Nadine, Chris, and PK Isac at their family home in Goshen, Connecticut. ("Gobble: The Quintessential Thanksgiving Playbook")
The Isacs have always treasured the Thanksgiving holiday season as an important time to reflect on all things they are grateful for. Their appreciation has only increased after the untimely passing of Peter Isacs, a loving husband and father, in August 2020, due to an aneurysm.
After Peter passed away, the family were bracing themselves for a difficult Thanksgiving. But Nadine and her two sons, PK and Christopher, decided to channel their grief into something positive. “Historically, in our family, when one of us has a good idea, we all tend to remember it as our own. We have since joked about which one of us actually initiated the idea for this book, but we now know in our hearts it was Peter,” they wrote in their new book, “Gobble,” scheduled for release in October. “We’re very grateful for the inspiration that we had to write this book,” said Nadine in a recent interview.
“Gobble: The Quintessential Thanksgiving Playbook” serves as a guide on how to organize the perfect family Thanksgiving. It covers everything from festive games and activities to laying out a beautiful table for the occasion. The book also discusses the importance of setting family traditions for the holiday season, from taking a short stroll between dinner and dessert, to starting a “gratitude” tablecloth and getting everyone to write one thing they are thankful for every year.
Embracing Family Traditions
(Photo from “Gobble: The Quintessential Thanksgiving Playbook”)
For example, the Isacs put up their Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving in their Litchfield Hills, Connecticut, home. They say they do this for several reasons: the first is to be able to enjoy the tree for as long as possible; the second is to enlist the help of guests to put up Christmas ornaments. “It’s a great way to kick off the Christmas season,” they stated in their book.
For both PK and Christopher, Thanksgiving has always been a favorite holiday, as it is a time to focus on family. “Traditions are a really effective way to share that love,” said PK. Christopher believes that traditions serve as a way to bond and for family members to express gratitude for each other. “Living in gratitude helps one appreciate the good times and get through the bad. Gratitude can be very similar to empathy in a lot of ways, especially when you’re with family and you’re sharing in the gratitude for the opportunity to be there together, grateful for everything you’ve done for each other, and grateful for everything that you’ve gotten out of the past year,” said Christopher.
Treasuring the Final Moments
Nadine remembers the days leading up to her husband’s passing as a particularly special time for the whole family. “We were in the middle of a pandemic, and had we not been, the boys would probably not have been home.” She is grateful for this time, as it allowed the family to be in each other’s company. “We had some incredible family time leading up to this death,” she recounted. The evening that Peter passed away was the most poignant day to her. “It was a gorgeous August day. If you could design a day for your last day, it would have been designed the way he lived it,” she said. He started the day by reading the newspaper and then riding on his tractor—something he loved to do.
“In the evening, we went to our meadow and had a beautiful summer dinner all together. And then, ironically, he came up and watched his favorite movie with the boys, which was ‘Star Wars,’” Nadine chuckled. After that, he told his family he loved them and got into bed. An hour later, he was gone.
The family shared many warm memories about Peter and his love for food, family, and tradition. Chris said, “My first memory of helping out in the kitchen was doing the onions, carrots, and celery and chopping them up for my dad, who was making stuffing for Thanksgiving.”
Fostering a Love for Thanksgiving
(Photo from “Gobble: The Quintessential Thanksgiving Playbook”)
The boys’ father was influential in fostering a love for Thanksgiving. “He was the one who taught us about food, about wine. That all comes from him,” added PK. Every Thanksgiving, each member of the family would assume different roles to help prepare for the occasion. Chris would help with cooking, while his brother PK displayed a keen interest in wine and bartending. Nadine said, “As soon as he was of legal age, and maybe even a little bit before, PK started studying wines. My husband really knew wine, and he also instilled in them an interest in history and geography.” PK spent many hours in the family library, sifting through books about wine regions, varietals, and vinification techniques, while his younger brother Chris studied cookbooks.
Nadine was renowned for creating beautiful table arrangements for the festive season. During holidays, it was common for friends and family to use Nadine’s decorations as inspiration for their own table settings at home. Peter’s mother and grandmother served as influential figures for Nadine, who considered them incredible entertainers and hosts. “I always admired them for the tables they set,” she said.
The Isacs’ appreciation for food and wine has been passed down through the generations. PK and Chris’ grandfather (Peter’s father) kept many books about wine and was awarded the title of Chevalier du Tastevin, a French award given to top wine enthusiasts. While attending Tulane University, both boys hosted elaborate dinner parties for friends, using their cooking and bartending experience from helping out at Thanksgiving.
Gratitude remains a big part of the family, even outside of Thanksgiving. Living through the pandemic and losing a family member has provided the Isacs with a new perspective and a heightened appreciation for each other. “It’s been such an incredible experience,” said Nadine. It has allowed the family to spend more time together while prioritizing good health and maintaining personal connections. “We’ve always taken for granted being in the same room or, you know, giving a hug to someone or just getting together. And I think all of us right now are appreciating that like we’ve never done before,” said Nadine.
Each region of America likes to put its own spin on how to incorporate the fall bounty into a delicious pie. (Lux Aeterna Photography)
As American as apple pie. It’s an expression commonly used to describe something that completely encapsulates the American character.
But surprisingly, the kinds of apples we commonly see in our markets and grocery stores are not actually indigenous to the United States. The crab apple is the only species in the genus Malus that is native to North America; it was English settlers who brought cultivated apple seeds with them. According to the University of Illinois, the first apple trees were planted by pilgrims in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Americans soon started grafting different cultivars, and today, there are roughly 2,500 varieties grown in the country.
Meanwhile, the earliest forms of pie were oblong—meant to transport food easily and preserve food for longer periods in the age before refrigeration. The crust was often inedible.
The first truly American apple pie recipe appeared in “American Cookery,” by Amelia Simmons, published in 1796. The cookbook is considered to be the first to use ingredients and cooking techniques distinct from the English tradition. True to American taste, the recipe called for cinnamon and mace—the outer covering of nutmeg—as spices.
Expressing Ourselves
Why did the apple pie become America’s signature dessert and a symbol of Americana? Ken Haedrich, author of several pie cookbooks, including the most recent “Pie Academy,” believes the versatility of the pie is a reflection of America’s love for self-expression.
“We’re all cowboys, you know. We like to do our own thing. And an apple pie is great for that. You can use virtually any type of apple that you want, any type of sweetening, any type of thickener, you can put a top crust or no crust, you can put a crumb topping,” explained Haedrich, who describes himself as a “pie apostle” and runs an online forum devoted to helping bakers with pie-related quandaries. “I think this is one of the things that has made apple pie the quintessential American pie—the fact that we can shape it into anything we want it to be.”
(Courtesy of Storey Publishing)
Pie is not only an expression of individual personality but also of America’s different regional attributes. In parts of New England where there is a lot of dairy production, a tradition emerged to place a slice of cheddar cheese on top of apple pie. “You start to get this confluence of regional ingredients with apples, and you’re going to find that in every part of the country. They will have their own sort of variations of apple pies based on what else grows there or the area is known for,” Haedrich explained.
Some in New England also use maple syrup as a sweetener, while in parts of the country with large Amish communities, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other parts of the Midwest, apple custard pies are common due to their dairy farming.
Pie is a reflection of the American penchant for self- expression. (Lux Aeterna Photography)
But there are other fruits of the harvest represented through pie. In the South, pecan pie is the ultimate fall dessert as the nuts are harvested during that season. In the Pacific Northwest, Rebecca Bloom, founder of the Piedaho Bakery based in Hailey, Idaho, throws in cranberries with local Jonathan and Jonagold apples and thyme for a fall treat. The pie company also uses flash-frozen berries from Washington in pies that are served throughout the fall and winter. Bloom loves the wild huckleberries that grow in Idaho, but she has yet to find a way to source them adequately to make pie—though she hopes “one day maybe we will find a treasure trove of them!”
(Lux Aeterna Photography)
And in Indiana, the Hoosier sugar cream pie—made simply of cream, sugar, flour, and spices—emerged during lean times when eggs and fresh ingredients were not available, explained Capri Cafaro, cookbook author and host of “Eat Your Heartland Out,” a podcast on Midwestern food traditions. “We’re dealing with ingredients that […] could be utilized […] with the resources available to people,” she said.
Also in the Midwest, other types of pie became popular due to the waves of immigrants who settled in the region and introduced their culinary traditions, explained Cafaro. In the Upper Peninsula region of Michigan, handheld pies called pasties reign supreme. They are typically savory and trace back to immigrants from Cornwall, England, who came for mining jobs during the mid-1800s.
But the custardy, delicious pumpkin pie did not emerge as a classic fall dish until Thanksgiving became a regional holiday in New England during the 1800s, Cafaro explained. Many abolitionists in New England featured pumpkin pie in their writings, and it became a symbol of the movement. After President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, pumpkin pie became a symbol of the fall bounty.
There is also the wholly American tradition of making recipes developed by major food corporations to promote their products. One year, Cafaro won the third-place ribbon at the Ashtabula County Fair in Ohio for her peaches and cream pie—which incorporated gelatin. The recipe came from one published by Jell-O. During the mid-20th century, with the rise of industrial food, brands popularized many classic desserts, such as the icebox cake, made with Nabisco chocolate wafers, Cafaro explained. “They oftentimes become heirloom recipes in their own weird way.”
Fall Memories
For Haedrich, who grew up in New Jersey with six siblings, pie-making was a treasured fall family tradition.
“Mom and Dad used to pile all of us in the station wagon. We had an old Woody, and we’d go up into the hills around Plainfield,” he recalled. “They’d buy bushels, baskets full of apples, and they’d come back and they would make their apple pies together.” Mom was in charge of the apple filling, while Dad was the crust maker. He believes these kinds of precious memories are “one of the things that strengthens our ties, our love of apple pie, and our love of pie, period.”
Julianna Butler, a baker in Vermont, similarly feels that pie gives off a “homey feel”—a comfort food that “reminds you of your grandmother.” In fall 2019, Butler won second place in an apple pie baking contest held by a local farmers market. The winning recipe incorporated her experience working at a pie bakery in her hometown in Virginia. Pie is Butler’s favorite dessert; in fact, for her upcoming fall wedding, instead of serving a wedding cake, she plans to give out mini pumpkin, pecan, and apple pies from the Virginia bakery.
Bloom, of Piedaho, said she recalls baking pies—especially her grandfather’s favorite, pumpkin pie—as a young child, and gifting them to him on birthdays. Her grandfather has passed away, but she still makes the same recipe—with a few of her own tweaks—to this day.
Rebecca Bloom, owner of Piedaho, grew up baking pies for her grandfather, who loved pumpkin pie. (Courtesy of Piedaho)
Haedrich said many of the people who email him with pie-related queries mention how much they enjoy the tactile experience of making pie. “You get your hands into it, you get to smell all the lovely ingredients.” For those who are new to pie-making, he recommends that they just practice—and not worry too much about how it looks. “I always tell people, don’t be afraid of strutting your ugly pies. Everybody makes a lot of ugly pies when they first start out,” he said.
He notes the most important thing is to enjoy the process. “Just immerse yourself in it totally. Just enjoy every aspect of it.”
Antique clocks harken back to the late 1800s—the time period that the Silver Dollar City festival is set in. (Laken Copeland)
With momentum building, the first curve sends passengers spinning front-to-back, disorienting any sense of direction and offering no mercy, before plunging straight down into the abyss. A diving loop, followed by a zero-gravity roll, both at hurling speed, challenges dimension awareness, as the backdrop of trees and sky blends into one big blur. Then, after twisting, turning, inverting, and dropping, it’s over. The roller coaster, designed to simulate an experience of traveling forward and backward through time and space, finally halts.
The $26 million record-breaking roller coaster, appropriately named Time Traveler, is an adventure, spanning time in more ways than one. A modern-day engineering marvel aimed at the current generation of thrill-seekers, the time-machine coaster ironically sits in the middle of a late 1800s-styled theme park.
The History
It’s known as Silver Dollar City, a name stemming from the practice of making change with actual silver dollar coins back when the park opened in 1960. In truth, however, Silver Dollar City’s conception began well before opening day.
As far back as the 1800s, explorers were intrigued by a huge cave located at what is now the park’s entrance. By the 1940s, it was known as Marvel Cave, and adventurous tourists waited in line to be lowered by bucket into the depths below—a slow process requiring many to wait their turn. The young couple who founded the park, Hugo and Mary Herschend, brought in craftsmen to exchange their goods and trades and entertain the crowds.
(Laken Copeland)
Today, the unassuming yet nationally known theme park no longer hands out silver dollars, and although the cave still remains, world-class adventure rides are what thrill seekers wait in line for. However, Silver Dollar City is also known as the Home of American Craftsmanship, a title officially given by U.S. Congress in 2010, and it’s the craftsmen who are front and center.
“Adhering to our roots while still looking at tomorrow’s generation—that’s what keeps us relevant,” stated Silver Dollar City’s Publicity Director Lisa Rau.
That strategy is how Silver Dollar City manages to perfectly unite old with new, past with present, and more importantly, parents with kids, and grandparents with grandkids. They are in the business of connecting generations.
Preserved like the Ozark Mountains, the park celebrates an era and creates a culture reminiscent of days gone by: when families completely depended on each other, and communities depended on families.
The Heritage
Heritage crafts, trades, and arts—characteristic of America’s history, and passed down from one generation to the next—are slowly disappearing behind a world of mass production and technology. Silver Dollar City invites guests to rediscover the former days, highlighting everything from blowing glass through a pipe extending deep into a 2,000-degree furnace, to hewing logs and hand-crafting furniture in an 1800s-style workshop powered completely by a series of pulleys, belts, and gears.
Entering through the gates is like stepping into a movie set dating back a century or more. The 110-acre park nestled within the woods weaves guests through old-time storefronts with cleverly created signs, sights, and sideshows. Woven into the rustic landscape are themed roller coasters, thrilling water rides, eateries, and one-of-a-kind shops—all brilliantly blended together like chapters in a good book.
Right away, you’ll notice that Silver Dollar City is not flat. From the top entrance where one might catch a bluegrass band or fiddler, the path immediately heads down, winding past a log-hewer, a blacksmith shop, a candy shop, and a working water mill used to grind wheat for fresh homemade bread and cinnamon rolls. In fact, most of the park’s food is made from scratch, prepared by hand, and might even be traced back to a grandmother’s kitchen.
Step inside Hazel’s Blown Glass Shop and walk through to the backside, where every day, second-generation glassblowers like Shawn Watt and Tim Aldridge invite you into their workshop. The large, spacious setting, with two glowing furnaces, offers visitors an up-close look at the glass-blowing trade in real time. While blowing a glob of glass into a magnificent vase or bowl, the duo work together like a tag team of true craftsmen, moving effortlessly through the process, all the while entertaining fascinated onlookers with an explanation of every step. Their beautiful works of art today were essential products of their era. Jars for canning, bottles for medicines, even windows for entire houses—each were once produced from glass-blowers and their trade.
Tim Aldridge is a second-generation glassblower who loves explaining the process of glassblowing to Silver Dollar City attendees who visit the workshop. (Laken Copeland)
Around the corner, visitors will meet Jeff Walker, a master craftsman in the skill of pottery. With literally a lifetime of experience, Walker is nationally recognized for his talent. An impressive pottery shop highlights his work, but guests can come in throughout the day and catch him on the wheel himself, shaping up something new, and offering some fascinating facts about creating a colorful glaze or mixing the perfect recipe of natural compounds. Walker is passionate about passing down his trade, which is partially art today but yesterday was utilitarian.
Jeff Walker, a nationally-recognized talent, is at the wheel. (Courtesy of Silver Dollar City)
Dennis Smith is a knifemaker. His skill in blacksmithing led him to begin forging knives out of old railroad spikes. The learning curve led him to handcraft steel-layered Damascus knives, many of which are collector’s items. He prides himself in his work, determined to do the best job he can with every knife created, whether novelty or specialty. In his small shop showcasing beautiful knives, every piece reflects meticulous hand-garnered detail: a statement of quality in both craftsmanship and character.
The Entertainment
Watt, Aldridge, Walker, and Smith are just four of the more than 100 master craftsmen in the Silver Dollar City artisan family. With the annual October Fall Harvest Festival, however, the grounds are packed with even more award-winning craftsmen, legendary cowboys, and talented artists with nationally recognized work.
Commenting on the uniqueness of bringing all of these artisans into one setting, events manager Kelly Eutsler stated, “Many art fairs highlight the finished products, but our festival is long-known for showing how the crafts are actually created.”
The concept reaches beyond simple education or entertainment. History comes to life in watching how something is made. The demonstration of an art or craft reminds us of our heritage, and although the trade might be lost to time and manufacturing, the values inherent in that era remain timeless.
Those timeless virtues of morality, integrity, and hard work are rooted deep into the framework of old-school America. Catching a glimpse of those days fascinates onlookers and reawakens an appreciation for what they represent.
As knife maker Dennis Smith explained, “I think it is a form of nostalgia—maybe not for an exact time or era, but just for a time when things were simpler, things were handmade, when nobody had ever heard of planned obsolescence, and when many of your possessions would be passed down to your survivors.”
Passing things down from previous generations is Silver Dollar City’s story, but not without the excitement of some modern-day thrills. Loops, drops, twists, and turns can be experienced onboard one of the park’s breathless roller coasters like Wildfire, Outlaw Run, or Time Traveler, and whitewater rides like American Plunge or Mystic River Falls are not to be missed.
(Courtesy of Silver Dollar City)
Although it might be unusual for an 1800s-style park to carry some high-flying roller coasters and fast-moving water rides, long-time employee and food-and-beverage director Sam Hedrick stated, “When you come to Silver Dollar City, you need to put all other preconceived ideas about amusement parks behind you.”
The festival also serves up delicious fare like barbecue and succotash skillets. (Courtesy of Silver Dollar City)
As you make plans for your next destination, consider hopping on the equivalent of a time machine, winding and rolling through the Ozark Mountains to arrive at Silver Dollar City and the 1800s. It’s a place where experiences and live demonstrations are real, not virtual; where culture and character are fostered and developed; and where individuals, friends, and families can make a memory worth repeating—so much worth repeating, they probably will.
Kelly lives in the Ozarks, enjoying nature’s playground of lakes, rivers, trees, and trails. Camper, hiker, kayaker, and cycler, she loves spending time in God’s outdoor creation, and when inside, can be found teaching couples to dance.
Working with wrought iron is a 4,000-year-old craft. (Courtesy of Dana Creath)
Jose Lemus was facing a new challenge on a recent workday. The custom order from one of Dana Creath’s two dozen showroom partners nationwide called for a standard table lamp from the product catalog to be reconstituted as a floor lamp. In his 21 years as a maker of Creath’s wrought-iron lighting fixtures and home accessories, Lemus has fabricated anything and everything. He indicated the present job would be no problem.
“He’s an artist,” said company president Greg Perkins, who was showing a visitor some samples. At Lemus’ disposal were a variety of welders and basic and advanced metal-forming tools. While wrought-iron is a 4,000-year-old craft, and hammers, tongs, and anvils have not relinquished their primary importance, the latest machines do add speed and flexibility.
Using a plasma cutter, a kind of torch that slices patterns in sheet steel as if it were cookie dough, Lemus produced the blank for an ornamental piece to be affixed to a lamp. The blank had a general resemblance to a leaf, but it was flat and featureless. Lemus then heated it up. (A six-burner forge stood at the ready just outside the fabrication area.) Then, he worked with tools and imbued it with convexity such that the leaf became symmetrically cupped underneath, like an arched hand. Going another step, he created surface texture, a network of creases that brought the form to life. After painting and an antiquing finish, the ornament would possess a vibrancy that’s unlikely ever to be duplicated in a mechanized manufacturing process.
Artisans create fine works by hand, using a variety of welders and metal-forming tools. (Courtesy of Dana Creath)
Lighting in its many flavors—chandeliers, table and floor lamps, flush-mount ceiling lights, sconces, exterior lanterns—is a Dana Creath specialty, but the company’s catalog also includes tables, mirrors, and pot racks. The 15-person staff operates in a 12,000-square-foot workshop within a nondescript light-industrial district of Santa Ana, the seat of Orange County. Thanks to a nine-foot-tall storage rack full of tools, they can turn out any catalog item, reproducing the exact curve required of a piece of steel. The craftsmen do more than bend metal; Perkins, who has been running the company since 2013, takes on the glass work himself, fusing, rippling, or slumping the panes in either of two kilns. Meanwhile, over in the shade department, two workers fashion the lampshades by hand. There’s even a candle-making studio.
(Courtesy of Dana Creath)(Courtesy of Dana Creath)
The final pieces are sold wholesale to showrooms and designers at prices ranging from several hundred dollars to well into five figures. On a recent visit, a seven-foot-diameter, 20-light chandelier—custom designed for a residence in nearby Irvine—neared completion, as well as nearing the top of the price range.
The story of Dana Creath goes back to 1967. After serving in the United States Navy, the company’s namesake returned to Orange County and went to work in a lamp shop. A year later, Creath opened Custom House Lighting, which is still going on at Newport Boulevard in Costa Mesa, six and a half miles from the workshop. After the retail location came the first production workshop, then located in Laguna Hills. Custom orders from hotels and restaurants flowed in during the 1980s, leading to growth. The operation moved to Santa Ana in 2008 and was eventually turned over to Perkins, who is married to Creath’s daughter, Monica. Creath has since retired and devotes himself to fishing at his home in northern Idaho. Greg and Monica have been exploring a transfer of the business that would result in 51 percent of ownership being in her name.
Dana Creath’s lighting fixtures elevate the style of any room. (Courtesy of Dana Creath)
“Most of our employees have been with us at least 20 years,” Perkins said, introducing production manager Miguel Sepulveda, who was fashioning a simple tool for the shade department to use in tucking shade edges out of sight. Sepulveda, 45, came from Arandas in the state of Jalisco in Mexico when he was a teenager, and for a time, he worked in construction putting in concrete driveways.
“I didn’t mind the heavy work,” he said. But construction activity faded after the dot-com-era bust. “I decided to look for factory work.” He started in Dana Creath’s paint department some 23 years ago and has since poured his soul into every job in the shop.
After the blacksmithing in the fabrication shop, there is painting and antiquing, wiring and finishing, and final assembly and testing with bulbs. Everything gets packed in triple-wall cardboard for shipping.
The Dana Creath catalog nearly exhausts all possibilities in traditional designs, with an extensive offering of Renaissance-inspired chandeliers as well as fancy intricacies in all departments. Yet the listing of recent products shows the company updating some traditional designs—and the push extends into product names as well. The exploration of color and form is best seen in a table lamp with a stand that is a vine wrapping around a gracefully curved branch. The startling use of bright yellow paint distinguishes the creation.
(Courtesy of Dana Creath)
“I thought this could work in today’s climate,” Perkins said. The design was resurrected from decades past but modernized with the splash of color. Products were always identified by alphanumeric tags, but Perkins had another idea. “In order to give some of these fixtures more personality, we would start naming them to bring them to life.” Hence, the lamp is called “Artemis,” after the goddess who loved the woods and mountains and led other Greek gods on the hunt.
Plenty of other possibilities lie ahead. For one thing, Perkins sometimes thinks about finding a glass blower from the Laguna Beach community of artists and collaborating on handmade creations in a new realm.
“We’re looking to grow,” he said. Demand has remained consistent in the Southwest and on the two coasts. “Most of our business is probably around the perimeter of the country.” Still, there’s opportunity for expansion of an ancient craft with products for use and appreciation in this present age when Siri can control house lights.
Ronald Ahrens’s first magazine article was 40 years ago for Soap Opera Digest. Nowadays he’s on a 15-year run with DBusiness (“Detroit’s Premier Business Journal”). Ronald lives near Palm Springs, California, where he struggles to understand desert gardening.
John Almeda ran the Boston Marathon and is preparing to qualify for the Western States Endurance Run, a 100.2-mile race in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Sacramento resident John Almeda, 27, has nonverbal autism. However, that developmental condition does not stop him from running marathons. Remarkably, the endurance sport has become his passion in life.
“It’s a gift that opened up to him a world of possibility,” said Vanessa Bieker, his mother. “When John is running, he’s so happy and free.”
Before becoming a distance runner, Almeda suffered from insomnia. A delayed puberty at the age of 17 caused him sleepless nights, according to Bieker. Running around a local high school track ended the spell.
Almeda is deep into long-distance running now. Competing for his second time in the Boston Marathon this year, John started preparing in February by running 40 miles a week, training six days straight, and then resting on Sunday. He ran the 2019 race in downtown Boston, finishing in three hours and 52 minutes.
To prepare for the 2021 Boston Marathon, Almeda worked with a strength trainer and a nutritionist. He also ran hills at elevations to increase his endurance capacity, and stadium stairs (100 up and the same number down) at Sacramento State University to build his hip, leg, and lung strength. In addition, Almeda did yoga to increase his flexibility.
His marathon training usually ends a week before the race, getting “up to running 22 to 23 miles before pausing his training,” Bieker said. Almeda planned not to train “for the pre-race week. That is typical of marathon runners to avoid breaking their bodies down.”
Almeda usually has a guide who accompanies him while racing in marathons, although he ran the Big Bear Marathon, a Boston qualifying race, on his own, according to Bieker. The guide ensures that John eats snacks and drinks fluids, which he can and does forget to do. As of publication time, however, Almeda planned to run the 2021 Boston Marathon without a guide. “He taught me that he can navigate these races on his own, and while as a mother I worry, he proves time and again that I do not need to.”
Almeda began his long-distance running career competing in the Special Olympics in 2014, where he ran five-minute miles. That is, he ran a quarter-mile in one minute and 15 seconds four times in a row—not too shabby for a beginner. John said he follows the advice of the late Satchel Paige, a famous black baseball pitcher: “Don’t look back; they might be gaining on you.”
He ran in races of increasing lengths: five kilometers, 10 kilometers, and then a half-marathon. In December 2017, Almeda ran his first marathon: the California International Marathon, which went from the suburb of Folsom to the state capitol in downtown Sacramento. As fate would have it, Almeda finished that race on a broken ankle (which happened at mile six, according to his mother) in four hours and 20 minutes. “He refused to quit, […] saying, ‘Boston, Boston, Boston.’”
Bieker, like Almeda, thrives on overcoming challenges and helping others in similar straits. She helms the Fly Brave Foundation, a nonprofit that offers career development for adults on the autism spectrum. She launched the group five years ago with five members. Today, there are 450 members. Bieker opened The Fly Brave Emporium, a brick-and-mortar shop, in April 2021; it features a coffee and consignment shop, plus an art classroom that gives space to artists on the autism spectrum to sell their work.
Other runners share their positive feedback with Almeda, according to Bieker. They support him with high-fives and words of encouragement. Non-runners, too, get a lift from Almeda and his running achievements.
“We get letters and cards all the time,” said Bieker, “from families with children who are on the autism spectrum and nonverbal, some of whom are newly diagnosed. They look at what John is doing as a beacon of hope.
“We also communicate with people who have been in accidents. A partially paralyzed woman found John online and reached out to him to share that his life story gives her hope. She goes to John’s Instagram account daily for inspiration and motivation to keep pushing hard.”
Bieker reads such stories to Almeda. “He lights up when he hears them,” she said. “John knows that he is helping others.” Such feedback is a motivating factor in his aspiration to run races longer than 26.2-mile marathons. In February 2020, he ran a 50-kilometer race and came in with the top 15 finishers, completing the 31-mile trail race in under five hours. In 2022, John plans to begin training to qualify for a race that is about three times as long: the Western States Endurance Run, a 100.2-mile race in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It begins in high-altitude Lake Tahoe and ends in Auburn, California. A local runner who has entered and finished the race has offered to run the course with Almeda during his training.
First, John must qualify. Some 1,500 athletes aspire to run that race every year; a lottery system selects 250 qualifying runners. If the past can indicate the future, do not bet against John running and finishing the endurance run in 2024—when he aims to compete in the ultramarathon. After all, John is a young man who, with his untiring mother, is overcoming the odds, and in the process brightening the lives of many others.
Seth Sandronsky is a freelance journalist based in Sacramento, California, married to a wonderful woman for the past 37 years. In a previous lifetime, he was a Division II college football player and competitive powerlifter.
Christina Rutland in front of her home in Hendersonville, North Carolina. (Courtesy of Christina Rutland)
Imagine allowing someone you hardly know into your home. Now imagine that stranger eating your food, sleeping in your bed, tugging on you for help, and distracting you from chores, day after day.
That’s exactly what happened when Christina Rutland of Hendersonville, North Carolina, invited a brother and sister from a dysfunctional family to be raised alongside her own kids amid a global pandemic.
As a biological mother of three—Elliot, 9; Emmalynn, 7; and Abigail, 5—Christina is one of many foster parents who believe that doubling down on sacrifice is a necessary virtue if the fabric of family life in America is to be strengthened.
In July 2020, Christina and her husband, Stephen, welcomed a 3-year-old girl and her 4-year-old brother into a safe haven filled with order, love, and laughter. “The Littles,” as Christina calls them, are among an estimated 419,000 youth in foster care nationally, separated from their biological families largely due to domestic violence or substance abuse—a population of vulnerable young people that is almost the size of Spokane and Baton Rouge combined.
But last year, during the pandemic, 20 states witnessed a total drop of 5 percent or more in licensed foster homes, according to figures gathered from child welfare agencies, widening the cracks in the system’s safety net.
“We always need more foster parents,” said Kym Rhodes, a social work liaison for Henderson County, North Carolina, who works with the Rutlands and other households. While most foster kids are age 5 and under at the time they are separated, “we need foster parents who are willing to take older kids. We need foster parents who are willing to take sibling groups, […] newborns that come straight from the hospital.”
Rhodes approached Christina at the church where the two worship and asked her if she would consider taking in siblings who’d been exposed to narcotics within their birth family and whose father was homeless.
Called to “serve for the fatherless,” Christina didn’t flinch. “We’re going to go where the need is,” she remembered thinking. By that time, she and Stephen were well along in the foster licensing process, which included 30 hours of training, a criminal record check, physical exams, and a fire safety inspection.
The Value of Stability
Sitting at the kitchen table of her home as her birth children folded laundry in a bedroom, Christina said that she shared a “very stable, normal upbringing” with one older sister and a mom and dad who are still together. She met her future husband in high school and they ended up working together at a summer camp during college. They’ve been married for 12 years.
When her sister and brother-in-law began foster parenting, “I was able to see what they were doing,” Christina said. Through several church friends in nearby Greenville, South Carolina, she was also able to learn about the role foster parents play.
Given her upbringing, the exposure to her sister’s fostering, and an unbreakable faith, “it never dawned on us to say, ‘Oh, we should probably pump the brakes,’” as the pandemic upended daily living, Christina said. Instead, she pushed forward, displaying the energy and positivity that friends and associates describe as her hallmark traits.
For others, however, the upheaval of the ongoing health crisis took its toll. A January 2021 survey of about 300 foster parents, conducted by Fostering Families Today, found that emotional and psychological problems created a collective dent in these parents’ well-being. Loss of income, deteriorating physical health, fear of family exposure and illness, and on-again-off-again schooling also posed challenges.
Yet, like Christina, these foster parents kept up the pace, maintaining a spirit of sacrifice while aided by strong governmental and community support in the form of daycare vouchers, Medicaid eligibility, and donations of meals and clothing.
Children First
In the end, fostering is not about the difficulties caregivers face, but about the potential for children in these temporarily blended families—foster and biological alike—to learn, grow, and love one another.
Christina recalled how her kids were a bit wary at first when “the Littles” arrived, wondering which beds they would sleep in that night.
“We’re going to have to be really patient,” was what Emmalynn told her mother. “And I said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to have to be really patient,’” Christina remembered. “But by the end of the next day, they’re all outside playing together.”
Christina believes her own kids now have more empathy toward others who don’t live in safe households. They also understand better why she and Stephen have always set down rules and boundaries. “They’re seeing how difficult it is for these little ones to adapt and, especially initially, to understand why are rules given in the first place.”
The two foster kids have been with the Rutlands for more than a year. While the foster kids and Christina visit the birth mother regularly, “the Littles” may be able to reunite permanently if the conditions that led to their removal improve, lessening the trauma of forced separation.
“One time, I found my oldest boy in tears, and I thought it was because something had been hard for him that day,” Christina related. “And he said, ‘I just know that they really want to go home, and I want them to be happy, but I also don’t want them to leave.’”
Foster care is by no means a guaranteed road to success. Foster children are more likely than non-fostered children to commit suicide. Many do not graduate from high school on time. Others become pregnant or homeless.
But in every foster family created, love and hope abound.
“We ask them to take them in, treat them like they’re your children, love them, be willing to let them go when it’s time to let them go,” said Lorie Horne, Henderson County’s social work program administrator.
“I mean, it’s a difficult job. It really is.”
Neil Cotiaux is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and business journals, mostly in the Southeast and Midwest. His work has largely focused on community and economic development, immigration, and health care. He works out of Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Decades before Johnny Appleseed started planting apple trees in Pennsylvania and Ohio, two brothers created an apple orchard in Limington, Maine, that has endured for 238 years. It was 1783, and the Treaty of Paris had officially ended the American Revolution and ratified the independence of the thirteen American states.
Joshua Brackett and his elder brother Abraham had traveled the 30 miles from Portland, known then as Falmouth, Massachusetts. It was a journey of about a day by horseback. But on their way to the newly settled area of Little Ossipee Plantation, their horses were spooked by an unexpected encounter with a bear. They shot the bear with their Brown Bess musket and considered the fact that the horse had warned them about the animal a sign of good fortune.
Both brothers had followed the example of their father, Lieutenant Joshua Brackett, Sr., and had joined the Continental Army: Abraham in 1778 and Joshua, Jr. in 1780. War in the New World was not new to the Bracketts. Their second great-grandfather, Anthony Bracket, had immigrated from England to New Hampshire around 1623 and was killed by Indians in 1691 at the age of 78. Conflicts with local Indian tribes and the French and Indian War in 1754 brought numerous tragedies to their family.
But when Independence from Britain was declared, the Bracketts joined the American cause, as did many of the citizens of the District of Maine. Joshua, Sr., was a captain of a company of minutemen who marched to Cambridge in 1775. He then became a Second Lieutenant in Captain Joshua Wentworth’s company, while both of his sons served in Captain Joseph Pride’s company, with Abraham discharged in 1779 and Joshua, Jr. discharged in December of 1780.
Joshua, Jr., had the colorful distinction of serving in a detachment of men deployed on boats that warned fishermen about the incursions of the British Naval Captain Henry Mowat, who had burned Falmouth in 1775.
The brothers had received a grant of land as recompense for their military service. Discharged, with the war winding down in 1781, they journeyed to their new holdings at Little Ossipee Plantation, later incorporated as Limington. They found that the hilly country was ideal for apple trees, so the brothers formally established a farm and orchard in 1783.
Joshua didn’t know that 238 years later, a ninth-generation Brackett, his sixth-great-grandson Manley Brackett, would still be running the orchard at the age of 99.
The brothers could not have imagined the future threat to their family farm posed by modern technology or an apple called “Honeycrisp.”
The 99 years of their descendent’s life were, except for a few brief interludes, resonant with the fragrance of apples. Manley Russell Brackett was born on the farm in 1922 and was wheeled in a baby carriage by his mother as his parents planted rows of McIntosh apples.
His parents were Guy Bracket, born in 1884, and May Russell, born in 1881. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” must have worked quite well for the Bracketts—Guy and May were 78 and 89 when they passed away in 1963 and 1971.
Guy and May had decided to stop raising cattle and had converted the farm to only grow apple trees, even though at that time it was still a small farm of about 10 acres. Manley joined the Merchant Marine in World War II and served for two years on a Liberty Ship as the ship’s purser and quasi-pharmacist. After the war, he came back to the farm and helped his father slowly expand the orchard until, in the ’70s, the apple trees covered 120 acres.
The Manley Expansion
Manley married Marion Virginia Sawyer right after the war when Manley was 25. “Ginnie” was a graduate of the Concord School of Business and served as Manley’s business partner, balancing the books “down to the last penny.” They had two daughters, Diane and Debra. Diane told me that Manley had once remarked that “asking Ginnie Sawyer to marry me was the best decision I ever made.”
Manley and Ginnie grew the business until it was a substantial success, shipping 30 to 40,000 bushels of apples a year, many of them out of state and as far away as Europe. In 1964, Manley was featured in The Portland Press Herald as one of the “Faces of Maine.” The farm is a member of the Maine Pomological Society, an organization founded in 1873 that includes apple orchards all over the state and deals with the science of fruits and fruit growing.
Manley developed the orchard even more when he installed a cold storage facility and took on the task of packing the apples in-house. Both decisions increased profits by cutting out two levels of middlemen.
When Manley was 57 in 1979, he was chosen as the York County Farmer of the Year by the Soil and Water Conservation District. The former Journal Tribune newspaper from Biddeford, Maine wrote on November 8, 1979:
“It is because of Manley’s efforts to conserve soil, his progressive and sometimes aggressive efforts in growing apples, in putting up wind fences, pruning trees, and turning apple-raising into an art that won him the award.”
“Operating an orchard is a year-round business, and the way Manley Brackett operates it is not so much a fight against the elements of time and weather, but rather a combination of agricultural technology with an understanding and appreciation of nature. It is learning to work with the weather, soils, trees, and the experience of apple-raising, handed down from generation to generation.”
Planes, Packing Houses, and Big Farms
In 1972, Manley’s daughter Debra married a young man named Guy Paulin. A year later, Guy started working for Manley in the orchard and has worked there ever since. Debra became a school teacher, and Guy and Debra had two boys who were “mirror twins”—identical twins except that one was left-handed and the other right-handed. Both boys graduated from Bentley College.
For the last 12 years, Guy has been the manager of the orchard and has witnessed seismic changes in the apple-growing business. After years of growth, Brackett’s has been confronted with the stresses of foreign competition and the implementation of modern but extremely expensive packing machines. Many other orchards have gone out of business, but Brackett’s has survived due to the commitment to the orchard by Guy and his wife, Debra, who is the farm’s bookkeeper and full-fledged partner.
Apple brokers are the key to success for a large-scale orchard since it’s an apple broker that arranges contracts with a variety of grocery stores across the country. Manley used a broker to get his apples in stores in Florida, where they were purchased by snowbirds from New England. But he eventually stopped using brokers because their increase in packing requirements was not cost effective.
Prior to the delivery of food items by aircraft, customers didn’t expect fresh apples to be available at every grocery store, 12 months a year. Now, with apples flown in from countries like Chile, one can buy a crispy, delicious apple at any time. Although that’s been great for consumers, smaller orchards have struggled to compete.
Brokers now go with the large orchards that can meet a continuous demand, whether foreign or American, and their requirements for packing and delivery have increased. Instead of apples being shipped loose in a box, many brokers want them packed in individual compartments as they are done with eggs. Additionally, supermarkets want a sticker on each apple, which is too labor-intensive for smaller orchards.
The year-round demand has made it tough for farms like Brackett’s, especially with apples like the Honeycrisp, which have stringent requirements for storage and a high percentage rate of failure.
The Rise of the Honeycrisp
Guy told me that Honeycrisp apples are extremely profitable and popular but require expensive equipment to ship year-round. To preserve them, farms need packing facilities that include controlled-atmosphere storage, which regulates the levels of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen, as well as temperature and humidity. Many big packing houses have specialized x-ray machines that scan the inside of the apples for defects. But those machines are far above the budget of many growers.
Developed at the University of Minnesota and released in 1991, the Honeycrisp apple is a hybrid of the Keepsake variety and an unreleased apple labeled the MN1627, a grandchild of the Duchess of Oldenburg and the Golden Delicious apples.
Its crispness and sweet taste have made it a must-have apple at grocery stores, and it sells at a high price. Customers want Honeycrisp apples, so stores and growers have to respond.
Yet for growers, the Honeycrisp is not all joy. In the article “The Dark Side Of Honeycrisp,” by Christina Herrick, published on the Growing Produce website on January 27, 2015, Herrick writes:
“Ask any grower whether they enjoy the experience of growing Honeycrisp year in and year out and they’ll likely tell you no. But it’s a necessary evil. Without Honeycrisp—one of the most profitable varieties to have in an orchard—many growers believe they can’t stay competitive. …”
“It is by far and away the most difficult variety I’ve ever grown,” says Bruce Allen, president of Columbia Reach Pack in Yakima, WA.1
In spite of the problematic side of the new Honeycrisp apple, Guy has planted over 3,000 Honeycrisp trees at Brackett’s. Because of changes within the industry and the consolidation of many smaller farms into larger ones, Guy also had to cut costs to stay competitive.
Downsizing and Fine Tuning
After years of expansion of their farmland, Guy has trimmed the land down to 55 acres. The orchard grows McIntosh, Cortland, Honeycrisp, Spencer, Macoun, Yellow Delicious, Red Delicious, and Northern Spy apples. He’s also added blueberry bushes and peach trees. The Brackett farm stand sells its own apple cider as well as a variety of other local products.
The farm has no broker, due to its size, so Brackett’s has been shut out of the supermarket routes of sale. To compensate, Guy supplies apples to 10 school districts within a 50-mile radius. The farm also has a very popular pick-your-own apple program at their high-ground orchard, which has a 180-degree view of the mountains of New Hampshire.
Brackett’s has also struggled with labor, as many companies have. Guy is fortunate that he’s been working with some excellent apple pickers from Jamaica that come every year for 10 weeks, from September to November. One of them has been working for Brackett’s for 10 years. But local help is much harder to find.
I asked Guy about his work schedule, and I was surprised, even though I shouldn’t have been. I’ve known for a long time that farmers are a special breed of human, far too often unappreciated by their customers who enjoy—in this case literally—the fruits of their labor.
Guy’s day goes from around 4:30 in the morning to 7:30 at night—a 15-hour day—seven days a week. One hundred hours of work a week is something that mere mortals don’t normally wish to contemplate. But that’s what farmers do, and that’s what Guy has been doing for the more than 40 years that he’s worked at Brackett’s. He has been fortunate that, as he stated, Manley was “an easy boss.” And, of course, Guy is now part of the Brackett family, and he loves his work.
Guy and Debra are both taking care of Manley as he approaches his 100th birthday. They’ve helped Manley fulfill his pledge to his father “to keep the orchard going.” Manley often told customers as they left the orchard with bags of apples: “We’ll see you down the road.”
Debra’s sister, Diane, has performed the invaluable service of keeping track of the history of the orchard and the Brackett family.
Guy Paulin of Brackett’s Orchard. (Peter Falkenberg Brown)(Peter Falkenberg Brown)Guy and Manley. (Peter Falkenberg Brown)
The Future of Brackett’s
We concluded our conversation by looking at the future. It would be easy to sell their orchard, but they don’t want to. They want to continue and make it work. Guy is 68, and he’s hoping that one or both of his sons might manage the farm. The farm is still profitable, although it’s always on the edge, as many small farms are. Crises are always waiting in the wings, in the form of bad weather or crops that fail.
When I looked at Guy, sitting in the small visitor’s cabin on the top of their beautiful hill facing the western mountains in New Hampshire, I was reminded of Rocky Balboa. The Bracketts have been fighting to survive, to grow, and to bring value to their neighbors for 238 years.
The Brackett’s Orchards farm most certainly qualifies, at least in my mind, as a Historical Landmark. It is indeed a historical treasure. In addition, when I drove through Brackett’s apple trees and came back to their farm stand to shake Manley’s 99-year-old hand and wave goodbye, I felt that this was one farm that must not be subsumed by the bean-counters of Big Agra. The orchard has too much soul and too much history. Brackett’s Orchards must continue.
Jamie and Brandon Ashby, a Marine veteran, chat as they prepare to open Sugar's for the lunch rush. (David Dudley)
Brandon and Jamie Ashby were married just shy of one year, when the latter decided that it was time to make her dream of opening a restaurant a reality. Jamie said that she’d wanted to open a restaurant since she was 15, when she worked at a small cafe in Nevada. “They did everything wrong,” Jamie said, “and I used to imagine how I’d do it differently.”
But due to her strict Mormon upbringing, she wasn’t encouraged to pursue such dreams. As she was preparing to graduate, she asked her parents if they’d set aside any money to help her pay for college. “My mom said, ‘Why would we do that? You’re just going to get married and have children,'” Jamie said.
So, she spent much of her adult life working for other people. “I felt like I was helping their businesses succeed, through management,” she said, “but not being brave enough to follow my dream.”
But when she met Brandon four years ago, she finally found the courage to pursue her dream. They were living in Boulder City, Nevada. Brandon, a 45-year-old veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and a career policeman, agreed to help fund Jamie’s dream.
They opened a bakery in Boulder City in June 2020. Jamie made spudnuts—essentially donuts, but with mashed potatoes folded into the dough—according to her grandmother’s recipe. “She was small-town famous for that recipe,” Jamie said. The bakery was a small family business; Jamie only worked with one other person. Then, when Brandon retired from the Boulder City Police Department later that month, he joined Jamie at the bakery.
Jamie keeps this picture at the restaurant to honor her grandparents, Enid and Dan Stewart. (David Dudley)
“He started by washing dishes,” Jamie said. “Then he began helping me with baking. I thought it might take him a while, because he’d never really done this kind of thing before. But he took to it almost immediately.”
The bakery was becoming self-sufficient, until October rolled around. Due to pandemic-related shutdowns and limited-capacity dining, the bakery quickly went from a successful small business to being on the verge of failure. “We had to change our whole business model,” Jamie said. “When the state dropped dining capacity from 50 to 25 percent, we had to find another way to survive.”
They had to close the bakery’s doors because they weren’t making enough money. Jamie had already begun to accept the looming reality of abandoning her dream, but Brandon had acquired a never-say-die approach to work and life, from his time in the U.S. Marine Corps. “He told me that this was good,” she said. “He said that we’ll come out the other end stronger.”
From the Military Police to Restaurateur
Brandon attended high school in Anchorage, Alaska. He joined the Marines after graduating in 1994, when he was 19. His older brother, who had joined the Army, tried to convince Brandon to join the Air Force. “According to my brother, they had it easier,” Brandon said. “They had the best barracks, the best food, the best training.”
Brandon’s brother thought he wouldn’t make it in the Marines. “So, I enlisted in the Marines,” Brandon said, smiling. Brandon knew he wanted to join the military police, but his recruiter said there were no openings at the time. Brandon accepted that he’d be an infantryman, but then he was assigned to the military police force. “It was the luck of the draw, I guess,” Brandon said.
He was sent to Ft. McClellan, in Anniston, Alabama, for recruit training. He did seven weeks of infantry training, then three more weeks training with weapons and land navigation. “Then, I learned military law, and how to enforce it. The last month was like a police academy.” After completing his training, he was sent to Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base in San Diego, California. He was eventually invited to join the Special Reaction Team, the military police equivalent of SWAT.
Brandon, who spent his career as a military and civilian policeman, skillfully cuts spudnuts from a disk of kneaded dough. (David Dudley)
Brandon said he feels lucky to have received the training he did. “It was the perfect path to a career in law enforcement.” He left the Marines after four years, then worked in construction and security. Then, Brandon was invited to join the Hoover Dam Federal Police. “This was just after 9/11,” Brandon said. “Hoover Dam was thought to be a terrorist target.”
After working there for two years, Brandon joined the Boulder City Police Department, where he worked for 12 years before retiring. “Then, I joined Jamie in the bakery. It was the best thing that could’ve happened to me then.”
Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire
After the bakery failed in Nevada, the Ashbys decided to move to St. George, Utah, because Utah took a much more lax approach to COVID restrictions. They packed their belongings into a moving truck, and headed for St. George in November 2020. As they crossed the Nevada-Utah border, Jamie Ashby’s phone buzzed.
“It was an automated message from the governor of Utah,” she said. “He’d passed a mask mandate. I looked at Brandon and said: ‘We almost made it. We almost escaped.’”
Again, Jamie felt her dream slipping through her fingers. Moving to St. George and opening a full-service restaurant was her last shot. The couple had to jump through a series of costly hurdles in order to get their restaurant, Sugar’s, up to code before opening its doors to the public on February 11, 2021.
A platter of fried chicken tenders, parmesan-dusted French fries, and cheesy mashed potatoes at Sugar’s. (David Dudley)
“When we opened, we were broke,” Jamie said. “We had to borrow money to stay open long enough to start earning money.” After a turbulent period, the Ashbys are finally making a name for themselves, and earning enough to keep their doors open.
“We came to St. George on a wing and a prayer,” Jamie said. “Throughout this emotional rollercoaster ride, Brandon has supported me in every way imaginable.”
“During my time in the Marines,” Brandon said, “I learned that you never give up. You fight until you can’t fight anymore.”
Watching Brandon knead dough, it’s apparent that he puts a great deal of care into what he’s doing. One may also get the sense that, as he and Jamie move through the kitchen, they’re fighting for their livelihood. That fighting spirit is the reason Sugar’s is open for business, and Jamie’s dream—which is a version of the American dream—is still alive.
Children play outside their house in Colonia de Carton in Piedras Negras, Mexico, on July 8, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Sky Cross is a nonprofit, strictly volunteer-led charity organization that operates along the Texas–Mexico border. Its mission is to provide food, clothing, medicine, and first-aid supplies to impoverished children, families, and orphanages. The organization works closely with missionaries of various denominations who offer education to the poor, primarily in Mexico, in substandard villages called colonias, which lack basic living conditions such as running water, sewers, and electricity.
The organization was founded in 1995 by retired U.S. Air Force Col. Terry Bliquez and his wife, Kathy. David Young serves as the current president, having been a board member and mission pilot since 1998. Before that, Young worked for the Civil Air Patrol (part of the U.S. Air Force), another nonprofit organization, which performs search-and-rescue missions.
When Bliquez first discussed Sky Cross’s mission with Young, it sparked a keen interest. Young would often accompany Bliquez on aid missions to the U.S.–Mexico border to deliver clothing, medicine, and nonperishable food to the needy. Together, they flew multiple times to migrant centers and orphanages, such as those in Nuevo Progreso, Mexico, and Matamoros, which is across the river from Brownsville, Texas.
Young said Sky Cross used to dispense secondhand clothing as well, but those deliveries have slowed down exponentially due to the pandemic. The organization has, however, distributed about 15,000 masks and more than 600 gallons of hand sanitizer across the migrant communities it serves.
The Importance of Helping the Needy
David Young, president of Sky Cross, unloads boxes of masks from his aircraft in Eagle Pass, Texas, on July 8, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
“The primary purpose of Sky Cross is to help provide food for the needy people, the poor on the other side of the border—they’re very, very poor. Many of them come up to the border hoping to be able to come across, and they end up being in the colonias on the border, such as the one in Matamoros,” Young said.
Years ago, people in colonias such as Matamoros would dig holes in the ground, scavenge coverings for the holes, and live in the burrows. Young remembers “being over there one time and looking at what they had on a grill that they were cooking outside—it was fish heads that they had scrounged for,” he said. “I was amazed that people could even survive with that type of food.”
Sky Cross delivers nonperishable food in the form of beans, rice, cornflour, noodles, and more. “I feel like God has placed in my heart a love for the poor and for their plight,” Young said, after being asked why the mission at Sky Cross resonated with him so deeply. “It’s such a blessing to me personally to go out and be amongst these people and, with my resources, be able to help them live a better life.”
Young said that when he was growing up, his parents instilled in him a deep desire to dedicate time and effort to helping those in need. “My dad was a homebuilder, and he would donate his time to work around the church. He had me help paint the back end of a church building one time—it demanded stacking scaffolding because it was so tall. He and I donated our time and efforts to that when I was just a 14- or 15-year-old boy. My father enjoyed giving himself to the community, and that carried over to me.”
Making a Difference in the Lives of the Poor
Children play outside their home in Colonia de Carton in Piedras Negras, Mexico, on July 8, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Through donations, Sky Cross also helped the Matamoros colonia develop to a point when residents could build a school. To support efforts like this, the Mexican government will provide water and electricity once a school is built, in turn helping the colonia become a sustainable community.
Many children in poverty-stricken communities such as Matamoros suffer from malnutrition. According to Young, children’s hair will often show signs of this. “Normally it would be black, but they would have red streaks in their hair, which was showing that they were not getting good nutrition. With time, those red streaks went away,” he said. “It’s a blessing to be able to do that and witness that as time goes on.” For Young, results like these are important, highlighting the difference Sky Cross makes in the lives of needy children.
Young said that his time at the organization is completely voluntary. Nobody who works there is a paid staff member, and 100 percent of the donations go straight to helping the poor. Young’s personal assets, including airplanes, fuel, and other equipment, are also put to charitable use for the organization, transporting volunteers to the border.
Aside from filling his role as president at Sky Cross, Young serves as a board member for a school in northwestern Peru that has 200 students. Together with his wife and family, he also helps more than a dozen children at any given time along the Texas–Mexico border. The Youngs provide money each month to keep those children in school rather than out scavenging the dangerous fields in search of food and money.
“We sent a couple on to the university; one of them became a dentist and came back. They are now practicing within one of the colonias there in Mexico,” Young said.
Sky Cross helps upwards of 30,000 people each year. It has supported six orphanages and helped build clinics in several Mexican colonias along the Texas border, providing quick access to medical care for families in need. “We’ve built a school in Nuevo Progreso where they would train the women to sew and work on computers. We have seen the results of that, to where the people will get out of the cycle of poverty and actually begin to have the skills to go out and earn a living,” Young said.
Physically Poor but Spiritually Rich
Through his time volunteering for Sky Cross, Young has learned many important life lessons—especially about how the needy can find happiness in the midst of their poverty. “The children are especially amazing to me. They can take a simple ball and have fun with that and laugh and enjoy life because they don’t want anything else. And what spoke to me is that some of the things we take for granted in our own society are more precious to them,” Young said.
“What I have learned in doing what I do is that the poor will find joy, and have more faith in their poverty than a lot of people that have all the things they would want in life. We in America need to understand that even the poorest of us are probably richer than 95 percent of the world. We place too much emphasis on the material things in life and not enough on the spiritual.”
Wrongly convicted and incarcerated at the age of 14, John Bunn has endured many struggles from a young age. Born and raised in Brownsville, New York City, to a single mother of three, Bunn had to learn to fend for himself without much guidance. Having lost his father before he was born, he spent the majority of his teenage life without the support of any male figures.
“In the environment I grew up in, the males would come around to exploit, not to come around with love and affection,” he said.
‘I Grew Up in Prison’
Bunn was forced to spend 17 years of his life behind bars, in an environment devoid of sympathy.
“It was predator-prey. If they [prisoners] felt you got a weakness, they took advantage of you,” he said.
He spent a further 10 years on parole, fighting for his innocence.
Before he was arrested and taken into prison, Bunn struggled with illiteracy; which only escalated while he was incarcerated.
“When they had me on trial, they told me to write down any questions I had. I couldn’t write down anything. I didn’t know how to express myself. That was the most trapped and embarrassing feeling you can ever imagine,” he said, breaking into a sob.
With the help of teachers, he finally learned how to read and write by the age of 16. It changed the course of his life.
“It made me stronger. It made me feel like I could fight for my life,” he said. Learning how to read and write is what drove Bunn to later go on to become a facilitator of an anger management program while in prison. From there, he met many other young men struggling with the challenges of illiteracy. “And I would talk to them about my illiteracy issues. And I told them that this was not something to be ashamed of,” he said.
The Unheard
Today, Bunn is the founder of AVoice4TheUnheard.org and helps bring positivity into communities, schools, houses, and prisons of New York City.
Meeting other young men struggling with illiteracy was the driving point that led him to found his literacy program after being exonerated.
In 2017, it initially started as a book drive aimed at refurbishing the libraries at Rikers Island and providing under-resourced communities with educational literature, according to the program website.
Today, the program also offers roleplaying activities to at-risk youth where they’re tasked with group interactions. “We put individuals in real-life scenarios and give them the option to put themselves in other people’s shoes. We try to make them think before making decisions. This is what we call consequential thinking,” Bunn said.
Finding His Passion
The program began during Bunn’s nearly 12 years on parole.
“It [parole] put my life in a limbo state. I knew I was innocent. Everybody knew I was innocent. And that’s what I was fighting for,” he said. While still waiting for a final decision to be made on his conviction, Bunn channeled that restlessness into something positive.
“I needed to put my energy into something more progressive,” he said. “A voice for the unheard—I don’t even know when it became the whole phrase, but it always represented me and what I felt inside my spirit.”
After suffering many setbacks and losing out on the prime years of his life while stuck in prison, Bunn refocused his attention on helping others who may be at risk of getting ensnared in the prison system.
“Where I come from,” Bunn said, “we don’t have too many role models. So my message is, if you don’t have anybody to show you the way, you make your own way. Don’t let that be the reason to discourage you from going forward. And that’s what I stand for. And that’s what we stand for.”
John Bunn visiting a school in NYC. (Samira Bouaou)
Making Positivity Cool for Kids
Part of Bunn’s mission is passing his positivity on to others. “The greatest champions have to go through adversities for them to have the empathy to deal with the world from a different perspective,” Bunn said.
“Our main message is about making positivity cool,” he tells me about his organization. He said that in today’s world, children are vulnerable to absorbing harmful messages from the media they consume. A lot of music nowadays romanticizes being tough, drugs, skipping school, and gang culture. But “that’s not real life,” Bunn says. His organization advocates for changing this narrative so that kids begin associating positivity with coolness.
A Voice 4 the Unheard not only provides prisons and schools with an abundance of literature but also offers numerous resources and networking opportunities to young people and children from underprivileged backgrounds.
“There’s a lack of resources in these communities, and we want to open them up to other resources that they may not know we have available today,” Bunn said. One of the ways the organization is working to bring resources closer to disadvantaged students is by building a network with other nonprofits and educational groups.
George Garber, who works alongside Bunn as one of the core members of the organization, says, “We’re working on creating a student portal on our website where kids could go and connect with other local nonprofits to fulfill their passions, whether that would be music, poetry, art, or the environment.”
The team has many future projects in mind, such as building a kids’ center to provide students with a safe physical location to study and access certain educational materials that may not be readily available in their immediate communities.
“A safe place where they can feel like it’s cool to learn at,” Bunn said.
Uriel Gurgov works on repairing a shoe in his workshop. (Lux Aeterna Photography for American Essence)
Shoemaker Uriel Gurgov immigrated to the United States on Jan. 21, 1993. He was born in 1962 in Bukhara, Uzbekistan—once an ancient trading city situated along the Silk Road in Central Asia. Uriel embarked on a grueling journey out of his hometown in the late 1990s, during the time that former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev was in power, and emigration among Bukharan Jews was prevalent.
Historically, Jews in Uzbekistan have always been religiously targeted. First, by the Sunni Muslims of the Bukhara Emirate during the late 16th century when they were forbidden from buying horses and forced to wear special clothing to distinguish themselves from Sunni Muslims. The religious persecution continued throughout Russian and Soviet rule. Finally, in the late 1920s, synagogues were permanently shut down and Jews were denied work in their traditional trades. Emigration was thus seen as a last attempt to flee persecution and discrimination in their homeland.
Having no relatives in the United States to support an affidavit application on his behalf, Gurgov was forced to cross over through Moscow. However, his journey was anything but simple and he met with several setbacks. Before his journey even began, he was apprehended in his hometown of Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Gurgov was falsely accused of buying a stolen television.
“I said, first of all, I don’t buy stuff from thieves. Also, from January to March, I was in Israel. How can I buy this?” Gurgov said. The crime allegedly occurred in February, when he was out of the country.
Searching for a Way Out
He was taken to jail and beaten in an attempt to make him confess to the alleged crime. When that proved useless, Gurgov was put on trial in front of one of the biggest judges in Bukhara. He went on to explain in the interview that the country’s government was very corrupt. His only way out of being condemned to a life in jail was to offer monetary payment to the judges and police.
“If you just bribe one, they will tell—so you have to have so much money to give each one now,” Gurgov said.
Many people encouraged him to escape Uzbekistan with his family. The government was well known for using Jews as a scapegoat for other people’s crimes. “Somebody stole this? They put it on you. Somebody hit somebody? They blame you. What kind of life is that?” he said.
This experience drove Gurgov to save money and prepare his family’s paperwork to flee Bukhara together. “But I didn’t tell anybody because everybody, everywhere, you have rats,” Gurgov said.
Before the family departed Bukhara, they paid a short visit to the cemetery to say farewell to their forefathers. Along the way, they paid out a lot of money to border police, guards, and airport security. Eventually, they arrived in Moscow, and from there, they flew to America in search of a new life.
New Shop, New Direction
(Lux Aeterna Photography for American Essence)
For three centuries, highly skilled craftsmen called “ustad” practiced traditional crafts in Central Asia and beyond. Some of this included jewelry-making, armory, carpet weaving, and shoemaking. Bukhara, Uzbekistan, was considered one of the major handicraft centers, often visited by wealthy merchants along the Silk Road. Skilled craftsmen would often take in apprentices who would learn their trade. This is also how Gurgov learned the craft of shoemaking. He explained that his father would often take him to many crafting hubs where he would be taught various skills in exchange for free work. These skills helped Gurgov kickstart his shoemaking business after moving to the United States.
Gurgov purchased his shoe shop in 1994, less than a year after arriving in the United States. With the help of generous friends and a bank loan of $15,000, he started a shoemaking business and has since been working there. His apartment is on the next block. “And what else do you need? I have a family, a wife, children, and grandchildren. I appreciate it, I’m satisfied.”
Shoemaker Gurgov considers shoemaking a real craft, one that requires the craftsman to really know his customer’s problem in order to help them accordingly. He places great importance on wearing the right shoes. “You can have a hundred shoes but none of them feel right. If you wear one shoe and you’re not tired of it, then that’s a good shoe.” He said many people wear the wrong types of shoes. They develop pain and fatigue, leading to serious health problems resulting in thousands of dollars in medical bills. He believes that making even a simple change in your footwear is enough to make a significant difference to your health. For instance, slightly changing the shoe size or purchasing one with good arch support can make a difference.
Today, he crafts sturdy, custom shoes for regular people and celebrities alike. Some of his past customers include Britney Spears and Patrick Dempsey. TV shows such as Boardwalk Empire and Gossip Girl have also commissioned Gurgov to design the cast’s shoes. He also carries out shoe, watch, and jewelry repairs.
Despite encountering many setbacks and enduring much suffering, Gurgov remains grateful and satisfied with life. He believes you can’t always be a winner and that sometimes losing is better as it helps one grow and appreciate things more. As Gurgov would say, “Today you give up, tomorrow you gain.”
Interior design featuring Ethan Allen furniture. (Courtesy of Dina Dotsikas)
At a time in history when certain international governments are creating incentives for reshoring, the American company Ethan Allen can hold its head high because throughout its 89 years of operations, it never fell into the trap of offshoring the majority, or the totality, of its production for low-labor costs.
Contrary to what may have been common belief, remaining rooted in its home country did not hinder an innovative evolution or business growth. Instead, the choice to keep production in the United States seemed to strengthen the brand’s position in the market.
Within a matter of three years, the company went from initially selling gnomes, trellises, and garden swings produced by other companies to kickstarting its own production of colonial-style home furnishings. It fully established its style by rebranding, becoming officially known as Ethan Allen in 1969. Ethan Allen’s reputation flourished to the point where it opened its own storefronts and began selling directly to consumers.
Five years later, the company opened the Ethan Allen Hotel in Danbury, Connecticut. Since 1974, the hotel has received a number of awards and over 100 five-star ratings on the online forum Wedding Wire. In 2019, the hotel accepted two awards: The Knot’s Best of Weddings, for a second consecutive year; and the Couples’ Choice Award from Wedding Wire, for an eighth consecutive year.
Staying True
Throughout its rich history of constant innovation, the company transformed its colonial style into a modern-day classic style fitting for the ‘90s. Today, the company continues to reinvent its pieces in classic, country and coastal, and modern styles.
During the offshoring boom of the 2000s, Ethan Allen stayed home and invested in new technology and state-of-the-art equipment for its manufacturing facilities. Now, the company boasts of using less electricity, water, and other resources, as well as ways to reduce the amount of waste we, as consumers, put into landfills. Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation named Ethan Allen a Vermont Business Partner from 2013 to 2018. Ethan Allen also cleaned up pollution in the Connecticut River, which runs near one of its workshops dating back to the 1830s.
The company’s prospects were not always a ray of sunshine, though.
Since the recession, and following the plummet of U.S. manufacturer Furniture Brands International in 2013, a number of legacy American furniture brands got pulled into the wave of disaster. Ethan Allen struggled greatly to stay afloat. By 2019, however, the company had made a major comeback.
In fact, after discarding a short-lived, discount-drive methodology and returning to its original emphasis on in-house interior design services and the promise of best prices, the company has been on the rise.
A Go-To Brand
Now fully rekindled with interior design at the forefront, the company opened a new format design studio in The Westchester shopping center in White Plains, New York, in 2019. The studio integrates the latest technologies, such as a 3D room planner, to enhance the company’s complimentary interior design service.
Television host and lifestyle maven Parker Kelley (writer, producer,
Ethan Allen’s designs have a classic look. (Courtesy of Dina Dotsikas)
and award-winning host of “Home, Life & Style,” a program that airs in New England) loved learning about Ethan Allen’s American heritage and tech toolsduring her recent partnership with the company to produce “Design Tips” segments on her show.
While the company’s constant innovation is good news for Ethan Allen’s in-house, world-class designers and consumers, the brand has been a long-lasting go-to for individual interior designers and the average American.
“Growing up, I’ve always known it to be a mainstay in the history of home furnishings. I’d love to see them last forever,” interior designer and home renovator Dina Dotsikas said in an interview for American Essence.
Ethan Allen has 1,000 in-house interior designers, but it openly suggests customers contact local interior designers and offers a useful site to guide clients. The team at Ethan Allen designs, develops—from cushions adjusted by hand for perfect shape and positioning, to upholstery in fabric or leather that is cut, sized and customized for a flawless fit—and delivers everything it makes.
Today, the company owns and operates nine manufacturing facilities, including six plants in the United States, two plants in Mexico, and one plant in Honduras.
Dotsikas said that “Ethan Allen has managed to shift with the times while maintaining the classic style appeal,” her personal preference. “Tradition will always be in style. We invest in more traditional pieces, the ones we know will last the longest; and we invest less in the more trendy, shorter-lived ones.”
“My personal style is classic, timeless, traditional with a touch of trend. I’ll stick with the basics that stand the test of time with a bit of today’s,” she added.
Dotsikas with her husband. (Courtesy of Dina Dotsikas)
Dotsikas has known the Ethan Allen name since she was a child, considering it a brand that provides long-lasting furnishings you can pass down to future generations. It has been a go-to brand for decorating her own home.
“They have people that you can work with to make them more to your style. It’s not cookie-cutter. There are a million different options. That’s always a great feature,” she said.
Dotsikas often integrates pieces from Ethan Allen when she is “flipping homes”—by renovating homes that have been unloved, as she explained it. After seeing through the mess and reorganizing it for today’s families, ensuring form and function, she gets to the fun part of designing the interiors. She called it “staging.”
“It’s different when you’re staging the house instead of furnishing the house. You want them to walk in and see themselves sitting there. Having quality pieces and accessories are important because visitors can visualize themselves living in the homes. When in a bind, I’ll pull furniture from our own home to stage the flip homes.”
Since she has quite a few Ethan Allen pieces in her own home, she uses them to stage homes set for sale—to give them that high-quality, luxury aesthetic she desires.
Erin Tallman is the editor-in-chief of ArchiExpo e-Magazine, an online news source for architecture and design professionals. She is based in Marseille, France, and enjoys cycling around Europe as a way to soak up the culture, discovering hotel gems along the way.
