On this week’s broadcast of Mountain Stage, we revisit an episode from 2019 featuring Gregory Alan Isakov, Elysian Fields, Mandolin Orange, The Brother Brothers and Hush Kids. Recorded in Morgantown, West Virginia at the WVU Canady Creative Arts Center with host Larry Groce.
North Carolina’s Watchhouse have been guests on Mountain Stage four times since 2013. Their 2019 album, Tides of a Teardrop, was released shortly after this appearance and landed at the top of four different Billboard Music Charts.
Listen starting Friday, May 10 for the entire set by Watchhouse, plus more music from Gregory Alan Isakov, Elysian Fields, The Brother Brothers and Hush Kids.
Find a station in your area to listen or queue up episode 936 via the Mountain Stage podcast and enjoy wherever you may be.
The Brother BrothersElysian FieldsFinale SongGregory Alan IsakovHush KidsWatchhouse
A local history preservation group is working to rehabilitate the battered First Zion Baptist Church, a historic Black church in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
For many residents, a first step toward preserving Harpers Ferry’s Black history is rehabilitating and preserving sites of historic significance.
When community members noticed a traditionally Black Baptist church in town fall into disrepair, they rallied behind an effort to restore the building to its former glory.
Now, a local preservation nonprofit called the Harpers Ferry-Bolivar Historic Town Foundation has secured a $100,000 grant to rehabilitate the church.
Reporter Jack Walker spoke with the organization’s incoming chair Lynn Pechuekonis about where the project is today, and the future of First Zion Baptist Church.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
First Zion Baptist Church has been worn down by the elements and pests, according to Lynn Pechuekonis, incoming chair of the Harpers Ferry-Bolivar Historic Town Foundation.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Walker: To begin, could you tell me what First Zion Baptist Church is, and why it’s important to Harpers Ferry history?
Pechuekonis: Harpers Ferry harbored a very vibrant Black community between 1870 and 1970, partially because of Storer College. That brought education to Black families here. It also helped with job training. It also engendered a summer resort industry, which ended up nurturing the Hill Top Hotel, which was a Black-run hotel from 1890 to 1926. It was Black-owned. So there was a large population, comparatively, of Black people in Harpers Ferry — Black families who could own homes. They were encouraged to own homes here. And so they wanted to worship here as well. There were actually altogether four African American churches in Harpers Ferry at one time. Two of those were on West Ridge Street, and First Zion Church was built in 1894 by some of the very early Black families who came to live in our town.
Walker: I know that you and some other local community members have rallied around First Zion Baptist Church and preserving the historic building for future generations. How did that project come to be?
Pechuekonis: So, several years ago, some folks in town, both in Bolivar and Harpers Ferry, were concerned about the fact that we had two former African American churches actually on the same street, just about within three lots of each other, that had been abandoned, and were just really deteriorating quickly. And so it was part of the foundation’s mission to preserve and beautify our communities. So they chose the building that was in better shape between the two, and also one that was on the market to be sold. We were able to buy First Zion Baptist Church, and we’ve been working slowly ever since then, trying to raise money and making improvements and protecting the church where we can ever since.
The Harpers Ferry-Bolivar Historic Town Foundation is currently soliciting community feedback on what type of establishment to convert the battered First Zion Baptist Church into.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Walker: As this project progresses, what vision do you have for the future of the church? What function will it serve for the local community?
Pechuekonis: We’re actually holding a community charrette on May 15 to get some ideas from the community about what they feel they need, because we want this to truly be a Harpers Ferry and Bolivar community center. We have some ideas, but we want to hear what the community has to say. We would like to have some kind of display honoring the Black community that lived here, and especially the history of that church. We also see it as a community or cultural center, to provide programming, to provide community space for events that the community wants to have. We are limited by the town of Harpers Ferry because it’s in a residential neighborhood to having it as a community center or religious institution. So we don’t have a lot of freedom to do other things with it. So that’s kind of why we’re going down that avenue, but we want to shape it in a way that the community most feels the need.
Walker: Obviously this is a long-term project, but do you have a sense of how long it will take to complete the church’s rehabilitation?
Pechuekonis: I think it’s a few years out, just because it’s going to involve so much — so many resources financially. The $100,000 that’s going to help us work on the exterior is just a drop in the bucket compared to what will need to be done to the interior to make it safe and also fit modern standards for a facility that the community can best use. So I think it’s maybe at least three to five years out. That’s just a wild guess.
First Zion Baptist Church, a historic Black church in Harpers Ferry, has become run down over the years. Community members hope to change that.
Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Walker: And now that the project is underway, what are your hopes for what it can bring to the local community?
Pechuekonis: One of the things that we’re hoping is that, as a secular community center, the foundation can bring together residents from both the towns of Harpers Ferry and Bolivar to help build a more cohesive community from the fellowship and shared experiences people have in this space.
On May 15, the Harpers Ferry-Bolivar Historic Town Foundation will host a community charette to receive public input on the First Zion Baptist Church rehabilitation project. For more information on the event, visit the foundation’s website.
Residents interested in providing feedback on the project can do so through an online survey operated by the Harpers Ferry-Bolivar Historic Town Foundation.
On this West Virginia Morning, we hear from Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, chair of the West Virginia Democratic Party, on the efforts to rebuild the party and restore Democrats to state offices ahead of this primary election. Also, we hear about preservation efforts for a historic Black church in Harpers Ferry.
On this West Virginia Morning, while Republican candidates dominate the media leading up to next week’s primary election, there are also Democrats up and down the ballot running for state offices. Their campaign strategy, however, takes a different path.
Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, chair of the West Virginia Democratic Party, spoke with Randy Yohe on the efforts to rebuild the party and restore Democrats to state offices.
Also, in this show, Harpers Ferry is a hot spot for Black history in West Virginia. The town was home to a major abolitionist uprising, a Black civil rights conference and the historically Black Storer College.
But preserving the city’s historic sites requires upkeep. When the town’s residents saw a historic Black Baptist church falling into disrepair, the idea for a new preservation project was born.
Now, the project has received a $100,000 rehabilitation grant. Jack Walker spoke with Lynn Pechuekonis, incoming chair of the Harpers Ferry-Bolivar Historic Town Foundation, about what’s in store for First Zion Baptist Church.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Chris Schulz produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
Homelessness is not just an issue for big cities. Across America, communities large and small are struggling to provide shelter to people without housing. In Charleston, West Virginia, government and community approaches to help the unhoused have created renewed debate on an issue that is already divisive. Earlier this year, this episode of Us & Them received a second place award from the Virginias AP Broadcasters for Best Podcast.
Homelessness has been on the rise since 2016, and the pandemic only exacerbated an acute shortage of resources to help people living on the streets. Many communities are struggling to provide support, even as some homeless people turn away from emergency shelters and remain in outdoor encampments.
In Charleston, West Virginia, the city’s opioid response program also focuses on support for people who are homeless. Tent cities have been a focus at the state legislature as debate continues over how to help people living on the street.
At the same time, some people say they’re more afraid of people living on the street than in the past. Providing sustained care for homeless people continues to elude and divide even well-meaning and determined communities.
Earlier this year, our Us & Them episode called Compassion Fatigue received a second place award from the Virginias AP Broadcasters for Best Podcast.
This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council and the CRC Foundation.
Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond.
Us & Them host Trey Kay met Randy Lantz on the steps of First Presbyterian Church in Charleston on a cold night in January 2023. Lantz, who’s from Georgia, said he’s been homeless since 2016. Lantz said after serving three prison sentences, he found his way “back into the world” after his first incarcerations, but this time, he said, he’s struggling.
Photo Credit: Julie BlackwoodRev. William Myers became First Presbyterian Church’s new head minister in August 2021. It wasn’t long before he became aware of the church’s transient guests who slept on the building’s front steps. Rev. Myers allowed them to camp there overnight, but he also wanted to set limits, knowing children in the church’s preschool program used that entrance every morning and afternoon.
Myers established ground rules for those sheltering on the steps. But this did not resolve the concerns of some community members in and outside the congregation. In his first days in Charleston, Rev. Myers was quickly immersed in the debate over how best to help people living on the street.
(Click here to view Rev. Myer’s sermon about caring for homeless people.)
Photo Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public BroadcastingAshley Switzer and her husband have raised five children in West Virginia’s capitol city. Her grandson attends a preschool located near First Presbyterian Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, which houses Manna Meal, a soup kitchen that’s been serving meals to homeless people for more than four decades.
“There was a group of parents from this school right here who actually called for a meeting with the mayor of our town because of instances with homeless or criminal vagrants on school property, near school property, banging on parents’ car doors, children in the back screaming,” she said, standing outside the preschool playground where her grandson plays. “There have been children playing on this actual playground where homeless people will threaten them. My grandson has witnessed someone walking down this very sidewalk with no pants.”
Photo Credit: Ashley SwitzerBarbara DiPietro, senior director of policy for the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, oversees the group’s federal advocacy and policy analysis. “It’s not compassion in our public policies when we consistently choose not to fund housing, not to raise wages, to allow people to not get health care,” DiPietro said. “Homelessness isn’t an accident. These are conscious public policy choices.”
Photo Credit: National Institute for Medical Respite CareTaryn Wherry, director of the City of Charleston’s CARE program, or Coordinated Addiction Response Effort, said the city’s outreach program focuses on those with substance use disorder as well as people living on the streets. The CARE program began under Charleston’s current mayor, Amy Goodwin.
(Click here to hear Mayor Goodwin on meeting the needs of Charleston’s homeless population.)
“We take a very hands-on, boots on the ground approach every day,” Wherry said. “We’re in the streets, we’re on the [river] banks or in abandoned properties. We’re talking to people and meeting them where they’re at.”
Wherry said CARE staff know firsthand what it is like to be out on the streets, struggling with drug or alcohol addiction.
“We have individuals who have lived and learned experience in all fields, people who are in long-term recovery who have been in active addiction,” she said.
(Click here to view former Charleston Mayor Danny Jones announcing his order to dismantle a homeless encampment known as “Tent City.”)
Photo Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public BroadcastingA peer support worker with Covenant House, Sommer Short works for the nonprofit service organization that partners with Charleston’s CARE team. When Sommer was 21, she was injured in a car accident and prescribed opioids. Over the next five years, she transitioned to heroin use and said she eventually left home and became homeless.
Short works to support people who are living without shelter, like she used to live. She said many of the homeless people she meets are living with substance use disorder and feel like “her people.”
“Though I may be in a position where I’m three years sober today, I am comfortable going out there and trying to help someone the same way that someone helped me,” she said.
Photo Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public BroadcastingShort offers food and hygiene bags that she keeps in her trunk to homeless people camping in and around Charleston.
“We have a Ziploc bag, which contains the toilet paper and their socks and some ointment. Then we have some baby wipes. And inside, we also have a bottle of water, a hairbrush, a comb, a little travel pack for their toothpaste and a brush, a razor, shaving cream,” she said. Short also has food gift cards and Narcan nasal spray, which can be used to reverse a drug overdose.
Photo Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public BroadcastingAs Short walked toward a homeless encampment, she passed under a highway overpass where someone had written “HOPE” in yellow spray paint on the concrete wall.
“Hold On Pain Ends,” Short said, describing what the word means to her. “You always gotta have hope. Pain ends eventually. But you got to work for it as well.”
Photo Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Asheville, North Carolina has an eclectic dining scene and one of its “hidden” gems is Neng Jr.’s. It serves elevated Filipino cuisine in a little restaurant that’s tucked away in an alley on Asheville’s artsy West Side. Folkways Reporter Margaret McLeod Leef visited and brings us this story.
This story originally aired in the May 5, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.
The first thing I notice about Neng Jr.’s is its lively decor. There’s a green-tiled open kitchen, fire engine red countertops, and turquoise walls. Adorning the space are items from Chef and owner Silver Iocovozzi’s personal life — stuffed animals and well-worn books, trinkets from Iocovozzi’s mom for good luck, a quirky telephone in the shape of a red high heel and a vibrant painting of Iocovozzi’s husband, Cherry.
But, what I’m here for is Iocovozzi’s popular Filipino creation — the adobo.
“To me, it is like a quintessential Filipino dish, and it evokes all those flavors,” Iocovozzi says. “I think a lot of people get their minds blown by it, and I love that.”
Inside the kitchen, Iocovozzi cooks in a high-powered wok over an open flame. The adobo is served with duck on the menu. But today, Iocovozzi makes the adobo with pork cheeks that he has on hand. The adobo sauce simmers while he prepares a bitter melon relish to set off the adobo. The dish has a uniquely Filipino flavor profile.
“I would say it’s really a kind of a tangy cuisine, lots of vinegar and lots of sour,” Iocovozzi says. “There’s a lot of tart aspects to it.”
Silver Iocovozzi, chef and owner of Neng Jr.’s.
Photo Credit: Will Crooks/Courtesy
The bitter melon, a spiky cucumber-looking gourd, is almost too tangy on its own. But paired with the rich and silky adobo, my mouth waters for more. The dish is an example of the taste and technical skill Iocovozzi is known for.
Neng Jr.’s was recently nominated for a James Beard award, and Iocovozzi was named one of Time Magazine’s Next 100 People to Watch. He traces the start of his cooking journey back to his mother. He has fond childhood memories of her cooking.
“She would sit down on the ground with this really heavy cutting board and tenderize meat and marinate it, and it was a really simple marinade. It was just soy and oil and garlic and onion and black pepper. But it tasted so good to me,” Iocovozzi says.
Iocovozzi and his mom loved the soy, garlic and onion flavors. His mom is Filipino, and his dad was from North Carolina.
“They met in Japan. My dad was stationed there; he was a Marine. My mom, a Filipino woman, was working in Japan at a karaoke bar. She was an entertainer,” Iocovozzi says.
Iocovozzi’s parents met and married, and his mom immigrated to the United States. His mom was the only person of color in her new family. Staying connected to her Filipino heritage was difficult.
“My mom was really seeking some comfort of home and realizing she couldn’t find that representation of Filipino food or cooking, or even that warmth of culture that Filipinos bring,” Iocovozzi says.
But she found a way to share her culture with Iocovozzi.
“I would go with her to the Asian market and get all these ingredients that she could tell me about and get excited about. Because I think that was like the little amount of representation that she could share with me,” Iocovozzi says.
It wasn’t until visiting Manila and Batangas in the Philippines that Iocovozzi fully understood his mom’s culture and the link between food and celebration. “I grew up between Manila and eastern North Carolina, where my grandparents lived. And [I] really had a lot of experience in Batangas. Batangas is coastal in the Philippines where we would go visit. And because we were in town, they would just bring a reason to have a fiesta and a big celebration around food,” Iocovozzi says.
Those fiestas often centered on butchering and cooking a whole hog. “This was the first time I’d seen a pig be sacrificed. A lot of the cookery in Batangas is no electricity, no gas, just fire. And to see the way … these people that are living in these provinces cook with fire and break down pig and really know how to kill a pig with their hands — it’s an experience I’ll never forget. And also understanding how much I can appreciate food and where it comes from,” Iocovozzi says.
Understanding where food comes from — and how to prepare it — was a quest that took Iocovozzi from the Philippines to the American South and around the world in the restaurant business.
He got his start in Asheville as a dishwasher in 2011 after a friend suggested he’d like the city. Soon, he attended culinary school in the area and worked as a chef at Buxton Hall BBQ — an Asheville institution — before eventually cooking at award-winning restaurants in Tokyo, New York and Grand Cayman Island.
In 2020, he returned to Asheville to build his own community around food. Within two months, he secured a building with a takeout window for what would later become Neng Jr.’s. When designing Neng Jr.’s, Iocovozzi was as intentional about the space itself as the menu.
“I just want to create a space that shows some representation for those that have been seeking it and know that it can exist,” Iocovozzi says.
At Neng Jr.’s, Iocovozzi created a space that welcomes people of all ethnicities, genders, and orientations — just like Iocovozzi’s mom made room for her culture when she moved to the States. “I’m putting myself out there and my heart,” Iocovozzi says, “It’s really a passion project.”
The exterior of Neng Jr.’s, located in a narrow alley in Asheville, has a brightly painted mural.
Photo Credit: Margaret McLeod Leef /West Virginia Public Broadcasting
And it was also a way to honor his mom, whose Filipino nickname was Naneng.
“It’s an affectionate name for a young girl. And I don’t, you know, identify as that, but … Neng Jr.’s is an iteration of that nickname stemming from my mom’s nickname. Because I’m her mini-me,” Iocovozzi says.
Iocovozzi shares his story through Neng Jr.’s, embodying the flavors, warmth and joyfulness of home. “I don’t think of myself as just like a restaurant in Asheville. I think of Neng’s as a restaurant in the world,” Iocovozzi says. “It’s so important to be a Filipino restaurant in Asheville because the people need to know what this food tastes like. And also understand this level of hospitality that comes from a Filipino.”
The Filipino traditions in Chef Iocovozzi’s family history continue to shape the restaurant. Iocovozzi is in the process of building a stage modeled after the original karaoke bars in Japan, like the one where his parents met.
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.
On this West Virginia Morning, as chief legal officer for West Virginia’s citizens, state office holders, agencies and boards, the attorney general’s (AG) responsibilities cover the litigation gamut. The four candidates in the upcoming primary races for AG have diverse views on how those responsibilities should be handled – and prioritized. Randy Yohe has our second story on this race.
On this West Virginia Morning, as chief legal officer for West Virginia’s citizens, state office holders, agencies and boards, the attorney general’s (AG) responsibilities cover the litigation gamut. The four candidates in the upcoming primary races for AG have diverse views on how those responsibilities should be handled – and prioritized. Randy Yohe has our second story on this race.
Also, in this show, ramp season in West Virginia may be winding down, but before the last ramp has been picked, Bill Lynch went out to see what was left.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Eric Douglas produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
