I often try to find some kind of yardstick to measure the distance I’ve come since I left my full-time job as a reporter in Haywood County.

Last week I found it all too clearly.

When I heard that Haywood County apple grower Charles Pinkney “Pink” Francis had died in a March 20 truck accident on a treacherous snow-covered Ratcliffe Cove Road, the shock was equalled by the sadness I felt over how I found out about it.

Sure, I watched with concern the WLOS footage on television about a fatal accident on Ratcliffe Cove Road, but the report I saw didn’t mention the victim’s name.

For some reason, I filed an image of that wreck in my brain. A week later, I was in the Western Carolina University library preparing an assignment for my students when I walked past the newspaper shelves. I hadn’t looked at the last several issues of The Enterprise Mountaineer, so I went back and pulled the top copy off the stack.

There it was.

I didn’t read the weather stories in their entirety. After I read that Pink Francis had died, that was enough for me. One of my former students walked by and cheerfully said hello as I held the newspaper. I think I grunted a response and looked up at him with an expression that said, “Do Not Disturb.” He walked away. I should have apologized to him.

Pink Francis dead. That was unthinkable. The obituary said he was 72. No way. Pink couldn’t have been that old. As I tried to let that sink in, another unsettling thought entered my head and has remained: No one told me he had died.

Have I really been away that long? I left my job as an Enterprise Mountaineer reporter five years ago to pursue a doctorate at Ole Miss. I returned to Western North Carolina to unite a scattered family, teach at WCU and finish my dissertation. True, I fired off occasional stories to The Mountaineer (and now the SMN), but those stories didn’t focus on the same topics I had explored through daily contact with Haywood County people as a full-time reporter and, especially, as a reporter for the Farm and Country section.

Kathy Ross, who served as my mentor and guide through Haywood County, told me I had to meet Pink Francis when I started the farm beat. Honestly, I can’t remember the first time I met him. It just seemed like he was always there.

And wherever he was, you knew it. He was a big man, the gentle giant of a child’s storybook, with a perpetual smile that was as genuine as his laugh. Pink loved life and when he chuckled, you felt that all was right with the world.

Pink was a member of the Western North Carolina Agriculture Hall of Fame, an officer in the N.C. Apple Growers Association, chairman of the Haywood County Soil and Water Conservation District, a former chairman of the Hay-wood Community College Board of Trustees and that doesn’t even scratch the surface of his accomplishments and honors. He was one of the most intelligent people I have ever met, and as I do with anyone who has a brain I want to pick, I tend to pester them.

Maybe I pestered Pink too much. If I did, he never said so, but it got to the point where he suggested each time I called him that I contact other farmers and get their input, and I received several suggestions from my colleagues that I follow his advice. Eventually, I became more comfortable at going “Pinkless,” but not before Pink had taught me what I needed to know.

He was a wonderful teacher. He didn’t need to promote himself for people to flock to him; he led by example. I often compared his directness to the convoluted, rambling attempts at explaining absolutely nothing that I have heard many times in academia.

I often thought of the instruction I received from Pink and laughed to myself when I would sit in a classroom discussion of a book by an “expert” on southern agriculture. In one discussion, after hearing tobacco farming explained in terms of gender, social class and race, I remember asking a basic question: “Is he talking about burley or flue-cured tobacco?” Dead silence. I had to explain the difference.

Last week, as I drove with my wife and son on an afternoon snow-seeing trip through Crabtree and Fines Creek, I remarked that the low clouds, white landscape and razor-sharp wind brought back memories of my years in Montana, and I pointed out farms of people I knew when I worked for The Mountaineer. I have lost touch with all of them.

I couldn’t help but wonder if anything stayed the same anymore. I don’t know why, but an image of that wreck on Ratcliffe Cove Road flashed again. I didn’t know that the snow we admired so much that day had recently killed the one source I had respected the most in my reporting days.

The funeral, I am told, was one of the largest ever seen in Haywood County. Friends of Pink waited as long as two-and-a-half hours in the receiving line at the funeral home and the service at Francis Cove United Methodist Church drew an overflow crowd, many of whom had to listen to the service from the fellowship hall. If you didn’t know Pink Francis, and you were caught in a traffic jam that Saturday, now you know what caused it.

It’s hard to believe that someone could live in Haywood County and not know Pink, but it’s sadly true. I live in Jackson County and write for a newspaper located on Main Street in Waynesville, and I didn’t know about his death until after the funeral. It hit home how separated many people in Waynesville have become. I also realize how easily I had lost touch when I committed myself to a life that requires much private time to get anywhere and how all too often, competition takes priority over community.

Whenever I crest Balsam Gap and see the Haywood County sign, faces flash back to me. One of those has always been Pink’s. I guess now it always will be. I can rest assured that many people in Haywood County feel the same way, whether I see them or not.

(Karl Rohr teaches history at Western Carolina University. He can be reached at rohr@wcu.edu)

 

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