“The greatest need of the mountains is for contact with the right people.”
—Katherine Pettit
I have been directly associated with Pine Mountain Settlement School for over fifty years, first as a doctoral student studying the school as an example of the social settlement movement in a rural setting, then as a member of the now defunct Advisory Council, and for the past thirty-eight years as a Trustee. From the first time I set foot on campus until my most recent visit earlier this summer, I have never failed to be touched by the magic of the place, expressed in 1917 by William A. Bradley: "Where else could you find such a school with the bloom of beauty on everything—in every detail…You have a spirit of magic and enchantment that can transform this dull world and refine away all its commonplace.” Or what many of us today commonly refer to as “the spirit of Pine Mountain.” Over the years many have tried to identify the essence of this spirit—is it the natural setting and the way the built environment grows out of it? Or is it the many wonders that wait to be experienced—bird song, crawdads in the branch, foam flowers and bloodroot in the spring, the state champion black willow, the silent majesty of the chapel, the opportunities to learn weaving, blacksmithing, or making a wooden spoon? These are certainly
part of it, but Pine Mountain’s greatest gift to me has been the opportunity to meet and get to become friends with amazing and wonderful people of varied and diverse backgrounds and talents. I’d like to share a few who have inspired and shaped me on my Pine Mountain journey, voices who have gone to sing in that ‘great choir invisible.’
Burton Rogers was Executive Director when I first visited the school in 1967 and director emeritus when I returned in 1975 to start my research and the school began to insinuate itself into my life in ways I never anticipated. As I got to know Burton, I was struck by his considerateness, his thoughtfulness, and his tact. He anticipated things that would facilitate my research including setting up a typing table in his office to be “your space.” Through informal conversation he prevented me from making an idiot of myself or upsetting the fabric of life at the school ; he modeled the kind of discretion and respect for the school he trusted I possessed. He was a man of great erudition and wisdom and became my de facto mentor. Without his encouragement, enthusiasm, and wisdom I would never have become intimately a part of the institution.We used to have great discussions on Appalachian issues, for example , whether there is Appalachian image that doesn’t exist in reality (“how do you get Denmark into it? he wondered), and whether whether a sense of quaintness and times past got in the way of Pine Mountain visitors understanding the Appalachian present. Burton was an embodiment of the settlement spirit believing that the mutual exchange of ideas, the effort to bridge cultural differences and to listen and learn from each other were crucial in assuring “that people are not subordinated to the dictates of a program, but the program is adapted to the needs of the people.” He lamented that those running government or privately funded programs operated too frequently from traditional assumptions of uplift that failed the test of genuine collaboration. He valued the emphasis of the settlement approach on working from data and a willingness to experiment.
Burton was a raconteur of the highest order, delighting in the leisurely unfolding of a story with lots of context and an occasional digression or two before ending where he intended. While stories could entertain as when he recounted Miss Pettit’ attitude toward snakes, they also served to make a point. Once a survey was being run to determine the acreage of the school, he was informed that there was a spot where there were two fenceposts a foot apart making a corner. Inquiring of the neighbor who owned the adjoining land, he was told that Miss Pettit would not let her family attach their fence to the school’s post. When Burton asked why that was, he was told “Miss Pettit had her ways.”
Burton was a talented organist and first rate interpreter of J.S. Bach. Having heard me play the piano, he decided the perfect ending to a summer day of work at the school would be a couple of duets in the chapel; maybe some Bach or one of the virtuosic works of Clifford Demarest. “Is there time for a little ‘Sheep’ today?”he’d ask. Though we rarely performed in public, we took great pleasure in making music for the pleasure of it.
Burton’s wife Mary was then engaged in building the Environmental Education program. I had the good fortune to experience the power of her teaching on several occasions. She was a keen observer who asked questions that helped you sharpen your own skills and called your attention to the myriad ways various trees or plants were alike and different. She had a great curiosity about the natural world and life in general, so that talking with her was a continual education. Mary and Burton together were wonderful hosts, and I treasure memories of tea with them at Big Log and later at the old Far House. Mary was also great story teller who delighted the students and the teachers my school system sent to Pine Mountain each summer.
When I began my research, my first interview was with Birdena Bishop who was on the staff in the early 1940s; my second was with her daughter Jane Bishop Hobgood who became one of my closest Pine Mountain friends. Jane graduated from the school in 1944 and went on to earn degrees in recreation and folk arts. As an Advisory Council member and later as a Trustee, she became the de facto artistic conscience of the school. She wanted to be sure that we did not let our traditions of ballad singing, country dancing, folk arts, and drama lapse and that what we did was high quality, A signal contribution of hers was to assist Clara Atkins-Pope in the latter’s updating the school’s songbook to include melodies. Ruth Shuler Dieter, a classmate of Jane’s, also served on the Advisory Council and the Board. The three of us were constantly engaged in thinking up ways to preserve the heritage of the school and to keep the arts side alive. Jane and I dreamed up a workshop on Appalachian literature for families that we promoted heavily until Executive Director Paul Hayes told us there were no staff to carry it out. More successfully, we collaborated on creating a reader’s theatre drama to celebrate the centennial of Katherine Pettit’s first visit to the north side of Pine Mountain in 1899. I supplied the source material, Jane wrote the script and cast it using Trustees and staff;, due to a schedule conflict, I ended up directing it, and we educated a lot of people about the school’s history. The next year we took part in organizing a Settlement Symposium attended by nearly a hundred people associated with various settlement institutions and other nonprofits working in Appalachia, sharing ideas and studying problems confronting the region.
A key influence on Jane and Ruth in their student days was then Executive Director Glyn Morris. On a summer Sunday in 1976, I had the good fortune to meet and talk in depth with him on the side porch at Laurel House and found him to be everything they had told me and more. He was a man of personal charm and charisma, affable, a good listener; he immediately insisted we use first names and within minutes it was as though we had known each other for years. Having studied his papers in the school files, I knew that we shared a lot of common ideas about education, but talking them out with him was an inspiration to me and I ended up trying out a number of them in my classroom and later ,when charged with helping our school district implement the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, I drew on what I had learned from his experience in leading the Pine Mountain staff in creating what even today would be considered an avant-garde high school curriculum. Disliking what he termed standardization, he set out to abolish credits and grades and rely on student self-evaluation to assess progress. Recognizing that Pine Mountain students needed practical as well as academic knowledge, he and the staff developed a thematic curriculum grounded in the realities of the place and hands-on learning. The theme for the ninth grade was Living Together focusing on Pine Mountain as a community and what it meant to be a member with responsibilities and duties. The theme for the tenth grade was cooperation which introduced students to the concept of cooperative marketing through operation of the Cooperative Store in which students and staff could own stock. The junior year focused on learning to serve their neighbors through the Community Group; students performed a variety of services such as home nursing, carpentry, recreation in the one room schools, assisting the doctor as he made home visits. The senior year was Specialization: students engaged in studies to prepare them for their intended post graduation world whether college, additional training, home making, or entering the labor force. Morris emphasized teaching students to think and solve problems. Watching alumni from that era organize meetings and plan initiatives at their annual homecomings were a proof to me of the success of his approach.
In 1986, Pine Mountain was confronted with an existential crisis that could have led to its demise had it not been for the willingness of Paul and Ellen Ayers Hayes to come out of retirement to help the school that had shaped their lives during the Morris era. They agreed to come for six months but ended up staying the rest of their lives. Their optimism and belief in the spirit of Pine Mountain inspired Trustees and staff alike. Paul was a friendly, quiet-spoken man who projected an unshakeable inner strength and faith. He once said, "“I found out through life..that attending Pine Mountain was the greatest things, really, that ever happened to me.” His leadership style as Executive Director reflected his early training at Pine Mountain with its emphasis on accepting responsibility and problem-solving. Setting the school back on the path to greater things was for him not only a duty but a labor of love and an expression of gratitude. Major accomplishments were the restoration of Big Log and Old Log, the start of construction on a new Far House, replacement of windows, siding, and heating systems in various buildings ,and removal of overgrown shrubs and trees. In cooperation with the state, Pine Mountain experimented with the wetlands approach to sanitation systems.. To address the high school dropout rate of the region, Paul and Ellen transformed a recently added after school program into an intervention program whereby retired teachers were sent to work in four neighboring schools providing tutoring and bringing students to campus for “fun” Saturdays and exposure to computer technology. Most importantly a sense of stability returned to the school and a strong foundation laid for the work of the next two Executive Directors, Robin Lambert and Nancy Adams.
Enriching lives and building bridges to foster community have been part of the Pine Mountain experience since its beginning; and the willingness of hundreds of individuals across the years to share in the process have given life to its spirit and led to many lasting and enduring friendships. I treasure those friendships and what I have gained especially from those with whom I have served on the Board of Trustees.
So to each of us has come the unusual,
the ordinary, the beautiful, the common, the gay, the sad,
the forgotten, and the memorable things that
Pine Mountain holds for all who seek its guidance….
To each of us has been given some of the gifts
That Pine Mountain has for all.
(1942 Commencement Program)
