Introduction

       I had the good fortune recently to visit an old friend in Clendenin, WV. He and his wife live about an hour's drive 'over the hills and down the holler' from Palestine, WV where the Lynch family lives. My friend was a fellow naval carrier aviator in our first fighter squadron, flying the F7U-3M Cutlass. Unlike most of the rest of us, he and his wife returned to their 'roots,' their home towns, after their tour of duty in the Navy.  They taught in the local high school and coached boys and girls athletic teams. They had then, and still do have, a strong sense of 'belonging' and service to their people and their 'roots' in West Virginia.

       They had a strong sense of 'coming home' as a civic duty after going out into the 'outside'  world -- to pay back those who gave them their break in life to 'better themselves.' My friend, a high school star athlete, had gone to college -- Glenville State College -- a small teacher's college a short distance from Clendenin. None of his family before him had ever gone to college and he had no plans for doing so after high school. His principal and coach told him that he had more than just athletic talent -- a sharp mind as well. They took him to Glenville for an interview and he ended up with an athletic scholarship.

      After graduating from Glenville, these same 'mentors' took him to Charleston, WV to interview for entering the Naval Aviation Cadet program. The draft at that time in the waning years of the Korean War gave us a choice. Either choose and volunteer for a branch of service or be drafted into the Army. He, like many of us, chose naval carrier aviation -- the most challenging branch of the service at the time. We grew up with movies of naval aviators winning the Battle of the Pacific in World War II.

      As much as my friend and his wife liked Navy life and the challenges it presented, it was abundantly clear to them that they just HAD to go back to West Virginia at the end of his obligated service. So they did. And they are very proud of that choice and the 'debt they repaid' to their community by going back and doing for others as their 'mentors' had done for them.

      We discussed the 'local' young soldier, Jessica Lynch, whose family lived just 'up the hollow and over the hills' from them in Palestine, WV. When I described how proud I was of her father and mother in the way they dealt with the media, which hounded them and unmercifully, invaded their privacy during the time of Jessica's POW experience in Iraq, they agreed that the family had, indeed, showed strong and stalwart character. The family members who were interviewed gave polite, responsive answers to some very 'leading' and 'personal' questions. But they never made any attempts to garner the spotlight and gain 'celebrity' for themselves. They just wanted their beloved daughter back home. Nothing more. Nothing less.

      My friends were especially proud of their West Virginia 'people' when Jessica's father countered the media's effort to promote Jessica as a 'Modern American War Hero' and maneuver the family toward signing a movie contract with NBC to take advantage of Jessica's new-found 'celebrity' status. Her father told them that, if they were still interested in a couple of years to the rights to Jessica's story, the story would be worth as much telling then as telling it now. In addition, her father said that Jessica would be making the decision herself, whether or not to 'sell' her story to the media, whenever she fully recovered from her injuries.

      My friend's wife said that it is highly likely that Jessica Lynch would come back home to West Virginia, just as they had, and attend Glenville State College to become a teacher. It was simply in the blood of people from that part of the state to do so. She described how people who went to the large universities from their area (e.g. West Virginia University at Morgantown) seldom came back 'home' to West Virginia and especially not to Wirt County (the smallest and poorest county in the state) where the Lynchs live. Most of those who graduate from the local Glenville State College stay in West Virginia and many stay in the near-by counties to spend a lifetime of service. My friend and his wife predict that for Jessica Lynch. It would be entirely in character for the people of Wirt County.

Wirt County Connects to America's Founding
       Wirt County has an important connection to America's past. William Wirt, for whom the county is named, was an author and lawyer who wrote the popular biography of Patrick Henry, the Revolutionary War figure who exemplified the American Revolution spirit with the quote, "Give me liberty, or give me death." Wirt was also appointed Attorney General of the United States under President Monroe. The people in Wirt County reflect the character and spirit of those men and women long ago who had a lust for liberty.

       According to the eminent historian of the founding of America, David Hackett Fischer [1], "The backsettlers, no less than other colonists in every part of British America, brought with them a special way of thinking about power and freedom, and a strong attachment to their liberties. As early as the middle decades of the eighteenth century their political documents contained many references to liberty as their British birthright." They proclaimed, "We shall ever be more ready to support the government under which we find the most liberty."

       Fischer continues, "No matter whether they came from England or Scotland or Ireland, their libertarian ideas were very much alike - and profoundly different from notions of liberty that had been carried to Massachusetts, Virginia and Pennsylvania...[The backcountry settlers] "...hate the name of justice, and yet they are not transgressors. Their object is merely wild. Altogether, natural freedom...is what pleases them...It derived in large part from the British border country [the northern border between England, Scotland and Ireland], where anarchic violence had long been a condition of life. The natural liberty of the borderers was an idea at once more radically libertarian, more strenuously hostile to ordering institutions than were the other cultures of British America."

       Fischer explains how the idea of natural liberty was sown in the hearts of those who lived in what is now West Virginia. "In Britain this idea of natural liberty...was rapidly in process of decay...but in the hour of its extinction, it was carried to the American back settlements, where conditions conspired to give it new life. The remoteness of the population from centers of government and the absence of any material necessity for large-scale organization created an environment in which natural liberty flourished."

       Patrick Henry, a descendant of British borderers, was also a product of the American backcountry. He consistently defended the principles of minimal government, light taxes, and the right of armed resistance to authority in all cases which infringed on liberty. According to Fischer, "Patrick Henry's idea of natural liberty was itself a border folkway that took root in the American back settlements and still flourishes in the United States today." And it flourishes nowhere in America stronger than in Wirt County, where the Lynch family resides.

       Fischer reminds us of how natural liberty differed from other ideas of liberty that came from Albion [2].  "When backcountry men moved west in search of that condition of natural freedom which Daniel Boone called 'elbow room,' they were repeating the thought of George Harrison, a North Briton who declared in the borderlands during the seventeenth century that 'every man at nature's table has a right to elbow room.' The southern frontier provided space for the realization of this ideal, but it did not create it."

     "This libertarian idea of natural freedom as 'elbow room' was very far from the ordered freedom of New England towns, the hegemonic freedom of Virginia's county oligarchs, and the reciprocal freedom of Pennsylvania Quakers. Here was yet another freedom way which came to be rooted in the culture of an American region, where it flourished for many years to come." And it still flourishes there. It defines the Lynch family's credo and basic character.

       It is reported that Jessica Lynch joined the Army at a time of poor economic conditions. While the backcountry has never been the recipient of the largesse of a booming economy, it was always sufficient to support a family and live the natural liberty lifestyle handed down to them by their forebears. Jessica joined the Army with the idea that it would pay for her tuition to college where she would become a kindergarten teacher.

       According to the New York Times [3], "Private Lynch, the second of three children, joined the Army in 2001, not as a career but as a way station...a path to the college education that her family could not otherwise afford and, ultimately, to a job as a kindergarten teacher. It is a route that is not unusual in Wirt County, about 70 miles north of Charleston, with a population of about 5,000 and an unemployment rate of about 15 percent. Private Lynch's older brother enlisted in the Army on the same day as his sister; her younger sister, 18, now a high school senior, has also enlisted and is due to begin her military service in August [2003]."

       The NYT describes the Lynch's family home as a "...tin-roofed, white frame home at the end of a single-lane gravel road" and her father, Gregory Lynch Sr., 43, as a "self-employed truck driver in heavy boots and blue jeans." The newspaper quotes those who know the family as saying that "...[Jessica] had been saved [from captivity] by the power of prayer and by the resilience fostered by her modest West Virginia roots."

        Wirt County has, indeed, fallen on hard times [4]. "...[It] is the commercial center of a region dependent on oil and gas wells and agriculture for its economy. Livestock, potato, dairy, fruit, and tobacco farms provide the economic base for the ares." It is the smallest and poorest county in West Virginia. Its population has steadily dwindled [5] from 10,284 in 1900 to 5,873 in 2000. In spite of this lack of economic opportunity, the Lynch's, like most who live in Wirt County are staunchly patriotic, prayerful Christians who would live nowhere else simply because of their love of the 'natural freedom' handed down to them by their borderer forebears.

Take Me Home Where I Belong
       Even after Jessica's capture by the Iraqi's, the Lynch family held on to hope that she would be spared. They were strong in their patriotic support of America. The New York Times reports that [6] "...There's no bitterness, the Lynches insist, no regrets that three children of three consider serving their country the chance of a lifetime...They saw Jessi at Christmastime when she was on leave from Fort Bliss, TX, and was loving military life so much she had just signed up for another four-year hitch."

       And their neighbors are just as supportive and patriotic as the Lynch family. After her capture, "...[In her high school], tearful clusters of students and teachers gathered in the halls, and before the final bell rang, they had taken an informal survey and discovered that the student body had about 60 relative on active-duty military. 'This brought the reality of what's going on [the Iraq war] very close to them,' said the school principal. And in Palestine, WV, such reality brings not protest but prayer."

       "After supper [one night], several hundred townspeople flocked to the county courthouse - farmers in pickups, children on bicycles, somber teenagers and tearful mothers - all gathering for a candlelight vigil to raise voices in hum and bow heads in prayer for Jessica. A chorus of 'America the Beautiful' rose into the night, and the Lynch family pastor called out: 'How many of us believe she's coming home?' All held flickering candles high and cried, Hallelujah."

       It was into this patriotic community with limited-future economic prospects that a team of U.S. Army recruiters marched, wearing their battle dress uniforms. They showed up at the white clapboard house up in the hollow where the Lynches have always lived. According to the New York Times [7], "It was Brandi Renee, the youngest of Gregory and Deadra's three children, who had invited them, but soon enough the whole family was out there on the wide front porch, listening raptly to the promises the strangers made. Neighbors and cousins drifted over, as well."

       "There were golden opportunities the military could offer, the recruiters said - a free education, lucrative careers, a chance to see exotic lands. Standard recruiting patter, but in this beautiful, hardscrabble patch of West Virginia, where jobs are scarce and money for college often beyond reach, the words resonated like poetry, and the Lynches exchanged excited glances. Brandi was crestfallen when the visitors told her she would have to wait another year to enlist. [A recruiter] looked at Gregory Jr. What about you? he asked the Lynches' only son, then 18. Greg nodded. The stranger then turned to Jessica Lynch, a pretty 17-year-old who had always dreamed of becoming a schoolteacher. What about her?"

       "Jessica would be graduating from Wirt County High School in a few months. She was thinking about enrolling in [Glenville State College], but now she found herself nodding, as well." Jessica found the excitement of traveling to places outside of her county so thrilling that she had re-enlisted [8] for another four-year stint in the Army just before deploying to Iraq. Teaching school back home was still a long-term goal, but for now she would travel and 'see the world.' Neither she, her family nor friends could ever have imagined her becoming a POW in an armed conflict with Iraq.

       Upon Private Lynch's return to the United States, after surgery on her injuries in Germany, she is under rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. According to published reports [9], "The [Lynch family's] top priority continues to be their daughter's rehabilitation, and they have chosen not to meet with the press." It is clear that if they have their way, and Jessica is true to her heritage, she will return to Wirt County and continue her journey toward becoming a school teacher in her home community. This strong calling back to one's roots reminds one of a John Denver song that was popular in the 1970s, 'Take Me Home, Country Road.' It has a refrain:

                                                                                            Country road,
                                                                                             take me home,
                                                                                             to the place,
                                                                                             where I belong.
                                                                                             West Virginia,
                                                                                             mountain mama,
                                                                                              take me home,
                                                                                              country road.

This could reflect the spirit and character of Private Jessica Lynch. America's Modern War Hero.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes:
1) Fischer, David Hackett, "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America," pp. 777, Oxford University Press, 1989.
2) Ibid, Fischer, David Hackett, pp. 782.
3) Jehl, Douglas and Blair, Jayson, "Rescue in Iraq and a 'Big Stir' in West Virginia," The New York Times, 3 April 2003.
4) County Info - Wirt County, WV, http://www.wvcounties.org/counties/wirt.html, 6 May 2003.
5) Wirt County, WV Population by Decades, http://recenter.tamu.edu/data/poped/pc54104.htm, 6 May 2003.
6) Jones, Tamara, "Hope in a Hollow for a Girl Who Dreamed: West Virginia Town Prays for the Return of Missing U.S. Soldier," The Washington Post, 26 March 2003.
7) Ibid, Jones, Tamara.
8) Ibid, Jehl, Douglas and Blair, Jayson.
9) Withers, Bob, "Pfc. Jessica Lynch undergoes foot surgery," The Herald-Dispatch, 19 April 2003.



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