The January/February 2023 issue marks the start of Blue Ridge Country’s 35th anniversary year.
Photo Above: Kurt Rheinheimer.
For the first 15 or so years, the town was Wheaton, Illinois. Over the past 20 or so, Hillsville, Virginia.
But the name above is the same on all of them: Arlene Betts.
These are all address labels on the lower left corner of issues of Blue Ridge Country, beginning with the inaugural, July/August, 1988.
Making this the beginning of our 35th anniversary year.
And how better to start the year-long celebration than with deep thanks to Arlene Betts and her daughter, who contacted us last year with the message that Arlene Betts had every issue from the beginning, had reached the point in life of needing to scale back, and did we want a collection of every edition?
We do have one full company archive, but several editions from our basement supply have been depleted to the point that the one in the main archive is the last one.
We’ve had occasional offers like this one over the years and have always suggested a nearby library or civic group. Maybe it’s the combination of that dwindling supply, the ever-increasing “maturity” of the publication and its editor, and the kindness of the offer that made us say yes, thank you, this time.
Arlene Betts’ daughter and her husband showed up with a collection of grocery bags filled with magazines, with apologies for the randomness of the collection. The bags sat unattended in a corner of my office for a few weeks while I considered what to do with them. At some point I sorted them by half-decade and then by year. They now sit closer to my desk in sequenced piles—a horizontal archive to parallel the vertical one on the shelves in another corner of the office.
So, our 35th-anniversary-year-kickoff thanks to Arlene Betts and her daughter, and to all who have thought enough of our editions to save them for a time.
We could not feel more complimented.
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2023 issue.
