My dad the hillbilly was born in Wayne County, West Virginia. He came into this world on April 26, 1938 and he left us on May 31, 2018. There were 80 years of life in between those dates, and every one of them included a love for his home state in his heart. Dad always loved the beauty of West Virginia; no place else could ever be home to him.

One of 7 children born to his parents, dad was right in the middle age-wise. He grew up in Wayne County, or “out in the country” as he liked to say. He was a little dark-haired boy with freckles and a mischievous grin. In particular, I’ve heard many stories of him and of his younger brother John (we all called him Uncle Dave) and all the trouble they’d get into. Somebody played with fire, somebody put salt in the sugar shaker, somebody scared my mammaw (their mother) half to death. In a family of 5 boys and 2 girls I’m sure there was plenty of trouble to get into on a pretty regular basis. And if that’s true, I’m sure my dad got right down into it on a regular basis.

My grandparents, his parents, were Albert and Elsie. My grandfather Albert was one of 10 children born to George Washington Cornwell and Mary Elizabeth (Ward) Cornwell. George was born in Tazewell County, Virginia. My pappaw Albert was born in 1911 in and later married Elsie Marie Crockett in 1929. My mammaw Elsie also came from a large family in Wayne County. Both Albert and Elsie’s parents and grandparents before them lived in Appalachia; our hillbilly roots run deep.

As a young man, dad went to work. He held several different jobs in his lifetime. At one point or another he had worked in a gas station, a furniture store, a sawmill, a machine shop, a factory… you could say he was a ‘jack of all trades’. He married once before my mother, to a lady named Bernice Napier and they had one son, my half-brother Joey (Billy Joe). That marriage didn’t last and my dad went to Chicago to find work as many others did around that time when industry was booming. It was there that he met my mother, Zyta Marie Dobek in a neighborhood tavern. The thought of my hillbilly father and my Polish mother meeting for the first time and having a conversation intrigues me. What did they talk about? I know that my mother approached my father, she was the brave one. Of course, after a few drinks anyone can be brave. Mom was there with her older brother. In any case, they met and fell in love, married, and I came along ten months later. It was a very quick courtship and they settled in an apartment in Chicago near my mom’s family.

I was born in 1969 and my younger brother in 1971, and not long after that my dad’s memories of home overtook his emotions. It was time to move back to West Virginia. Mom says he had always been homesick, and there was no way he would have stayed any place else but West Virginia. I do vaguely remember the move, although I was very small. I remember riding in the U-Haul. And I do remember my dad’s love of Appalachia. Dad loved the mountains, the forests, the streams and lakes, being outdoors, his family, the music of Appalachia, and the people. He was in his element and happiest in the hills of West Virginia. The hills of West Virginia also have a bit of melancholy about them, and my dad connected with that as well. He was happy at home, but there was always a bit of sadness surrounding him… the kind of sadness that lives in the mountains and is as old as the stories in the hills of struggle and hardship. Dad loved West Virginia, but it was more than that, West Virginia was a part of him. He wore it on his face and in his eyes like so many of us do. It’s almost a sullen pride and defiance in the face of outsiders. We love our mountain home and we dare you not to.

In 2016 it was discovered that dad had cancer. He did the treatments, saw the specialists, and went through the attack on his body. In the end though it was too much for him; he passed on May 31, 2018. This day was significant as it was also my parents’ 49th wedding anniversary. He waited for my mother to come see him that morning to tell him happy anniversary, and then he was gone. Dad had his shortcomings and failures. He endured hardships – he buried two sons in his lifetime. He was not a perfect man or a perfect father. But there was a hint of an artistic spirit that emerged now and then, not unlike the artistic people of Appalachia. Dad loved to sing and loved music, and he had a beautiful singing voice. He wrote poetry and liked to paint. Underneath the melancholy and the stones that life had thrown was an expressive soul. I wish I’d known that soul a little better.

In many of the good ways (and a few of the other ways), I am my father’s daughter. I can feel West Virginia in my blood, he passed that on to me. I have a love of music and poetry, I paint a little. I feel the connection to the ghosts in the old photographs that I find here and there. They’re all part of me. This Polebilly girl is part European tradition, part big city buzz, and part barefoot on a dirt road thanks to the diversity of my parents. Thanks dad, for making me a little bit hillbilly.