In February of 1975, 25 Appalachian Catholic bishops released a document titled “This Land is Home to Me: A Pastoral Letter on Powerlessness in Appalachia.” Written in free verse, it describes the history of extraction and exploitation in Appalachia’s coalfields and beyond, challenges the faithful to stand up for those abused and discarded, and suggests a path forward.
The bishops wrote:
[T]he goal which underlies our concern is fundamental in the justice struggle, namely, citizen control, or community control. The people themselves must shape their own destiny. Despite the theme of powerlessness, we know that Appalachia is already rich here in the cooperative power of its own people.
“This Land is Home to Me” is today considered one of the most eloquent and impactful statements issued by the Catholic church in the U.S., widely circulated and emulated. It inspired people of faith to relocate to Appalachia to help realize its vision.
Among those called were Gretchen Shaffer, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph, and Kathleen O’Hagan, with the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Both were longtime educators. Sister Gretchen, a native West Virginian, had been a teacher, a principal, and, most recently, director of Catholic Charities West Virginia. Sister Kathy, a Pennsylvanian, had been teaching in inner-city Baltimore.
This calling led them to Mingo County, in West Virginia’s southern coalfields, where a consolidation of schools had resulted in kids in the Big Laurel community having to walk a considerable distance to catch the bus – a trek too far for many.
The two helped found a school and were its first teachers. That school evolved into what is today Big Laurel Learning Center, a mountain haven that hosts camps for children, offers a tranquil retreat for gatherings, and provides outreach to the community. That outreach includes assisting schoolkids in planting, growing, and studying their own produce; and mentoring in visual arts, science, and language arts.
From the roots of this hallowed ground, Sister Gretchen, 89, and Sister Kathy, 81, have committed themselves to actualizing the spirit of “This Land is Home to Me.” They’ve been, in the words of their goddaughter, Mary Tierney, a community organizer based in Charleston, West Virginia, “educators, protectors, nurturers.”
Their neighbor and friend Tommy Estepp considers them “a godsend.”
“Two incredibly dedicated and committed women,” longtime friend and Tierney’s mother, Marcelle St. Germain, said, “doing whatever it was that needed done” – no job too small or big to tackle.
They are, in the words of Molly Linehan Belcher, director of campus ministry at Charleston Catholic High School and board chair of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia, “the nuns who drive four-wheelers … pretty amazing.”
They’ve been quick to respond to a need, to a cause that resonates. They helped launch a food pantry. They’ve championed workers’ rights and protested mountaintop-removal mining. They regularly traveled to Georgia to the School of the Americas to protest militarization and human rights abuses.
Sister Kathy has for many years provided care for people in recovery from addiction and continues to work in a Suboxone clinic.
Among the many awards and citations Sister Gretchen and Sister Kathy have received are the West Virginia Mine War Museum’s 2020 Mother Jones Hellraiser Award, bestowed in honor of the iconic orator, educator, and United Mine Workers organizer.
“Their lives are so beautifully woven together,” Tierney said. Woven, likewise, into the fabric of their community.
‘Revolutionary Stuff’
Resting high atop a ridge along Marrowbone Creek, Big Laurel Learning Center is a community “inspired by the voice of God among us,” its mission statement explains, striving to “promote healing and social change by providing education, outreach, and spiritual renewal, in solidarity with the people of southern West Virginia.”
For the past half century, this land has been home to Sister Gretchen and Sister Kathy.
Sister Kathy has always had a special love for horses. (Photo by Taylor Sisk)
Gretchen, the daughter of a coal miner, born and raised in North Central West Virginia, was stirred by the eloquent urgency of “This Land is Home to Me.” “I thought, ‘This is revolutionary stuff,’” she said. “This is going in the right direction.” She wanted to lend her talents as a teacher.
Kathy had a notion of revolution. The Black Panthers were sometimes visitors to the house on Aisquith Street in Baltimore she shared with her fellow sisters. A wall there was adorned with a poster: Malcolm X on one side, the Flying Nun on the other, depending on who they were hosting.
Sister Kathy heard a call had gone out for teachers in Appalachia. “Well, I thought that would be a good adventure.” She was put in touch with Gretchen, who recalls that Kathy had but two questions: “One was could she bring her dog. The other was did I drink beer?”
Complementary Natures
Sister Gretchen will tell you she’s the introvert; Sister Kathy, the extrovert – and it’s true Kathy tends toward restlessness. She has a talent for “finding wonder in everyday life,” Tierney said, “like showing you the beauty of the light coming through the trees. She instilled a joy for adventure in me.”
Gretchen, a voracious reader, is quite content to settle in. She’s renowned for her storytelling. Such as when she recounts the “bizarre rules” she was subjected to as a novice. “You weren’t supposed to read in bed. Imagine that!”
Or of the visiting nun from Belgium who pronounced Kathy’s homebrew to be excellent: “And she knew beer!”
Or of the response she got when informing a nun in her order that she and Sister Kathy were celebrating Mass at Big Laurel without a priest presiding. “Do you believe that Jesus is present?” the nun asked. “Well, do you believe Jesus would refuse to be present?” Sister Gretchen recalls responding. “Made no sense to me, buddy.”
Tierney has a wonderfully vivid way of framing Kathy and Gretchen’s complementary natures: Gretchen is the narrator; Kathy, the illustrator.
They’re both “really passionate about creating a space and a community where people can feel welcomed and cared for,” said Grace Williams, Big Laurel’s director. Also: “They both love to feed the birds.”
St. Germain came to West Virginia from Rhode Island to assist with recovery from the catastrophic flooding of the Tug River in April 1977. She was introduced to the sisters through others who had been called to action by the “guiding star” of ‘This Land is Home to Me.” At their gatherings, Kathy was in charge of entertainment. She traveled with a portable record player and a stack of classic-rock 45s. “And then somebody would make a beer run,” St. Germain recalled. Glad times would be had.
Meanwhile, Gretchen would be in the kitchen figuring out how to feed everyone and where they would all sleep – and, ever, St. Germain said, making plans; plotting a path forward.
Gretchen, Linehan Belcher attests, has always been “determined toward justice,” steadfast in her understanding “of what is just and good.”
Estepp has known the sisters for some 30 years: a neighbor, a helping hand. “We take care of each other.” His kids attended camp at Big Laurel in the summers, affording them the opportunity to meet kids from across the country, across the globe.
He tells of when his daughter Angel, then 7, was badly hurt in an accident and the family withdrew within themselves to care for her. Sister Kathy reached in, checking on what they needed, assuring them they were not alone.
Angel, now 25, recovered from her injuries but has been limited in what she’s able to do. The sisters again stepped in, bringing her on at Big Laurel Learning Center through AmeriCorps. She now works in an afterschool program.
“I can never repay them enough, or help them enough, because they’ve really helped my baby,” Estepp said. “They’re like my second moms.”
Such acts underscore what Tierney calls Kathy and Gretchen’s appreciation for “the value of community love, and how deep that goes.”
Sister Kathy traverses Big Laurel’s undulating terrain on a trusty “Jane Deere.” (Photo by Taylor Sisk)
No Need to Explain
“This Land is Home to Me,” closes with a vision,” Linehan Belcher notes, “a very utopian vision, a vision of the very nature of what it is to be church”:
The dream of the mountains’ struggle, the dream of simplicity and of justice, like so many other repressed visions is, we believe, the voice of Yahweh among us. In taking them up, hopefully the Church might once againbe known as a center of the Spirit, a place where poetry dares to speak, where the song reigns unchallenged, where art flourishes, where nature is welcome, where little people and little needs come first, where justice speaks loudly, where in a wilderness of idolatrous destruction the great voice of God still cries out for Life.
Sister Gretchen and Sister Kathy have nurtured this vision. It’s informed what they’ve fashioned at Big Laurel, what they’ve fashioned with a food pantry, with outreach to neighbors. It’s informed their protest against militarization, and Kathy’s work in addiction recovery. (She herself gave up the beer 40-plus years ago). It’s manifested in their love for all creatures.
Williams speaks of the community the sisters forged on Marrowbone Creek, a community with folks throughout the region and with “partnerships and networks all over the world.” She will now help carry that forward – to see Big Laurel Learning Center continue to thrive for decades to come.
Linehan Belcher said that with Gretchen and Kathy, it’s never been a matter of, “‘Wait, explain to me why you’re doing this?’ You could see why they were doing it. They were doing it because this life is worth living, because this is the richest way you can live, because they were living fully.”
“They don’t judge anybody; everybody’s welcome,” Estepp said. They’ve taught him the gift of an open mind, “and I’ve taught that to my kids, and my kids, hopefully, they’ll pass it on to their kids, and hopefully we’ll change things a little by little.”
“I know that many people have been touched by them,” Linehan Belcher said, “by their Christian witness.”
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