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Levie Wilson Celebrates a Century
by Loretta Akins
"Always follow in the footsteps of doing right."
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A mile south of Mars Hill College, Mt. Olive Baptist Church celebrated a century on March 25, 2006 - not for the church, which won't reach a hundred for several years, but for its oldest parishioner, Levie Wilson.
Wilson's neice, Jessie Coleman, brought him out to his 100th birthday party from Asheville, where he now lives with her not far from the Smoky Mountain Bridge.
As Wilson entered the church, he found his wife had been brought from her nursing home in Asheville and was waiting patiently for him. His sister Hattie had come. And of course her daughter Jessie Coleman, who was always around to oversee Levie and Hattie. Jessie's daughter Theresa Barnette, had brought her husband, Mars Hill Coach Kevin Barnette, and their children. Still more great nieces and nephews sat with Jessie's son André. And there was Wilson's daughter Fatimah R. Shabazzy, too, along with other faces from times past and present.
While friends and relatives testified about Wilson's life and the person he is, food laid out on long tables waited downstairs in the fellowship hall, which was festive with balloons.
Levie Wilson, one of 10 children, was born and raised at Bald Creek and Swiss, just over Ivy Gap and not far from Possumtrot, in Yancey County. He bears witness to a century of Western North Carolina history through the eyes of a black man.
"I tell you, when we grew up in Yancey County, we owned our own home, and we raised about everything we had to have except sugar and coffee. We raised everything else right there on the farm. We knew how to raise it, you see.
"At that time, these big landowners, some of the children would be named after that family. Hattie was named after the Byrd family. And some of the other children were named after the Byrd family. But the Byrd family finally left from over there, but still yet some got their name from the original family that they worked with or lived with. Some wasn't named after them though. I wasn't named after a family; my name came from the Bible. But most children at that time were named after families they worked with."
"I didn't think at that time I'd ever have to leave there. Then President Woodrow Wilson declared we had to be in school all the time."
"I only went to school part of the time. At that time there wasn't too many people living at Bald Creek and Swiss. Maybe one year we'd have school; then the next they wouldn't. That's the reason we had to leave over there. President Wilson, he said if people didn't keep their children in school, they'd have to pay fines or go to prison themselves. There wasn't but about five or six families over there then. Some went to Tennessee. Some came over here to Mars Hill. But, we still go back over there to Bald Creek once a year to have a meet. A homecoming."
Wilson gave a chuckle at the mention of his wife. "My wife is at the nursing home now, and I was. But I didn't see no reason for me to be astayin' there, hardly. I got the doctor to say I was able to go out, if I had somewhere to be goin' to. That's how come I'm here (at Jessie Coleman's house). They took me in here, but my wife is still over there in the nursing home." Wilson and his sister Hattie, who is in her 90s now, both live with Coleman.
Although he misses his wife, Wilson is happy to be at home. He tells about Hattie's grand-daughter. "We have two children here. They don't live here, but when Theresa (Hattie's granddaughter) goes to work, she brings the kids here for us to look after. I love those children." He smiles and laughs, almost as youthful as they. "My daughter, she comes by all the time and brings me places. I thought that is who was coming today. I had these overalls (a pair of jeans that he's laid beside him) on, and when I thought it was my daughter coming I changed. Maybe we were going to see my wife, and she don't like me wearing overalls. I figured I better change.
Click photo to enlarge
The City of Asheville rang the chimes on the City Building ten times on Wilson's birthday.
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"Now, I met my wife while I was goin' with another girl. They were taking teacher training at Allen School. The girl I was going with would bring my wife down by the train station and up to Clingman Ave. (Asheville) and Rector Street, and I'd meet them coming off there. Next thing I knew I married my wife instead of the girl I was going with. We've been married about sixty years or so."
"When my wife and me was living out at Mars Hill, and the school out there needed another teacher, I knowed a whole lot of people out there, and I took her out there. They took her, and she stayed there for fourteen years, until the schools came together. She stayed at Longridge School until it closed."
Wilson himself worked much of that time as a cook. He worked at Memorial Mission Hospital three different times, Moore General (Veteran's) Hospital in Swannanoa, and for a period right at the end of World War II at a veteran's hospital in Ohio. "That hospital in Ohio had 2100 patients there."
"When I first went to Moore General, they wouldn't hire a colored cook. We opened up Moore General, me and some of the others. We was working there as a head cook. When we went there, there was only a main kitchen and that's when they said they wouldn't hire a colored cook. The head cook told us he wasn't used to that kind of cooking. He was charging as a head cook. He was a white guy, but he had only worked at logging camps. He didn't know nothing about that kind of cooking. Whatever we said (telling the other kitchen workers what they needed to do), he'd say he told us to say.
Some of the cooks told a Lieutenant and Captain Stevens that I was agoin' with some of the white girls up there. I told him this, 'I'm in charge of the kitchen, and one of the supervisors gives me orders what they want done, and then if I can't talk to them (the white women), I can't get the message over to them.' The Lieutenant said he was going to take my word, just like he took theirs. I told him if I was intended to go with them, I'd go on up North where they do go together. But I can't tell them what to do if I can't talk to them."
Aside from being a cook, at some point Levie worked at the Biltmore Estate for Charles Waddell, who had been chief construction engineer there before becoming paralyzed.
"I went to Warm Spring, Georgia, when President Roosevelt was there. I went with the Waddells. He was paralyzed like Roosevelt. They were taking baths in that warm spring water at that Georgia hospital. He was a pretty heavy man. I could get him to standing and walk him backward. Then he would hold on to rails and I could give him his bath.
"What happened in Warm Springs was, he grabbed for the thing to hold onto and missed it, and that put all the weight on me. If I hadn't of caught him, he probably would have drowned. After that, I had to leave from there because I hurt my back, and I come back home to Mars Hill. Then when the Waddell's came back, they sent for me and I went back to the Biltmore Estate."
After living through a hundred years Wilson finds the changes generally positive.
"I think everything is going along pretty well. As long as it goes like this. Way back yonder time we were in slavery because of our color. I think right now, as long as both races, both colors, both people, if they try to get along, I think it would be better.
"You have free chances to be what you might and could be. That gives each side a chance where if he's stood up and elected to be this, then let him be it. If he chooses to be it, he gets to be there because of a reason that he stands for certain things. If things just keep going this way, it would be the best thing. I think which ever side wants to do the more right, that's the side that oughta be in charge."
The advice a man of 100 offers for younguns' is "Always follow in the footsteps of doing right."
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