Inspired by, and Dedicated to Dolly Withrow

Having located my copy of More Than Penny Candy I realized that, perhaps the greatest blessing bestowed on me by Dolly Withrow is that when I read her colorful essays, more than feeling I’m in the room with her, hearing the crackling of a fire, seeing her as a young girl in an oversized rocker, I can still read the words of her choosing AND HEAR HER VOICE – the perfectly planned pauses, the inflections, her little laugh.

My introduction to her is clear, the rest of my life at the time a bit hazy. After the personal devastation of relinquishing my basketball scholarship at the University of Charleston, my academic performance in my first few semesters at West Virginia State, sandwiched by summers working in Murrell’s Inlet, S.C., and circling the country in my good friend Jody Jividen’s Toyota Corolla, was underwhelming at best.

The class was British Literature. The year, circa 1984-85. The professor, one Dolly Withrow. Project approved by her with a wistful glance and her hopeful smile, I set out to find a poem in our textbook I could most easily put to music, to sing to the class. Honestly, the idea was the clincher. The three-chord arrangement was simple. Other than a few spots to paraphrase, condense, or modernize – no disrespect to poet laureate William Wordsworth – it was a cinch. A good grade in the bag. IF, I managed to show. I did, and it went well. What I learned was, validation and appreciation from Professor Withrow was a valuable commodity.

My first stay at State was short – and I’ll whitewash the negatives like Tom Sawyer’s fence – but after a 7-year hiatus in the restaurant business I returned, and I rediscovered Dolly Withrow, who had found her niche as the “Grammar Professor.” She had not forgotten me, or my performance of “The Solitary Reaper.” She asked me to “play the poem” for another class, and I complied. Anything to help my grade. I believe I even played it in another class for Dr. Arnold Hartstein, per her urging.

Precision in the grammar arts was not my bag, so I struggled a bit, which she and I discussed openly. I may have even taken her class twice as I piled up hours like bricks, trying to earn my Spanish requirements. She was always encouraging, and she could always see beyond. Maybe, I’d like to think, pleasant always recognizes pleasant.

Flash forward a decade. I ran into Dolly at a book signing for More Than Penny Candy . I was now, and had been, a sportswriter for the Charleston Daily Mail, for which she too would later write as a guest columnist.

She signed her book to me: For Andy, my friend and fellow writer – Love Dolly Withrow. In 2016, I published the first of my three novels (thus far), The Long Shadow of Hope . In the Acknowledgements I thanked her: Professor Dolly Withrow for advice and a humorous voice.

It had always remained in the back of my mind to record “The Solitary Reaper” with proper accompaniment, and send her a copy. One of her cousins, Lance Carney, is a friend, a former basketball mate, and, more akin to her than me and my writing style, a fellow humorist – as a novelist of his Daniel O’Dwyer, Oak Island series. Through Lance I could have tracked her down. But, ever the procrastinator, it hurts me to say I failed in that goal. Dolly passed away on June 22nd, at the age of 92.

Here, after some 40 years, dedicated to the memory of Dolly Mae Withrow, with the help of Larry Ellis on lead guitar, Nate Schoettker on fiddle – as the trio Good Country Folk (streaming an EP album Five Corners), my daughter Claire on the camera, and recorded in Angela’s On The River, a.k.a., the Historic Chilton House, in St. Albans, West Virginia, is my adaptation of William Wordsworth’s “The Solitary Reaper.”

Thanks for reading and listening! God Bless!

P.S.

All of Dolly’s, Lance’s, and my books are available on Amazon.com