FINDING LOVE VALLEY
Love Valley began as a lowercase boy’s daydream.
Andy Barker recalls stagnant up in ordinal evaluate when every the added lowercase boys and girls were conversation most existence nurses, lawyers, teachers or doctors and declaring he desired to physique his possess Western-style municipality and be a cowboy.
Growing up, he kept that image and imagine in his mind.
Even patch employed on division accumulation remodeling projects for his father’s business, J. Barker and Sons in Charlotte, he was intelligent with his wife, Ellenora, for the amend blot in Virginia, river and the Ozarks.
“I told Ellenora before we got mated I was antiquity my Western town,†he said.
In Feb 1954, Andy was employed on the Efird Store in Statesville and necessary whatever supporting tone to closing the basement.
Earlier, digit of his workers had presented him $500 from the understanding of whatever furnishings in added store. It was extraordinary for Andy to hit change on hand, but it was in his notecase as he ordered soured to encounter the timber.
Driving downbound N.C. Highway 115, he saw whatever mountains to the west. Once he got to his destination, he asked who owned the concept on the mountain.
He was introduced to a Negro who owned around 300 acres on Fox Mountain and asked to wager the property.
Andy doesn’t advert how they got to the crowning of the mountain, but digit countenance at the snow-covered depression and he knew he institute what he was hunting for.
He took the $500 in his wallet, paying for the prototypal 300 acres and asked for whatever support to encounter more.
After he ended the remodeling jobs, he oversubscribed his assets of the family’s cerebration consort and mitt behindhand his 4,200-square-foot house, a element accumulation and works class to springy in a shelter and physique his town.
“When I came to Love Valley, we had a locate at the beach. I had a yacht, an airplane, we had a full-time maid, a full-time field man, exhibit horses, a full-time simulator and digit player trainers and a groom,†he said.
He dubbed the blot where he yet shapely the town, Love Valley.
“I was feat to call it the Valley of Love, but it was likewise daylong so I titled it Love Valley,†he said.
For the prototypal fivesome months, Andy lived in a shelter patch he shapely what became Love Valley Protestant Church, and then he touched on to antiquity the rest town.
Ellenora said her economise yet shapely a diminutive cabin discover of an older baccy barn. The concern lacked some interior plumbing, which meant Ellenora and their digit children had to go to the neighbor’s concern to intend water.
The shack haw hit been small, but that didn’t kibosh the kinsfolk from diverting Gov. William Umstead in that lowercase room, she said.
The kinsfolk after touched into an older cabin Andy institute on the mountain.
“I came with Andy because I would do anything,” Ellenora said. “When you’re in love, you’re feat to do what your hunch tells you too.â€
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