When Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the Blue Ridge region, the loss was unimaginable. But sometimes what’s lost finds a way back home.
Jesse Pope, president and executive director of the Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation, says flood waters swallowed the cabin on the New River in Virginia near the North Carolina state line where his 83-year-old aunt, Joy Pope Murray, had lived before moving to assisted living. Her daughter and son-in-law had recently spent months renovating the cabin. As the family historian, Joy had many family records in the cabin that didn’t survive the storm, but unbelievably one family heirloom did. It was an old milk can passed down to Joy and her late husband, Ronnie, from relatives Claude and Selma Roberts.
Pope remembers sitting on this milk can many times as a kid and has a vivid memory of all the milk cans his Aunt Joy displayed in the cabin.
Cleanup crews recovered the milk can in North Carolina on the Ivanhoe Birding Trail, which is located 45 miles downstream from Joy’s cabin in the Cox’s Chapel Community. The names on the bottom helped lead them to Joy, and her neighbor drove the distance to bring it back home.
“It’s hard for me to imagine the trip this milk can made down the river,” says Pope. “It flowed over the Fries Dam and other dams as well as several bridges and shoals to deposit in Ivanhoe! Never underestimate the power of water.”
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2025 issue.
