Tuesday, June 12, 2007
'Long Way Home' drama is gone, but there's still a journey to be had
New River Journal
Bud Jeffries doesn't have to invite all those people to his farm. He does, anyway, because he knows that his family's story doesn't belong to just him. It's the New River Valley's greatest epic.
Jeffries -- his full name is Lewis Ingles Jeffries, but everybody calls him Bud -- is a descendent of the great Mary Draper Ingles. You know her. She walked "the long way home" after her kidnapping by Shawnee during the 1755 Drapers Meadow massacre.
Ingles' flight from her captors has inspired books, a TV movie and a long-running (but now defunct) outdoor drama. If you've lived in Radford for more than 15 minutes, you know the story of how Ingles fled her captors and walked 800 miles alongside rivers that would lead her back home.
Much of the New River Valley can lay claim to a piece of Ingles' heroism. Drapers Meadow was the settlement that eventually became Blacksburg. Ingles' long journey home ended near the majestic New River palisades in Giles County. She lived the rest of her life by the river in present-day Radford.
Her great-great-great-great-grandson lives on that farm where Ingles is buried. Last weekend, Jeffries welcomed visitors as part of Radford Heritage Days. It was the second year in a row Jeffries opened his farm to people who wanted to see the land where Ingles lived and hear him tell stories about her arduous adventure and later life.
Ingles Farm is a green isle in Radford's southwest. Bordered by the river, the land is still a working cattle farm and is protected from development by a conservation easement. Jeffries and his family have done much to restore old structures, including his 18th-century home, Ingleside, which was not open to the public during the festival. A replica of Ingles' cabin stands on the spot where it would have been built in the mid-1700s.
A sizable crowd took various tours of the property when I was there Sunday. Re-enactors camped on the farm, women in period dress gave demonstrations of 18th-century arts and crafts and many people walked down to the river where the old Ingles Ferry operated for nearly 200 years.
I hadn't been on the farm since 1996. That was the only time I attended a production of "The Long Way Home," the beloved outdoor drama that was staged in a rustic amphitheater near the Ingles family graveyard. The play went dark in 2000 and has yet to be resurrected, except for a brief summer run in the Radford High School auditorium.
The play is still one of three heritage mainstays in Radford's 2001 comprehensive plan, but it appears unlikely that it will be staged soon. The antiquated script needed work, and there never was a truly long-term plan for the play's financial survival.
Two years ago, I flipped through a Mid-Atlantic travel book to see what activities it listed for the New River Valley. When I got to Radford, it listed one: "The Long Way Home."
Well, tourists might not have seen a drama last weekend, but they got a great history lesson. The valley should be thankful that Jeffries and his family invite us to share in their legacy.
Ralph Berrier Jr. has been with The Roanoke Times since 1993.
