Reformers to Radicals (27 page)

Other VISTA volunteers warned about spreading the Volunteers too thinly across the central Appalachian highlands. The Volunteers, believed David Thoenen, should concentrate their “resources within [a] small geographic area to achieve max [
sic
] effectiveness . . . and results.” Cathy Lochner echoed this sentiment by commenting that the Volunteers needed to work on a countywide basis but not let themselves get so diluted that they would cease to be productive. Issues, however, were not limited to geographic distribution and organization. Some AV members wanted to hold a conference
that addressed what Carol Wolfenden called the “specific problems that have confronted us” over the past summer. These problems included local CAPs and county judges. The Volunteers needed to either find a way “to work around them, or get them on [our] side.” Candy Colin, who spent the summer in Mendota, Virginia, wanted to see the phrase “m[aximum] f[easible] p[articipation]” of the poor included in all CAP bylaws.
¹⁷

Both VISTA volunteers and VISTA associates recognized similar problems during their brief stays. Responses to a questionnaire about their experiences during the summer of 1966 revealed a desire to go beyond the enrichment and renovation exercises of the past and cited the problems that came with such a huge influx of volunteers. While David Altschul of Amherst, Massachusetts, questioned the relevancy of OEO programs for Appalachia's poor, Robin Buckner of Georgetown, Kentucky, and Carol Wolfenden, a VISTA volunteer working in Frakes, Kentucky, expressed a desire for more stringent restrictions on strip-mining practices in the region. “Is there anything we can do to these m[oun]t[ain]s,” Wolfenden asked, “that have been ruined by strip mining?”
¹⁸

Other AV workers experienced frustration in dealing with local CAPs and county officials. Though one activist from Indiana asked for “information on all local CAP boards—structure—function, what we should know about them as AVs working with them,” Jerry Knoll, stationed in Clospoint, Kentucky, hoped the Volunteers could meet with Edward Breathitt, the governor of Kentucky, “and other official types that can pressure out AVs' from their states.” Joining Knoll were Karyn Palmer, who worked in Inez, and Patricia Dicky, who worked in Bethany, Kentucky. Palmer looked for ways to get “thru the ‘structure,'” whereas Dicky wanted the AVs to “try to get [congressmen] to represent thier place of office like the people expected them to when they elected them in.”
¹⁹

Coupled with this concern over the AVs' ability to operate within the confines of eastern Kentucky's political system were issues that posed serious questions to the Appalachian Volunteers as an organization. Judith Jacobs, a native of Great Neck, New York, for example, complained of the lack of follow-up projects in certain communities where the Volunteers had worked. She also called into question the training, selection, and assignments of those who participated in the AV program. In a question that resonated throughout the entire Volunteer camp, she wondered why the AVs had
experienced minimal success in community development. Her fellow Volunteers made similar statements, especially about training. Ed Turner, who came to the mountains from Atlanta, thought that the Volunteers should have had a better understanding of their communities' problems before actually arriving in them. While this might have been a monumental task for the trainers, another AV member from Pennsylvania suggested that each community expressing a desire to host volunteers form a committee that could “determine how to best use the A.V.'s instead of letting them over-run the community.” Harvard University's John Zysman added that the Volunteers themselves needed to set goals and priorities—“something left generally undiscussed with Volunteers”—for the program's participants. A forth summer volunteer, also from Pennsylvania, vocalized a sense of frustration that the antipoverty organization had failed so far to get “something done about the problems we went looking for.”
²⁰

This sense of frustration permeated the thoughts of many AV workers after the summer project. Sheila Musselman of Newton, Iowa, resented the fact that the community in which she worked “was expecting cheap laborers!” While it is clear that she did not expect to exert herself physically, Musselman did not explicitly state what she thought she was supposed to do while a volunteer. It is possible, nevertheless, that she was not sure of her role in the mountain community. Another respondent from Hartford, Connecticut, wondered about the Volunteers' conception of the “poor” and “how social change came about.” “What I am trying to avoid,” she continued, “is the AV's feeling of distress when confronted w[ith] a situation he
cannot verbalize
to himself except to fall back on his middle class understanding of the ‘poor.'” John Campbell of Chester, Pennsylvania, agonized over the “power of the poor.” “Is it realistic,” he pondered, “to think in grass roots terms in the 20th century bureaucratic society?”
²¹

As these responses show, the Appalachian Volunteers' summer 1966 project offered more questions about than solutions to the region's problems. More important, however, those taking part in the project exhibited a growing willingness to take an increasingly combative stance, prompting an organizational change in the Appalachian Volunteers. Issues concerning communications between the field and the office and among volunteers themselves, fears of overextending the program, difficulties with local politicians and CAPs, and community obstacles to organizing caused Ogle and Fox to reevaluate their efforts. A more politically aggressive Appalachian Volunteers was the result.

Perley Ayer (in 1963), the director of the Council of the Southern Mountains, 1951–1967. (Courtesy Records of the Council of the Southern Mountains, 1970–1989, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College.)

Loyal Jones (in 1972), the assistant director of the Council of the Southern Mountains, 1958–1967, director, 1967–1970. (Courtesy Records of the Council of the Southern Mountains, 1970–1989, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College.)

Milton Ogle (in 1964), the director of the Council of the Southern Mountains' Appalachian Volunteer project and then, following the split with the Council, the first director of the Appalachian Volunteers. (Courtesy Records of the Appalachian Volunteers, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College.)

Phil Conn and Milton Ogle (ca. 1965). (Courtesy Records of the Appalachian Volunteers, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College.)

A Council of the Southern Mountains staff group photograph (ca. 1965). (Courtesy Records of the Council of the Southern Mountains, 1912–1970, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College.)
First row, left to right:
Milton Ogle, Eleanor Ball, Verdelle Vaughn, Martha Abney, Loyal Jones, Perley Ayer, Ann Pollard, Bill Suters, Dorothy Crandall, Mace Crandall.
Second row:
Isaac Vanderpool, Wanda Farley, Vivian Fish, Thomas Parrish, Jim Templeton, Ann Floyd, Nancy Graham, Judy Trout, Nina Worley.
Third row:
Dave Lollis, Gibbs Kinderman, Sylvia Forte, Tom Rodenbaugh, Jim Blair, Jean Moister, H. J. Homes, Sue Giffin, Maureen Stoy.
Fourth row:
Julian Mosley, J. H. T. Sutherland, McArthur Watts, Roslea Johnson, Dorothy Haddix, Diane Bayne, Pauline Smith, Jane Harold.

Left to right:
Unidentified, Milton Ogle, U.S. Senator John Sherman Cooper, Loyal Jones. (Courtesy Records of the Appalachian Volunteers, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College.)