this trip, that was the extent of the time I have spent in West Virginia. But, my roots are here in the West Virginia hills. The stories I grew up with all take place in West Virginia. When I started my genealogy research, I learned just how deep those roots go. In one case back to the late 1600s. Perhaps that explains why as I drove west on WV Highway 88, I felt as if I were back home again—in a place I’ve never lived.

All five of my mother’s siblings died in the town where they were born: Parkersburg. To date, three of my twelve first cousins on Mother’s side have also died in the same town. Most of the cousins still alive live in Parkersburg. The family didn’t move far once established.

My dad was born in the next county south, Jackson County. He lived at various times in Ripley, Ravenswood, and Cottageville where he graduated from high school in a class of twelve. His mother died when he was twelve and his father remarried almost immediately. Eventually Grandpa Spellman and his second wife, Pearl, had two more boys. I have (half) first cousins on that side as well, but I don’t know them. Most of them now live in Florida.

WALTER S. SPELLMAN
My Grandfather's Eldest Brother
Taken 10/1/07 in Jackson County West Virginia

My dad’s stories centered on landscape—the steep hills, narrow roads, and broad waters. Mother’s stories centered on family members. In both cases the stories were about West Virginia, “my home far away”—as John Denver put it. Driving from Wellsburg through Bethany and West Liberty into Wheeling, I saw what my father had been talking about. The hills were steep, the roads narrow and twisting. As I left WV Highway 2 to take Emergency 2 at Moundsville, I doubt that I was able to get above 25 mph and rarely out of second gear.

The directions I had been given so that I could find Roseland, West Virginia’s Best Kept Secret, according to one friend, told me to drive ten miles then to take the right fork and continue for another ten miles. At one point, a school bus I had been following pulled over to let me pass and as I did so, I noticed that what allowed the bus to pull over was a road that took off to the right. For several miles I wondered if I was supposed to have taken the hidden fork, but eventually I found my way to the poshest, best appointed gay resort I’ve ever seen.

Roseland is set on 222 acres of mountain ridge top in the northern West Virginia panhandle. Formerly a large farm, many of the old farm buildings have been restored and refurbished to provide lodging for the guests. There is one house with an institutional kitchen, dining room and living room open to all guests, and bedrooms upstairs for those willing to pay the fee to stay in the house. I opted for the barracks, an attic room in another building with eight twin beds and a shared bath. There are hundreds of tent sites and places to park your RV or camping trailer, and more individual cabins than I could count. Friendship Hall has a store, a bar, and a rec room/dance hall with fireplace, large screen tv, and pool table all on the ground floor, and sinks, showers and toilet facilities for campers downstairs. There are over ten miles of hiking trails and flowers planted in every available space. Most of the flower beds had signs asking the guests not to pee on the flowers. Well, for most of the season there are just men on the grounds.

This particular weekend was “Country-Western Weekend,” and I made good use of the clothing I’d brought along for line dancing in Portland. Friday night I danced the night away, closing the bar for the first time in I don’t know how many years. Saturday night one of the “seasonal” guests gave a two-hour line dance class, which was followed by the big dance of the weekend. I’d like to say that I danced my booty off, but in fact, by the end of the class my legs were hurting so much that I took a nap then spent the rest of the evening in the hot tub.

Calvary United Methodist Church
Formerly the Ripley United Brethren Church
Many generations of Spellmans and Spellman relatives worshiped in this church
Taken 10/1/07 in Ripley, West Virginia

Between lounging in the hot tub and laying out on the deck chairs by the pool, I was able to get past most of the ache in my lower limbs—but not all of it. I met many men with whom I had great conversations, and enjoyed the meals that were part of the price of my room. In fact, Saturday night is pot-luck night at Roseland, and I really didn’t think the ramen noodles I had in the car would be an acceptable covered dish. But, as anyone with any gay friends knows, you’ll never go hungry around a group of gay men, and the pot luck dinner had more delicious food than a group twice our size would have needed. It never ceases to amaze me what these magic fairies can whip up in their tents and campers—but then my first partner Steve said that I was the only person he knew who took a soufflé dish along on a camping trip. What? Don’t you all do that?

Sunday dawned bright and clear and even though I knew that I would have to leave, I decided to get as much out of the experience as I could. Accordingly I took my book to the pool and spent most of the day sunning and reading. Around four I finally got in the car and began the long trek back down the mountain, meeting West Virginia Highway 2 near the town of Proctor.

The one thing that did not happen while at Roseland was a massage. There is a massage therapist who spends most weekends at the resort, offering his services to the guests, but it was my luck that the one weekend I’m in residence, the masseur is not. I asked one of my hot-tub companions if he thought I’d be able to find a gay masseur in Parkersburg, and he told me that the fellow normally at Roseland was from the Parkersburg area. My friend thought the masseur was named Ron Stephens, but I figured that he was mistaken.

My mother’s maiden name is Stephens. Her baby sister married a man named Stephens—one way to get out of having to change your name. Aunt Ruth is the only one of my uncles and aunts to have more than two children. She had eight. One was named Ron. I have his fourth grade school picture in my family album in Missoula. But neither Ron, nor Stephens, are terribly uncommon names. What were the chances that I was related to this guy? I picked up his card at the front desk as I was leaving the resort, with the idea that I would call for an appointment and a genealogy check once I got to Parkersburg, seventy miles down river from Proctor.

Those West Virginia Hills, Part II
The Spellman family farm
Taken 10/1/07 in Jackson County, West Virginia

West Virginia Highway 2 follows the Ohio River from Chester in the extreme north of the state to Kenova, the point where the Ohio turns westward and the states of Kentucky--KEN, Ohio—O, and West Virginia—VA, hence Kenova, all come together. I followed WV Highway 2 from Proctor to Parkersburg, passing through New Martinsville, Paden City (where I passed by Paden Place), Sistersville, Friendly (home of the Friendly Christian Church and other such institutions), St. Marys, Willow Island and Waverly. Eventually I arrived in Parkersburg, and I drove through town on WV Highway 68 knowing that I would have to cross the city to reach my cousin Sharon who lives just by the sign announcing “Lubeck: Unincorporated.” As I drove by Sharon’s drive way, I told myself “She lives up there.” I kept driving. As I passed through the town of Lubeck, my cell phone rang. It was Vikki, one of the daughters of my dad’s half-brother, Ralph. “Where are you?” she asked. “Lost in Lubeck” I replied. Eventually I turned around and drove back turning into Sharon’s driveway on the second go-round.

On Monday, Sharon and I drove to Ravenswood to meet Vikki, and Vikki and her husband Mike drove us all over Jackson County, starting with the family cemetery. From there we drove into Ripley, the county seat, where I found the former Ripley United Brethren Church—the church my grandparents, great-grandparents, and I don’t know how many generations back attended. The United Brethren ceased to be a denomination in 1946 when they merged with the Evangelical Association, and the “new” denomination, The Evangelical United Brethren (EUB) were absorbed into the Methodist Church in 1969 becoming the United Methodist Church. I was surprised to find such a large building for what I had always thought of as a rural church, but West Virginia is the land of churches—lots and lots of churches and most of them quite large, at least in the western part of the state.

The Little Kanawha at Sunset
The Little Kanawha flows into the Ohio at Parkersburg
Taken 10/2/07 in Parkersburg, West Virginia

On Tuesday I had a session with massage therapist and first cousin Ron Stephens, and we spent twice as much time catching up on family news as we did at the massage table. That said, I did have a massage that lasted at least ninety minutes. It was one of the best I’ve had, but we continued catching up throughout the entire experience.

I first met Sharon, the grand-daughter of my mother’s brother Brady, when I was in college and her grandmother brought her west as a High School graduation present. Sharon and I were immediately aware of a connection, and I have often since referred to her as the sister I never had. Up until now she is the one person I would come to West Virginia to visit, the only one of my blood relatives I felt close to.

Spending five hours with Ron, I had the same feeling. This is a man I have known all my life, even if we only met on Tuesday, October 2^nd, 2007, with me approaching 58 and Ron just turned 53. I’m still staying at Sharon’s home, introducing her to the movie Sordid Lives (which I borrowed from Ron), and continuing to catch up on our lives. I will be spending more time with Ron and his partner Derwin as well. I do have family. I have come home.