Connie Bailey Kitts, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Tazewell, Virginia Family Keeps Black Poetry Alive For Today’s Generation

For nearly 100 years, Jeanette Wilson’s family has used poetry to share stories of African American life in southwest Virginia. Now those poems are reaching a wider community – and a new generation.

This story originally aired in the Sept. 10, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.

Jeanette Wilson thinks she was about five years old when she heard one of her grandfather’s poems for the first time. Her aunt Edna used to recite them to the children. “She would say them and we’d be cuddled in her bed, like story time,” Wilson said.

Wilson’s aunt Edna Dickerson Moore with Wilson’s grandson, the fifth generation who will know the family poetry. Aunt Edna was also known for her poetry and storytelling.

*Courtesy Jeanette Wilson*

Some of her grandfather’s poems were matched with tunes to make it easier for the children to memorize. “He made up a song, ‘Dickerson Boys Are We’ and it would go something like, ‘All those biscuits in that oven/ How I wish I had some of them/ Sop, sop, the goodness I declare/ All them molasses on that plate/ Something something/ Don’t be too late.’ I can’t remember it all, but they used to sing it all the time,” Wilson said.

Rev. George Mills Dickerson, center, surrounded by his sons, many of whom moved away to pursue higher education.

*Courtesy of Jeanette Wilson*

Her grandfather was the Reverend George Mills Dickerson. She called him Papa. He was born in 1871 in Mudfork, a freed slave community near Tazewell, Virginia. He attended Virginia State University, and taught school in the segregated schools for 25 years, at a time when public education for Black students only went to the seventh grade.

Dickerson became an ordained minister in 1898 and preached for more than 50 years. He married more than 1,000 couples at the Tazewell County Courthouse. His ceremony was poetic and often drew courthouse workers to listen in.

Over his lifetime, Dickerson wrote hundreds of poems. He wrote poems about Black children making the long trek to a school in TipTop, about soldiers coming home from World War I with shell-shock, about the development of cities within his region, and one poem about the city of heaven. There were family poems, Tazewell poems, landscape poems and love poems. Themes of his Christian faith were woven throughout.

Rev. George M. Dickerson, standing top left, at a family reunion in 1936 with most of his 16 children and his grandchildren. He formed a neighborhood children’s drama group called the “Rock Alecks” and taught children how to sing shape notes. Many of his poems were about family life.

*Courtesy of Jeanette Wilson*

Black Community Shares Poetry

One poem, the Outcast Stranger, was about a poor man who found shelter in a preacher’s woodshed before he died. It became a favorite in Tazewell’s Black community.

Wilson says she was shopping one day and ran into a man who asked her for a copy of the poem. “And he told me the story of how he memorized it,” she said. “When he got in trouble, his mom would send him upstairs and say, ‘Now you go memorize one of George M.’s poems.’ And he would come down and recite it to her. He said, ‘Please can you get me a copy, because I love that poem,” Wilson said.

One thing that helped the poetry to circulate in the family and community was that her grandfather copyrighted and published more than 100 of his poems as a paperback book. They were printed by the Hilltop Record, a newspaper company in Columbus, Ohio in 1949. Years later, one of Jeanette’s uncles had more printed.

“I’m so thankful they got these books published,” Wilson said, “because they would have been lost. And it’s our history. You can just imagine how they were doing things from reading the poetry.”

Poetry Tracks History

Joseph Bundy is an African American poet, playwright and community historian based in Roanoke. He said many of Dickerson’s poems provide a historical track of Black life in southwest Virginia in the first half of the 20thcentury. They also show Dickerson’s aspirations for his people.

Commenting on the poem “Black Folks Coming,” Bundy said, “I think he was really way ahead of his time. Instead of saying ‘Negros coming’ or ‘colored folks coming,’ he’s saying ‘Black Folks Coming.’ He was not letting someone else name us. He is naming himself. He’s saying our roots come from Black Africa.”

In the fields of old Virginia.
And on Georgia’s sunny plain.
Africa’s able sons and daughters
Sing a hopeful glad refrain.

They have leaders true and faithful
Men and women brave and strong.
Armed with love, instilled with duty,
Working hard and waiting long.

Douglas struggling up from slavery,
Bruce and Scott, if I had space,
I can name a thousand heroes
Champions of this race.

Bundy said he thinks Dickerson’s poems convey a Booker T. Washington-like philosophy, showing the dignity of all labor. “He’s talking about growing corn, working in the coal mine, and he doesn’t seem to place one occupation or one thing above another. He sees dignity in all of it.”

In the pulpit, in the workshop,
On the railroad, on the farm,
In the schoolroom, mine in factory,
There was power, in brain and arm.

Ignorance shall flee before them.
Hate shall hide his ugly head.
Idleness shall be discouraged
Honest toil shall earn its bread.

Dickerson could write on an everyday level, Bundy said, but also on a high level. “This man, he could definitely write,” he said. If Dickerson had, had more than a local audience, Bundy said, “he could have been like a Langston Hughes or somebody. He could have really been known.”

Joseph Bundy reads from Rev. Dickerson’s book of poems, copyrighted 1949. The book is dedicated to his first wife Sarah and second wife Mary, and his 16 children.

*Credit: Connie Kitts/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Tradition Carries On With Son

Rev. George Mills Dickerson died in 1953. But the tradition of writing poetry carried on with his son George Murray Dickerson. This George Dickerson, who is Jeanette Wilson’s uncle, was born in 1917. He was well known throughout the region for his recitation.

His poems were humorous and topical.

We’ve got a President today,
His name is Richard Nixon.
From what I hear and read about,
This country needs some fixin‘.

Uncle George recited his poems in the public schools, at the community college, local museums, libraries and festivals. He recorded them on cassette tape and made a 45 rpm vinyl single that was sold throughout the community as a fundraiser for the Tazewell Rescue Squad.

Four of George Murray Dickerson’s poems were recorded on a 45 rpm vinyl.

*Credit: Connie Kitts/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

I’ve always wanted to ride in a Rescue Ambulance
I think I’m gonna try it if I ever get a chance
But I have a couple of questions I’d like to ask you first
Cause some of the folks who ride these things
Wind up in a hearse.

He printed a handful of his poems and sold them as a tri-fold pamphlet. When the town held its summer festival on Main Street, Wilson said, “[Uncle George] would be selling his little booklets, and setting up his little tent and reciting poems.”

Together, the poetry of Wilson’s grandfather and uncle spanned momentous points in African American history. “Papa was right out of slavery,” Wilson said, “and Uncle George’s was right after the Civil Rights Movement.”

George Murray Dickerson was the topic of a research paper for an American Studies class at Southwest Virginia Community College. Holding a student sketch, former college president Charles King dubbed Dickerson “Poet Laureate of Southwest Virginia.”

*Credit: Connie Kitts/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Juneteenth Returns Poems To Broader Community And New Generation

After Uncle George died in 1999, Wilson said the family continued to read his poems – and her grandfather’s, too – at reunions and church events. But the community as a whole began to lose touch with the poetry.

That started to change in 2021. The Town of Tazewell passed a Juneteenth resolution that called for honoring contributions African Americans made to the town and the region. Now, the Dickersons’ poems are read aloud as part of the town’s Juneteenth celebrations.

During the 2023 Juneteenth program, Steve Rainey, left, reads “The Hills of Old Virginia” by his grandfather Rev. Dickerson, and Bettie Wallace, right, read “‘Cause I’m Colored” by George Murray Dickerson.

*Courtesy of Vanessa Rebentisch*

Bettie Wallace read the poem “‘Cause I’m Colored” by Uncle George at Tazewell’s 2023 Juneteenth Celebration.

Everybody picks on me,
‘Cause I’m Colored.
They don’t think I want to be free
‘Cause I’m Colored.

They won’t give me a decent job,
And claim that I just steal and rob;
And they call me “boy” when my name is “Bob”,
‘Cause I’m Colored…

I thought one time I’d try to pass
And then I looked in the looking glass;
My hopes went down the drain real fast,
‘Cause I’m Colored.

Wallace, 72, said this poem, written in 1973, has special meaning for her.

“I can relate to it so much,” Wallace said. “Coming up, so many things we couldn’t do, not just because I’m colored, but because I’m a dark-skinned colored person. Most of my life people would say, ‘Oh you dark skinned, you can’t do this.’ I did not learn that Black was beautiful until Black became beautiful – that the color of my skin was a very important part of me,” she said.

Wallace said she has known Uncle George’s poetry for years. But now his poems are finding a new audience as well. BrookeAnn Creasy, 18, is starting to write poetry herself. She first heard Dickerson’s poems at the Juneteenth celebration, and she said while they are sometimes funny, they’re also eye opening.

“When you hear poems from other times, like segregation – it makes you understand what we don’t understand. Because I’m a white person. I don’t get to experience discrimination like Black people do. And that’s why I think a lot of people show arrogance, because they don’t like to learn about other people’s perspectives. Because that’s important…empathy,” Creasy said.

Wilson, left, and BrookeAnn Creasy, right. Creasy said she thinks Dickerson’s poems should be included in the school curriculum. “If you’re going to learn poems, don’t include just white poetry. Include all the sides of southwest Virginia.” The humor and short format of Uncle George’s poems, she said, is a good fit for kids like her who have grown up with social media.

*Credit: Connie Kitts/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

As for Wilson, she said empathy and equality were recurring themes in her grandfather and uncle’s poems.

“I think they both had the same idea, about life in general for anybody,” said Wilson. “Not just the Black people but everybody – the idea to just have equality for rich, poor, Black, white, you know. Everybody has a part in this world.”

In 2020, Tazewell citizens voted to keep the statue of a Confederate soldier in front of the courthouse. The county then supported a citizens-initiated mural of 16 local African Americans – including the Dickersons – with placards telling their stories as well.

*Credit: Connie Kitts/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

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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.

Ballad Of Muddy Water Endures And Brings Healing

The back-to-back horrific McDowell County floods of 2001 and 2002 were widely reported by print, radio and TV, but these outlets could not tell the story and bring healing like Alan Cathead Johnston’s ballad, Muddy Water, with healing effects that still endure.

“It was on a Sunday morning, on the 8th day of July

In the year of 2001

Way down in McDowell County, in the West Virginia hills

Our lives would change before the day was done.”
– Muddy Water

This story originally aired in the July 30, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.

In the little town of Kimball, on the banks of the Elkhorn Creek, Markella Gianato is making french fries at her Greek-American restaurant called the Ya’Sou. Kimball is in McDowell County, the southernmost county in West Virginia.

Back in the summer of 2001, Markella saw buildings and debris washed away in a horrific flood. People said it was a once-in-a-hundred-year flood, but it wasn’t. Less than a year later, an equally devastating flood tore through the county. This time, Markella, felt the heartbreak of witnessing a futile effort to save a mother and child from floodwaters. “I have had to have treatment for PTSD and so forth,” she said.

She says part of her healing has also come from a song — a ballad about the floods called “Muddy Water.”

“At first, it was very hard for me to hear it,” she said. “I could not talk about it at first. Now, it seems like it’s just part of my heart. Every phrase of that song is so real.”

Gianato uses the ballad story to tell her story when she talks to SWAP volunteer mission groups who come to the county to do repair work in the summers. She opened her PowerPoint presentation, and looking at a photo said, “That’s Richard Jones; that’s the guy who rescued my dad.”

In the background audio, Alan Johnston and his daughter’s voice sing the ballad. Johnston wrote “Muddy Water” in the summer of 2002. As Gianato looks at the slide show, Johnston sings, “we wondered if it was ever gonna end.”

“That part touches me,” Gianato said, and she remembers how rising waters forced her to retreat with her family to the upstairs apartment of her father’s grocery store, where she found her 13-year-old son attaching an empty milk jug to her father’s waist.

“Lightning flashed around us, and the thunder shook the ground, and we wondered if it was ever gonna end,” — these lyrics of Muddy Water described the anxiety of those like Gianato’s family, who were trapped in the brick building (right), surrounded by at least 7 feet of water.

*Courtesy Markella Gianato*

“And I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and he said, ‘My papoo might not remember how to swim. But if something happens and the rescue gets botched, or the building doesn’t stay under us, he’ll float and they’ll find him.’ He put a belt through the handle of that milk jug and around my daddy’s chest. That rascal had thought that far ahead,” Gianato said.

After waters receded, rescuers reached them with an endloader.

“I call the PowerPoint presentation ‘Forever Changed,’” Gianato said, “because it changed my life, changed our town, but mostly it changed me.”

Centered on the restaurant’s wall of historical family photos and news articles, is the photo of the flooded building.

*Credit: Connie Kitts/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

New Dreams And Old Friends

Reflecting on the ballad lyric, “From Keystone down to Landgraf, and from Kimball into Welch, Muddy Water washed away our hopes and dreams.” Gianato said she sees two sides of those ballad words now. “It washes your hopes and dreams away but they come back to you sometimes. It may be different,” she said.

And that “different” for her is the restaurant she now operates. It’s not the original grocery store her father had operated since 1947, and it’s not her dream of the sandwich shop she’d planned, which washed away in the 2002 flood. But the dream that emerged instead was this Ya’Sou Restaurant and West Virginia Grocery. She’s still honoring the spot where her immigrant father started his dream, and the people of Kimball have a place to gather and hear live music on the weekends.

Alan Johnston performed Muddy Water at the Ya’Sou numerous times before the COVID-19 shutdowns. Gianato and Johnston are friends who have known each other since high school and they have lived through at least six major county floods in their lifetimes.

The Ya’Sou, nicknamed “The Breadbasket of Kimball” on signage, was formerly A.P. Wood Grocery Store.

*Credit: Connie Kitts/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Johnston will still occasionally drop into the Ya’Sou for a burger. Many know him by his nickname of “Cathead” because of the cathead biscuits he loves to eat. He’s lived in McDowell County his whole life. He’s worked at everything from school teaching to furnace repair to grocery store management and juke box repair. He’s photographed his county end-to-end, and has written ballads about its range of characters, including John Hardy the gambler, Sid Hatfield the sheriff, and Homer Hickam the NASA scientist. He combines his passion for history, photography and music on his YouTube channel.

Don Rigsby, national bluegrass artist of eastern Kentucky, considers Johnston one of West Virginia’s finest songwriters.

“He equated the muddy water to having its own soul, its own personality and goals, instead of it just being a form of matter that we can’t create or destroy,” said Rigsby. “He gave it power beyond just being water in the river. He gave it life and character. And that’s very, very clever writing.”

Rigsby said Johnston is all about the feeling in a song first. “The old blues guys from back in the 1920s and ’30s and ’40s were the same way,” he said.

Rigsby recorded his version of Muddy Water with the iconic Vassar Clements on fiddle and Kenny Malone on percussion. “You can hear the fiddle making the devil-laughter up there, if you listen,” said Rigsby. “It’s one of my favorite pieces of music I’ve ever recorded,” he said.

He added that it’s also a legacy piece for him, as both Clements and Malone have passed away. And it’s special for Johnston, as Clements is his favorite fiddler.

Music Is In The Genes

Johnston grew up on Premier Mountain, just west of Welch, the county seat. He still lives there. Music is in his genes. When he was about 5 years old, he sang the coal mining ballad “Sixteen Tons” in the grocery store.

“So they put me up on the meat case there and I’d sing it,” he said. “I must have been a sight,” he said.

Johnston’s grandmother played the clawhammer banjo and passed that down to Johnston’s father, a coal miner and prize-winning fiddle player.

Alan Johnston’s grandmother, Clara Blankenship Johnston on banjo, Druey Mitchem on fiddle, and father Raymond Johnston on accordion, in Carswell Holler in 1953.

*Courtesy Alan Johnston*

“Daddy, he was awesome on clawhammer banjo and the fiddle, and he played guitar very well,” Johnston said.

“So every night when I came home from school, after I got my homework done and everything, it was just play music, play music. Every night. And then he would give me a pointer or two. He’d say, ‘Do that like this, do that like this.’” Johnston said.

Raymond Johnston (left) on fiddle, and Alan on guitar. Alan taught himself banjo first, and he received his first guitar one Christmas.

*Courtesy Alan Johnston*

Musical Talent Passes Down

Johnston specializes in upright acoustic bass and guitar but he can also play mandolin, fiddle, banjo, electric guitar and keyboards. And perhaps any other instrument put in his hands. He’s the one playing all the instruments in the mix of Muddy Water. And he also sang.

“I’m not much of a singer,” he says. “I come up short on that end, but my daughters are fantastic singers.”

The voices of both Jessi Shumate and Stacy Grubb are familiar to many in McDowell County and Johnston recorded a version of Muddy Water with each daughter.

Jessi Shumate and Stacy Grubb, accompanied by Alan Johnston.

*Courtesy Alan Johnston*

When Muddy Water played on the radio, shortly after the floods, it became the most requested song at WELC, the Welch, West Virginia AM radio station.

People wanted CDs of the song. Johnston thought he would mimic the old 45 rpm record singles. “And there was two songs on it. And front and back, you know, A side, B side. And I thought, well, that’s what I’ll do,” Johnston said. So he put two songs on a CD disk and made 50 copies, using his own home studio, printer and supplies. He took them with him to work.

“And before I could clock in, the 50 were gone and when I came to work the next day, people were outside waiting to get one,” he said.

He said he had to charge something to recoup the cost of supplies, so he sold them for $3 a piece. “I ended up selling over 5,000 of them,” he said.

The ballad was given out on CDs at class reunions, covered by national artists — including bluegrass performer Don Rigsby and David Davis — and it was often played at festivals and flood reunions.

Muddy Water was often one of the first requested songs at festivals, Johnston said. He plays here with Charlie Davis and Johnny Prevento at the Asco Hollow Reunion.

*Courtesy Alan Johnston*

Ballad Says What People Could Not Say

It’s the recording that still circulates on the internet that Cynthia Cox remembers hearing. Cox grew up in Northfork Hollow, about 10 miles east of Kimball. Her home was severely damaged in the floods and they made the hard decision of moving about 15 miles south to Bluewell, West Virginia, in neighboring Mercer County.

She’s still deeply moved by Muddy Water.

“Even driving in the county now, I still think at times that happened yesterday,” she said as she listened to the song on her smartphone. “The people stay with you and the song stays with you.”

Cox listens to and loves all kinds of music. “Growing up, McDowell County music was a part of your life to survive. And the musical love in my generation was because of our parents and our grandparents. Also music in church. It was a coping skill,” she said.

She loves the instrumentation in the beginning of the song. “Just hearing the rift of the music in itself draws you in. And then when you listen to the lyrics, yes, it offered comfort that we couldn’t speak,” she said.

The song lyrics also expressed the anger people felt, Cox said.

“Some people blamed the coal mines and the timber industry.

They called it the 100 year flood.“

“The anger toward the timber and coal mining was real. And he spoke it when he sang it. He could say what we couldn’t say,” she said.

What she hears in the song is a common language of empathy and struggle. “He put the community in the lyrics,” she said. “You know, the news articles tried to capture it, the photographs back then tried to capture it. But you don’t really hear it and feel the story, too, until you hear him sing Muddy Water,” Cox said.

Second Flood Brings More Suffering And Lessons

“But less than 10 months later, on the second day of May

The thunder clapped and rain began to fall.

And we ate the words that we had spoken way back in July

Muddy Water you made liars of us all.“

Johnston’s lyrics capture the unbelief people felt when the second 100-year flood came 10 months later. “If you would’ve told anyone at that time, there’s a flood coming tomorrow, and it’s gonna wash it all away, we’d called them a liar,” Cox said. “Like, are you just crazy? You’re talking nonsense, but it became a reality,” she said.

“Well we worked so hard to put back

What you took away before, just to have you come and take it all again

Ten thousand people cried, seven people died

And I could hear the devil laughin’ in the wind.“

Cox said she now lives with a faith that accepts that disasters may come. “We’re not invincible from any kind of natural disaster. You don’t think, ‘I might face a train derailment of toxic chemicals’ like the East Palestine train derailment, until the things happen.”

Music can give a sense of community even when devastation and natural disasters destroy it, Cox said. “So you need music. You need healthy outlets.”

“The therapy that comes from his music helped us to grieve, which gave us strength so we could rebuild and regather to like, okay, we’re either gonna stay down here or we’re gonna have to move. I commend those who were able to stay, and at times I envy that because once your county, that’s always home.”

Johnston said someone once told him he lived in a cool place. “The man said, ‘Everybody writes songs about where you live, you know, in Appalachia. Nobody has ever written a song about where I live,’” Johnston said he thought about that a while. “And I thought, it is a cool place to live. I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

——

Cookies For A Nativity Fast: Recipe With Ancient History Makes Annual Appearance In Appalachia

To prepare for Christmas, many Orthodox Christians fast for 40 days from eggs, meat and dairy. But that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy something a little sweet. Ginny Chryssikos’ melomakarona fasting cookie brings a bit of ancient history to Appalachia.

We’re all familiar with recipes for a Christmas feast but what about recipes for a Christmas fast? For many parishioners of St. Mary’s Orthodox Church in Bluefield, West Virginia, the 40 days before their Christmas feast are spent fasting. It’s basically a vegan fast, excluding eggs, meat and dairy. But that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy something a little sweet.

“I’m sifting six cups of flour and four teaspoons of baking powder,” said Bluefield native Ginny Chryssikos, as she started the first step of a special cookie recipe. Chryssikos is Orthodox Christian, and she’s also Greek American. She makes these cookies every year for her church’s St. Nicholas Day bake sale.

Three generations of Ginny Chryssikos’ Greek family have made meals in this same kitchen, where Chryssikos watched her grandmother make melomakarona.

The recipe she uses for these fasting cookies is from a Greek cookbook. But it’s a variation of her grandmother’s cookie.

“This particular cookie is a fasting cookie,” said Chryssikos, as she mixes plant-based margarine, sugar and peanut oil. “In the Orthodox tradition, we fast before we feast. We prepare ourselves for the Nativity of Christ by some abstinence from dairy and meat products. It’s a kind of self-emptying in a way, in preparation for bringing Christ into our lives at Christmas.”

Chryssikos’ melomakarona recipe comes from a cookbook recommended by a Greek American friend in Bluefield. Chryssikos was browsing through it with her godmother and they spotted a picture of the godmother’s brother in Greece, preparing lamb. “She was so excited. He had never been able to come to America,” Chryssikos said.

“The people in Asia Minor have a different name for it but in Greece we call them Melomakarona.”

She said the name is a synthesis of the Greek word ‘meli’ which means honey, and ‘makaria’ which was the word for a bulgar wheat mixture served in ancient Greece at a meal for the departed, after a funeral.

In Chryssikos’ small home kitchen, a dish towel embroidered with “Thessaloniki” hangs above the kitchen sink. It’s a reminder of the years Chryssikos lived and worked in Greece. She recently retired as a social worker and is presently in the middle of translating a book from Greek to English.

There’s not much counter space, so her cookbook is propped up in the window sill, in front of lace curtains and alongside several Orthodox icons. This is the house where Chryssikos and her brother grew up with their parents and grandparents — three generations cooking and eating together.

As she added orange zest to the flour, she said, “Recipes that don’t have the dairy ingredients in them, you have to put some flavoring in it like a citrus, to sort of compensate for what’s missing in the dairy.”

A Holistic Fast — More Than Just Abstaining From Food

These cookies are part of Chryssikos’ fasting tradition, an ancient practice and something she sees in a holistic way to prepare for the Nativity. “It’s more than just a fasting from food. It’s a fasting from anger, you know, the passions that make our lives difficult in a relationship with God and our relationship with others.”

And thus it goes hand-in-hand with other practices of prayer and giving to those in need, she said. “The good things in life don’t always point us to God. Sometimes you have to restrain or empty yourself to see the true value of things,” she said.

Explaining the Nativity icon, Chryssikos said, “We use the paradigm of the cave because holy tradition says Christ was born in a manger, and the manger was actually in the cave. So the cave is like our hearts. We have to empty our hearts to prepare ourselves for Christ to enter.”

Reaching for a circa 1960s hand-cranked nut grinder her mother used, Chryssikos starts making the walnut filling that will go into the cookie. She’s also kept the cast iron grinder her grandmother used, and demonstrates how it attaches to the countertop.

Circa 1960s hand-cranked nut grinder used by Chryssikos’ mother.

Cast iron grinder used by Chryssikos’ grandmother about 70 years ago.

Chryssikos used to sit on a stool in the kitchen and watch her grandparents cook many Greek dishes, including this cookie. “My grandmother’s admonition was ‘Watch me, watch me. Watch what I do and that will help you learn,’” she said.

Immigrant Greeks Drawn To Southern West Virginia

Chryssikos’ family brought their skills with them when they immigrated from Greece.

“My grandfather came to McDowell County in 1910. He was a baker in Greece in the village area, so I always think of him when I’m doing some of these recipes,” Chryssikos said.

Her grandfather went back to Greece to fight in the Balkan Wars in 1912 but returned again to this country. He married Chryssikos’ grandmother when she arrived from Greece at Ellis Island. They moved to Welch, the county seat, where Chryssikos’ mother, Alexandra, was born. Chryssikos’ grandfather, Demetrios Gianelos, helped run the popular Capitol Lunch restaurant with a fellow Greek.

Demetrios Gianelos, Chryssikos’ grandfather, at the Capitol Lunch restaurant in Welch.

“There’s a joke — when Greek meets Greek, they open a restaurant,” Chryssikos said. “I don’t know if it’s in the genes or what, but that’s something we’re known for.”

In fact, Chryssikos’ father, Paul Chryssikos, also worked in restaurants as a young man.

“He came here under very different circumstances because he was in the Greek army. And when the Nazis invaded and occupied Greece, he went with the government into exile,” Chryssikos said.

Paul Chryssikos (left) in uniform, helping prepare meat on a spit in Greece, circa 1940.

He traveled from Egypt to South Africa and to Argentina but eventually arrived in America, where his brother lived, in Bedford, Virginia.

He got jobs as either a cook or manager at five of Bluefield’s numerous Greek-run restaurants: the Spanish Grill, the Ideal Lunch, the Matz Hotel Grill, the Pinnacle, and Paul’s Grill, which he owned.

Ginny’s father, Paul Chryssikos, manager of the Ideal Lunch in Bluefield in 1951.

It was the owner of Jimmy’s Restaurant in Bluefield who introduced him to Chryssikos’ mother. They married and she taught elementary school and he eventually became a language and literature professor at what is now Concord University. His interests were always academic, Chryssikos said, but he also cooked Greek specialties for faculty picnics.

In their south Bluefield home, fruit trees and a backyard garden supplied the family cooks with plenty of fresh produce for their Greek dishes. Chryssikos learned Greek early, before she entered grade school.

Paul Chryssikos with partner Nick Katsoulis at the Spanish Grill.

“Lessons were in that little breakfast nook with my grandmother on Saturday mornings. We had lessons, my brother and I. It was the Greek version of ‘Tom, Dick and Harry,’ you know. I have the book in fact,” said Chryssikos.

Chryssikos’ maternal grandmother, Virginia Gianelos, standing by her rose trellis bordering the vegetable garden of her Bluefield home.

Alexandra Chryssikos, Ginny’s mother, was well-known in the community for her home hospitality.

Chryssikos’ grandmother, Alexandra Gianelos, (right) visiting her Bluefield Greek friend, after comparing who grew the largest tomatoes.

Back in the kitchen, Chryssikos takes the chilled cookie dough out of the refrigerator and kneads it by hand. She pinches off small pieces to flatten into oval shapes. She puts a teaspoon of the nut mixture in the middle and folds them closed. She crimps the top for decoration, and puts them on a cookie sheet and into the oven.

This crimping tool was a gift from an Egyptian friend, said Chryssikos. “A lot of the cooking that we have in Greece is very much part of the Middle Eastern cuisine.”

The front porch door is open and it conjures up a memory of Chryssikos’ grandfather. He learned his baking skills as an apprentice in the Pintas Mountains of Greece, she said.

“I think he liked West Virginia because it was all mountains here. And he felt at home. You know, he would sit on the porch — it faced East River Mountain — and he would say, ‘Look, just like my village.’ He enjoyed the mountains here. He loved this area,” Chryssikos said.

Cultural Diversities Come To Appalachia Alongside Orthodox Faith

Shortly before Ginny’s grandfather immigrated from Greece, another group of immigrants with Orthodox Christian roots had come to these southern West Virginia mountains. They came from the villages of the Carpatho-Russian mountain range, in eastern Europe and parts of Ukraine. They came to work in the coal mines. They made a home in McDowell County and they organized the first St. Mary’s parish.

“Families arrived there in the late 1800s, and they built this little church, which had to be rebuilt in 1913 because of a fire,” said Chryssikos. The Elkhorn parish had more than 100 families.

Artist’s painting of the original St. Mary’s structure, still standing in Elkhorn, West Virginia. Although the church congregation has moved to Bluefield, Father Michael Foster sometimes does parts of the service in other languages “just to again connect us to our ancestors and our departed family members and to remember again what all they went through to find themselves here where we are now,” Foster said.

The onion-shaped gold dome of St. Mary’s was easily spotted by cars and coal trucks traveling in and out of the coal fields on Route 52. Services were in the old-church Slavonic language.

The church became part of the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox diocese in America and in 2000 moved to Bluefield, West Virginia. The three gold domes of the new St. Mary’s are silhouetted against East River Mountain. The parish has become more multi-ethnic, and its services are now conducted in English.

Over the decades, the parish has added converts with Anglo-Saxon roots in the Appalachian region, to those members with roots in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, Lebanon, Palestine, Ethiopia, Greece, and Russia.

“Many of these are countries that have historically had an Orthodox presence,” Chryssikos said.

“It’s interesting that St. John Chrysostom, who wrote the liturgy, lived in a time when there were many cultures and languages,” Chryssikos said. “He spoke often about the commands to love your neighbor. So there’s always been that aspect of orthodoxy, with language and cultural diversity.”

Bringing Ancient Practices And Patron Saints To The Present

Father Michael Foster, priest of St. Mary’s, announced the beginning of the Nativity fast in a Sunday service in mid-November.

Many of the Orthodox liturgical practices, embodied in such objects as the seven-branch candlestand, metal incense burner and bells, icon panels, and altar area behind a screen, date back to ancient times, Father Michael Foster said.

Fasting, prayer and almsgiving are seen as complementary spiritual “pillars” he said.

“One of the things I always try to tell people, the money that you’re saving from your fasting, give it as alms; the time that you’re saving, worried over food, use it for prayer,” Foster said. The intention of fasting, he said, is to reorient our hearts toward a love of God and others.

One historical figure who serves as a model for many Othodox, Foster said, is the beloved St. Nicholas. This early Christian bishop was Greek, lived in Turkey, and is known for his secret gift giving — which might be why he is considered the early model of Santa Claus.

He’s the patron saint of children, travelers and prisoners, and is commemorated on Dec. 6, Foster said.

“I think the thing that I’d love people to remember is he’s more than just a stand-in for Santa Claus,” Foster said. “But instead, he means so much to all of us. In almost all Orthodox churches, there’s a special part of the wall that’s dedicated to a saint that means a lot to that community. And in almost every single church that spot is reserved for St. Nicholas, because he is so beloved and respected.”

“I think one of the most impactful things was just how much giving that he did to the poor and to prisoners,” he said. “And this was out of his heart, as well as his pocket, to be able to help these people that were disadvantaged and had never gotten any sort of help before.”

St. Mary’s Orthodox Church sits at the foot of East River Mountain.

And to let the community learn more about the true identity of this real St. Nicolas, the parish began holding a dinner and bake sale several years ago. Every year, Chryssikos makes her fasting cookies. As we’re waiting for the cookies to brown, Chryssikos pulls an icon of St. Nicholas off the window shelf and tells me its story about St. Nicholas.

The icon depiction of St. Nicholas (left), patron saint of children and sailors. The story icon (right) depicts him saving three sisters from prostitution, when their father was completely destitute, by putting bags of gold at their window. “Sometimes we see during the holidays, chocolate coins wrapped in gold paper. And it’s possible that comes down from this,” Chryssikos said.

“He helped save three sisters from prostitution when their father was completely destitute by putting bags of gold at the window sill of their room,” and that act, she said, may be the origin of the Christmas tradition of wrapping chocolate coins in gold foil.

Chryssikos then offers to sing one of the hymns of the season. “There’s a beautiful Greek Orthodox hymn that I know in Greek, that talks about the birth of Christ,” and she began to sing it in Greek.

The timer goes off, and the cookies are done but Chryssikos will hold off on the last step — dipping them in hot honey syrup — until she’s ready to take them to the church. “That’s really what gives it its character,” she said.

After they’re baked and cooled, the last step is to dip the cookie in a honey syrup.

Her treats will join a tablespread of others that show the ethnic roots of the parish: Romanian truffles, Greek baklava, Slavic nut horns and — not to be forgotten — Appalachian fried apple pies. On Christmas Day, the day of the Nativity, the fast ends and the special feast begins.

Melomakarona alongside Greek/Turkish coffee, made in a traditional briki coffee pot. Two vintage brikis used by Chryssikos’ family are in the background.

You can learn more about St Mary’s traditions of community, culture and faith in their recently published Savor the Flavor of St. Mary’s cookbook. It includes family memories of ethnic ways, special prayers, and fasting recipes, including Chryssikos’s recipe for melomakarona.

Cookie Steps In Pictures

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