Fortunately for her and the thousands of other graduates, Virginia Tech has for another year had the good sense to invite someone other than me to present their graduation speech. But I can’t help but wonder what I’d say if ever called upon. What accumulated wisdom have I gained through the school of hard knocks since my own special day 37 years ago that I would share with my daughter?

Well, in no particular order:

In a world where it’s all about the money, remember that it really isn’t all about the money. Don’t get lost in the pursuit of income and don’t live beyond your means. Use money and credit wisely. It’s hard to live a happy, fulfilling life if your nose is always to the grindstone paying off debts. See what things you can do without; stuff never makes anybody truly happy. Invest carefully and look for ways to make money while you sleep.

Live a life of service. Find a balance between what you do for yourself and what you do for others. Volunteerism and charity feed the soul. Do something great with your life in service to others.

Find work that motivates and excites you. There’s nothing worse than dreading every Monday. And be willing to fail. Take measured risks and learn from the experiences.

Fill your scrapbook rather than your closets. Travel, read, and explore. Make a “bucket list” and set exploration goals for yourself. Begin a tracking system of your own life history because your memory will fade.

Banish the word “bored” from your vocabulary, because there is always something interesting to learn and discover. Seek out intelligent, motivated people. Never stop learning and growing intellectually. Do things that make you proud of yourself.

Adult life is about the journey, not the destination. The destination will come soon enough. Life’s pleasures come in small, incremental occurrences while the miseries come in wallops. Take a moment every day to appreciate the pleasures.

Remember, life isn’t fair. As you progress through adult life, you will see others benefiting from advantages unavailable to you. Don’t dwell on them. Make the best of what you’ve got.

Don’t be in a hurry to hitch up and start a family. Great life partners are hard to come by. Be patient and select well. Prove to yourself that although a partner can enhance your emotional and financial life, you can make it on your own.

For that matter, select all your friends carefully. Look for people who support you and honor your gifts. Associate with people who make you better and who bring you up. Maintain a grouping of friends that includes people young and old, and of all religions and ethnic groups. Honor their cultural differences.

Take care of your integrity. When your days are done, it is the only thing you take with you.

And take care of your body. You only get one, so don’t abuse it. Develop healthy lifestyle habits in eating, sleeping, and exercise that will serve you well for the duration of your life.

In general, practice good maintenance habits on all your possessions so the things you buy will last longer and not need frequent replacement. Be kind to nature and travel lightly through life. Minimize your consumption of the planet’s increasingly scarce resources. Look for quiet places and eschew noise, bustle, traffic, and cluttered places.

Be kind to everyone you meet. Remember, an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. Don’t let others get your goat and don’t feel the need to retaliate. Your emotions belong to you and are subject to your own choice. Life is, or can be, filled with love, fellowship, sharing, and the mystical wonder of the universe. It will be, if you decide it will be. That is the freedom your education gives you.

Most of all, live a life of passion. Passion makes energy and energy brings successes. No commencement speech is complete without a quotation from some famous person, so here’s Nelson Mandela on passion: “There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” Aim big and then go for it!

Oh, and visit your parents. They always enjoy being with you.

======================

Sitting next to my teen daughter, she in the driver’s seat and me in the passenger’s seat for our third driving lesson in a nearby parking lot, I had a flashback. My mind drifted to the day after her birth, 15 years earlier. I was lying on my back and she was napping, her tiny stocking-capped head resting against my ribcage, each of us feeling the other’s warmth and heartbeats. I remembered thinking about the wondrousness of birth, the immaculate beauty of a newborn, and the performance capabilities of the modern diaper.

Screech! I was jolted from my reverie by a dumped clutch as our family car lurched forward. “Sorry dad,” she said, wondering aloud how her parents could be so thoughtless as to inflict upon her a manual transmission while all her friends were learning on automatics.

It goes without saying my daughter is a competent young lady—intelligent, attentive, and dexterous. In my fumbling paternal way, I have tried over the years to teach her a thing or two, but typically she already knows those and more. It’s nice to have a fleeting upper hand, experiencing a skill I can do robotically and so far, she can’t do at all.

Earlier in the week, I sat through an excruciating evening presentation for young drivers and their parents at Christiansburg High School where a parade of pedantic teachers, administrators, and law enforcement people downloaded a weighty cargo of horrifying statistics about teens behind the wheel. For instance, your child, or shall I say my child, is roughly 126,000 times more likely to have an accident before her next birthday than the members of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club. Sixteen year olds have the attention span of cocker spaniels (with all due respect to cocker spaniels) and don’t develop into functional human beings, attention wise, until at least their mid-twenties. Furthermore, these teens are physically incapable of just doing one thing at a time, like driving, and will preternaturally gravitate towards adjusting the radio, putting on make-up, or downing a 16-oz Mellow Yellow, or some combination, every twelve microseconds.

We were told that cellular phones are a real driving hazard. Some states have restricted their use when driving, but not Virginia. My daughter’s fingertips haven’t been more than a millimeter away from her phone since day one and I’m sure she’d be happier if it could be surgically implanted. She types cryptic messages at 48,000 words per minute and there is no thought too inconsequential to exchange at any hour of the night or day with her boyfriend. She, “I dnt fel wel & i jus snezd.” He, “Im bord w/ my jb & i wnt 2 go hm.” It was suggested to us that we convince our child through reasoned parental persuasion, that the cell phone should camp in the trunk and not be accessed whilst our child is driving. I proposed it moments ago to a cryogenic look of outrage and indignation.

Also it was suggested, perhaps as a twisted joke, that we see the whole driver training experience as a wonderful, familial bonding opportunity. Right.

The meeting featured several gratuitous angst-breeding documentaries, some more relevant having been filmed right here in the homes and valleys of Virginia, where real parents of real deceased children choked through torrents of tears talking about the senseless losses of little Suzy and Tommy to avoidable traffic crashes. The irony here is that my daughter didn’t accompany me to this meeting, as she had something infinitely more important to do, like riding her horse or somesuch. The presentation was completely wasted on me, as I’m already more vexed about her safety in cars than anything.

Screech! “Sorry, dad,” she repeats.

Lastly, we got our sermon from the local State Farm Insurance agent. He didn’t venture any actual numbers regarding the projected increase in premiums associated with adding a teen driver, lest mass resuscitation efforts be necessary. But I envisioned that if our current insurance costs $500 annually to cover my wife and me, it would rise to approximately $675,000. That is, of course, assuming we can actually find an insurance company naive enough to cover such an obvious risk as my daughter.

The bottom line is that the chance of your child having a tragic crash the first time he or she shifts into “reverse” is 344%. Any parent would have to have a bucket of walnut shells inside his or her cranial cavity where the grey matter belongs to allow his or her baby to drive an actual car on an actual road before that baby reaches the age of, say, 43.

We arrived in New Zealand shortly after the Newtown, CT, shooting tragedy, and many people we met wanted to talk about it, even more so when they learned of our close ties to Virginia Tech. I spoke at length with two policemen and one hunter.

New Zealand gun laws are amazingly sane:

Private citizens can own pistols, but they must be a member of a licensed pistol club. The pistols cannot leave the club’s premises.

Private citizens can own rifles for hunting, but the owner must pass a qualification test, undergo a background check, and have their characters vouched for. Rifles must be registered and stored unloaded at all times when not in use in approved, locked safes. Ownership licenses are expensive.

Private citizens cannot own semi-automatic or automatic rifles.

Regular “beat” cops do not carry guns. Only members of the national SWAT team carry guns.

Gun violence per capita in New Zealand is about 5% of ours.

As the debate goes on and our nation struggles with how to curb the epidemic of violence, many of those in favor of modest proposals like universal background checks and limited capacity magazines are quick to say, “I support the Second Amendment and I don’t want to take anybody’s gun away.”

Our government really should take your gun away.

Owning a gun to hunt should be a privilege, granted to our citizens in ways similar to how it is for New Zealanders.

Owning a gun to protect the citizenry from a tyrannical government is nonsensical, obsolete fantasy. Our military can put a missile into the window of any house on earth within an hour. So forget any delusions of protecting ourselves from a totalitarian government.

Owning a gun for personal security is statistically unrealistic. Owners are more likely to be hurt by their own gun than someone else’s, as a gun is used in suicides 11 times as often and in unintentional shooting deaths 4 times as often as in self-defense.

Virginia recently eliminated its a one-handgun-a-month law, on the books for 19 years. If you’ve got the money, you can buy as many Glocks, Smith & Wessons, or Sig Sauers as you want. And America has among the highest rates of gun violence in the First World, 46 times higher than England, 17 times higher than Germany, and 160 times higher than Singapore.

Yes, we have the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. We do not have the right to unlimited firepower and unlicensed use. Every right has limits. Our problem is that we’ve spent the last three decades making it affordable and easy to obtain weapons of unprecedented lethality. We need to begin marching in the other direction, making guns difficult to obtain and expensive to own and use.

To own and drive a car, citizens must pass a competency test, register the car and have it licensed and routinely inspected, and obtain insurance. Why? Because cars are a potential public safety risk. How can we morally justify making it easier to buy and operate a Bushmaster .223 than a Dodge Dart?

Yes, we need other solutions, too, including better enforcement of current laws and better mental health screening and treatment, and we need to commit to paying for these things. But not talking about guns to reduce this carnage is like not talking about cigarettes if we’re trying to reduce cancer deaths.

A few weeks ago, a man walked into a Charlottesville grocery story carrying a loaded semi-automatic weapon. According to the article about it, “Police restrained the man to ask him questions. They released him after they confirmed he is not a convicted felon, owned the gun legally and it was not concealed. Police say he was cooperative and did not break any laws.”

Seriously!

I can’t drive to the end of my block without proper licensing – and a seat belt! – because of the public safety risk, and yet it is perfectly legal for anyone to parade publicly with a loaded AK-47. This is cruel inexplicable insanity.

Substantial reductions in the millions of guns in America would make us safer and more secure, even if the government needs to buy them back and destroy them.

It’s high time to show the world – and ourselves – we can get sane again.

“I was studying to become what in America you call a CPA, when I decided to take a break from my studies. I never went back.” Since then, he’s traveled around the world multiple times.

Followers of my columns may remember that my wife and I often take in strays, wandering travelers who come through our area. Frank is riding a BMW motorcycle and was referred to us by a friend in our local club. Frank stayed with us for a few days on his journey that began in South America and went through Mexico and into the States. But he’s essentially been on the road for 17 years.

“I began backpacking. To world travelers, that means something different than for Americans. You think of it as hiking through the bush, carrying your food, tent, and camping out. For world travelers, it means traveling by whatever appropriate means carrying only what’s on your back, often through poorer, third-world countries.”

When he began, there were guest houses throughout the world where he could stay for $2 per day. “I went to Asia to get away from it all, because I realized I needed a break. It was an early mid-life crisis. I left Germany just shy of my 30^th birthday.”

He ended up in Thailand and Laos, overlooking the beaches and the Mekong River. That trip took five years before he went home. Frank is a big, loquacious, boisterous guy, filled with opinions and stories. He rides a huge BMW GS motorcycle, way too big for little guys like me to ride. He drinks as many beers in a sitting as I drink in a week.

“Before I left, I was depressed. I didn’t see a purpose in my life. I was brought up to think of my career and car and family and house first. I was destined to have a regular, corporate life.”

On the road, he took various odd jobs on the way, including sheep sheering in New Zealand, tour guiding in Canada, and marijuana cultivation in California. But he said, “I learned to live on lots less money. I learned that I didn’t need air conditioning or fresh sheets every day. I moved from a European to an Asian sensibility. I began to live at about $800 per month and stay comfortable.” He has visited 80 countries or so on what has become his endless journey.

Frank taught himself Spanish and English. Between those languages and his native German, he can communicate in much of the world.

“It takes a certain level of adaptability, flexibility, and adventurousness to do it. I’m always facing changing situations and accommodations. It’s not for everybody. For instance, I’m staying with you at no cost. I could have stayed in a Motel 6 for $60 per night and not met anybody. I prefer staying with people and getting to know them.”

Eventually, he decided to trade the backpack for a motorcycle. He said, “It has advantages and disadvantages. You can go when you want and where you want. But when you cross oceans and stuff, you need to find ways to take it with you.”

By now, he’s been to China, Russia, Mongolia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, India, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Nepal, Taiwan, Japan, Canada, etc., etc. “I’ve been once around the world eastward and twice westward. This trip I’m on now by motorcycle is westward.”

On the current trip, 30 months so far, he’s spent most in South America, then Central and North America. He brought his bike to the Americas on a boat from Hamburg to Buenos Aries, a trip that took 35 days.

Here, I took him motorcycling on both Saturday and Sunday. I stretched his sedentary ways by forcing him into walking with me a couple of evenings on my daily walks. And we took him to a two-person play about American politics in rural Meadows of Dan.

I asked what he knows about the world now that he didn’t know when he started. He said, “I see the effects of overpopulation. In Japan, most of Europe, and in some parts of the USA, populations are shrinking. The Third World is growing. Paradise doesn’t exist. Every place has problems or issues. I have photos of beautiful beaches, but you don’t see the mosquitoes. No place is perfect. But if you have a life back home, that won’t be perfect, either.

“The Appalachians are perfect motorcycle country. The roads are scenic and empty. It is colder than I expected, but riding is great. I have been surprised by the intense hospitality and friendliness of Americans. This is not known in Europe.

“I will remember you and my time in Blacksburg!”

Here’s what I saw. Cortney is in her mid-forties, yet has the youthful, angular, chiseled look of all competitive athletes. She has a boyish blonde bob of a haircut and almost luminescent pale-blue eyes that sparkle when she smiles, which is often.

She’s been a hot commodity lately among the media, as she’s just returned from a great run at the Boston Marathon and people are clamoring for personal stories. Expressing her willingness to chat with me and let me share her story, she said, “I’m sensitive to keeping the focus on the victims rather than the bystander that I was. I was so numb after the race I hardly made sense of any of it.”

Cortney had qualified to run at the Boston Marathon two other times, but injuries had kept her from running. She’d run the Richmond Marathon three times, qualifying there for Boston.

She’d never been athletic as a youngster, taking to it later in life. “I was set up to define myself not as an athlete.” After having two boys and going to graduate school which led to a largely sedentary life, she committed herself to getting in shape. “It was May 4, 2008, my day of reckoning. Until that time, I had never done any running, cycling, or swimming, other than playing around.”

After a couple of years of training, she found that she was good at it, REALLY good at it. She was winning at regional levels and competitive at national and international levels at short-distance triathlons.

“I’m as surprised as anybody,” she admitted modestly. “People think I’ve been doing this forever, but I haven’t. It still feels so new and fresh, and I have a passion for it.”

I met Cortney through my wife who had known her at Virginia Tech, and began following her passion in a blog she calls, “Cort the Sport,” found at http://www.cortthesport.com/

She continues to get faster, at an age where millions of Americans are becoming more inactive and overweight.

Still, it’s not easy for her. She’s had many injuries including broken fibulas in both legs and had to bounce back. She claims, “(Training and competing is) a pleasure to do. I enjoy the suffering and the focus that goes along with it.”

Around her work and family responsibilities, she wedges in around 12 hours a week of actual training, but preparation takes still more time.

There are four distances in triathloning: sprint, Olympic, half-Ironman, and Ironman. She specializes in the two former, which are shorter and faster. The sprint combines a 750-meter swim, a 13-mile bicycle ride, and a 3.1 mile run. The Olympic event is double that. At the National event in 2011 in Vermont, she qualified for the National team and began attracting sponsors. She represented our country at the Worlds last year in Auckland, New Zealand. “It made me feel like a legitimate athlete. It made me hungry. I still am. We do the swim first and it’s my least strong event. On the bike and on the run, I pass people. That’s lots of fun!

 “For me, it’s about those cold, pre-sunrise mornings running along alone. I feel like I own the world. I love it when the weather isn’t so good, when other people are in bed. That’s what it’s all about. It’s that, and racing to your potential. When you race to your potential and leave it all out there, you’ve got to be happy.”

Cortney won a race in Smith Mountain Lake and then another in Salem, not just her age group but women’s overall. “It was sweet beating much younger women!”

At Boston, she was elated just to be there, starting. The road was “a sea of people” but she stayed extremely focused in her own space, “in the zone”. She felt good through the race, running 8:10 minute miles. “I barely noticed ‘Heartbreak Hill.” She finished strong, ecstatic.

About the bombing she said, “I am not fearful. I am overwhelmed by the people who have said to me they were thinking about me being there. I didn’t even know they knew I was there! I work at home. I train mostly alone. I live a somewhat insular life. But apparently I have a sphere of people who care about me. Where was the network of caring people for the bombers? Where were the people who could have gotten them off the path of pre-meditated violence?

“Marathons take so much out of me, but I am so motivated to go back to Boston next year. My message to others, what I try to convey in my blog, is that people should squeeze everything they can out of life. For me, athletics and training is a way to do that. It makes me positive, energetic, and hopeful. The rewards of stepping away from comfort, trying different things, taking chances, are incalculable.”

Like all fair-minded people who love peace and seek harmony among all mankind, the murderous rampage of April 16, 2007 still resonates with sadness and heartache, but especially those of us with ties to Tech. So I make it a point to do an annual pilgrimage those long four miles to campus each year in April.

April is a glorious time in the central Appalachians, and campus is stunning! Spring is bursting forth with a voracious, insatiable zeal, starting from the ground up, as the grass turns green first, then the shrubs blossom, then finally the trees, which give us purples, pinks, and whites before the pervasive green of summer sets in. The temperature can still be fickle, as we remember that fateful day six years ago was blustery, with flurries of snow. April in Appalachia seems hopeful, expansive, and wonderful. Or it did, until that killing rampage.

This year, for the first time since, I toured Norris Hall, the hallowed ground where most of the killing happened. There is a Center for Peace Studies in the classrooms where so many of my fellow Hokies’ lives were destroyed. Still, like I see in my mind’s eye when I toured Gettysburg, Cross Keys or Appomattox, when I walked through Norris I envisioned the carnage, the blood-splattered walls and the bullet-riddled bodies of that unspeakably horrific day.

As I write, our nation has just endured another appalling tragedy, an indiscriminate bombing in Boston, with 176 casualties including three fatalities. I mourn for another community dealing with loss, sadness, and anguish. I know what it’s like.

I’m not alone as I search for answers in the madness. I find comfort in knowing that generally we Americans are good and kind people, willing to lend a hand and a heart. I take comfort knowing that for everyone who would wantonly and randomly do harm, there are thousands who would wantonly and randomly do good.

However, I may be alone, or at least in a smaller crowd, when I recognize that we also have a darker side. As we can be kind and generous individually, we can also be pugnacious, manipulative, aggressive, belligerent, and confrontational. Our nation spends in its military more than the next 10 countries behind us. Just since my childhood, we have invaded Vietnam, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Drone strikes are thought to kill 50 innocent people for every terrorist. The only president during my lifetime who actively promoted peace first was Jimmy Carter, and he was derided, excoriated!, for it.

Former General Dwight Eisenhower knew war intimately. He said leaving the presidential office, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” We should be paying more attention.

Many corporations are actively assaulting workers, the environment, public education, and public health with proliferation of pernicious chemicals, non-biodegradable plastics, genetically modified seeds and insidious pesticides. Oil companies are destroying enormous swaths of land to obtain tar sands and coal companies are decimating Appalachia and ruining the lives of the people and animals through mountaintop removal mining. Child labor and even slavery still exist and substandard labor conditions persist at factories around the world. Income inequality has been escalating rapidly for the last three decades in America, and a new cadre of hate groups has promulgated not on racial lines as in the past but on economic lines. Less-privileged people at home and abroad are marginalized and dominated, and our natural resources are seen as little more than cash machines. People are angry, both at home and abroad. Tensions are high and violence seems inevitable.

I don’t have any better answers to unspeakable tragedy than anybody else. For me, I react to such tragedies by doing seeking my own best nature, trying to bring creativity and harmony to the world, by telling my wife and daughter that I love them, by picking up somebody else’s trash, by waving at a passing motorist, by smelling the blossoms, by speaking out against violence and intolerance, by helping someone in need, and by refusing to be terrorized.

I encourage you to use a few minutes of your time and energy today to wage peace in your own way.

I spoke with her and T. Byron Kelly the other day at Solitude beside the Duck Pond at Virginia Tech. Byron is a Virginia Tech graduate and visiting professor, doing workshops in Literary and creative workshop. He is a volunteer working with Anita who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Tech. She is the current director of the Appalachian Studies Program, which was formed back in the late 1980s, in the department of Religion and Culture.

She said, “We offer a minor in Appalachian Studies, so any student here at Tech who takes and passes 18 hours, which is six courses, in Appalachian Studies, earns a minor. There is great demand now for our classes. Within our department, we are teaching around 300 students each semester. Including the other courses in English, Forestry, Geography, History, and Sociology, we teach over 450 students on Appalachia.

“We have a good research program as well. We have some of the best Appalachian scholars on our faculty as anywhere in the world.

“We are teaching a graduate course this semester for the first time. They are learning about the cultural underpinnings of the region to augment their research, whatever it may be. Whether it be engineering, biology, veterinary sciences, or geography, if they are working in the region they find themselves confronted with certain cultural barriers. We help them understand what it takes to get along by bringing them materials on cultural history and contemporary environmental, social, political, and cultural issues.

“Like everywhere else, our culture is more homogenized with the advent of mass communication and the Internet. There are still some areas poorly served by the Internet, and we’re working to improve that.

“Interest in our courses is high. We’re trying to revitalize the defunct student organization that was called The Appalachian Way. We have a number of events going on.

“There are few departments on campus that don’t work in some way throughout the region. (Virginia Tech) an incredible place for Appalachian Studies because of our location and our Land Grant mission.

“It is an exciting time. We’re working on community development. We’re helping communities transition to a post-coal future. After fracking. After natural resource extraction of all types. We study ways to help to improve local economies.

“Interest in Appalachia ebbs and flows, but I hope it has transitioned into something more real and less imaginary. The imaginary fuels the interest and the desire of the public to learn. Appalachia is whatever people want to make of it. People like our faculty are always fighting for Appalachian people, for their empowerment, helping the find their voice.”

It is entirely fitting that Virginia Tech has set aside for Appalachian Studies a building called Solitude, which is the oldest, and for my money, the most beautiful building on campus. Situated by the Duck Pond, the white framed, green roofed former home is thought to be over 200 years old. With its hardwood floors and one of a kind rugs and carpets, guests are asked to remove their shoes, which I’m sure is the only socks-only building at Virginia Tech!

“Solitude is the rightful home of the Appalachian Studies program,” Puckett beamed. “It has come home.”

Byron said, “I have been teaching and tutoring in English and creative writing for two decades. I approached Anita last fall about hosting a workshop, which is more informal. Workshops are geared towards the individual needs of the students.

“For me, one of my most memorable moments came after the tragedy in 2007. I came back to campus to do some work in the writing center. The spirit I encountered and the courage I witnessed was astonishing to me. Appalachian people are molded by hardship and strife. We were once the frontier – in some ways we still are. The people who carved out life from that frontier have adapted by maintaining solidarity and shared purpose. Lots of our students here are not Appalachian, but the culture is still pervasive and it affects them.”

Anita concurred, “When your self becomes defused within the selves of others, what happens to them happens to you.

“We live in the mountains and the mountains are in us. We at Virginia Tech and throughout Appalachia are all part of the same space and the same place, over time and over generations. The past is always present. Our ancestors are in us and we are in our ancestors. There is as sense of community and spirit here. People from Tidewater or DC or Richmond aren’t necessarily tied into that, but they feel it while they’re here. What we saw on campus after that tragedy was the diffusion of each individual into the collective, within this space and this place.”

But sadly, in recent years, the lake has diminished to a mere puddle and the hotel, in the words of new General Manager Jeffrey Burrell, has become “tired.” But work is underway to restore both the lake and the resort to their former glories.

“It seemed to me,” Burrell said, “that it had seen its heyday a long time ago. The staff felt tired, the buildings felt tired, and it seemed way overdue for some love and attention. And innovation.” 

Burrell got into the hotel business after college in 1998, with stints at Disney World, the Hard Rock, and finally to the Weston in Beaver Creek, Colorado. He was recruited to manage Mountain Lake when longtime manger Buzz Scanland retired last year. “Once I got here and saw how pretty the property was,” Burrell said, “I was sold. The opportunity to turn a property like this… you can see the vision the owners had when they first built it, and the heritage behind it, that really rings for me.”

Burrell spoke about the movie Dirty Dancing, much of which was filmed at the Hotel over 25 years ago. “Dirty Dancing is a part of our history that needs to be respected and cherished – and no offense to the Dirty Dancing fans – but we hung our hat on it too long. We have 150 years of other history.

“When we looked at our current guests, we saw many of the same people coming again and again, with not enough new ones… and they were getting older.” Burrell said they needed to attract a new clientele.

He gave special mention and credit to Bob Donovan, who consulted on the refurbishment. Burrell said, “Donovan took me outside and put his arm around my shoulder and said to me, ‘Jeff, here’s an opportunity for a young guy like yourself to make your career.’

“In the hotel industry, it is so rare to find something like this. It is a huge challenge. We have to respect the history and the people who love this place for what it was, but at the same time, we have to harvest a new group of guests who have never been here.

Donovan was hired by the Foundation that owns Mountain Lake to study ways to increase revenues at the Hotel. His organization, the Urban Land Institute, was hired 18 months ago to make recommendations. Donovan, on a panel of five, came to study the situation. He said, “There was an incredible excitement about this place that had gone dormant over the years. There was enthusiasm. There is so much history here. Everybody loves the place. Everybody had such wonderful stories about it. My initial impression was that the Foundation should shut it down. But with the love we felt for it, we decided to put a plan together to save it.”

They quickly concluded their first order of business was re-filling the lake. They had to fully drain the lake, using huge diesel pumps the size of school busses, and then shuffle the lake bed and add dehydrated clay to get the bottom to seal. Burrell said, “We plugged four primary holes. There are still others, but we reduced the outflow by about 90%. It is already filling, and is higher than when I arrived in November. We expect it to be full again in 12 to 18 months, depending upon precipitation.”

The foundation invested around $150,000 in this effort. Once it fully fills, it will reach its natural spillway and will stabilize at that level.

“Task number two is repositioning the hotel,” Jeff continued. “It will now be called Mountain Lake Lodge. It conveys the repositioning of the hotel as more of an adventure property. It is taking advantage of our natural surroundings. It is layering in new types of activities, including a ropes course and an aerial adventure course, with climbing walls, rope bridges, zip lines, and those sorts of things. This will be a huge part of our new identity, getting people out of doors in new ways. Hiking. Bouldering. Rock climbing.

“We’ll be repositioning our restaurant, away from standard hotel fare and more towards featuring the region’s agricultural and cultural food heritage. We hired a new chef who will be focused on locally sourced, simply prepared good food.

“We are mindful of affordability. We don’t want to be a luxury hotel. We want to be accessible to everyone. Entrées at the restaurant will vary from $10 to $30. Our rooms will start at under $100 per night. We have only 101 rooms, but we have 25 different types of accommodations.”

Donovan said, “We want to bring the buzz back to the place that it had in its heyday. It will come back, grander than it has ever been. The phone lines are already lighting up.

“I heard so many stories. I spoke with a guy from Maryland who went to (Virginia) Tech. He proposed to his wife here. He said, ‘we went all the time; it was our favorite place.’ I heard story after story.”

Burrell spoke at length about their plans for activities, including local music, local cuisine, local artists and craftspeople. “The music here is amazing! The talent in the area is so rich. We will celebrate it.”

Both gentlemen expressed their perception of the love and support they’d received from the community. Jeff said, “There is a connection to this place that is beyond anything I have ever seen. I have met ladies in their eighties and nineties who have been coming here every year since their childhoods. Wow! It is moving. Everybody in the area has been great. Everybody wants us to be successful.”

Donovan, “There’s something about this place. It is truly magic.”

Tragically, my longstanding, dear friend died last Sunday. He died unexpectedly, as his wife of 25 years, Melodee, found him departed on the floor beside his bed, an apparent heart attack victim. He was only 52, seven years my junior, deceased unexpectedly and in the prime of life.

I met Scott back when dinosaurs (and shoppers) still roamed downtown Christiansburg, where we both grew up. He was dating my baby sister Karen at the time. He made an immediate, and positive, impression. Even in his teens, he was outspoken and informed. He had the most outrageous accent in all of Appalachia, and could make an art form of words like “employees” which from his mountain twang sounded like emmm-plaww-yeeezzz, stretching the second syllable to an elastic breaking point in a high-pitched, almost scratchy wail. He was unpretentious and uninhibited, gifted in mathematics, and could talk knowledgeably on a million subjects – and he never shut up! And while strong in his convictions (and he did not suffer fools gladly), he could do so in a completely disarming way. He was the type of person who could tell you to go to hell and leave you looking forward to the trip.

But what really stood out was his hair.

To say it was “red” is to do a disservice to the word. His hair was a crimson explosion.

His hair was red before Shawn White ever threw his flying tomato off the half-pipe.

His hair made the strawberries in the produce department cower in unworthiness.

His hair made scarlet tanagers sulk in envy.

Karen had good taste in guys. I liked most of her boyfriends. But I liked Scott the most and we developed our own friendship. In 1981 when I was 27, I quit my job in Lynchburg to embark on my life’s greatest adventure, moving to Seattle, Washington. Scott was a mere babe of 20, and having some free time, he tagged along. He rode across the country with me in the U-Haul, my Volkswagen Rabbit towed behind. Most of the trip has faded from my memory, held in place with mental sticky-notes and glued-together synapses, but I remember how taken my new Seattle friends were by the folksy, skinny kid with the flaming hair and the homespun accent. We climbed a mountain together in the Olympic National Park, something I did again in 1991 and 2001 (and am overdue now for my next decennial visit), and threw a Frisbee at the top. I remember dropping him at SeaTac for his flight home, feeling lonely and alone.

Exactly ten years later, when I dragged my new wife Jane back to the New River Valley, Scott was still here and we renewed our friendship. Much to our wives’ consternation, Scott and I carried on lengthy conversations on a spinning whirlwind of topics that left me breathless and exhilarated. By this time, his much shorter hair had become a mature chestnut and he had put on a few pounds. But the youthful enthusiasm, contagious smile, and gift of gab were still there.

Scott and Karen didn’t marry. Instead, he married an uncommonly graceful, elegant,  and articulate woman in Melodee. He sired two beautiful children, Meaghan Elizabeth and Haden Bryce. He played golf and he bowled. His heart was made of pudding when it came to animals and he took them all in.

As far as I know, he worked his entire career keeping the family business of grocery and convenience stores alive, in an era when the chain stores came to dominate retailing. His prodigious intelligence and endless curiosity would have made him a success at anything he tried. But I know his family’s legacy was important to him. He never gave up maintaining a positive outlook through the craziness that seems inevitable in a family business and the competitive pressures. He was loyal to those who contributed to his life, including me, when he agreed to being one of the first retailers in the area to stock my books at his Deli Marts when I began my writing career.

I come from a line of long-lived people and my goal and expectation is to reach 100. It tears at my heart-strings to lose such a great friend at such an early age. And I pour out all the sympathy I can muster to Melodee, Meaghan, and Bryce. I’m not profound enough to produce words of wisdom commensurate with the situation, other than to suggest we all take care of ourselves, cherish each day, and never miss an opportunity to tell our spouse and children how much we love them.

To those who believe there is a heaven, you can bet your bottom dollar there’s a new kid in town who is about to give them an earful.

Edwin has been a friend for close to twenty years now, although he’s been absent for most of that, living in Indiana for over a decade, working in churches there. A recent cosmic convergence of events has brought him back not only into this area, but into my life. First, he found an old, abandoned church building in Indian Valley and convinced his Presbytery that it was ideally suited for his new idea. Second, he relocated from his most recent assignment in Bristol and moved into a house in Radford. Third, I bought a banjo.

Edwin is a preacher, but what defines him to, well, I suspect everybody who knows him, is the amazing things he can do with that drum-with-strings, that possum-skin-on-a-gourd, that instrument of countless depreciatory jokes: the claw-hammer banjo. He’s teaching me how to play mine.

We got together the other night for my second lesson and I asked him about his new church. He’s calling it the “Wild Goose Christian Community”.

Edwin said, “We will have a distinctly Appalachian worship style. When you walk in, the first thing you’ll see is a stone fireplace. There will be handmade quilts on the wall. It has a wooden hardwood floor and wooden beams overhead. It will feel like a lodge or a cabin.”

Many of the traditional Appalachian churches I’ve visited during research for my books have been austere, undecorated places with hard wooden pews and more of a lectern at the front than a pulpit. Edwin said, “We’re getting rid of all the pews and are bringing in rocking chairs. We’ll assemble them into a circle where we’ll sing and play instruments together as we worship. When we’re done with the ‘service’ we’ll move the chairs away and have a square dance.”

Wow!

Edwin’s appearance has changed over the years since he left for Indiana, with a close-cropped head of white receding-hairline hair and a trim white beard, but the mellifluous voice, infectious smile, and hyper-local accent are still there. He’s as warm and friendly as an old blanket; I can’t see how anybody wouldn’t be drawn to him.

“Traditional Appalachian music will be integral to everything we do. We’ll play religious stuff, but non-religious stuff, too. I don’t think this is done anywhere else. We’ll have fun. We’ll worship on Tuesday nights rather than Sunday mornings, because we don’t want to compete with the other churches. I expect – and hope – some of our parishioners will go to another church on Sundays but come to ours on Tuesdays.”

I told him my impression of Appalachian churches is rigid, moralistic, top-down, and paternalistic.

“That is not what we’re going to do. To me, Appalachia is about barn dances and house parties. Barn raisings. Canning. Community things.

“I chose ‘Wild Goose’ because in Celtic Christian traditions, the wild goose is the symbol for the Holy Spirit. They felt it was a better representation than a dove because a wild goose is free, strong, humorous and, well . . . wild. A wild goose will also sneak up behind you and bite you in the seat of your britches – an apt metaphor for how the Holy Spirit often works in our lives.

“I want to bring the love of the land, the camaraderie, the music, arts and crafts, and the community of willingness to help each other. I want to celebrate these things.

“We’ll start by greeting each other, where we just visit. Then we’ll move into a more liturgical session, when we greet God. We’ll have prayer requests, prayers of thanksgiving and for people needing help. We’ll have the Lord’s Prayer. We’ll have music as a bridge to the spoken sections. Traditional churches are audience and performer oriented. People observe worship rather than participating. I want to radically move away from that. I’ll be in a rocking chair, too.

“We want to appeal to people who may have given up on churches but not on Christianity, to give them a place to find community. Hundreds of thousands of people have left the church but not Christianity. We want to welcome them back. I believe in embracing the quest, embracing the mystery. I’m not preaching answers, I’m preaching questions.

“Music is a language of emotion and spirit. Instrumental music is the most powerful, removing us from the intellectual process to the deeper places. It is psychologically and spiritually powerful. One of my band-mates concluded when she was four or five years old that music was the language of God. Perhaps God didn’t speak the world into being but sang it into being instead.”