When Joni Mitchell sang, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” she sure got it right.
Repeatedly, the words “razed” and “parking lot” are used to describe the fate of old buildings in the archival photo stories told by Valley historians Scott Hamilton Suter and Cheryl Lyon in their volumes of the Images of America series and Places, Faces, and Traces.
“That was intentional,” says Suter, “because I was trying to make people feel guilty.”
As self-proclaimed preservationists, Suter and Lyon worked together to assemble the perfect collection of photographs to tell the stories of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. Through these stories, they convey the importance of protecting the past and recording the present.
Published by Arcadia Publishing in Charleston, S.C., Images of America: Harrisonburg and Images of America: Rockingham County combine more than 400 black-and-white photos and descriptions of local history into paperback books. Unable to include all of the photos they found for the first two books, Suter and Lyon compiled even more for their third, Places, Faces, and Traces. This book was published locally by Silver Lake Mill and printed by Good Printers in Bridgewater, which allowed the authors more leeway, even though the book’s basic structure remained consistent with that of its predecessors.
With eight generations of family who lived in Rockingham County and more than 30 years here herself, Lyon has a lot invested in the area. As an example of her devotion to preserving the past, Lyon renovated a mill, which dates back to the 1800s, into a usable space for her creative custom ceramics company, LDA Creations.
In the living-room setting of her office in the Silver Lake Mill, Lyon, wearing a leaf-patterned turtleneck and pink socks, sits turned away from her desk.
Born in Washington, D.C., Lyon ended up in the Valley in the summer of 1969, and says she could never bring herself to leave.
“There’s just no place like here,” Lyon says. “I think that’s why the crush of development hurts so much — the changes in Rockingham County are overwhelming. The sad part is, we can never go back.”
Her attitude is one of deep respect for the rich history preserved in the land, buildings, photographs and written accounts of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, and it’s shared by her co-author, Suter. He holds a Ph.D. in American Civilization and is an assistant professor of English at Bridgewater College.
A Rockingham County native, Suter has spent most of his life in the Valley. He has worked in museums, for an academic journal, as an ethnographer and as a folk-life expert. Though Suter left to attend graduate school at George Washington University and to teach as a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Presov University in the Slovak Republic, he has always felt that his roots are here.
“For a long time, I’ve had a real problem with the way Harrisonburg as a city and property owner is more interested in what’s new, and has forgotten that there’s value in old things,” Suter says.
Wearing tortoise-shell glasses and a black blazer, Suter explains the roles he and Lyon played in the creation of the books.
“Cheryl wears several hats in this partnership — technical, historical, consultant, editor — and I’m pretty much the collector of things for Cheryl to scan.” Suter also says that he writes many of the first drafts and Lyon edits his writing.
They both glance at each other and laugh. “Scott can be a bit dryly sarcastic at moments in his writing,” Lyon says with a grin.
With such a love for the historical, it’s easy to see why he would have trouble keeping sarcastic remarks to a minimum when writing about the destruction of so many buildings.
The book hadn’t been released more than two months when two more historically significant properties were razed and turned into parking lots, explains Lyon. “It’s amazing to me how Harrisonburg can do that,” she adds.
And finding the photographs to tell that story was not difficult. Suter worked at the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society, which provided many local connections and sources. Both Suter and Lyon previously had worked together on many exhibits.
One very helpful source was the private collection of the late Julius F. Ritchie, police chief of Harrisonburg for 27 years. Images of America: Harrisonburg is dedicated to his memory.
Mr. Ritchie began his collection in the mid-1950s, when he started researching his genealogy. “He really went to town scrounging around for photos,” says Lura Ritchie of her late husband. “I’m just glad he was able to keep what Harrisonburg used to be in people’s memory, especially for the younger generation. They have no idea what it was like years ago.”
Mrs. Ritchie recalls “court days,” when people came in from surrounding areas in their horse-drawn buggies, and Saturday nights when the streets were packed with people. She reminisces about the days when Mr. Ritchie had to issue tickets to the merchants who sold items on Sunday during the era of the “blue laws” — regulations banning certain activities on Sundays.
“It’s a different climate now — an integration of different people,” says Mrs. Ritchie.
But with selections from Mr. Ritchie’s and many other public collections, Suter and Lyon captured the feeling of the area for younger generations to explore.
Readers are very eager to find their families mentioned and pictured. One woman, a Harrisonburg native now living in Ohio, wrote to Suter because she had found her family in a parade photo. She was 3 years old in the photo, which showed her brother holding her hand as her family watched the parade. Now she’s anxiously waiting for a family member to send her the other books to see if anyone else she knows is pictured.
“It tends to key [readers] up on the idea of history or genealogy, or things that have older roots,” says Lyon. “It gets them more excited about the general topic.”
While preservation is the authors’ passion, many others value renovation and progress more highly. Suter and Lyon chose to create these books to “raise awareness of the value of historical artifacts” — not only buildings and photographs, but also the oral history the older people in the community want to share.
Suter admits that a surprising number of buildings still remain, but they are starting to go rapidly. “The city is creeping outward,” he says.
As written in Images of America: Harrisonburg, the history of the city “is one of change, and change often necessitates demolition … but the story of Harrisonburg also involves a dedication to ‘progress’.”
Recently, with the Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance project underway, there has been a push to renovate older buildings rather than destroy them. The old Wetsel Seed Company warehouse was just purchased and is going to be converted into both a commercial and residential space, Lyon says.
“We seem to be schizophrenic in this community with things like that — at least there’s two parts to this schizophrenia.”
But to many Valley residents’ dismay, Mrs. Ritchie’s words still ring true: “If there’s a piece of land the size of a dime, they’ll build on it.”
While the books written by Suter and Lyon have been successful and sparked readers’ interest in the past, the authors do not have any plans to start another project. Suter said if all goes well, he plans to stay at Bridgewater College for a long time. Lyon and some coworkers have talked about creating a cookbook of local recipes that would include photos and the history of each recipe, but nothing is definite.
But it was just an idea that sparked the creation of three popular books that are helping to bring the Harrisonburg and Rockingham County communities back to their roots. Though some of its symbols have been lost in the name of progress, Suter and Lyon have given the Valley a permanent reminder of its rich history with their telling photograph collections. |
