Clara Haizlett, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Cryptids, Local Food, Artwork Celebrated In W.Va. Board Game

Mothman’s been sighted again in West Virginia. And he’s looking for a meal. He’s part of a new board game that features cryptids and local West Virginia food. Jared Kaplan and Chris Kincaid of Beckley, West Virginia created the game called “Hungry for Humans.”

At Kincaid’s home in Morgantown, we sat around the colorful board arranged in the center of a wooden table. His basement was a board gamer’s paradise – a giant game cupboard lined the wall and the table we were playing on was designed specifically for board games.

It was my first time playing and I was up against the two creators of the game.

“I’m gonna say ‘You look hungry’ and I’m going to make you eat that extra chunky milk,” Kaplan said. “So then you have to go back one.”

The odds were not in my favor.

“So us as the players, we’re the humans, we each have a monster friend who wants to eat humans,” Kaplan explained. “But if you feed it enough, good food, normal food, it’ll satisfy its human hunger and it won’t eat anybody.”

That good food could be a sundae from Ellen’s Ice Cream in Charleston or a burger from the Farmer’s Daughter in Capon Bridge.

“However, if you feed it too much, too fast, it [the monster] becomes too powerful and just explodes,” he continued. “If you feed it the wrong things, because there are some nasty foods in here, then it becomes hangry. And it just gets mad at you and it will eat you. And you’re also out of the game.”

“This is toothpaste with an orange juice chaser,” Kincaid read from a game card. “That’s a minus two.”

Kaplan said they wanted the game to celebrate their home state and its local restaurants.

“I love food. So I just started thinking of a game that involves food,” Kaplan said.

They decided to focus specifically on food from West Virginia restaurants, like Tudor’s Biscuit World and Pies and Pints.

Cryptids are another important part of the game. The Grafton monster, Sheep Squatch, Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster are all special power cards that give you an extra edge on your competitors. In real life, cryptids are rarely spotted. And it’s the same in the game.

“Do you hear that?” Chis asked.

“The buzzing?” I replied.

“No, that’s the sound of the Sheep Squatch coming to scare Jared out of the meal!” he said.

Kincaid and Kaplan met several years ago, in their hometown of Beckley. Kincaid said they bonded over their love for board games.

“We’ve played games with people from very different walks of life,” he said. “From very different places, with very different belief structures, and it’s great, nobody cares about any of it. We’re just there to rob the bank or rescue the princess.”

As a kid, Kincaid learned to play games with his dad and two younger brothers.

“It was always associated in my life with happiness and togetherness,” he said. “We grew up, not super well off, so a board game was about as much entertainment… we weren’t going off to take trips and vacations all the time. We played Uno till we ruined decks.”

Now Kincaid is a family doctor and professor at West Virginia University. He said board games are his escape.

“My career’s pretty taxing, especially lately, as far as time consuming and energy consuming, and it’s just how I recharge my batteries,” he said.

Kincaid has carried on the family tradition of playing games with his own kids. He said they’re budding board gamers with a game shelf that’s starting to rival his.

Kaplan works in marketing at the Resort at Glade Springs in Daniels, West Virginia and he has his own marketing business. He said he was never very good at video games, so he played board games instead.

“For someone like me, who has a ton of anxiety, I actually enjoy being around people more than you would probably think,” Kaplan said. “That’s what I love about board games as it brings people together.”

Kaplan said for him, board games aren’t just something he pulls out at the holidays. He hosts frequent game nights throughout the year.

“It’s really the anchor right now for me that brings my friends together,” he said.

At one of these game nights in Beckley several years ago, none of their other friends showed up, so it was just Kaplan and Kincaid. Instead of playing something, they started brainstorming game ideas.

That was the start of “Lonely Hero Games,” their board game company. After diving deeper into the world of board games, they quickly learned that a good game needs good artwork.

“If your art and your game is not good, you’re going to hear about it,” Kaplan said.

Morgantown artist Liz Pavlovic was the perfect fit for their second game, Hungry for Humans. She’d never illustrated a board game before, but she’s known around the state for her funky renditions of West Virginia food, like pepperoni rolls, and cryptids like Mothman.

“I just really like celebrating the weird stuff in the state and the stuff that maybe people don’t know about, especially if you’re not from here,” Pavlovic said.

It was Pavlovic’s first time playing the game, like me. Her monster friend was none other than the fictional Flerbin Gusselpot, a peculiar creature, loosely inspired by a bat. It’s her personal favorite and just one of the many monsters she illustrated for the game.

“He has a really weird nose. And otherwise, sort of a reptile body with a horse tail. And some fangs and like a really long tongue and really long fingers. He’s purple with spots, orange spots,” she said.

When Hungry for Humans launched on Kickstarter last fall, Kaplan and Kincaid received an unexpected amount of support for the game, specifically from West Virginians.

“I reflect on that and feel extremely lucky to be from West Virginia and have our community,” Kaplan said. “If you’re creating a game in somewhere like New York, everywhere you look, people are doing that. In West Virginia, though, people take a lot of pride in people who are doing things that are different and unique, and they want to support each other and lift each other up.”

Kincaid said he enjoys playing Hungry for Humans, but he rarely wins. And indeed, Kincaid’s monster – Porgis Bean-hammer – was the first one to explode.

“Don’t blow me up! Blow him up!” Kincaid pleaded.

That left me, Kaplan and Pavlovic. When we totaled up the meal, it was a seven – meaning that all of our monsters were about to explode. I had to think quick. Without hesitating, I played a “Yuck” card – landing me right at the finish.

They may have let me win, but I’d like to think otherwise.

Hungry for Humans will be available this summer. And even though their game isn’t even on the shelves yet, Kaplan said he already has at least 15 new game ideas.

“There’s a skeleton of a game under this table right now that I’ve been working on,” Kincaid said.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, which is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to Inside Appalachia to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

Ethiopian And Eritrean Immigrants Bring A Piece Of Home To Moorefield With Traditional Coffee Ceremony

Moorefield, West Virginia, is home to about 3,300 people — about one in 10 are immigrants. That includes a small community from Eritrea and Ethiopia. Many of them work at the chicken processing plant in town, Pilgrim’s Pride. The hours there are long and don’t leave much time for socializing. Still, members of that East African community continue to practice a tradition they’ve brought from home: the coffee ceremony. Folkways reporter Clara Haizlett brings us this story, with help from former West Virginia state folklorist Emily Hilliard.

Trihas Kefele, a native of Eritrea, is one of the many immigrants who live in Moorefield, West Virginia and work at Pilgrim’s Pride, a chicken processing plant in the small town. Although Moorefield, West Virginia has just about 3,300 residents, around one in 10 are immigrants—including Kefele’s small community from Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Due to long shifts at the factory, members of the community don’t have much time for socializing. But in their free time, they continue to practice a ritual that is custom to their region of East Africa—the traditional coffee ceremony.

On a Sunday—Kefele’s day off—she invited a group of friends and family to a coffee ceremony at her home. Incense and candles perfumed her small apartment, along with the smell of roasting coffee beans.

Kefele sat apart from the guests at a low table that was used to prepare the coffee, stirring the green coffee beans on a single-burner electric stove. She wore a floral dress and a wooden cross around her neck.

On the floor beneath her was a green mat, decorated with strips of plastic that look like grass.

“It just makes it look special, like you’re welcoming the guests,” said Kelefe’s teenage son, Finan, translating for his mom.

Three paper plates were lined up on the mat, each filled with a different colorful snack. On another table, fruit, homemade bread, and chilled drinks were artfully arranged. The ritual obviously took time to prepare, with each detail carefully arranged in anticipation of the guests’ arrival.

Women typically perform the ceremony, which can take up to two hours and involves multiple steps—from roasting the raw beans to serving fresh coffee individually to each guest.

The coffee ceremony isn’t just for special occasions. Among family and friends, it’s a common pastime that involves sharing coffee and food, listening to music, and just enjoying each other’s company.

“You cannot just make coffee by yourself,” said Azeb Mekonnen, a guest originally from Ethiopia. “You call people. That’s how it’s fun.”

Mekonnen explained that the tradition is passed down by family matriarchs.

“My mom learned it from my grandmother and my grandmother learned it from her mom,” she said.

A couple of years ago, Kefele began teaching her 14-year-old daughter, Nebiat, how to make coffee, even though she’s lived most of her life in the U.S.

“I just watched my mom do it and I just learned from it,” Nebiat said.

Now, every evening, Nebiat makes coffee for her parents before they work the night shift at Pilgrim’s.

Cups and Plates Used in Coffee Ceremony.

The poultry plant is what brought Kefele and her family to West Virginia. Before coming to Moorefield, they lived in a rural part of Eritrea, farming vegetables. More than 10 years ago, they decided to leave their home and immigrate to the United States.

“We wanted to have a better life, better freedom and my dad was the first one to come here,” said Kefele’s son, Finan.

Kefele stayed behind with their children until her husband got settled. Their migration process was long and difficult. But after five years of separation, the family was reunited in the U.S. Now they’re all in Moorefield.

“It’s good and free… and it’s also free of violence,” said Kefele. “It’s always safe here.”

Kefele and her husband both work at Pilgrim’s Pride. Her job is to cut and debone chickens. She works long hours and it’s hard work—even harder, she says because of the language barrier. She mainly speaks Tigrinya.

“Whenever you go to work, you struggle with English a lot,” said Kefele as her son translated. “Even out of work, out of your house, you go somewhere, you struggle.”

Kefele hopes that learning English will make her life in Moorefield easier. So after each night shift, she comes home, showers, and goes directly to a 9 a.m. English class at an adult learning center.

It’s hard to make friends with native English speakers, she said, but the classes offer a chance to build community with immigrants from other parts of the world who are also learning English. They’ve even done coffee ceremonies together as a class.

“Everybody that goes in that class is her friend right now, ” said Finan.

The coffee ceremony also plays an important part in maintaining social ties within their East African community in Moorefield, where Mekonnen said there aren’t many outlets for leisure activities.

Mekonnen, who worked for eight years at the Pilgrim’s plant, said her life in Moorefield has primarily consisted of work, spending time with family, and more work. There’s not much else to do.

“Maybe you go Walmart; where can you go?” she said. “Maybe you go somewhere in Ponderosa or somewhere here, you know?”

For Kefele, who comes from a small village in Eritrea, rural life hasn’t been such a big adjustment. But Mekonnen is from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, and lived in Atlanta, Georgia, before coming to Moorefield.

When Mekonnen gets the chance, she goes over the mountain to cities in Virginia like Winchester and Harrisonburg, where she can find ingredients from East Africa, like green coffee beans. She said the coffee ceremony helps alleviate some of the tedium of her life here.

“Like get together like this and make coffee—I love that,” Mekonnen said.

Mekonnen often hosts her own coffee ceremonies, but that Sunday she was a guest – sharing snacks, coffee and conversation at Kefele’s home in downtown Moorefield.

After roasting the beans and brewing the coffee, Kefele moved around the room with her coffee pot, serving each guest. She poured the coffee from up high into little espresso-like cups.

The coffee was strong and sweet. It tasted of cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger, which Kefele ground and stirred together with the beans.

As Mekonnen sipped her coffee, she explained the coffee ceremony’s significance in her community in Moorefield.

“With ceremonies you think you are back there still. Your mind go back there,” she said. “So we feel like we are back home.”

On Monday, Kefele and most of her guests would be back at work at the chicken plant. But for that hour or two, her living room was full of guests and conversation, fueled by coffee and the warmth of hospitality.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

Virginia Band Bridges Mexico and Appalachia through Mexilachian Music

With Spanglish lyrics, the pluck of a banjo and strum of a guitarra de son, music by Charlottsville’s Lua Project is hard to place. The band defines its sound as “Mexilachian”—a blend of Appalachian old-time and Mexican folk music. But Lua members said their music also draws on Jewish and Eastern European traditions, with a dash of baroque and Scots-Irish influence.

Estela Diaz Knott and her husband Dave Berzonsky are the founders and lead members of Lua Project. Their music is especially personal to Knott, who grew up in the Shenandoah Valley to a Mexican mother and Scots-Irish father. Berzonsky has Jewish, Slavic and Appalachian roots. And together, they’ve made it their mission to merge their various identities into music—a fusion that Berzonsky parallels to food.

“Food wise, what’s Mexilachian? It’s beans, pork and corn, right? Those are really central to both of those cuisines,” Berzonsky explained. “And you start to see that they can filter together and interweave themselves in various ways that are totally organic and totally legit.”

Estela Knott and Dave Berzonsky Playing Mexilachian Music Together

He said it’s similar with music. The same rhythm that’s found in musical styles in Latin America is also used in Appalachian and country music. Since they’re made of similar elements, there’s room for creativity.

“Are we going to have banjo on this track? Or are we going to have accordion on this track? Or let’s be honest, we’re just going to have both, right? And that’s going to work,” Berzonsky said.

The Mexican and Appalachian sounds seem to blend together almost effortlessly, but both Knott and Berzonsky said this project has been a long time in the making. And it’s been hard work—musically, emotionally and even spiritually.

Growing Up Mexilachian

Knott’s father is from Virginia. Her mother’s from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. After her parents married, they settled in her father’s hometown of Luray, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley.

This was in 1967 and interracial marriage had only recently been legalized in Virginia. Knott said her mother was the first Mexican woman in Luray, and the relatively homogenous community didn’t know how to relate to her. In the first couple years, it was so hard on her mother, that they moved back to El Paso, Texas, across the border from her hometown.

“And that didn’t turn out so well, either,” Knott said, “because the people in her community were not accepting of the fact that she had married outside of her race.”

When they came back to Luray, Knott’s mother decided if people weren’t going to reach out to her, she’d reach out to them.

“She started to have fiestas in the community and taught our church kids how to dance Mexican dances and just created a really beautiful vibe. And eventually, more people started to come,” Knott said.

As an adult, Knott has followed in her mother’s footsteps as a cultural and community organizer, but she said she hasn’t always felt grounded in her Mexilachian identity.

“Growing up in any sort of dominant culture, you just want to blend in,” she said.

Knott wrote a song called “Mexilachian Breakfast” as a tribute to her childhood. In it, she sings about growing up with a mixed cultural identity, using the metaphor of her plate.

“We would have sausage and gravy and there were the tamales that we made for the holidays, so we just heat those up, too, and you throw that on the plate… these kinds of things always happened,” she explained.

Traveling Through Mexico: A ‘Genetic Memory’

Knott said she assimilated at a young age. But when she went off to college to study social work she felt like there was a piece of her that was missing. That’s when she found spirituality.

“Doing sweat lodges and going up on the mountain for fasts brought me to a space one time during a fast of dreaming about the native women of Mexico,” Knott said. “I had these visions of these women that I needed — I felt like I really needed to connect to. They were my abuelas [grandmothers]. They were women that I didn’t get to meet.”

Knott had visited the border town where her mother is from, many times. But suddenly, she wanted to spend time deeper in the country. So in her mid 20s, she went with her family to Puebla in south central Mexico.

“And I just couldn’t hold myself together. Like I get emotional just going back there. Like the smells, the sound of the streetcars, the food in the streets… everything was just like hitting me like a genetic memory or something.”

After spending a couple weeks there, Knott reluctantly came back to the U.S. But she was desperate to spend more time in Mexico. Knott and Berzonsky had recently started dating, and together, they hatched a plan to spend a year traveling through Latin America together.

They started in Mexico where they were introduced to San Jarocho, folk music from Veracruz, Mexico, which Knott said “inspired all of this Mexilachian music.” And they discovered the Fandango, a community celebration where San Jarocho musicians play traditional folk music and dance on a wooden platform called a tarima.

Knott said these Fandangos often take place outdoors, in fields or in the woods, and sometimes people camp out. She said it’s similar to an old-time festival in the Appalachians.

“Even though the styles of music are so different, the culture around it is very similar. It involves food, people dancing together, people singing and improvising, and playing in nature,” she said.

Estela Knott, Dave Berzonsky and their two girls at their home in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Putting The Pieces Together

When they came back to the U.S., Estela and Dave began experimenting with a fusion of Mexican folk music and Appalachian old-time. Eventually they settled in Charlottesville, Virginia where they had their two girls—Luna and Mareana. Having kids would change their music, and Berzonsky’s relationship with his cultural identity.

Berzonsky grew up in Northern Virginia feeling largely removed from his Jewish, Slavic and Appalachian heritage.

“At a certain point, you become assimilated into this sort of amorphous, secular, white-dominant identity,” he said.

But when he and Knott had children, Berzonsky felt called to address the different threads of his ancestry. He wanted his kids to be grounded in their cultural origins. That’s when he started getting involved with the local Jewish community.

“When I started hearing the traditional melodies from the prayers, I was like, ‘this is the music that has been inside me all this time,’” he said.

Berzonsky was even able to find Jewish and Middle Eastern melodies within music from Latin America.

A Bridge Across The Line

As Knott and Berzonsky began to feel more deeply rooted in their cultural identities, Knott said their musical purpose suddenly became clear.

“It was about documenting our people and history through music, and rooting that music in where we’re from—here in Virginia,” she said.

Berzonsky said he hopes their music encourages people to dive deeper into their own various threads of cultural identity.

Luna Berzonsky, 13, accompanies her sister and parents on a Mexilachian song.

“I think there are a lot of people who are profoundly lonely and profoundly culturally lost,” he said.

Knott and Berzonsky said they’ve both been there, and it was hard work to reconnect.

“You have to go back and look at old photographs, like talk to your grandparents or whatever, maybe go to the community in which you’re from,” Berzonsky said.

But they said it’s worth it—especially for young people, like their daughters who are now 13 and 11. They’ve recently started learning the Mexilachian songs.

“I wanted to give my girls the world, I want them to know where they come from,” said Knott. “And even more deeper than that is we want to be able to leave this behind for our community.”

Knott said she wants to inspire a sense of belonging that she didn’t have growing up.

“I always felt like I was just walking this line, that I didn’t belong here in the Mexican community and I didn’t belong in the white community that I grew up in. I just didn’t fit in anywhere,” she said.

But with time, and through music, Knott said she began to see her mixed identity as an opportunity to bring people together.

“That’s what I started to realize, as I started to get deeper into my roots, that I’m a bridge across this line.”

The Lua Project’s new album is coming out this fall.

Navigating Wood, Whitewater And The Art Of Paddle Making

This story is part of a recent episode of Inside Appalachia. Click here to hear the full episode.

Appalachia boasts some of the wildest rivers on the East Coast, including the Gauley, the Youghiogheny, and the New River. And though whitewater paddling is now popular in the region, it wasn’t long ago that paddlers first started exploring these rivers, designing their own gear and even building their own paddles. Inside Appalachia Folkways Corps Reporter Clara Haizlett spoke with some of these DIY paddle makers about their love for the craft and perhaps more importantly – their love for the water.

It was a cloudy day on the New River. I was in a canoe, pulling a wooden paddle through the water. The lyrics of a Bob Dylan song were stamped on the glossy blade.

The paddle’s maker was Jon Rugh, who was alongside me in a bright blue kayak. He told me it’s one he made for his wife, Rachel.

“I got a bird that whistles. I got a bird that sings,” he sang. “But if I ain’t got my Rachel, life don’t mean a thing.”

Striped with different kinds of wood, the paddle weighed less than I expected. But it felt sturdy, too. Rugh’s paddles are made for whitewater.

Wooden paddles aren’t commonly used on whitewater; most boaters use paddles made from fiberglass and plastic. When I was a raft guide for a summer, I’d occasionally see the flash of a wooden paddle on the river. I would crane my neck to watch it slice through the rapids. It was always the best paddlers who used them and each paddle had its own story.

Rugh started making paddles after studying sculpture and ceramics in college.

“I felt like I had a very wide pool of skills, but it was a very shallow pool,” he said.

Jon Rugh carves at a wooden paddle blade.

He says he wanted to focus on one skill and become an expert at it. He chose paddle-making because of his love for whitewater kayaking.

Today, Rugh runs his own business out of his basement in Blacksburg, Virginia. It’s called Shade Tree Paddles.

In his basement shop, more than a dozen paddles hung on the wall. Both new and old, shiny and cracked, they all crowded together – waiting to get back on the water.

“This is one of the first paddles I ever made,” he said, as he reached for a cobwebbed paddle hanging on the rack.

“I used it maybe once, because it was not very good,” he said with a laugh.

He’s discovered that paddle-making is a slow, complex process that requires specific, high-quality wood.

“You’re making a paddle that somebody’s life is reliant upon, so you can’t make any shortcuts,” he said.

The Inuit are credited with inventing what we know as the kayak and the double-faced paddle. But these designs weren’t made for whitewater, and for centuries, many rivers were largely deemed unnavigable.

But with the technology that emerged from WWII, like fiberglass and synthetic rubber, adventurers took to the rivers – learning to canoe, raft and kayak on whitewater.

“People had to make their own gear, people had to make their own kayaks,” Rugh said. “And then there would be people who would build paddles.”

That includes people like Keith Backlund. In all of my conversations with different paddle makers, I kept hearing his name in particular. They say Backlund revolutionized the craft. His paddles were specifically designed for whitewater and they were so special they were known by his last name.

“They were these prized possessions,” Rugh said. “You’d say, ‘Hey, can I try a paddle?’ And they’d say, ‘Heck no! That’s my Backlund. Nobody touches my Backlund except for me.’”

Backlund died soon after Rugh started getting into paddle-making, but his legacy was carried on by the apprentices he took on during his career – the first of whom was Jim Snyder.

Jim Snyder works on a paddle in his shop in Preston County, WV.

Rugh would study Snyder’s paddles and email him with questions – about both the building process and the business side of things.

“One of the things that Jim told me early on is that paddle-making is a vow of poverty,” Rugh said. “And like most things he is proven to be correct.”

Rugh sells his paddles for close to $600 each. While that might seem like a good chunk of change, when you consider the weeks and sometimes months of labor involved, Rugh says he would be hard pressed to go full-time.

For now, he works at a woodshop to support his family and just makes paddles on the side. But Jim Snyder has been a full-time paddle maker for about 47 years. I called him up at his home in Preston County, West Virginia, to ask him about it.

“Having real financial support for myself would have been a smart thing,” he said with a chuckle. “But I just wanted to play a lot. I didn’t care if I was poor, and hardly had enough firewood.”

Snyder told me it hasn’t been a financially stable career, but it’s been fulfilling.

“If you look at it, from my perspective, there was actually the danger of getting a job that would pull me into some career track that I didn’t really want to be in,” he said. “Because I really wanted to be a paddle-maker.”

Snyder says making paddles is a transformational process. Turning a tree in the ground into a paddle in the water is like bringing the wood back to life.

“When the wood is cut down and stored, it’s like it goes to sleep,” he said. “Then when it’s finally built into a paddle and used on the river, it thinks the wind is still blowing.”

Christine Vogler paddles over a waterfall with her Jim Snyder paddle.

And the paddles he makes are built to last a lifetime. For some paddlers, they are just a stylistic choice. But for Christine Vogler from Asheville, North Carolina, Snyder’s paddles have allowed her to keep kayaking.

“I simply cannot paddle without a Jim Snyder paddle,” she said. “It’s like my lucky charm.”

Vogler has a genetic condition that affects her connective tissue. When she started kayaking, she says her shoulder would dislocate all the time. She tried physical therapy, and eventually had surgery. But she kept having pain until she tried one of Jim Snyder’s paddles.

“I just was able to paddle without pain,” she said. “It was revolutionary for me.”

Paddle makers say wooden paddles aren’t as stiff as the ones off the shelf, making them more gentle on the body. For Vogler, it goes even deeper than that.

“For some reason it feels like you’re more part of the water – working with the water, moving with it,” she said.”Paddling with a wooden paddle feels more spiritual somehow.”

There aren’t many custom paddle-makers in the region like Rugh and Snyder and there’s high demand. Rugh has already started a waitlist for next year, and Snyder has stopped taking any new orders until things slow down.

Snyder says it’s a supply issue. He’s the supply.

“The supply’s not meeting the demand,” he said. “The supply doesn’t want to.”

Snyder says he’s not interested in scaling up. He’d rather spend his time on the river.

“In the summer, I work half a day and go play half a day. And that works just fine,” he said.

Back at his shop in Blacksburg, Rugh slowly chips away at a paddle – carving it slowly with hand tools.

“I’m trying to come to grips with the fact that there’s significantly more efficient ways to do this, but this is kind of how I like to do it,” he said. “So I think I’m just gonna keep doing it that way. Because otherwise it wouldn’t be so much fun.”

Rugh is always experimenting with new designs and trying them out on the river. I asked him if it’s ever frustrating. He said no.

“If I did it right the first time, then I wouldn’t have to build anymore, I guess,” he said.

Rugh says the craft has also kept him focused on being on the water.

“I get jealous of my paddles,” he said. “They get to go out more than I do.”

West Virginia Maronites Preserving Food, Faith And Future, Before It’s Too Late

Updated on Aug. 18, 2022 at 3:45 p.m.

Editor’s Note: In August 2022, Dalton Haas was arrested and charged with passing bad checks and possessing stolen church property.

——

Throughout Appalachia, many communities share a common concern: As the young people leave and the older generations pass on, who will carry on the traditions?

But in Wheeling, West Virginia, one young man, Dalton Haas, is determined to reverse this trend. He’s committed to bringing his community home, to the sound of church bells and the smells of homemade cooking.

It was the annual church fundraiser and volunteers gathered in the basement kitchen, serving food and sharing fellowship. The volunteers were mostly women, but alongside them was Haas, dressed in a black t-shirt with a tree printed on it: a cedar of Lebanon.

Dalton Hass in front of Our Lady of Lebanon in downtown Wheeling.

Haas is 25 and with his dark hair and youthful face, he looked out of place. But he says he’s known the women for a while. “I’ve been watching them cook and bake in this church my whole life,” Haas said.

Haas is a member of Our Lady of Lebanon, the only Maronite church in West Virginia. Maronites are Catholics who adhere to an Eastern branch originating in what is now Lebanon and Syria.

In parts of their mass, Maronites still use Aramaic – the language of Jesus.

Monsignor Bakhos and Dalton Hass during a church mass.

Maronite immigrants came to West Virginia around the turn of the 19th century, seeking economic opportunity and refuge from religious persecution in Lebanon. With them, they brought rich traditions of food, faith and community.

There were once over 300 Maronites in Wheeling. But today, the congregation is small and the majority is elderly. Older generations have passed on and the younger people have moved away.

“I’m the one that stayed, the lone wolf that stayed,” Haas said.

Haas’s family moved to Wheeling from Lebanon in the early 1900s. When he was eight, he began serving on the altar at Our Lady of Lebanon. Today he’s one of the few servers still left.

But Haas explained that for him, it was different. During his preteen years, he fell in love with the traditions of his church and the culture of his ancestors. He started to learn Arabic and practice Lebanese dance.

Dalton Haas carries Lebanese flag at the 2019 Lebanese festival.

Around that time, he started cooking. Haas says food plays an important part in Maronite religion.

“We put a cross in our dough because we think that’s the only way it’s going to rise, is if it’s blessed with a cross,” he said.

Haas learned to cook from the women of the church. They would prepare food for bake sales, church dinners and the annual festival fundraiser. Dalton learned how to make “kibbeh” from Linda Fadul Duffy, one of the main volunteers for food events.

Kibbeh is Lebanon’s national dish. It’s made with ground meat, onions, spices, and bulgar wheat, all mixed together and topped with pine nuts.

Duffy’s family used to own a Lebanese Bakery in Wheeling. Her mother, Rose Fadul, was born in Lebanon. She opened the bakery in the late 1950s. They served dishes like hummus, stuffed grape leaves and tabboli.

Meat and spinach pies being served at the annual church fundraiser at Our Lady of Lebanon, a Maronite church in Wheeling, W.Va.

“It was in business for over 50 years, and it was very, very popular,” Duffy said.

The bakery closed its doors in 2017 — much to the disappointment of the community, Duffy said, the Lebanese and non-Lebanese alike.

“Everytime I go somewhere, people say, ‘I miss the bakery, I miss the bakery,” she said. “And I says, ‘Well we all do.’”

Duffy still regularly cooks for church events at Our Lady of Lebanon. But she worries future generations won’t be able to carry on traditions of food in their community.

“I think Dalton’s the only one,” she said. “Because we don’t have too many young people in our parish.”

With the bakery closed and the congregation shrinking, Haas felt compelled to reverse the cultural loss in his community. That’s why he plans to open a Lebanese restaurant and bakery in downtown Wheeling. He says it will be more than just a restaurant, it will be a cultural experience.

Hummus at the annual fundraiser at Our Lady of Lebanon.

“When you walk into the restaurant, you’re going to think you’re in downtown Beirut,” he said.

The restaurant will have live music, belly dancers on the weekends and serve authentic platters of Lebanese food, Haas said.

Monsignor Bakhos, the pastor at the church, says he’s thankful younger generations are preserving these traditions.

“Some younger generations, they pick up from their mothers and grandmothers,” he said. “We are pushing as much as we can.”

Bakhos says the church in Wheeling is unique. It’s been over 20 years since he first came from Lebanon to lead the congregation, and he’s gotten to know the people well.

Bakhos explained that many in the church feel a pull back to their culture, back to the faith and back to the food.

“They have what I call nostalgia,” Bakhos said. “They have nostalgia to their childhood with their grandmas and grandpas.”

He says even though most in the congregation have forgotten the Arabic language, they’ve held on to a few words — words like kibbeh, tabouli and hummus. They know the names of the food.

“I noticed that the difference in this community here in comparison with other communities in the U.S., is that this community has roots,” Bakhos said.

This community does have roots – in the mountains of Lebanon and the hills of West Virginia. And Haas says he’s committed to bringing his community back to these roots…before it’s too late.

“In 10 years, who’s going to do all the cooking? Dalton and monsignor? Dalton and one of the women who is still here? It can’t be,” Haas said. “It’s impossible.”

By offering more activities for Maronite kids, Haas hopes that more children will get involved with the church. They are trying to bring back Arabic classes, dance and cooking lessons.

In the meantime, Haas is planning to open a Lebanese food truck in Wheeling, while he continues to search for a permanent home for the restaurant.