Dr. Ernest J. Benko

Dr. Ernest J. Benko, Retired, Now Works With ARC TV, Doctor in Business Administration, Norton-Wise County, Virginia:

"I went to military school for seven years. I’ve got dyslexia, I see everything backwards and that’s the reason they sent me to military school. Then I came back and went to Clinch Valley College, University of Virginia at Wise, Union College and Cumberland College and ETSU and King University, worked in the coal mines, worked for Clinchfield Coal Company, had my own coal mines mining property, worked for Barge Waggoner Summer and Cannon, largest engineering company in the state of Tennessee. I was Vice-President of the Strip Division of Clinchfield. Clinchfield at the time employed over three thousand people and mined over eighteen million tons of coal, about thirty years ago. Then I worked for Gulf Oil, I was an expert in explosives for Gulf Oil. I traveled all over the mid-south. 

People had to work together to survive in the mines. It didn’t make any difference what color you were, or what nationality you were. It doesn’t make any difference in the mines; you are all brothers under that ground if you want to survive.

Pocahontas was the first major mine in this end of Virginia that was in the 1880’s. The first major railroad went to Pocahontas in 1881, is my understanding. They had something like 27 different churches in Pocahontas because they would get people right off the boat and bring them in to work in the mines. Bringing all those nationalities together has cemented the culture as much as anything. 

But also, a lot of people here are real suspicious. They want to look back to make sure who they are talking to because, for lack of a better term, there’s been a whole lot of carpet baggers here. They come in and they take what we have, our strength, our energy. 

In this general area, the Central Appalachian Mountains, we have over two hundred idiosyncrasies that are found no place else in the world except right here. We’ve got more different kind of vegetation here than any place else in the world, with the possible exception of Amazon River Basin. 

Our history here goes back to the 1500s and then Daniel Boone lived in the next county over. Colonel Russell and Daniel Boone were going to have the first settlement in Kentucky and Daniel Boone’s son, James, was killed along with Colonel Russell’ son, Henry. Colonel Russell’s son’s mother was Patrick Henry’s sister. And you go on and on, on what a significant impact people coming through here have had. And of course Daniel Boone led the first, mainly, group of people through the Cumberland Gap 240 years ago. 

But also, we have two of the oldest rivers in the world in our backyard here. The oldest river is the Nile, the second is the New River, and the third, as far as we know is the Clinch River. It’s got over 100 kinds of fish in it, and something like 47 different kinds of shellfish. 

One side of the Clinch is 400 million years old, that’s the limestone. The other side, where it is coal, is 300 million years old. You lost 100 million years in that river. Right over here going to Jenkins that’s one of the biggest faults that you can see anywhere this side of the Mississippi. You can go through there on the weekends, particularly during the school year and find people looking all over at that fault going through there. That’s the upper thrust. And then the coal, there is so many different seams that we have, depending on what community you’re in, they have different names for the same seam, basically. But down in Appalachia, they got the Kelly and Imboden seam and it’s at the top of the mountain. In Jenkins it is way below the ground. But that is the result of the fault.

Music is vitally important to us and it depends on [the] operational definition of what one calls mountain music, bluegrass, etc. Of course the Birthplace of Country Music is Bristol, and most the people that they had over at the Bristol Sessions are from this general area. Fortunately, we still have the Carter Fold going strong. 

Another thing that is kinda interesting is most of the people that died at the Alamo were from this area and there [are] some Stanley’s in Texas, and they feel like they are certain that they are related to Ralph. I think the Tex-Mex music actually is kind of a division of our people from here, because our people took our music from here and then they mixed it down there. 

Sam Houston is a Virginian. There is a Wise County, Texas too, named after our Governor, Wise, because he supported Texas. Sam Houston, he’s a Virginian. He was from Virginia, he went to Tennessee and went through a messy divorce or separation or something, and said the hell with Tennessee, and then went on to Texas, and he was an emperor down there for a while and then he was the first Governor, and he was a good old Virginia boy. 

John Sevier was one of the leaders at Sycamore Shoals, Elizabethton, Tennessee, and the first real victory of the Revolutionary War was people from this area. They met at the muster ground in Abingdon, [Virginia] went on to Sycamore Shoals down in Tennessee, and then defeated the British in King’s Mountain. Then he [Sevier] was the first and only Governor, [of the] State of Franklin and then he was the first Governor of Tennessee. 

We’re developing ghost towns through the Appalachia Mountains. The Federal Government, particularly the EPA, is putting all these people out of work and shutting down the mining industry. And all they need to do is get like Virginia Tech or University of Kentucky or University of West Virginia and put some money in research on how to make it cleaner. People say, ‘oh well, we can’t that, we can’t do this.’ Well, if you don’t do it, you can’t do it that’s for sure. 

The Germans ran WWII on petroleum made from coal, and that’s over 70 years ago. We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t get our act together to make clean coal? And furthermore, just like the power plant they put over at St. Paul, they’re going to have approximately two million tons of ash. They are not real sure what to do with it, but you can take that ash and mix it with certain chemicals, salt and other chemicals, put electrodes in that, get the heavy metals out and you can almost use it for any building material. Then you can also sell the heavy metals. We’ve got everything to work with, its just getting people that are in the politics off their butt to do something."

Rebecca Brock

Rebecca Brock. Chiropractic Office Manager; Evarts, Kentucky:

“I was born in Harlan. I grew up in a little community called Kildav. When I grew up everybody knew everybody; we got to ride our bikes till dark. When mamaw came out on the porch and hollered your name and you heard it you knew you had to get home. You had neighbors that watched you; you knew to behave ‘cause word got back. I liked to climb trees, I liked to play house, play school. 

I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I think that the mountain people are full of heritage and you can’t find that everywhere else. We’re more close knit; everybody knows everybody. I think we’re a resourceful type of people. We might not have nothing to eat but we know how to grow it; we know how to hunt it. Appalachian people are resourceful. The stereotypes of Appalachian people, I guess there is a certain few of us that are like that and I believe that could come out in all of us in one point in time. Why does the media do anything they do? I guess just to make one person look bad to offset somebody else. Money has everything to do with it. Oh, yeah. “Dumb hillbillies ain’t too smart and can’t talk right.” That we are not all dumb, inbred hicks from a holler. We’re educated, we’re down to earth, we’re very family oriented. I think that’s what I’d tell them. I consider myself a hillbilly. I was raised in the hills. When you go away from here everybody’s like, “Wow, you’ve got an accent”. Yeah, I was raised in a holler, in Harlan, so yeah, I’m a hillbilly.

Apple-at-cha. It’s the way I’ve always said it. It don’t really bother me ‘cause I talk the way I wanna talk and they talk the way they wanna talk. I don’t like putting other people down for the way they talk. I really don’t care what they think about the way I talk either. 

By no means is it easy (in the mountains). You know, when you’re growing up you have to work for what you want. If you want that bike or whatever you gotta go out there and work. That’s what I had to do. It never was just handed to you. I think it makes you a stronger as a person as you grow older ‘cause you know that to get what you want you’ve got to work for it. 

The hardest time I had in my life was three years ago on January 24th my father passed away; he had stage four lung cancer. That was a very hard time. My dad worked in the coal mines off and on when I was little. He held down several jobs; he was a mechanic. What really kept him from holding down a job and really providing was he was an alcoholic. It was hard for him to hold down a job. He wasn’t an abusive alcoholic by any means. Me and my dad were best friends. He watched cartoons with me, we rode dirt bikes. I think he always wanted to kill me ‘cause he’d put me on something and he’d say, “Hey Bec, do a wheelie!” “Okay dad, I got this!” And I would go flippin’ backward or he’d put me on a go cart and say, “Go ahead and drive it!” You’d drive and the steering wheel would come off bout ready to go into the creek. He got me into some trouble but he was always there to bail me out. He was 49 when he passed; it was very early. 

Having my kids. My daughter Kytalynn, she is eight now. She is sassy; she’s my sparkle. She really is, she’s my sparkle. She’s a big helper, she helps me take care of my son, Gideon, who is one. She does pageants. I always love watching her go onstage. She just lights it up. I try to teach Kytalynn especially, no matter if you are a girl or not, if you want to do something, by all means go do it. Don’t let nobody tell you that you can’t, because we can. She see’s me as far as working a job, taking care of the house and kids and still being able to do all of it. 

We like to competition barbeque. I think it’s fun to cook. I approach competition as just kinda cooking for my friends. I put it out there whenever we’re cooking, I’m like hey, just cooking for our buddies in the back yard. It’s definitely a lot of stress. We prepare for a week to get ready for a competition. Monday we’re prepping our meats. I work only two days a week, but I work Tuesday and Thursday, on them two days you know I’m picking up what we’re needing whether we’re needing like butter or whatever. Wednesday we’re making our injections and rubs. You don’t just stop that. You still got the house, you still got to cook dinner, you still gotta mow grass. You still got all that to do around everything. Sometimes I feel I’m about paper thin. When we (get to a competition) I kinda relax. My goal is to have fun cause if it’s not fun I don’t want to do it. I always tell Jerry that, “Let’s have fun, let’s go enjoy us being together, being able to see people and talk to people and just enjoy it.” 

I love it. I’m very proud of him. I love being a coal miner’s wife. Every night when he goes (to work) I don’t like saying “bye”. I say, “See you tomorrow.” It’s never “bye”. See, you just don’t know when they’re gonna come back. It’s always hug and kisses and, “How was your night?” The bodily injury? He’s already had one back surgery so bodily injury is one thing that always that weighs; just wondering, it’s not if he’s gonna get hurt but when is he gonna get hurt. The way I always look at it is when they sign on for a job as a coal miner they know what they’re getting into. They know it. They ain’t going in there like, “Oh crap! I didn’t know we was gonna do this.” Just like somebody in the military that goes over to Iraq be like, “Oh crap! I didn’t know you was gonna shoot back at me.” You knew what you were getting into. 

(Coal mines closing) It’s hitting Harlan pretty hard right now. I always say if they close down the last couple of mines we got you might as well go ahead and turn Harlan into a lake. That’s all it’s gonna be good for. There’s nothing unless they come up with some kinda industrial park or something then Harlan ain’t gonna be nothing. It’s just gonna be a memory. Cumberland, Kentucky is way worse. You go up there and the stores are all empty, everything looks abandoned. You can sit back and picture how it could be in it’s heyday. Same way with the main street of Evarts, they’ve had to consolidate the schools because there’s not enough kids to go to school, because there’s not enough jobs to sustain families so everybody is having to move. That’s where we went to school, that’s where we graduated. It’s so sad ‘cause we live half a mile above the high school. We go by it everyday and just like, “Dang, I can’t believe that place is closed down.”

Jody Hall

Jody Hall, School teacher; Lives between Langley and Wayland, Kentucky:

“I live in Eastern Kentucky, between Langley and Wayland, Kentucky. Been a resident there probably the last four years. I was born and raised in Wheelwright, Kentucky. Wheelwright was the first to have an Olympic sized swimming pool in the state. (That was) when Inland Steel was still a coal company there in Wheelwright.

I’ve lived around the state and without a doubt in my mind it’s [the mountains] the best place you could ever raise a child. Family values goes deeper than family. Your community is your family and to raise a child in that atmosphere is irreplaceable. 

Family makes the culture different. You know, people are raised to respect their family, take up for their family, and I believe it’s an understanding that other families are gonna do that as well. It’s kind of a love, love relationship there. 

Hillbilly? I love it, call me hillbilly all day! It’s something I’m proud of. It’s our heritage. If you’re educated about what a hillbilly is it shouldn’t offend you. So yeah, I mean, I’m cool with that.

I think it is ignorant (stereotyping) to what we really are. What we’re portrayed as on mainstream media, even movies, most of the time is 99% wrong. You know, come and check us out and see what it’s about and then judge. It’s about living your own life and letting others live theirs. You know, whatever you want to do, you do. If it don’t bleed over on me, I don’t care. That’s like all the political stuff that’s going on now, whether it be the rebel flag or gay marriage or whatever, I’m a devout Christian, but I’m not the one to judge. You know, we’ve got one man that’s gonna do that, no need for me to.

I teach high school social studies at South Floyd High School for 10 years. Sadly, students don’t have an appreciation for the Appalachian culture. The culture that this area has come up with is what you see on TV now. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Eric C Conn social security scandal that is just absolutely a black eye for this region. Being in school systems I see people, or children being raised to follow in the footsteps of parents who have been lifelong recipients of state aid. That’s what they know, that’s what they’re raised with, you know it becomes the thing to do. Where I was raised education was put on the top shelf. My old man wanted me to have a good education and to be able to provide for myself and that’s what happened. But I was lucky to have the parents that I do have. 

I lived in Louisville for six years and Corbin for two years. I left [the mountains] once and don’t ever plan on leaving again. I’ve got a wife who also teaches school, I’ve got a two-year-old son and I would love to raise him where I was raised. 

I guess, you know, probably the saddest thing that I can see right now is the kids that I teach in school that are living in the communities that I was raised in, the difference in that community now. It is not as prideful, it is not as, I don’t wanna say booming cause where I was at was not a booming city by no means when I was growing up but we did have the bare essentials. You’ve got a Dollar Store, a grocery store, we had the swimming pool and a movie theatre, you know, enough to make it. But the kids don’t have it anymore. They don’t have a lot to be proud of. But at the same time, they’re not proud of what they got.”

Sharman Chapman-Crane

Sharman Chapman-Crane, Artist, Eolia, Kentucky (Originally From Wooster, Ohio):

“I was born in Wooster, Ohio. Wooster, Ohio, is in the northeast part of the state, and it has always been known as one of the first to recover from a recession or a depression, and one of the last to be affected negatively by a recession or depression. It was always really well balanced between agriculture and manufacturing, and that was not the case here. 

In my home county, there were three different colleges. That’s Wayne County, Ohio, and, so there was lots of educational opportunities close to home, and it was very important to people. Probably there were over three hundred people in my graduating class, and at least ninety percent of them went on to higher education after graduating.

People [here in Appalachia] just haven’t had the options that I took for granted and grew up with economically, educationally, job variety. And I left Wayne County in ’84, and I graduated in ’70. The longest I was ever without work was a week, and that was pretty much by choice. I needed a break. 

I met Jeff [Husband and Kentucky Artist Jeff Chapman-Crane] through a Presbyterian event that was held at the College of Wooster, in my hometown. It was a weeklong event. We were in a class together, and he was twenty-nine and I was thirty-one. We just knew what we wanted in life, and what we didn’t want by that point. I knew I didn’t want to stay up in Wooster anymore, where I had my B.S. in Business Management and Accounting, and I was director of internal accounting for two nursing homes, and office manager. 

It wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, but it gave me a lot of inner confidence as far as, if I came to some place where I didn’t know anybody, and I didn’t have the job security and availability that I had up there. That wasn’t a stress on the relationship. I knew. I made the decision to move here, because he was here, but I knew in myself that I could do this. 

I think a lot of times, when we make those life changing decisions, and we’re young we’re just not totally aware of all the ramifications. I never wanted to be in the position where I would blame him for bringing me to this place. And that turned out to be real important, because five months after we got married, the apartment building we were living in burned down, and furniture and clothes, and everything I had accumulated up to that point. Writing I had done. Artwork I had done. Some furniture that I had designed, and had built was gone, made real good fire fodder, you know. So it was just real important that I have that, that I did it for me.

The difficult thing was I had been to the mountains, to Morris Fork, in Breathitt County, as a high school student through my church youth group. I had had a very romanticized view [of Appalachia], plus I had read the book ‘Christy,’ by Katherine Marshall, and my experience in Morris Fork reinforced that, and the people I met, in large part, had had enough of northerners by that time, and were very conservative about being accepting and welcoming, and that was difficult, because I left my family, my people, my culture, the job I’d had. 

My mom felt like I’d given up my education. Just things like that, so that was difficult, but Jeff’s family, they just live a couple of hours away in the Kingsport area, and they embraced this Yankee. I mean, I did meet people that accepted me, you know. I love the people, and I love the culture. 

I’m unable to embrace the devastation left by coal mining, but that doesn’t mean that I love the people any less, or respect them any less. We all have to make a living. We have to support our families, and we do the best with the options we’re given. And what I want is a better future not just for my child, but a better future for their children, and their grandchildren. I want them to have more options that are healthy, and sustainable, and that kind of thing. I want them to have clean water, clean air, and better health. Better education and opportunities. 

It seemed like there were two words they had the hardest time understanding me, and that was when Jeff and I were dating. He didn’t have a phone, so I would have to call the pay phone at the gas station across the street from his apartment building, and I would tell them I wanted to talk to Jeff Crane, and they could not understand Crane. That was difficult for a while, because they’d hang up. I’d call back in awhile, in five minutes after they had gone and brought him. So I’d say, ‘The real, tall artist with the beard, and wears a camera around town.’ 

And the other thing they couldn’t understand me [saying] was ice. When I’d want ice in my drink. They couldn’t get, they didn’t get what I was saying. So those were the two main things. 

The most interesting story that happened though, I worked with non-profits that did advocacy and helped people, and there was a mountain woman in our community that had talked to the Sisters of Charity, in Jenkins, that had come to work here from the country of India. I took this woman over to Jenkins to get a box of food. We were in line, and we got to the door, and they said, ‘Oh, this door is for clothing. If you want food, you have to go around to the other door.’

You had to go around the house, and go into another door, and they let us in and told us to have a seat. The mountain woman that was with me noticed that they had this real lacy veil separating a room where we were seated, and she said how pretty it was, and she noticed that there was a little font on the, she didn’t know what to call it, on the wall beside it. And it had some liquid in it, and the sisters would dip their fingers in it, and cross themselves, and genuflect. Of course, she didn’t know any of those terms, or what was going on. 

The Indian woman had come back at that point, and she says, ‘What is she saying?’ So I said, ‘Oh, she was commenting on how pretty that curtain is.’ And she says, ‘Well, would you like to go in there?’ Well, it was their chapel, and in the Catholic Church they have a decorative box that they call the tabernacle, and they had another piece of lace over it. And the mountain woman asked me, or asked in general what is in there, or what is that for? 

And the Sister said, ‘Jesus is in there.’ At this point, I lost all ability to translate, and I was so relieved that they both were speaking English. We all three were speaking English, but one was speaking mountain English, I was speaking maybe more mainstream, and this woman from India was speaking pretty broken English. I was just at a total loss, because I had not a clue how I would explain to a mountain woman what was meant by, ‘Jesus is in there.’ I thought if I were even to attempt [it] it would be so misunderstood, and I could just imagine how this would go out in the community. 

So that’s the funniest story I have about dialect, and trying to understand, and on top of that I mean, here is the mountain woman with indigenous religion, religious understanding, Christian understanding. I’m Presbyterian by birth and raising, and then this is a Catholic faith, and just trying to, yeah, it was pretty wild. (Laughs)

People know their stories. They knew who they are, and where they’ve come from, and I think in large part it’s because they didn’t get the TV as early as some parts of the country. Where I grew up, we were left to our own devices with the TV, and if we tried asking questions even, ‘Oh, I don’t remember,’ or ‘I don’t have time.’ Here, even though we still have TV here, they’re better at explaining; they’re just better at telling their stories, and sharing their stories. My family didn’t do that, and the little bit I know, I had to dig for. 

My dad’s parents were from Ohio County, Kentucky, actually, but they grew up going to a one-room schoolhouse. My grandfather was a coal miner for three days, and couldn’t stand being underground, and so they left Ohio County, Kentucky, and they moved to Rutland, Iowa, and my dad’s the oldest of eight, and that’s where they had all eight of their children. Then when my dad was in his early twenties, he and a younger brother came to Wayne County, Ohio, and that’s where they ended up staying. 

[The pronunciation of Appalachia] I had been raised Ap-pa-la-sha, but I grew up in Wooster, and Jeff knew it as Wooster pronounced Wuster with a long U, so we agreed, since we were interested in each other, and had much motivation, I immediately said, ‘It’s Appalachia,’ and he said, ‘All right, it’s Wooster.’ So we sorted that out right away.

My heart is much more Appalachian, than Yankee. I’ve been here thirty-one years, and I have come to such an appreciation, and our son is Appalachian. But people will ask him where he’s from, because both his mom and dad speak, I don’t know what you want to call it, but we don’t speak mountain. I guess I’ll say it that way, but I mean, I don’t know if any of us can really disclaim where we’ve come from. 

But interestingly enough, I have family and cousins from Detroit, Michigan, who say I’m from the south, and have said that before ever I had lived in Kentucky. So they said that for the first thirty years of my life, that I was a southerner. So that, in part, too, defines you. 

I can’t disclaim being a Yankee, and sometimes that’s great, and sometimes that’s cause for apology.”