Roddy Moore is the executive director of the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He has a fascination with hotrods, moonshining, Great Road Pottery and Thunderbird jewelry of the Santa Domingo Pueblo in New Mexico. He lives with his wife, Sally Moore, and their two Vizsla “girls,” Dixie and Ginger, and helps tend to their national champion Percherons.
As a folklorist for all of my adult working life, I’ve been able to do what I truly enjoy for a living—talking to old-timers and looking for regional examples of folkart, like blanket chests and pie safes. And I’ve been in the best of places to do this—the Blue Ridge of Virginia. For close to half a century, I have been crisscrossing the region from the Piedmont on the east to the Great Valley that borders its western slopes. I’ve discovered that the complexity of this physical landscape is about as diverse as the people that have settled here.
The Blue Ridge is rich and distinct in its folklore and folkways—how we live and our stories and traditions. That’s because our common heritage has been influenced by the many cultural groups that settled here and also by the ones that migrated through on their way to other parts of the country.
And let’s not forget that the men in the region, who served in the military for centuries, traveled the world and brought back with them their unique cultural experiences. The Blue Ridge is still evolving with the presence of other cultural groups like the Hispanic population which is prevalent throughout the region. I’m excited to see what impact this will have on the cultural landscape.
From a lifetime of collecting oral histories from thousands of craftspeople, musicians, tradespeople and other tradition bearers, I’ve learned how important their cultural identity is to them. These people love where they live, have a deep appreciation of how they have been raised, and they don’t mind sharing what they know. It’s this unselfishness and kindheartedness that are truly the most extraordinary to me. I have witnessed it with some very special people that I was lucky enough to get to know—folks like the late Daniel Womack, a blind African-American gentleman who was a dishwasher at the Hotel Roanoke, but most of all, an amazing storyteller and musician; and Wayne Henderson, a renowned guitarist and guitar maker who never fails to share his knowledge and time with others. It’s humbling and heartwarming to see folks in my own county taking their time, and sometimes money, to educate others about traditional folkways that they have always wanted to share.
I’ve never forgotten what Rik Cooke, the National Geographic photographer, said to me when we were visiting a small church in the community of Woolwine, Virginia, on a cold, snowy morning. We observed how many of the elderly members were escorted into the church by the younger members. Rik said, “The Blue Ridge is not about the beauty of the natural landscape. It’s about the kindness of the people.”
And for me, too, that is what makes the Blue Ridge such a special place.
END OF PREVIEW
The story above appears in our Jan./Feb. 2019 issue.
