Nestled in the heart of Appalachia.

The University of Virginia's College at Wise is where students experience unique regional culture and the great outdoors.

UVA Wise empowering students to learn and lead in their communities and the world.

[uplifting music] [Joshua Deel] Baseball and the coalfields is what originally brought me to this part of Virginia.

Not to play or even to watch a game.

No, I heard about the 1951 Norton Little League team's story, and how it served as a shining counter-narrative to the stereotypes imposed upon this region.

You see, the first Little League baseball team to integrate in Virginia, possibly the United States, happened here.

And not only did they integrate, they went on to win the state championship later that season.

I had the privilege of filming a dedication ceremony for the historic marker placed in honor of this team and its story, hearing from the daughter of one of its all-star players on the team.

[applause] -When I was notified about this event, and then asked if I'd be willing to speak on behalf of my father, I had to start thinking about what I was going to say again.

So, I started calling my family, my Aunt Grace and my Uncle Bobby.

I had to get some background on the growing-up and the childhood of my dad, here in Norton.

We all knew that my dad loved baseball.

There were days I remember growing up on Southside, that we would all gather at what used to be called the CC Camp, family, friends, and we would stay there all day, watching baseball.

You know, food would be on the grill, kids would be running and playing, and there would be ball-playing, all day long.

[audience chuckles] But I am forever grateful for those days.

I don't think my 12-year-old father understood the significance of the moment he was chosen to be on the All-Star Little League team.

There were 100 kids that showed up, Dr. Canto.

Four of them were Black.

One of them was my father.

All Dad knew and understood at that time, according to Grace, was that he was playing baseball, and he was playing it with his friends.

The love for the game extended all throughout my childhood, and on to my son.

Dad would make special trips to North Carolina to watch Roman, and sometimes coach him, when he was playing ball, who was also an all-star on the Union County 12U All-Star Little League baseball team at home in Waxhaw, North Carolina.

Dad always would tell him, "I played Little League too, I was an all-star too."

[soft laughter] But at that time, we didn't know and never understood about the history of that team my dad played on.

We all know that sports can bring people together, you can see it here, despite the differences that exist within our own society.

And that 1951 Little League baseball team is a prime example.

My aunt mentioned, back then, that watching so many people cheer for my dad and Harold Mitchell the day they won, was so exciting, and it was a major step toward inclusion.

We are very proud of my dad and the legacy he created, unbeknownst to him, by simply playing the game he loved.

This marker will forever be my dad's memory.

I will have the historical significance of the 1951 Little League baseball team that he was a member, relevant for upcoming generations of Little Leaguers here in Norton.

My Aunt Grace said one time, "This can't be forgotten.

It's just too important to forget."

Thank you.

[applause] [Joshua Deel] This is too important to forget, as are the many incredible stories in small towns throughout Appalachia.

And this ethos is surprisingly what I continue to discover in and around Norton.

[♪♪♪] I've heard it said, "Where we are affects who we are."

And I think we have the chance to understand ourselves better if we understand where we come from.

Hi, my name's Josh, and I'm producing this series with PBS Appalachia to explore the towns that so many people still call home, their hometown, to unearth remarkable stories and the people behind them.

Hometowns is about exploring the communities that make small-town America unique.

This season, I'll take you on a journey off the beaten path through Southwest Virginia.

And don't get me wrong, this place has its warts.

But if that's all I showed you, you'd miss out on the remarkable beauty of its natural wonders, and the rich depth of its cultural heritage, that in a sense, are at the heart of what it means to be an American.

[♪♪♪] [♪♪♪] Norton is an independent city in Southwest Virginia, near the western edge of Wise County, situated at the crossroads of US 23 and US 58.

[♪♪♪] If coming from Big Stone Gap, which I recently visited in one of this season's episodes, you'll see the Country Cabin, where keeping old-time mountain music alive is a multi-generational effort.

[♪♪♪] At one time, Norton was one of the richest cities in Virginia due to coal and coke oven production, but today, it is the least populated city in the Commonwealth.

This place is no stranger to transition or change.

Not only is it in the coalfield region of Appalachia, but Norton has a rich history of timber-related industries and rail.

In fact, it was the hub for the timber trade until the coal boom of the mid-1800s.

Originally known as Prince's Flats, Norton was officially renamed after President Eckstein Norton of the Louisville National Railroad in 1890.

Norton is located along the Wilderness Trail blazed by Daniel Boone, and at one time, coke ovens would have lined the street here across from the railroad tracks as Norton is in the dead center of a rich bituminous coal region, a coal valued for its high heat properties and use in generating electricity, as well as the production of steel.

At nearly 100 years old, this family-owned and -operated hardware business highlights in one place the history of the area.

[♪♪♪] [Big O] Yeah, I've been here my whole life.

I started working here when I was 13.

Pick came when he was like 17 or 18.

He worked a couple other places, but he's been here his whole life.

Pick's my brother, Pickle.

-Yeah.

-They call me Big O, or O.

And then, Steve that works with us now, he's the new guy.

Some people call him Chrome 'cause he's bald, but he's been here 27 years.

So, it's... we don't have a lot of turnover.

-He's about eligible for benefits maybe.

-Yeah, just about.

[laughter] [Big O] It's changed, which I don't remember so much, but back in the '50s, they say it was wide open.

I mean, you couldn't walk down the sidewalk, you know, on Friday evening.

The town was full 'cause everybody came to town.

My dad worked here then.

They'd stay open till 10 o'clock on Saturdays because there were so many people out.

And he told the story back in the back, we have a restroom and a pipe-fitting room as you go to the restroom, so there's a bunch of cubbies back there.

And all the people walking down the streets would give them a pint, you know, and have a nip.

So, they would slip in here, and they would stick their pint in the pipe-fitting bins.

And Dad said, like Monday morning, you'd come in, somebody need a three-quarter-inch pipe nipple, you'd reach in there to get them a nipple and pull out a pint of Old Harper.

[laughter] He said, "I did that plenty of times."

But people'd forget where they put it and leave it, you know, and it'd be there Monday morning.

It was the big thing to come to Norton, of course.

This was like Walmart then.

Like, we carried furniture, we carried appliances, we carried toys, we carried dishes, housewares.

I mean, they had everything.

It was basically like a general store.

My grandfather actually didn't own it.

He was a manager here, him and Judge Ray.

Mr. Ray and Mr.

Craft, that was my granddad.

He had worked here his whole life, ended up buying some stock in it.

And then my dad bought in.

He came to work here after World War II, just to fill in for a couple months.

Granddad asked him if he could help him out.

He passed away in 2001, and he worked the day he died, so it was a little bit longer than a couple months.

[laughter] He ended up putting his life into it.

After 90 years, we're about to figure it out.

They had a murder here back in the...

I guess it was the '30s, but Edith Maxwell, she was a lady that beat her father to death with a shoe, when my dad was a boy.

[Joshua Deel] Okay.

[Big O] And so, he would lay out of school and go to the trial, and he said he always wanted to be a lawyer after that, 'cause it fascinated him, the process.

So, we used to have credit for individuals, which we still do for businesses.

But we had literally hundreds of thousands of dollars out in bad credit, and it tickled him to death to try to collect it.

[♪♪♪] [Big O] You get all kinds of cool stories.

I learned a lot here.

[Joshua Deel] Yeah.

[Big O] A lot that I didn't need to know, but I... [laughter] [Joshua Deel] Big O also regaled me with one of the biggest legends in the area, the Woodbooger.

Sightings were reported, a television show was called in, and the rest is history.

[Big O] Everybody else has got a Sasquatch or a Yeti or the Bigfoot, so we adopted the Woodbooger name.

One of the people they were interviewing said their grandma always said, "Don't go in the woods, the Woodbooger will get you."

Set a trap for it up on the mountain, put some donuts out and stuff like that, and they said they didn't find any evidence, but they said it was ideal habitat for them.

So, you know, we got that going for us.

But we have a lot of fun with it, and sell a lot of T-shirts, so it works out good.

So... [♪♪♪] [Joshua Deel] My curiosity got the best of me, and I had to go see this Woodbooger habitat for myself.

By the looks of things, he's quite the local celebrity.

So, I got my heading, and I was off to a spot called Flag Rock and the nearby High Knob.

[♪♪♪] So, I found the Woodbooger.

Kinda.

[♪♪♪] Yeah.

Anyways... [♪♪♪] Woodbooger or not, the views here are incredible, and hard-pressed to be rivaled.

[♪♪♪] Every year, Norton hosts a variety of events here, including the High Knob Music Festival, which invites musical talent from across the region, including local artists, and draws crowds from far and wide.

[♪♪♪] [Jake] [indistinct] I think I was in love once, so... [instrumental music] [applause] ♪ Never would've hitchhiked To Birmingham ♪ ♪ If it hadn't been for love ♪ ♪ Never would've hopped The train to Louisiana ♪ ♪ If it hadn't been for love ♪ ♪ Never would've walked through The blinding rain ♪ ♪ Without one dollar To my name ♪ ♪ If it hadn't been ♪ ♪ If it hadn't been for love ♪ [Joshua Deel] Although coal has declined, the owners at Hillbilly Grow have set their sights on Virginia's next big cash crop, learning from Norton's past in order to build a future in the town they call home.

[♪♪♪] -Without being too cliché, Norton-- Norton is home.

It's my quiet little mountain town.

Born and raised, yes sir, on Spruce Street.

Thackers Branch, if you ask my papa.

-I grew up in Appalachia about, you know, ten minutes down the road a little bit.

Went to Appalachia High School.

Lived here until I was about 20 years old, until I moved up to Roanoke.

I went to Virginia Tech and got a major in history and a minor in Appalachian studies.

At this location, we are an indoor/outdoor grow store.

We sell indoor supplies like lights, tents, ventilation systems.

But we also sell indoor/outdoor supplies.

We have soil, we have nutrients, and about any other accessory you need for your garden, pretty much.

-Basically, you know, we saw a need, yeah, like you said, that needed to be met.

And, you know, we both grew up here with parents that kept a garden, did canning, living that self-sufficient hillbilly lifestyle that's kind of been lost amongst our generation.

And it's something we wanna bring back, you know, making hillbillies self-sufficient again.

Bringing food from their own garden, from these mountains, from these hills.

[Joshua Deel] Bringing fruit from their own garden.

-Bringing fruit from their own garden.

Be fruitful and multiply.

[chuckles] [Jared] Moving back here, it felt like home because it's such slow pace.

But one thing that you miss out on from a bigger city, like Roanoke, for instance, is there's not quite as many amenities.

There's not as many stores to visit.

So, you know, when we were kids, we remember Norton being a little more robust and active than it is now.

And we just wanna be part of that trend where, you know, small local businesses are thriving and bringing the Main Street back.

Because there was a time when it was packed at all times, people walking up and down the sidewalks, cars going back and forth.

And, you know, in more recent years, you know, we're dealing 20, 30 years after the coal bust, more or less, that a lot of people have moved away, a lot of people, you know, have saw opportunities elsewhere.

But we see a need here in bringing back the small-town life because it's how we grew up, that's what we love.

That's why we're doing this.

We started this business, and it's kind of blossomed into something more than we first saw.

At first, we were thinking, you know, with this new potential gold rush coming in, that we wanted to be a part of it somehow.

And something a lot of people don't think about, that a lot of the people during the actual gold rushes, they didn't make any money off gold.

But the guys selling picks and shovels to all those people were the ones that, you know, thrived and did well and had successful businesses .

So, we're kind of implementing that model right here as best we can with growing supplies.

I mean, everybody wants to make money, everybody wants to live a comfortable lifestyle.

-You have to make sure your bills are paid, you know.

Unfortunately, this world runs off of money.

But, you know, just honestly, the same of, like, with my music and other travels, if we got into it to be millionaires, we'd have quit a long time ago, because once you've made a connection with a community like I felt we have, we've helped so many different customers of so many different age groups, you know, our age and up, have quality access to growing, and better quality of life, and really building a community here.

We know folks by a first-name basis, and they're happy to see us, we're happy to see them.

It's, you know, those little gems there that you don't necessarily know that you're gonna get into once you step into it and reach out.

-I mean, any job is tough, right?

Like owning your own business is very hard.

But, because we're doing something we actually care about, you know, we're driven to do more than just, you know, show up to work and put stuff on the shelves and go back home at the end of the day.

Like he said, we've kind of cultivated our own little community here.

We have regular customers that come in every week sometimes just to chat with us, you know.

We have a lot of people that come in, and all they wanna do is ask questions about, you know, their garden, and what did I do wrong and what can I do better.

And not everybody wants to listen to our advice, but we do our best to give it to them.

But yeah, the little community that we've formed here has been an unexpected consequence of all this.

-Like he said, over the years, we've watched this town dwindle down, and we don't... we don't wanna leave empty mountains to further generations.

No, we're trying to plant trees and, you know, provide shade for our grandchildren, knowing that we'll never sit under those trees.

It's something that we're passionate about.

[♪♪♪] [Joshua Deel] After spending some time in Norton, I wanted to get out and see the surrounding area.

I found the nearby Swede Tunnel, built over 100 years ago by Swedish workers.

I always feel a sense of awe in the presence of such engineering feats, enduring the test of time, and now left as testaments to the hard work and indomitable spirit of previous generations who also may have called this place home.

[♪♪♪] During this trip to Norton, I ended up staying in nearby Wise, Virginia, as I happened upon a lovely Airbnb, and in the process, discovered some wonderfully hospitable hosts with connections to Big Stone Gap, another hometown I recently became very endeared to.

Conversation ensued, and I found myself captivated by their stories and the perspectives they've gained.

[Ben Mays] We were the products of a well-meaning education system in a sense that most people ingrained in us, when we were in elementary school and high school, that in order to be somebody or in order to make something of yourself, you had to leave this area.

And that may be a common thing everywhere, I don't know, but it was definitely a common thing here.

And I grew up hearing that, but never quite believing it.

Even at the, you know, the young age of like nine or ten years old, I just, I'd never understood why.

Why did I need to leave here?

Because, you know, the people I know and love lived here.

I loved playing out in the woods and climbing rocks and things like that.

And I just loved it.

So why did I need to leave in order to be something?

So I never fully understood it.

But once I got out of high school, I was lucky enough to go to college.

That was, I was the first in my family to do it.

I mean, it's incredible the breadth of knowledge that I know around here that people have; much, much smarter people than me, you know, and they didn't go to-- some barely finished high school, some didn't go to college.

But there is a wealth of knowledge that I think comes from a connection of living in a specific place with a specific culture.

-And it doesn't mean that it's a perfect place, you know.

Every place has its problems, you know.

So, we don't want to make it sound like there's some Pollyannish world in existence here, because everywhere you go, at the end of the day, you have to figure out if you can make a home here.

-We both explored our passion.

We had a need to do that.

And it wasn't driven by money.

And we explored it because it was a part of what we felt like we needed to do.

And I think it allowed us to further, you know, delve into those questions of who are we, and where are we from, and what's important to us.

But when you talk about like art and things like that, I think it comes from a different place.

I think there's a need in people, whether they're from Southwest Virginia or New York City, to express themselves in a way that doesn't always pertain to their economics.

[Kim Mays] The flip side is, well, you have to find something to do to earn money and earn a living.

There's no doubt about that.

And we've struggled quite a bit with that ourselves.

So, the irony that we now have this house doesn't go unnoticed by me, you know.

And who knew-- I guess I did-- who knew a home could transform so many?

Because now we have guests who come in, and they return, and we're close friends, and it's become a part of our journey that I couldn't have written that any better.

[Ben Mays] And to me, that's what the value of arts is, is the fact that it allows us to be human, and to acknowledge that, and to explore that in all its depths.

Whether it's good or bad, you aren't turning a blind eye to it.

And I think that, you know, if you have a community that has strong arts, you have a strong community.

So economically, maybe they're not doing as great, but again, I think you just got to-- that's the one thing I think about a lot of the small towns is, economically, they may not have, you know, the best places to work.

But in terms of a place to live, quality of life, I think that has a lot to do with it.

And maybe people don't think of it in the same way that we do.

But I've always thought about, you know, the fact that arts allows us to explore what does it truly mean to be a decent human being.

-Yeah.

[Joshua Deel] One last stop I had arranged before leaving town was at the Napoleon Hill Center, I recognize today that Napoleon isn't a household name, but he certainly held some influence in the field of self-improvement and personal development.

And since Napoleon was from the area, and I was this close, I wanted to stop by and learn a little bit more from the foundation's director, Don Green.

[Don Green] I grew up here.

I was born in Dixon County, but Dad moved over here when I was in the fourth grade.

He took a job in a coal mine-- he transferred, he took a job in a coal mine on the other side of Pound.

He was an underground coal miner up at base of Calvert Line.

And so, I grew up and went to Wise Elementary School and high school, and shortly, I moved away and continued my education.

Napoleon Hill, he was born along the Pound River in 1883.

His mom died when he was eight years old.

And at the time he was growing up, school was not mandatory.

I think it was only like 20 four-year high schools in the state of Virginia.

And the boys, basically 13, 14, went to work in the coal mines.

Girls got married at an early age.

I mean, that was just a fact of life.

And his dad insisted on that.

And so, he went to business college to learn how to be a business person.

But he dropped out, and he went to work for Bob Taylor's Magazine, a US senator from Tennessee.

And he went to work for him, covered assignments on successful people.

And one of them was Andrew Carnegie.

Carnegie challenged him to spend 20 years studying successful people, and said, "I'll give you the introductions."

But Hill taught people how to sell while he was doing all his research before he ever published his The Law of Success in 1928 .

And shortly thereafter, he was driving a Rolls-Royce.

And he had his ups and downs.

He had a lot of failures in businesses because he went through two World Wars and one Depression.

But that was their dream, to set up a nonprofit.

And that's kind of where we are today, to continue, I would say, his legacy, but to keep his principles available to people out there that they can make a difference in your life.

[Joshua Deel] The imprint that was made upon me from this visit to Norton and Wise is that we have more in common than our differences, be it race, age, ideas on money, or even where we're from.

What separates us is far smaller and less significant than what unites us in our humanity.

[♪♪♪] [♪♪♪] [music fades out] Nestled in the heart of Appalachia.

The University of Virginia's College at Wise is where students experience unique regional culture and the great outdoors.

UVA Wise empowering students to learn and lead in their communities and the world.