Go South: To West Virginia!
Written for and read at the 2010 annual dinner of the Associated Businesses of East Fairmont as part of my introduction of Governor Joe Manchin, who had just been elected to the US Senate
“Go South, young(ish) man.”
Those were the words echoing in my head in 2006, when my wife Tonya and I were unexpectedly given the chance to purchase three acres just outside the city limits of a place called Fairmont, West Virginia.
Looking back, what is most surprising is not that we made this life-changing move, but how quickly we said “Yes!” to it. Our lives were very full at the time, with two young children, Tonya’s work in Human Services, and my growing career in the dramatic and literary arts as a teaching-artist, director, and playwright. We had recently sold our interest in the acting school we had co-founded in New Jersey and were concentrating on developing our social justice theatre company. We lived close to family and old friends and knew the highways and by-ways of the Garden State like our own reflections.
But it had never felt like home.
For Tonya, this made sense, as she had not been there long, and was never crazy about the hustle and bustle, population density, and ultra-competitiveness of the Tri-State area. For me, though, it had been my “landing pad” for the vast majority of my life. Although I attended college near Philly and had lived through the bleak winters of southern Maine and the scorching summers of the Arizona desert, I had always gone back to the low-waved waters of the Jersey shore.
So here it was, this chance to slow down the pace of our lives, to get a bit of rest and self-reflection in a place known for its scenery and country-road rurality.
I was high strung and always on edge—working extremely long hours and often on the road, either teaching or touring as an actor, shouting myself hoarse above the din of our competitors and high-dollar political and economic interests, and it was time for a change.
“Are you nuts?!” our friends and family asked. “West Virginia? Can you get Internet there? You know you’re gonna stick out, right? Can’t you hear the banjos playing? They’ll never accept you… You’re gonna hate it there.”
But it really was, in all honesty, love at first sight.
It was no small comfort when Tonya’s father, a long-time genealogist, called to say that their ancestors had settled centuries ago in Lewis and Preston counties and, unbelievably, at Decker’s Creek—about 10 minutes from where we’d bought the land.
In an odd sorta sense, Tonya was going home.
First order of business was securing the future of the theatre company. The social justice work we were doing was too important to let go because we needed to slow down some. Our business partner, still running the acting school, offered to let us use the rehearsal space free of charge, and two of our mentees stepped up to assume the managing and directing roles we were vacating.
“You’re really gonna do this?” people asked. “What are you doing to your kids’ futures? Do you know what the schools are like down there? At least you still have your freelance editing business… Unemployment must be through the roof…”
They were right about one thing—the editing and proofreading work I had been doing the last decade for an international journal publisher was our ticket to a quiet, rural existence in the “holler” where we’d built our house.
Year One was all about learning the lay of the land—physically, psychologically, and spiritually. Our neighbors complained to one another that “those Jersey people” drove too fast up and down the three-quarters-of-a-mile of dirt and gravel that led to and from our place (and in truth, I’m quite sure we did). Folks kept asking me when I was gonna cut my hair and take out my earrings, and our 13-year-old son spent more time talking to his friends in Jersey than the kids he saw every day at school. He felt unchallenged and exposed.
“No one here gets me,” he would say on his way to his room.
In the mean time, we were cultivating our land and our daughter was riding horses not far from the house—and often-times to the house via a trail that came down through our back woods. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Jolie’s head right next to a horse’s through our living room window.
That was a sight to see.
It wasn’t all easy—you don’t think about getting to and from your three acres of Heaven in the middle of winter when you buy it the previous summer. But there we were. The first thing to go was Tonya’s beloved Beetle. She drove it twice. Once to the house, where it sat for three months, and once to the dealer, where we traded it in for a four-wheel drive with a V8 engine, off-road tires (with Kevlar in the side-walls!), and computerized traction control.
Yes indeed. After getting our Escape towed out of the ditch for the third time, I was a “truck guy.”
“What is happening to you, man?” my friends asked after receiving an excited email—complete with pictures—of my new tires. “We have got to get you out of that place and back home to sanity…”
But here’s the thing. One year in, I was home. More so than any place I had ever lived before.
Over time we began to venture out. Mostly to Morgantown, where, due to a geographical border anomaly, our kids went to school and we paid our taxes. It was early 2009, right at the time my first novel was published, that Tonya suggested we get my publicity shots done by a photographer she had found in Fairmont.
“It’s time we get to know the place where we live,” she said with the instinctual surety for which I love her.
The time since rages like a river of meetings, planning, networking, and investment—economically, psychologically, and spiritually. Some days it’s hard to pin down just how this all happened… it has become, in the words of Joseph Campbell, our own “personal myth.” New Mystics Theatre Company has become New Mystics Arts, and our North Company, prospering with 35 members and touring five of my plays, is now complemented by our fledgling South Company. As I write this, the Center for Arts and Education in Southside Fairmont is mere days from its Grand Opening, and we are doing everything within our relatively meager means to help revitalize and promote the city we have grown to so greatly love.
This never could have happened to us outside of Fairmont, West Virginia. It takes the perfect set of conditions to create this kind of alchemical, all-encompassing change in a person, a family, and a vision of using the arts to educate, communicate, and bring people together. Nearly every day for 18 months we have met extraordinary folks in all walks of life—artists, educators, business-people, entrepreneurs, and true innovators. People with families, full-time jobs, and great responsibility who spend all their “spare” time investing in their community. They are inspiring and have become our extended family.
I think my natural optimism might lead me to say it’s all been a breeze, but nothing worthwhile ever is—nor should it be. There are prejudices North and South still to overcome; prejudices and misperceptions about Fairmont and Marion County to debunk and overcome; a past history of false-starts and “we’ve heard this all before” to fight past and overcome.
Create Marion is a means to those ends. Our meetings, early on in the process, are lively and empowering. It’s a talented, diverse group of Believers. They don’t care what Exit you live off of, or who your “connections” are. They care about what you can bring to the table personally and professionally. They care about Talent. They care about Enthusiasm and Follow-through. They care about Integrity.
Most of all, they care deeply about their city, county, and state.
For me, I have finally found a home. Three acres that, through hard work, patience, and time and dollars invested, have yielded an abundance of fresh food, peaceful evenings, and energizing days. Family and friends who come to stay with us don’t want to leave. They “get it” now. And our son Jeremy has learned how to better be himself, and so people finally “get” him.
I still wake up before dawn (I started this story at 4 am) and go to bed late, but the reasons for doing so have never been clearer, my sense of purpose never so strong.
If four former Jerseyans can learn to grown grass in three acres of rock and clay, just imagine what the Create communities can do for themselves and their state armed with the knowledge of the New Economy and the unwavering belief that West Virginia is not only physically beautiful but economically, educationally, and artistically bountiful as well.
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