We’re pleased to present the eighth edition of THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS, Blue Ridge Country’s ongoing bimonthly digital issue. This edition features National Heroes from our Mountains. These stories, chosen from the BRC archive that now goes back 33 years, recall some of the most memorable and most-sought-out pieces in the magazine’s history:
• Cyrus McCormick: The Father of Modern Agriculture. As a young man in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, Cyrus McCormick received from his father an imperfect, undeveloped device that had as its goal to harvest wheat at a speed far greater than a man could. The son perfected the machine and soon began a new life as a promoter of the reaper, which would lead to the founding of the International Harvester Co., of Chicago, where Cyrus had moved to produce more reapers and ship them all over the nation and the world.
• Jack Jouett: The Rider Who Saved a Would-be Nation. With the organized and sophisticated British troops on their way to Charlottesville, Virginia with a goal to disable and dishearten Thomas Jefferson and other colonists, Jack Jouett learned of the plan and set out alone into the night to reach the imperiled before the British. The fact that he succeeded makes him perhaps more important to American history than another rider, Paul Revere, who benefitted over the decades after his feat by having a poem written about him.
• Francis Gary Powers: The Cold-War Pilot Who Went Down over Russia and Lived to Tell About it. Francis Gary Powers, who grew up in the coal country of Southwest Virginia, was, as a young man singled out by the Air Force for his demeanor and his flying skills—a set of traits that resulted in his being sent on a solo, nine-hour flight over the total expanse of Russia, at the height of the Eisenhower-Krushchev Cold War. The story of his capture, imprisonment, return home and treatment by his own country is one of intrigue, espionage and more.
• Q & A with Dolly: Is There Anyone Nicer to Talk To? Even in her hardscrabble childhood in the Tennessee mountains, Dolly Parton knew she was someone different and someone who could make a difference for others. Her life of a big smile, a bigger voice and the talent to match both has made the world a better place for all of us.
• Sequoyah: The Man Who Made a Language. Dismayed that his people could do nothing but put an x where a treaty was to be signed, a young Cherokee man set out to create a language—the only such person ever to do so. The fact that his wife—dismayed over his having abandoned her and the family in favor of his pursuit—burned the results of his first few years of effort did not slow him in the creation of the syllabary.
This is the eighth in our ongoing HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS series. If you have not already, we invite you to enjoy the previous installments:
• Heroic Women of the Blue Ridge
• Tales of the Strange but True
• Famous and Infamous Crime Tragedies
• Remembering the Mountains’ Favorite TV and Showbiz Stars
• Presidential Presence in the Mountains
• Sports Heroes of the Blue Ridge
• Mountain Mysteries: Real or Not?
And be sure to keep an eye out for our next one, They Died Too Young, They Died Too Soon.
Please note, we’ve digitized these pieces just as they appeared in their original print form. Please remember that as a result, all quotes and references to “present day” things such as artifacts and other items are contemporaneous to the time of publication rather than the current time.