Save the Don West Homeplace: An Editorial

Don West (1906–1992), the featured author of our Fall 200 issue, was not only an important poet, essayist, educator, and activist for labor and civil rights but also a huge promoter of mountain music and mountain culture. His mother and daughter were both important preservers of traditional mountain music. His homeplace, at the foot of Burnt Mountain along Turkey Creek in the Cartecay River Valley in Gilmer County, Georgia, is now owned by a Florida developer, but a concerted effort to preserve it has been initiated.

Professor Donald Davis, who recently retired from a distinguished career at nearby Dalton State University, became interested in finding the Don West homeplace last year. Rex Jones of East Side Cycle on the Burnt Mountain Road had noticed, while he was hunting, that there was a place on Turkey Creek where daffodils always bloomed in the spring, indicating an old homeplace. Serendipitously, this issue includes a poem by David Hightower, "Invisible House," on page 112 that celebrates this spring phenomenon. Davis was able to confirm, by checking old deeds in the courthouse, that the property that Rex Jones noticed is indeed the West homeplace. Later he found Don's name carved in a Beech tree on the property. Our Appalachian Heritage Facebook page and website have pictures of Helen Lewis, whose commencement speech is reprinted on page 52 of this magazine, reading Don West's poetry at the site, now accessible only by taking a four-wheel drive vehicle up old logging roads and then walking through the woods with no path.

If you Google, "save the West homeplace," you will have an opportunity to read and sign a petition. It asks that officials in Gilmer County and the State of Georgia acquire and preserve the West homeplace.

As the petition states, Don West's mother, Lillie Mulkie West, recorded recollections of the family's Burnt Mountain homestead that are currently housed in the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State University and document the rich cultural heritage of the Cartecay community. The oral history recordings provide a revealing window into life in Gilmer County during the first two decades of the twentieth-century, including farming practices, folklore, and musical traditions. Another seven hours of recordings, which feature Lillie West singing traditional Appalachian ballads, are housed at the University of Georgia's Russell Library in Athens, Georgia. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, these recordings were conducted by Don West's daughter Hedy West, the noted American folksinger who recorded several albums and wrote such popular songs as "500 Miles." Because of their roots in the folk tradition, Hedy West, along with Jean Ritchie, gave legitimacy to the folk music revival of the 1960s. Don West's life's work is also well documented in two award-winning books: A Hard Journey: The Life of Don West, by Jim Lorence, and No Lonesome Road: The Prose and Poetry of Don West, edited by Jeff Biggers and George Brosi.

There are many good reasons to preserve the West homeplace. It can honor the contributions of a family that actively promoted and preserved the Southern Appalachian way of life. It can provide a peaceful public green-space for relaxation and quiet recreation. It has the potential, eventually, for an educational center to be built to acquaint people with the natural, historical, cultural, and literary heritage of the area. It can be used as a place for scholars and citizens to do research. It can augment the economic development that has already occurred in this watershed as a result of the local apple raising and merchandising businesses.

Similar literary sites have been and are being developed creatively, while others languish or have been obliterated. Jesse Stuart, arguably Kentucky's most popular 20^th-century author, donated his property before he died, and it is now a nature preserve. After the death of his daughter, who now lives in his house, a part of the property will be developed as a historic site. John Fox, Jr., Thomas Wolfe, Janice Holt Giles, Pearl Buck, and Byron Herbert Reece are among those whose properties have been...