THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Byron
Herbert Reece Interpretive Center receives boost
Those of us who are avid Byron
Herbert
Reece fans and who appreciate his poetry and prose were elated over the
recent
grant of $671,072 to be used in development of the Byron Herbert Reece
Interpretive Center on the farm about a mile north of Vogel State Park.
For one who struggled both as a
farmer and
as a writer, the amount, no doubt, would have seemed magnanimous to the
humble
poet. To make use of the grant from the Department of Transportation
Enhancement Funds, money on the local level amounting to 20 percent of
the
allocated grant must be raised. The Byron Herbert Reece Society is in
the
process of achieving that goal. Members are confident that people will
contribute so that a beautiful center at the former Reece farm along
Thanks to those who worked hard
to secure
the grant. Reid Dyer and Joy Still representing Hayes, James and
Associates
assisted with writing the grant proposal. President of the Byron
Herbert Reece
Society, Dr. John Kay, has exerted time, effort and enthusiasm to the
task.
Thanks are due Senator Chip Pearson and Representative Charles Jenkins
for
their interest in and advocacy of the project. Those from the Georgia
Department of Transportation supported the application for the grant
and seemed
happy that
I can envision the future when
the
I thought of a mutual friend of
mine and
Reece’s, Mrs. Marel Brown, a
Mrs. Brown tells about meeting
Mr. Reece
first in July 1940. She was spending a week at
Without a phone at the Reece house for her to make an appointment to see him, she drove from Vogel to the farm. There she met first Mrs. Emma Reece, the poet’s mother.
Mrs. Reece was delighted that
another poet
had sought out her son, and urged Brown to wait until her son and his
father
Juan would be in from the fields.
Mrs. Brown writes: “The first
time I saw
Byron Herbert Reece he was coming over the top of a hill, walking home
from an
afternoon of farm work on the far side of the ridge. Even silhouetted
against
the brown earth as he and his father made their way down the furrowed
land, I
could see he was a tall, slender young man. His pace was the slow,
careful gait
of the farmer who knows how to walk steady in uneven, plowed ground. He
reached
the almost level barn lot and approached, a question in his dark eyes.”
(p. 60)
From that meeting in July of
1940 until the
poet’s untimely death in 1958, Marel Brown and Byron Herbert Reece were
steadfast friends. With her connections in literary circles in Atlanta,
she
engineered several invitations for him to read his poetry publicly with
the
Atlanta Writer’s Club, at the Druid Hills Baptist Church in “A Night
with the
Poets,” and at other venues. She tells in her brief biography of Reece
how
adverse at first he was to reading his own poetry, and even asked her
to read
for him. She encouraged him, and saw a marked improvement over the
years from a
shy, almost apologetic reading of his poetry to a voice that undulated
with the
movement and power of his poems.
With poetry in her prose account
of Reece,
Mrs. Brown wrote: “To me the pattern of Reece poems reveals the wise
farmer in
him; he guided his plow against the lay of the land, always. Where the
furrows
should hug the curve of the hill, they hugged; where the contour
changed, his
furrows swerved to the natural heave and dip of the uneven soil of what
he
called ‘God’s Country.’ His variation of rhythm was always in
conformity to the
underlying substance— never any conscious effort to be bizarre or
different. His
are true lines, in true rhythms, against the uneven hills of life as he
knew
it.” (pp. 65-66).
As a member of the Byron Herbert
Reece
Society, I am excited to think that many can learn more about the
mountain
farmer Mrs. Marel Brown met that late afternoon in July 1940. It will
be good
to have a place to visit where he worked the land and experienced the
creativity that came from his brilliant mind to produce masterful
poetry and
prose. Marel Brown ended her chapter on Reece with these words: “Time
will
surely assay the inevitable truth: Byron Herbert Reece was a farmer
first, but
a poet always.” (p. 69).
(Note:
If you can find a copy of Marel Brown’s book, Presenting Georgia Poets, in
a library near you, I
recommend that you read it. You will enjoy her keen insight into this
mountain
farmer/poet whom she called her friend. While you’re looking for her
book on
Georgia Poets, you might like to check on some of her own books. She
wrote
nine. A collection of her most noted poems is entitled The Shape of a Song.)
c2006 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published Feb. 2, 2006 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA.
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
Updated August 5,
2009
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