Willa Cather Comes Home

If it were possible, I would buy the Willa Cather birthplace – and I would renovate it – but . . . then, what would I do? Would it be possible to live and write in the birth home of my favorite American author? That is an unbelievable thought – and one I imagined as I stood outside the Cather homestead in Gore, Virginia last week and watched as the high-powered, 18-wheel trucks roared past the property. I looked across the street at the old motel with the “day traders” coming and going from parking lot to doorway – and saw them look back at me as though I, the one taking pictures of an author’s birthplace, were the one out of place in that picture. Something has to be done, but I don’t know what . . .

The abandoned birthplace of my favorite American author, Willa Cather, distresses me each time I go there – which has been only twice – but I feel I’ve been there many more times because it weighs so heavily on my mind. The first visit, a year ago, I drove two hours from my home on a sunny spring day, expecting to see a pristine home where a young tour guide might escort me through upstairs bedrooms and provide facts and nuances about the life of a young Willa Cather. Instead, I found a condemned shack that could barely support the little metal plaque declaring it a Virginia Historic Landmark. Thinking there was some mistake, I went to a nearby gas station where the regulars sat along a stoop just inside the door and told me, unofficially, far more than I had asked for. The current owner seemed to be waiting for the termites to finish the job, one man told me while the others concurred – so he could legally clear away the mess and sell the property located on the only highway through town. Since the house is a registered historic landmark, however, the owner’s hands are tied for the time being – until the termites finish their job. He is under no obligation to preserve the home at his expense – and neither is the State of Virginia, I suppose.  For now, the house is in waiting. The men in their overalls thought I had come to buy the house – or write a story about it – or do something to bring attention to their town’s only legacy.  No, I just wanted to visit it. “We sure could use the tourism here, right on the highway like it is,” said one man. “Look on the website and see what they’ve done to her in Nebraska!” shouted a woman from behind the counter. “And we’re only 80 miles from D.C.,” said another.

I, like many others I suppose, have always assumed that Willa Cather came from Nebraska. The subject matter of her most popular books is about German and Czech immigrants who came to settle and tame the unforgiving prairie lands of Nebraska. Many died of starvation. Cather experienced their stories firsthand because her own family had moved there from Virginia in 1883 when she was only nine years old. But she left Nebraska when she was 18 to pursue a college degree and subsequent journalism career in Pittsburg.

The small town of Red Cloud, Nebraska has made a sweeping claim to their author, as noted on the official website of the Willa Cather Foundation – http://www.willacather.org/  Red Cloud is host to house tours, walking tours, parades, annual conferences, and writing contests. Grandaughters of people who knew the Cather family give speeches at various literary functions. There are bed-and-breakfast homes and restaurants in her honor. Willa Cather is big business in Red Cloud.

Cather’s first nine years of life, however – and six generations of Cathers before her – were lived in a tiny town in the Shenandoah Valley called Gore, VA.

I was only 15 years old when I read my first Willa Cather novel, "My Antonia" – soon followed by anything else I could get my hands on. I’ve never forgotten her description of the old Bohemian, Mr. Shimerda, and his violin . . . and what happened to him. It wouldn’t be a far fetch to say that she is a primary reason I came to love literature and to hold high hopes of someday writing even one short story with the impact she gave to writing.

Willa Cather has said this: “Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”  Why would she have said that if her first nine years in Virginia meant nothing to her? The last book of her life, "Sapphira and the Slave Girl," takes place in Gore,Virginia and was written in 1940 before her sudden death of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 74.  It's as though she had come full circle -- back to Virginia in her writing.

I stood in her front yard thinking that Willa Cather may have returned to this very site before writing her last book. It is said she spent nine years visiting and researching the missions of New Mexico before she sat down to write "Death Comes for the Archbishop" – the actual writing took only three months. That’s how she worked. She would spend many years visiting, thinking, and absorbing a place before putting it to paper. I contend – though the guys at the gas station didn’t tell me this – that she came to her birth home many times before writing her final novel.  She may have stayed in the house – for I was told that Cather family members owned and lived in the house until a few decades ago. Maybe she sketched an outline of her final book in an upstairs bedroom. Perhaps she walked along Back Creek, only a trickle now, and remembered the days when she played or tended her six younger siblings there. She may have planned more books about her birthplace . . .

I’m sorry that the State of Virginia has neglected this landmark and legacy of yours, Ms. Cather. Thank you – your books have meant the world to me. That’s what I said aloud to the spirit of Willa Cather as I stood in her front yard amid the din of a passing truck.

"Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things,” she has said.