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| Pop’s Mountaineering Program as part of the school’s institutional fabric - A Tribute April 24, 2005 |
| Good morning! If you saw the rainbow over the water tower yesterday in the sunlight, and given the alternating cycles of wind, rain and sunshine over the past few days, and capped off by the snow of this morning, I’m sure you will agree with me that this is a sign from the Good Lord telling us that He knows that this is Pop’s Hollandworth’s weekend at Asheville School. And He approves! For everyone at Asheville School and for over a century, the distant, soaring mountains on the horizon have been a scenic backdrop and an inspiration. Mt. Pisgah and the Rat, and the snowy Bride and Groom etched onto the face of Mt. Pisgah in deep winter – and sometimes in April! The green sweep of these magnificent, ancient, mountains dominates our campus and our minds. And having become a part of us, they stay with us long after our departure from this beloved school. But how many of you know that from 1947 until 1985, there was another mountain on this campus? Rugged…yet also sensitive and wise. And that mountain is etched into the hearts of those who were here during those years. That mountain is among us here today, and his name is Pop Hollandsworth. James Guy Hollandsworth, Sr. A mountain of a man, and a giant in the lives of hundreds, no thousands, of young people. Young people who lived in the same rooms that you students live in now, and who sat in these pews. This real mountain man served here for over three decades as a science teacher, dean and head of the mountaineering program. But he was more. For it was through Pop that so many of us learned that the surrounding mountains were not just a scenic backdrop for a vigorous education and rigorous athletics, but a rich treasure trove to be explored and to take calculated risks in, not once but over and over again. It was Pop who taught us to fall in love with the wilderness and with Nature and with Nature’s God. And it was Pop who along the way helped us to discover – sometimes under extreme challenge – truths about ourselves, what we were made of deep inside. Journeys into the mountains have been a feature of the school’s life from the early days. Even as early as Pop’s birth year, 1915, boys who are now lost to time took on the extreme challenge of departing the school by foot before dawn to climb Mt. Pisgah, 5800 feet high and over 20 miles away, then return after nightfall. In the ‘30’s there were Canadian canoe trips, and in the ‘40’s hiking trips to Alaska and to the Smokies in deep snow. But in 1947 something important happened to this school and to its mountaineering feature. Pop stepped into the picture. And over more than three decades he turned a mere school feature . . . into a legend. Pop. A fourth generation educator. An Eagle Scout at age 14 – about when this stone chapel was built. A geology student at Berea in the Kentucky mountains, where he learned his “work first, play later” discipline. He started his teaching career in a one-room, coal camp school – C-O-A-L – near home in West Virginia . Then he served as a combat engineer in the 2nd World War, where he earned a Bronze Star for dangerous duty in the Battle of the Bulge. Now this military training served the mountaineering program well on grueling hikes, but it also made for surprises for mischievous students. Because Dean Hollandsworth could camouflage his face with charcoal and in the darkness sneak up on wayward students huddled on the grounds long after “lights out”, startling them with a quiet shoulder tap. And Dean Hollandsworth could remove a shoe then run down a dorm hall to a mischievous student’s door – with the sound of a casual walk. But while Pop was an authority figure, he always gave slack in discipline, allowing you to keep your dignity, to believe you weren’t entirely defeated. Pop’s regular weekend trips into the mountains started in the early ‘50’s. A cabin below Clingman’s Dome served for many years as the school’s wilderness outpost – until it burned to the ground in 1958. This blessing in disguise forced the trips deeper into the wilderness – and made them mobile. By the ‘60’s these Camping Club trips had become just like a sport. They ranged from Linville Gorge in the East to the Smokies in the West. In the school’s earliest days, the students had made sleeping bags by pinning together scratchy wool Army blankets. And for decades the equipment was not the gleaming ABS kayaks and fancy, hi-tech North Face packs and sleeping bags that you see today hanging in the Paulsen Outdoor Center . Instead, in the dark but cozy Cave under Anderson , it was Army surplus – that’s old equipment sloughed off by the Army – musky with the smell of woodsmoke and sweat. And the leader – Pop – always carried the heavy iron stove, the tent, and the heaviest pack. Speaking of equipment, the closest either of Pop’s wonderful wives ever got to a wilderness trip…was the time Marjie sampled the inside of a new tent in ….their living room! We thank both Willie Lee and Marjie for sharing him with us. Pop brought to the school the high art of woodcraft – Man in the Forest with his axe: knot tying, axemanship, fire building, bivouacking and navigation by dead reckoning. He honed these skills during 33 summers as Program Director at Camp Sequoyah in Weaverville. Camp was more fun than school. Days were filled with laughter and a prank now and then. Like the time a newlywed counselor couple returned to their camp cabin on their honeymoon, only to discover a cowbell…padlocked to their bedslats – they traced it to Pop…the impish prankster. And nights began with the haunting sound of Pop’s cornet, skillfully filling the valley with Taps – a sweet sound that Pop’s son Jim said he would never forget. In the short time today, it is impossible to give a full picture of Pop’s mountaineering program. So I’m left to give you only a glimpse -- some stories to show you different sides of this remarkable man who is larger than life. A man whose best day and worst day – whether in rain or sleet or snow or heat -- are all the same. That’s called inner strength. A unique combination of gentle, straightforward charm in dealing with people from all walks of life, standing in contrast to his utter ruggedness – his extra salt in the blood. Pop is…rugged, yet he is also…sensitive to Nature’s beauty, and he is…wise. Pop’s ruggedness. From the late ‘60’s until the early ‘80’s, Pop conducted his trademark trips to Wyoming , with the help of Vince Lee. The two had met in the ‘60’s when Pop took a year away to set up the North Carolina Outward Bound School below Table Rock. The simple but wise formula for the Wyoming trips was to figure different ways to travel the 150 miles of wilderness between two school vans. The hikers experienced -- with a soupy gruel diet (this was before hi-tech food) -- hunger, fatigue, blisters, weather, and rock-climbing challenges – and did I mention hunger? The climax was climbing a major Wyoming peak with ropes. For these trips, Pop was both inside and outside man: publicist, traveling salesman, outfitter, equipment manager, guide, climbing instructor, chief driver and leader. And just as with Camp Sequoyah , because of these summer trips and others like them in the Blue Ridge and all over the continent, to outsiders Pop was a roving ambassador, the face of the school and a magnet for it. About 10 years ago, Pop traveled to Wyoming to celebrate his 80th birthday, with a reunion trip up Freemont Peak in the Wind Rivers, a 3,000-foot vertical granite face. Pop made it to the summit fine, with even a nip of Parson Brown in celebration. Then he took Vince aside, “Vince, I’m not feeling too well.” Vince looked down thousands of feet to the tents below, “This will be a nightmare if he folds on me”. So a small group descended the easier backside, with “just” a couple of rappels then hard glacier hiking over two days, with Pop missing suppers. After the traditional hiker’s “Graduation Dinner” in town – he refused to skip it -- they went straight to a doctor, who urgently reported that Pop had only minutes to get into surgery for a burst stomach ulcer draining into his abdomen -- often fatal. An ambulance rushed him to successful surgery. Another story about Pop’s toughness. The Great Smoky Mountains have always been a favorite destination for Pop. His first ascent of Mt. LeConte at the crest of the Smokies was half a century ago this month. On the icy slopes of Mt. LeConte in January 1971, Pop’s close friend Dr. Charles Lindsley tragically fell to his death at dusk in sleet and wind. Pop and I were on that trip. In memory of Doc, Pop has led a group up LeConte each January for 34 years, often in rough weather. On one trip when Pop was in his mid-80’s, the wind had blown chest-high snow onto the trail face. The normal 4-hour hike stretched into 12 hours – til midnight - for Pop and Jim Richards, breaking trail and often falling in the snow, fighting hypothermia. At that age, was this Pop’s last trip up LeConte? No, the next year, the weather was fine and he made it up in his typical 4 or 5 hours. Pop is tough. Pop is sensitive to Nature’s beauty. On a winter trip in the 1970’s, Pop took a student group out to the frozen Carter Creek Falls in the Great Craggies. The students bedded down in a foot of snow. Long-time teacher Chase Ambler was along, and as Chase eyed his sleeping bag, Pop asked “Just a short night hike?” Chase begrudgingly followed Pop up the trail for 20 minutes, panting at the pace. Then suddenly in the silence they stood before…a magical tiny forest of miniature pine trees dotting the snowy landscape. Nothing else appeared on the forest bed, and the moon shone through the trees. Both were awed by the scene’s beauty. Then Pop turned to Chase: “I’ve always loved this site…” Then he whispered -- in a moment of tender respect for Nature -- “I camped there once…but I didn’t build a fire”. Pop is wise. In the late 1970’s, Pop led a school group up Wyoming ’s Gannett Peak . But instead of a trail, they had picked a creekbed -- because Pop and Vince had always wondered about this route. Hiking up Gannett Peak is tough enough. Hiking up just a creekbed – like John Freemont did in 1846 -- is something else. And then this was early June – that’s a Wyoming word for winter. The wet snow was this high (waist). With Vince Lee tied down, Pop had brought along another real mountain man, Joe Kelsey, to lead one group. No ordinary hiker, Kelsey had written a hiking and climbing guide to the Wind Rivers that is still used. But Kelsey had brought two fine dogs; the wet snow was freezing the dogs and they couldn’t take it. After a few days, Joe Kelsey suddenly announced that they were “crazy trying to climb Gannett Peak this way, that this was a fool’s errand, that they had no business being in the mountains, that he was leaving – heading back to town”. No one said a thing. A few days later, Joe Kelsey burst into Vince’s office -- unannounced. “That’s the craziest trip in my life – you can’t go up Freemont Creek to reach Gannett Peak ! I told the students, I’m giving you over to Hollandsworth.” Kelsey went on, “That incompetent old fool thinks he can do it!” A few days later, before going on to climb three other peaks, and while Pop – and these rising high school seniors -- were resting atop the crest of Wyoming , Gannett Peak -- the peak that they were not supposed to climb that way -- Pop turned to them: “Boys, don’t ever let anybody tell you…that you have no business being in the mountains.” In the end, yes this is a glimpse into over three decades of Pop’s mountaineering program at the core of the school’s personality. But this is also the story of a remarkable teacher and leader and his institutional legacy. A story of a positive, relentlessly optimistic and restless spirit, who has stayed nimble and changed with the times. Pop organizes his outdoor trips today by e-mail, for heavens sake! How many 90 year olds do you trade e-mails with?! It’s a story of an active and connected life, and how that kind of life both builds and strengthens institutions. Of staying alert to opportunities and seizing them – and sometimes even making them. And of finding a passion, quietly burning like the embers of one of Pop’s fires, and pursuing the passion and living it, no matter the obstacles. Pop’s legacy is deeper than stories. And ultimately it is about more than mountains. It’s about all the young men and women whom Pop has introduced to a love of Nature and wilderness, and the joy of being with Pop in the wilderness. It’s about so many people whose parents have realized, as my mother wrote, that “I sent you a boy…and you sent me back a young man.” It’s about all the lifetime friendships – and at least two marriages -- that Pop helped forge in the wild. It’s about all the young men and women whom Pop, in that brief wilderness time together, has led, shown, and taught like a father. It’s about all the adults who told me as I prepared this talk, like Cleve Pinnix from the Class of 1961, that “Pop’s influence and love of the outdoors opened my eyes to what I really cared about” – and opened doors for so many of his students to lifelong careers, whether as a respected geologist, or a national park chief ranger, or a renowned urban forester. Like the cornet in the valley at Camp Sequoyah , do you hear the music of this rugged, beautiful, outdoor life? In closing, to complete the picture of what this man is made of and what he has given this beloved school, I share some words that Justice William O. Douglas penned in Of Men and Mountains. Pop read these words at the service for Doc Lindsley, whose tragic death I mentioned earlier: “The excitement of climbing the high peaks of the world is not the view to be seen, the flirtation with danger, or the communion with the universe that the high peaks afford. The challenge is in the discovery of the outermost limits of one’s own endurance. Sound heart and lungs are not enough for mastery of the peaks. It takes the power of the spirit too, a resolve and determination that knows no limit even when the feet are too heavy to lift. It is spirit against matter; the power of the soul to drive the legs above fatigue and to push an exhausted body without whimper. It is more than what we call guts. It is the positive force that requires a man to go forward even when every muscle rebels. It is man against the mountain – finite man against the universe. In these moments man discovers himself. Then he discovers the power of his soul to carry him on.” And to Pop, who is forever etched in our hearts as not just the Dean of Mountaineering at this school, but the Dean of the Southern Highlands , on behalf of all those whom you have taught to love the mountain wilderness, and along the way to discover important truths about ourselves, we are forever grateful. We thank you from our hearts. You are a mountain of a man |
______________________________________________ Matthew 5:16 “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” I:\MCG\LDP\Asheville School\Misc\Pop Hollandsworth Speech FINAL2.doc |
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