James Moore

An old friend and supporter of ATD Fourth World, James Moore, died May 3, 2015 at the age of 67. Vincent Fanelli of ATD Fourth World Appalachia wrote this remembrance.When we arrived in McCure in 1995, the small frame house in which we would live had been donated to the U.S. movement through the efforts of Sister Bernie. It was a former “company house," and pretty rudimentary. It had been empty for several years and needed a lot of repair.   This meant many trips to McClure Lumber where Vincent met James Moore. He was a yardman man, loading materials for customers. James was considered somewhat simple; he could not read or write and often was the butt of jokes by his fellow workers.When Vincent encountered him at McClure Lumber, James always had a friendly word. One day, he asked Vincent, “Are you going to raise a garden?” – a question which most people asked as spring time took hold. We had no land attached to the house so the answer was no. That didn’t deter James. He said there was good “bottom land” at the family homestead where he lived with his two sisters, Carolyn and Linda, and that I could raise a garden there. We had gotten to know his sisters through Sister Bernie and, at the time, three ATD volunteers were doing a short group sabbatical, living in the parish guest house in nearby Clintwood. So we proposed to them to do a garden at James’ place, a potato garden which for James was very important. When you didn’t have anything to eat, he said, you still had your potatoes which would keep over the winter. I, with the other volunteers, planted my first garden and under the tutelage of James, raised several more on a piece of land just outside McClure. When I told people that James was a nature educator, that he taught me to garden, how to find the wild morel mushrooms, where to look for the raspberry and blackberries, they were at first taken back but perhaps saw James in a new light.When James had difficulties with his sister, he moved to the “apartments” outside McClure. It was a two-storey frame building divided into 10 apartments. It was low-income with mostly transient tenants. He didn’t like it and complained of the noise of the coal trains which ran just behind the building, especially at night when they sounded their horn at the road crossing. He was used to the quiet of the homestead at Lick Creek and never could get use to the sound of that train. But, at least in this new place he had only to hitch or walk a mile to work. Before, that, it meant hitching a ride or walking a 30 to 40 minute car ride from Lick Creek, every day whatever the weather   And he rarely missed a day’s work. Yet some people considered him lazy – his weight and the years of lifting heavy loads took a toll on his body. He was becoming less mobile and we were seeing him less and less on the road, hitching a ride somewhere.We visited him occasionally and he always insisted we go away with some packaged food he had gotten from the local food bank. The only thing he asked of us was to find clothes for him at the Binns-Counts clothing sale where Fanchette helped out.James always wanted to go back and live at the Lick Creek homestead. He had retired, his sister Carolyn had died of a heart attack and his other sister, Linda, was incapacitated with a stroke and either at nursing homes or with their brother, Gene. But the Lick Creek home was rundown and uninhabitable. With the help of his brother, James purchased a used camper which they placed on the slope above the house. There, James lived until his death. The camper was no bargain; the roof leaked, the little air conditioner didn’t work. It had little insulation, stifling in the summer and the small electric heater hardly kept it warm when it got cold. In the winter, the water pipe coming from the old house froze and this past winter James was without running water from early March on. Eventually, he went to live with his sister, Barbara, waiting for the water line to be fixed. But he was already ill. “The doctor found five spots on my bones” he told us in one of his many phone calls. During these calls, he would talk about gardening, the animals he saw, local events. At his wake, other people spoke of James calling them to see how they were. He would say, “I love everyone”, and he would tell Vincent, “I’m proud of you”He never married or had children, but he was like a father to his nephew Adam, the son of Carolyn. From his meager Social Security pension, James helped out Adam constantly as Adam struggled to make a living through occasional construction work. James had the same love for Adam’s two little children. Besides the monetary help he gave Adam, any sweets James had, even a single banana, went to the children. “They like things like that.” He called us proudly when the little girl started to talk and called him “uncle Feefee” the nickname people had given him.In his classic documentary book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee carefully noted all the little things in the lives of the rural poor of the Depression era, even furnishings in the homes. In putting all those little details together, Agee revealed the courage and worth of his subjects. The same is true for James Moore and so many others we have yet to know.