Cataloochee Homecoming

 This year the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is ninety years old.  A good sized part of the Park is the Cataloochee valley located on the North Carolina side of the park.  Prior to the establishment of the park as many as two thousand people lived there having arrived as homesteaders in the 1830’s. They were all bought out and removed leading up to the establishment of the Park in 1934.

On the second Sunday of each July a great homecoming day is held at Palmer Chapel Methodist Church, no longer active, but an important landmark in the valley.  Trish and I go each year as my Uncle Gudger and Aunt Mary met when she went to teach school there in 1930.  He was from a very old mainline Cataloochee family.  Aunt Mary died in 1985 and Uncle Gudger lived to be 103 and left us in 2011. We go in their memory.

The crowd begins to arrive on Sunday morning, setting up picnic tables on the grounds.  Then at 11:00 am the bell rings and the church service starts. Each year there is a different guest preacher.  This year the preacher was Rev. Keith Turman, the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Waynesville, my home church.  It has been my privilege to deliver the sermon on three different years.

When the bell rings, the church fills to overflowing with people outside listening at the windows.  This year Harley Caldwell was the only attendee left who was actually born in the valley.  Those who have died in the past year are always read out and remembered.

Then it is time to head outside to eat and visit for a good long time.

When eating winds down, many people head out to visit their relatives graves. Some even get jugs of water from their family’s old spring to take home with them.  Then it is goodbye until next August.