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["Diane Betler was born in Pendleton County, West Virginia and came to Helvetia as a child to live with her adopted mother Margaret Koerner, an immigrant from Germany. Ms. Koerner was a skilled home cook from her Ms. Betler learned many traditional recipes. She married Kevin Betler, nephew of Eleanor Betler, and they live in the Koerner home in Helvetias Metzner Hollow where Ms. Betler was raised. She served as the principal of Pickens Elementary/High School, the public school serving children from Pickens and Helvetia. Ms. Betler makes the yeast-raised doughnuts for Helvetias Fasnacht celebration every year using Margaret Koerners recipe.This interview is part of a series of interviews conducted with foodways practitioners in Helvetia, West Virginia, as part of the Helvetia Foodways Oral History Project in partnership with the Southern Foodways Alliance. Learn more: https://www.southernfoodways.org/oral-history/helvetia-west-virginia/"]
["Eleanor Betler was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia in 1940 and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She spent her summers in Helvetia at the farm of her maternal grandparents, James and Anna Merkli McNeal. She married Howard Bud Betler in 1961. The couple moved to a hilltop farm in Helvetia and raised four children. All the good cooks, many of them relatives of Mr. Betler taught Mrs. Betler about canning, preserving, cooking and baking. She was especially interested to learn the skills of butchering and preserving meat, and making sausage. Mrs. Betler loves the Swiss traditional baking but also Appalachian ways of some neighbors. She grinds her own flour for baking bread. At Fasnacht time she invites neighbors and friends to make the hosablatz and rosettes just to keep the tradition alive. She also preserves this history by collecting stories, music, and photographs for The Helvetia Archives.This interview is part of a series of interviews conducted with foodways practitioners in Helvetia, West Virginia, as part of the Helvetia Foodways Oral History Project in partnership with the Southern Foodways Alliance. Learn more: https://www.southernfoodways.org/oral-history/helvetia-west-virginia/"]
["Dave Bing is a fiddler and fiddle maker from Melissa, West Virginia, outside of Huntington. He now lives in Harmony in Roane County, West Virginia with his wife. As a young man, he spent time learning from many elder fiddlers in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, including the Hammons Family of Pocahontas County. Dave Bing has been a member of numerous old-time bands such as The Bing Brothers with his brothers Tim Bing and Mike Bing, Gandydancer with Gerry Milnes, and The High Ridge Ramblers with Mark Payne and Andrew Dunlap."]
["Vernon John Burky was born to a Swiss family in Helvetia, West Virginia in 1925. He grew up speaking Swiss on his family farm, where his parents raised animals and managed a sawmill, and his grandparents operated a cheese house. They made Helvetia cheese, a type of Swiss cheese, similar to Emental, that was made throughout the Helvetia community and a staple in the diet of residents. As a child, Burky raised chickens and tapped maple trees on his family farm. As an adult, he was an active winemaker, a common pursuit in the Helvetia community. During his working years, Burky worked as a truck driver for a saw mill and a coal company. He learned to play fiddle as a child and started playing in the Helvetia Star Band, the local dance band for generations and the namesake of one of the villages two dance halls. He still plays in the group, which performs regularly for Helvetia square dances and events. This interview is part of a series of interviews conducted with foodways practitioners in Helvetia, West Virginia, as part of the Helvetia Foodways Oral History Project in partnership with the Southern Foodways Alliance. Learn more: https://www.southernfoodways.org/oral-history/helvetia-west-virginia/"]
["Cecelia Coleman Smith was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia in 1949. Originally from Pickens, West Virginia, her family moved away from the Helvetia/Pickens community when she was seven so her father could take a coal mining job. She moved back to Pickens in 2005. Mrs. Smith served in the military and is a member of the local American Legion chapter. She is also part of the Pickens Improvement and Historical Society, the Farm Womens Club, and occasionally volunteers at the Hutte Restaurant.This audio slideshow is part of a series of interviews conducted with foodways practitioners in Helvetia, West Virginia, as part of the Helvetia Foodways Oral History Project in partnership with the Southern Foodways Alliance. Learn more: https://www.southernfoodways.org/oral-history/helvetia-west-virginia/"]
["\"I want to sing an old song my grandmother used to sing when I was a kid... if I can remember-- I haven't thought of this for a long time. It was called \"The Two Little Orphans\" and she died when I was 12 years old and my sisters, they all, both remember her singing this. She'd sing us to make us kids cry, I guess! But let me see if I can remember it, it's been a long time. I was trying to think of it coming up here on the road today.\"West Virginia old-time musician, local historian, and collector Jim Costa sings \"The Two Little Orphans\" at the West Virginia Humanities Council MacFarland-Hubbard House, January 25, 2017.Jim Costa is a native of Summers County, and an accomplished traditional musician, storyteller, and local historian. He is also an avid collector and expert of 18th and 19th century farm tools and objects of rural life, including Hammons family fiddles, spinning wheels, cast iron cookware, and blacksmith tools. Costa has been building this collection throughout his life, and he restores many of the old tools and instruments himself. In addition to his public presentations on music and material culture, Costa appeared in the 1987 John Sayles film Matewan. Listen to the full tape of the concert here: https://soundcloud.com/user-521885027/west-virginia-folklife-presents-jim-costa-with-zoe-van-buren-12517Concert poster by Ratbee Press: http://www.ratbeepress.com/"]
["West Virginia old-time musician, local historian, and collector Jim Costa plays the Italian song \"La Spagnola\" on his grandfather's accordion at the West Virginia Humanities Council MacFarland-Hubbard House, January 25, 2017.Jim Costa is a native of Summers County, and an accomplished traditional musician, storyteller, and local historian. He is also an avid collector and expert of 18th and 19th century farm tools and objects of rural life, including Hammons family fiddles, spinning wheels, cast iron cookware, and blacksmith tools. Costa has been building this collection throughout his life, and he restores many of the old tools and instruments himself. In addition to his public presentations on music and material culture, Costa appeared in the 1987 John Sayles film Matewan. Listen to the full tape of the concert here: https://soundcloud.com/user-521885027/west-virginia-folklife-presents-jim-costa-with-zoe-van-buren-12517Concert poster by Ratbee Press: http://www.ratbeepress.com/"]
["\"I'm gonna try an old tune here that Jenes Cottrell used to play-- an old fella from Deadfall Run up in Clay County.\" West Virginia old-time musician, local historian, and collector Jim Costa performs \"Cherry River Line\" on banjo at the West Virginia Humanities Council MacFarland-Hubbard House, January 25, 2017.Jim Costa is a native of Summers County, and an accomplished traditional musician, storyteller, and local historian. He is also an avid collector and expert of 18th and 19th century farm tools and objects of rural life, including Hammons family fiddles, spinning wheels, cast iron cookware, and blacksmith tools. Costa has been building this collection throughout his life, and he restores many of the old tools and instruments himself. In addition to his public presentations on music and material culture, Costa appeared in the 1987 John Sayles film Matewan. Listen to the full tape of the concert here: https://soundcloud.com/user-521885027/west-virginia-folklife-presents-jim-costa-with-zoe-van-buren-12517Concert poster by Ratbee Press: http://www.ratbeepress.com/"]

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["Joe Herrman (master artist, b. 1949)  of Paw Paw in Hampshire County and Dakota Karper (apprentice, b. 1992) of Capon Bridge are participants in the 2020-2021 West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, studying old-time fiddle. Herrmann is a founding member of the Critton Hollow String Band and has taught old-time fiddle to many private students and at the Augusta Heritage Center. Dakota Karper, a Hampshire County native, has been playing old-time fiddle for 20 years and runs The Cat and the Fiddle Music School. Herrmann and Karper apprenticed together previously in 2004 (when Karper was 11) through Augusta Heritage Centers former Apprenticeship Program.See the West Virginia Folklife Program feature on Herrmann and Karper: https://wvfolklife.org/2020/12/03/2020-folklife-apprenticeship-feature-joe-herrmann-dakota-karper-old-time-fiddle/"]
["Leenie Hobbie of Rio in Hampshire County and Jon Falcone of Lost River in Hardy County were participants in the 2020-2021 West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program. Hobbie led an apprenticeship in traditional Appalachian herbalism with Falcone. Hobbie has been a family herbalist for over 30 years, originally learning the tradition from her grandmother, who used both garden-grown and wild harvested plants at her home in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia. She has studied with acclaimed herbalists across the country and has taught the tradition within her community in Hampshire County. Falcone is a novice herbalist who hopes to apply his skills to his future homestead in West Virginia.In this video, Hobbie & Falcone discuss the topic and scope of their apprenticeship and adaptations they made in order to continue to teach and learn during the COVID-19 pandemic. See our feature on Falcones apprenticeship with Hobbie here: https://wvfolklife.org/2020/10/26/202...The West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program offers up to a $3,000 stipend to West Virginia master traditional artists or tradition bearers working with qualified apprentices on a year-long in-depth apprenticeship in their cultural expression or traditional art form. These apprenticeships aim to facilitate the transmission of techniques and artistry of the forms, as well as their histories and traditions.The apprenticeship program grants are administered by the West Virginia Folklife Program at the West Virginia Humanities Council in Charleston and are supported in part by an Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. West Virginia Folklife is dedicated to the documentation, preservation, presentation, and support of West Virginias vibrant cultural heritage and living traditions."]
["Elaine (Moore) Purkey is an activist songwriter and musician from Harts Creek, West Virginia in Lincoln County. She was born on May 29, 1949, on the same piece of property where she still lives. She was raised in a family of musicians and flatfoot dancers and attributes her powerful voice to the acapella singing she learned as a member of the Church of Christ. As a teenager she played in bands with her brother, and in early adulthood she was the lead singer of a local country band. In the 1980s, she began performing regularly on the Wallace Horn Friendly Neighbors Show, a live radio program out of Logan County that has been on the air since 1967. She now hosts the show. Elaine performed a concert at Yasou Greek Restaurant in McDowell County on July 8, 2017. The concert was sponsored by the West Virginia Folklife Program at the West Virginia Humanities Council and McArts."]