On April 22, join a couple hundred of your relatives and neighbors at the 31st Brocks Gap Heritage Day at J. Frank Hillyard Middle School cafeteria. The event is free and runs from 10 until
. Our three programs range from light-hearted to serious to practical. Hundreds of old photographs of different families will be on display. If you’d like to delve into your family’s history, you can use my personal library of local, regional, and family books which I bring from Winchester annually. If you have an old family Bible (before 1925), bring it along to have the family information copied for future generations. While you wait, folks from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and Rocktown History will photograph the pages to preserve the information. Sometimes a Bible is the only record than can be found for births and deaths, so the information is important.
At past Heritage Days, families let me copy their Bibles, dating back before 1850. Unfortunately, over the last thirty years four of those Bibles have been lost when the owners passed away, and the next generation lost track of their Bible. Important family history would have been lost if they had not made copies at Heritage Day. Other researchers will have displays and discuss their research, and new books will be available for sale. Here are highlights about the programs: 11:00 Ronnie Fulk will present “Fulks Run Funnies.” A natural storyteller, Ronnie grew up in his father’s country store (Macs Superette) where he worked from the age of nine. There he heard tales from local residents.
Some tales may have occurred recently, and some may have been first told by our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. This is Ronnie’s second appearance as a speaker. At the 2019 Heritage Day, Ronnie presented “Grins Ghosts and Other Things.” One of my favorite stories from that program involved his own experience in hearing mysterious footsteps at midnight in the family’s hunting cabin. Ronnie graduated from Broadway High School in 1975. He was co-owner of M & R Feed and Hardware in Fulks Run until 1985. In 1985 he began working for the United States Postal Service, becoming Postmaster of Quicksburg and in 2013 of Fulks Run. He finished his full-time working career at Central Valley Truss, retiring in 2021. Married for
1 years, he and his wife Cammie Anderson Fulk have two daughters, Rebecca and Sarah. 12:30 Joe T. May will discuss “the Will Brothers Go to War.” Warren Will (Air Corps) and Stanley Will (Navy) answered their country’s call and served during military campaigns with intense fighting. They survived the fighting and returned home after the war; their service deeply affected their after-war years. Warren and Stanley were brothers of Frances Will Crider (1918-2022), wife of Loy Crider of Fulks Run. A native of Broadway, Joe T. May is an Electrical Engineering graduate of Virginia Tech and a Professional Engineer. In 1997, he founded EIT, LLC. He currently holds 28 patents, with his latest involving helicopter instrumentation. He served 20 years as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, where he chaired the Science and Technology Committee and the House Transportation Committee. Joe is an avid history buff, particularly WWII. In 2009, he became interested in knowing more about the WWII soldiers from Rockingham County who were killed in action. In collaboration with his sisters, they have researched and written WWII stories of various soldiers whose heroic sacrifices are now recorded and memorialized in the Plains District Memorial Museum. 2:00 Fran Ritchie will share “How to Preserve Your Family Heirlooms.”
The best medicine is preventative medicine and the same is true for our special collections like quilts, photographs, documents and books, vinyl records, furniture, and more. A professional art conservator, Fran will discuss how and why our family heirlooms are vulnerable to deterioration, while also providing easy tips for how to slow that process. Learn how to save your priceless pieces for the next generation. Fran has been working in the museum field for nearly 20 years. She is an Objects Conservator at National Park Service Harpers Ferry Center, focusing on a wide range of collections from parks across the country. She has also worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., the Harvard Peabody Museum in Boston, Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, and other smaller institutions from Alaska to Panama. Fran graduated from the Art Conservation graduate program at SUNY Buffalo State University and also holds an MA in Museum Anthropology from Columbia University. Even if you’re roots don’t extend into Brocks Gap, come anyway to see the pictures, hear the programs, and have a good time. We’ll make you an honorary cousin for the day.
