Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 22, 1993 TAG: 9308220114
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAT BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It had been more than 10 years since the last reunion, whose organizer, Bertram Riley, had since passed away.
Onlookers would not have been able to spot any difference between Saturday's covered-dish picnic and an ordinary family reunion. But the Laymans, Guslers, Reedys, Dogans and Rileys in attendance - former residents and 50 of their family members - knew why this one was special.
They were displaced from their homes in the Carvins Cove area when farmland was flooded to provide water for Roanoke residents.
Saturday they fished in the reservoir that saturated their parents' land, livelihoods and legacies.
Roanoke Water Co. began construction of the dam in 1927. Anchored between two cliffs, it was completed the next year at a cost of $180,000.
None of the displaced residents knows why, but the water from Carvins Creek was allowed to continue on its way after the dam was finished.
More than 15 years passed before the last resident moved out of the cove.
"I was baptized in the creek," Lucie Reedy Layman said. Later, others were baptized in the rising reservoir.
By the time the reservoir was ready for use, the city of Roanoke had condemned and taken over 1,200 surrounding acres, the reservoir and the water company.
"They would buy one house out and let it run down and look bad," Louise Riley Harmon said. "I don't think I've ever forgiven the city of Roanoke."
"I was married and starting out," recalled Clarence Riley, who was a young man and not reluctant to move away. "But my daddy did not want to leave."
Kyle Riley, who was the oldest man present at the reunion, said the city of Roanoke paid $3,500 for his family's five acres, house and outbuildings.
"Nobody felt it was fair," Louise Harmon said of the condemnation sales.
"My dad was broken-hearted" Ruby Riley Sowers said. She recalled how her father, Letchum Riley, had struggled to keep his eight children together after the death of their mother.
"It didn't take a lot of money then," she said. "We all worked together."
Harold "Mac" Reedy recalled when the biggest body of water in the cove was not a glistening reservoir. It was modest Carvins Creek, neither deep nor large. "We found pools to swim in," Reedy said, "or we made 'em."
He recalled Tuckaway Park, an amusement park built by his uncle at the cove. Its pool, cabins, bowling and dancing were replaced by fields of corn that his father harvested and carried to a mill at Cloverdale.
That was the way it was in the cove before the dam. People combined farming with small-scale enterprises to support their families.
When the dam was begun, the hills that form the outer bowl of Carvins Cove were not all tree-covered, and the bottom land now under water was lush farm fields.
When more crop land was needed, new ground was cleared "the hard way," with saws and mattocks, said Clarence Riley. He recalled sawing oak, pine and sycamore.
Grover Riley, Clarence's father, was famous for the time he got $14 a bushel in Roanoke for delivering the season's earliest tomatoes. When tomatoes were plentiful, the price dropped to 75 cents a bushel or less.
Lyle Riley recalled blue huckleberries he used to pick in the woods. The late P.T. Layman, father of Louise Harmon, would take them to Roanoke City Market to sell. He ran a cannery and would pay children in the cove 10 cents a bushel to pick them and five cents a bucket for peeling.
"There were no kids with raggedy clothes in the cove," Louis Harmon recalled. Her father paid once a year, just in time for the children to be able to buy school clothes.
No one could pin down the year the school closed. Mary Layman Stone recalled graduating from the two-room cove school that taught through grade seven. She lived with a family in Vinton to begin high school. The next year, the bus began hauling the few remaining school children to Botetourt County schools.
Lyle Riley and his cousin Clarence Riley used to walk two miles each way to court their sweethearts, sisters Luevenie and Cassie Gusler. "Everybody in the cove was related," reunion goers declared.
Another sister, Marie Gusler Tullis, recalled how the dam project changed her life. Appalachian Power Co. knew the people in the cove would be losing their homes, so they never got around to bringing electricity to the area.
"I just lived for the day when I could have electricity," Tullis said. She moved out of the cove and got a job in Florida. "Now I wish I could build myself a cabin on top of one of those hills," she said.
Judy Riley Sink, one of two organizers of yesterday's event, brought a picture of herself from a Riley family reunion held soon after Carvins Cove became operable.
It wasn't until 1980 that the late Bertram Riley staged a reunion at nearby Enon Baptist Church in Hollins for members of all the cove's displaced families. When Jean Layman Dickerson realized that this year would mark the 50th anniversary of the departure of the last resident, she called Sink, her cousin.
"Sometimes the older ones aren't able [to organize reunions] any more," said Dickerson, "so it's up to the next generation."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***