Uncontainable Gardens

Container gardens make your home bright during fall, winter months.

Winter container gardening is an excellent way to display color in your garden, on the patio and throughout the house. Mark Viette is a certified horticulturist from Andre Viette Farm & Nursery located in Fishersville. Viette’s winter container gardening tips can help you create festive and colorful creations.

CHOOSE A CONTAINER

Pots come in many sizes and shapes. Viette recommends choosing medium-sized pots so that you can group them together. Place a hole in the bottom to produce adequate drainage. While Viette personally likes clay or ceramic pots, he recommends that you purchase matching containers in different sizes.

Flat baskets make great containers. He recommends using a basket about 36 inches in length. “Line it with three-millimeter plastic to protect your floors or table. Fill in with plants, and add sphagnum moss around the edges. Create hanging baskets using metal baskets lined with sphagnum moss,” says Viette.

“You can even add candles for a festive look,” he adds.

CHOOSE YOUR PLANTS

Use plants available during the winter months, such as poinsettia for the basket, container or carrier. Poinsettias are available in any full-service garden store. “Nationally, orchids are the number one selling container plant. Poinsettias are number two,” Viette explains. He likes cyclamen, peace lily, orchid and poinsettia for winter container gardens.

He recommends mixing plants with ferns or orchids and says that Bromeliads are very popular. “They are shiny green with reds and pinks, and they have a beautiful flower. The color is very showy. They look nice when mixed with ferns like the Rabbit Foot Fern. [They] produce stems, which come down around the pot and look like rabbit feet,” Viette says.

Mix colors. Use contrast to create a showy arrangement with heirloom red poinsettia and a white orchid. When mixing white with red and pink striping, Viette likes Jingle Bells, a new hybrid poinsettia.

“Hybrids were created to withstand tougher conditions in the home. Indoor heating systems make the air super dry where there is less humidity than in a desert. You can use a humidifier to add moisture to the air,” Viette explains.

SELECT THE SOIL

Viette recommends using soil-less potting mix, (this may contain peat, pearlite and composted bark.) You can find this product in any full-service garden center.

WAIT TO WATER

According to Viette, the number one cause of plant death is over-watering. Do not over water. “Water once every two days or twice every eight days, depending on the type of plant,” Viette says. He does not recommend enhanced water holding granules, which can rot plants or hold too much water.

LOCATE THE LIGHT

Most plants prefer bright light; however, protect plants from the hottest sun and the flowers will last longer. “East, west or protected south windows are best for most plants. You can get fluorescent grow bulbs which fit into normal lights if needed,” Viette says.

OUTDOORS

For outdoor container gardening, spruce up an empty annual container with winter hardy evergreens. Fill empty annual urns or containers with cut evergreen boughs such as pine. Place the boughs into the container and add ornamental grass from the garden. Be sure the container can handle the harsh winter temperatures. “They last for quite a while and it gives winter interest. Use sparkleberry holly for color. Cut boughs about 24 inches and stick amongst the evergreens to brighten up with color,” Viette says.

Following Viette’s easy tips can help you create containers with a punch of color for those long winter days and add interest to your garden and home.

The Roaming Invalid

Thomas Jeffries’ books show the life of a disabled man in the 1800s.

Last year, Bridgewater resident Betty Blough Martin brought an old family photograph album to the Alexander Mack Memorial Library at Bridgewater College. As I leafed through a list of people pictured inside the album, my eyes stopped abruptly at the name “Mr. Jeffers.” (Actually his name was Mr. Jeffries, and the name in the book was incorrect.)

“I saw him at the home of my Grand Father Levi Shaver in 1873,” read an accompanying note from one of Mrs. Martin’s ancestors. “He was a cripple and men carried him into the house. He was an interesting man and much beloved and respected by his friends.”

My curiosity piqued, I turned quickly to his photograph and saw a man in a wooden wheelchair, baggy trousers draped over withered legs. The image confirmed what I suspected: The man in the photograph was none other than the “Crippled Fayette,” which is the title of a book he later penned.

Known also as “Roaming Invalid,” Thomas Fayette Jeffries left a sad but unique mark on the literary landscape of the 19th-century Shenandoah Valley. Although he long ago faded from historical memory, a few of Jeffries’ writings remain to provide a glimpse of Valley life in the mid 1800s, an unexpected accomplishment for someone with a major physical disability.

Jeffries was born Sept. 15, 1829, in Rockingham County, in the shadow of Massanutten Peak near Cub Run. He was the son of a school teacher, Harrison Rector Jeffries, and his wife, Margaret Darnell Jeffries. His mother died when he was 8, the first of two tragic events that shaped a tragic life.

Unable to care for his children alone, Harrison Jeffries sent Thomas and his five siblings to live with relatives and friends. A Miller family who lived alongside “Cheese Creek” took in Thomas. While working on the Miller’s farm one summer day, Jeffries experienced the first pains of an illness that altered the rest of his life.

Taking a break from making hay, Jeffries remembered feeling “a sharp pain in my left knee-joint.” The pains increased in severity and frequency and, he wrote, “gradually extended themselves to different joints of my lower limbs and to the spinal column, and tortured me more or less until they finally disabled me altogether in my 18th year.”

From 1847 to 1854, Jeffries remained almost constantly bedridden. All efforts to alleviate his pain or his disease, which he called “my great enemy, the Rheumatism,” failed. He tried a slew of remedies, including “Cod-liver” oil mixed with turpentine, arsenic, opium, laudanum, morphine and a contraption made by a Harrisonburg doctor to move his frozen limbs “by force.” His malady occasionally affected his eyes, sending “ten thousand pangs through those tender orbs.”

To pass the time, Jeffries wrote, first as a hobby and eventually to make a living. The Rockingham Register, the long-running Harrisonburg weekly newspaper, printed several of his first writings, not for their literary merit, but “more through sympathy,” Jeffries wrote. He called them “simple little pieces,” but the newspaper’s publishers liked them enough to reward him with an honorary subscription.

Once he was able to endure his pain enough to ride in a carriage, in 1854 Jeffries traveled up the Valley to Staunton and boarded a train for Georgia. He visited relatives in Atlanta, then traveled to northern Georgia where his father had moved a few years earlier. Jeffries continued on to Tennessee, then returned home to Rockingham.

Encouraged by friends, Jeffries compiled his poetry, his life story and an account of his trip to Georgia into a book called “Nine Years in Bed, Or Affliction’s Own,” published in 1856 by Joseph Funk of Mountain Valley (now Singers Glen). He then traveled throughout Virginia, hawking the book and generating enough interest to produce a second edition in 1857 entitled, “Crippled Fayette of Rockingham, Detailing His Times and Giving His Rhymes.” He published at least three more small books: “Invalid’s Offering, or, A Helpless Man on Wings,” 1858; “The Book of Sunshine, or The Bright Side of Everything,” 1861; and “The Secret Out, or The Curses of the ‘Credit System,’” undated.

Although Jeffries’ books reveal he lived in Dayton and Bridgewater for a time, he continued to travel outside Virginia and wrote about his excursions in the Register and another Harrisonburg newspaper, Old Commonwealth. In 1860, he traveled between New Orleans, La., and Hot Springs, Ark., seeking medical relief while also peddling his books, papers and pens. According to a recent article on peddlers in Arkansas Online, Jeffries stayed long enough in Hot Springs to publish a newspaper and sell photographs of the springs.

As much as he lauded his native land in his writings, Jeffries apparently spent most of his remaining years traveling in other parts of the South. An 1871 letter published in the Old Commonwealth reveals he was in Georgia. In a short biographical sketch in “Men of Mark and Representative Citizens of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County,” published in 1943, historian John Wayland noted that Jeffries died in Georgia about 1890.

Dale Harter is the curator of the Pritchet Museum at Bridgewater College and archavist for the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society.

The Oft-Overlooked Goat

To some people living in the Shenandoah Valley, goat meat is a delicacy. Raw, its color is more like the pinkish rose of pork rather than a beefy red. Cooked, it isn’t greasy like lamb because it has 2.58 grams of fat per 3-ounce serving compared to 16 grams of fat in lamb or beef, according to a U.S.D.A. chart Debbie Shifflett keeps on hand. Debbie and her husband Dale own Riverdale Boer Goat Farm in Elkton, where they breed, raise and sell Boer goats.

The low-fat meat, often used in Caribbean cuisine, is becoming increasingly popular in the United States.

“It even has less fat than skinless chicken,” Debbie says. Dale and Debbie sell their Boer goats directly from the farm.

“A lot of people like my dad try to watch their cholesterol. They are going goat because it’s low in fat,” Dale says. The same USDA chart says that goat meat also contains more iron than any of those other meats, including pork.

“We grind our goat burger up for hamburger and Sloppy Joes,” Debbie says. The next goat meal she plans to cook is steak, fried in the skillet. North Americans and Latin Americans usually freeze their goat meat until they are ready to cook it.

“A lot of people say that it tastes like chicken, it tastes like this, it tastes like that,” Dale says. “To me, goat has its own taste and it’s very good . . . mild.”

BUYING GOAT MEAT

In the Shenandoah Valley, goat meat can be purchased from local farmers. Dale is a member of Shenandoah Valley Boer LLC, a group of six Valley meat-goat farmers. Customers buy the entire live goat, 80 pounds or so, and for a small fee—from $20 to $30—the farmer transfers the goat to the processing company. In about two days, the customer goes to the processor to pick up and pay for about 50 pounds of frozen packaged meat. The entire cost, around $200, comes to $4 per pound for a year’s worth of low-fat, fresh, hormone-free meat.

“We six families also sell goats at the county fairgrounds at the end of March as breeders or meat. That large doe would be sold as breeding stock,” he says, pointing to a goat living on his Elkton farm. “She’s a 94-percent Boer, so she wouldn’t go for meat.” A doe with 50 percent or more Boer, Dale says, can be registered and sold as breeding stock. Any less than 94 percent Boer is usually sold as meat.

Walking to the far side of the barn, he points to his three breeding stock bucks, huge animals with knee-length beards and long circle horns. The bucks must be at least 94 percent Boer to be registered. “This [6-year-old] buck would sell for $900,” Dale says.

PLAN AHEAD

It’s a good idea to plan ahead when buying goats due to the competition from ethnic and religious groups, Dale says. “[They] are wanting them for the holidays.”

He explains that October to November is prime purchasing season. “After Christmas there’s very few goats left because everybody’s sold everything.” Dale says he usually holds back a few goats for the post-Christmas season because the demand is greater than the supply. He and Debbie and the other SVB breeders have ideal weight goats ready for sale from October through November for Christmas dinner and from March through April for Easter.

Dale also raises cattle on family land down the street and works as a livestock specialist for the Virginia Department of Agriculture. He believes consumers should purchase meat locally and actually see the farms where the animals have lived. You never know what you get, he says, if you don’t visit the farm.

OTHER GOAT PRODUCTS

Consumers know little about goats because most don’t use their products. Although the meat of the exotic, ostrich-like emu is available at larger grocery chains, a customer can’t go to Kroger or Martin’s and ask for goat meat. But an avid gardener has probably worn soft yellow goatskin gloves. Where cloth gloves do not protect from rose and blackberry thorns, goat gloves keep the thorns at bay. Goat milk lotion is also sold at specialty shops.

Partygoers may have unknowingly downed a dollop of goat cheese on a cracker, or even on gourmet pizza. Though it looks a little like cream cheese, it tastes sort of tangy and has a texture like whole milk ricotta. That unusual taste is worth getting used to, considering the health benefits of goat milk over cow milk.

For years mothers have been substituting cow milk with goat milk for colicky toddlers. Most scientists agree that goat milk is more similar to human milk than a cow’s. According to a 1976 study by the U.S.D.A., goat milk has more essential nutrients than its ruminant cousin. A variety of studies also show goat milk protein is easier to digest than cow milk and contains 27 percent more of the antioxidant selenium. Not a miracle drink, however; goat milk does contain insufficient amounts of folic acid essential for infants and toddlers, so it often comes in cartons that advertise “supplemented with folic acid.”

Exploring Native American Life at D.C. Museum

The crackly remains of harvested corn in a garden plot, a tumbling waterfall and the huge grandfather rock signal to visitors they’re approaching Indian country. Right in the center of Washington, D.C.

Even the grounds and building of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) on the National Mall are exhibitions. Native Americans were involved in every aspect of creating the museum, from its design and exhibits to heading up and staffing it. After 15 years of planning and building, the Smithsonian Institute’s NMAI opened in September 2004. Donna House, the Navajo and Oneida botanist who supervised the landscaping, said, “The landscape flows into the building, and the environment is who we are. We are the trees, we are the rocks, we are the water. And that had to be part of the museum.” This theme of organic flow continues inside the museum, too, with its curving walls, open space and outdoor colors.

Preserving Culture

Several Virginia tribes are represented among the many exhibitions in the museum, including the Pamunkey and Algonquin. The Pamunkey are among the first tribes to be featured in the “Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities” section of the museum, which explores how native peoples have survived through the choices that have brought them into the 21st century. Smithsonian researchers were intrigued with how the tribe maintains age-old traditions against the onslaught of modernity. The Pamunkey—descendants of Pocahontas and her father, Chief Powhatan—live today on a 1,200-acre reservation between Richmond and Williamsburg. The exhibit focuses on the river, which was photographed in every season as tribe members worked and played around its waters. Curators videotaped the Indians digging clay for pottery, milking eggs from shad and boating down the Pamunkey River. Every year, the tribe’s chief, whose Indian name is Swift Water, dons his deerskin and headdress to present venison or turkey to Virginia’s governor at Thanksgiving.

Even Food is Native

Artifacts come alive at NMAI with films, music and interactive screens. American Indian tour guides and staff members welcome questions and conversation about their tribe’s history, customs and modern life. The menu at the Mitsitam Café offers native foods from each of the five regions in the Western Hemisphere. There’s quahog clam chowder (Northern Woodlands), Peruvian potato causa (South America), smoked seafood platter (Northwest Coast), pumpkin cookies (Meso America) and buffalo chili with pinto beans on fry bread (Great Plains). The menus change seasonally. A fire pit in the café’s kitchen allows visitors to watch the staff cook such foods as the cedar-planked juniper salmon.

Fact, Not Fiction

Other permanent exhibitions at NMAI are “Our Universes: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World,” which explores native cosmology and the spiritual relationship between mankind and the natural world, and “Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories,” in which American Indians attempt to correct misconceptions about them by telling their own histories.

The native peoples of the Chesapeake Bay region—what is now Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C.—are the subject of a temporary exhibition, “Return to a Native Place: Algonquin Peoples of the Chesapeake.” Through photos, maps, ceremonial and everyday objects, the exhibit seeks to educate visitors about the historical and continued native presence in the region.

Nov. 1 marks the opening of a new exhibit, “Franz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian,” featuring many of the revolutionary paintings of Native Americans for which the artist was famous. The art exhibit runs through August 2009. v

Ecclesiastical Rainbows

Explore the colorful stained-glass windows of the Shenandoah Valley.

Who hasn’t felt a twinge of disappointment as a rainbow fades into the sky? Or wanted to reach out and touch its brilliant colors? Perhaps that’s the appeal of stained glass. God created rainbows. Man created stained glass. And as rainbows tell a biblical story, the Valley’s stained glass tells stories as well.

Drive through any downtown area in the Valley and you’ll find a trove of stained glass. From Winchester to Natural Bridge, every town has a spot where light, color and glass mingle.

Take Harrisonburg, for instance. Many of its churches were built in the early 20th century at the height of the stained glass era, and examples of these multi-colored windows are plentiful–from the rainbow fired into First Presbyterian’s sanctuary glass to Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church’s eclectic mix of traditional and modern windows.

Throughout the Valley, biblical stories come alive through the color-shifting windows found in many churches. Staunton’s Trinity Episcopal Church holds 30 windows in multiple styles—a stunning feast of color and story. Thirteen of Trinity’s windows, plus three in Rockbridge Bath’s Trinity Presbyterian Church, were created by Louis Comfort Tiffany—yes, that Tiffany.

Tiffany built a studio of some 100 craftsman and fostered an industry. Examples of Tiffany windows dot the entire country, according to John Raynal of Raynal Studios in Natural Bridge. But few churches have a collection as extensive as Staunton’s Trinity Episcopal Church. The windows feature exquisite opalescent glass and artistry made by layering colored glass, which creates shading and ever-changing light refraction that would make the masters jealous. One pair portrays Easter morning with a spectrum that renders astonishing dimension. The Archangel Michael window, with layers of glass, is vivid in its variations of color and texture from the “foggy” clouds around his feet to the woven texture of his shoes–features, interestingly, that are visible from only one side of the window because of the depth of the layers.

Biblical accounts aren’t the only stories chronicled through stained glass in the Valley. New Market’s Hall of Valor holds a modern creation that tells the story of 10 Virginia Military Institute cadets who died at the 1864 Battle of New Market. According to Barbara Blakey of Lexington’s VMI museum, the 10-foot by 30-foot window by Israeli artist Ami Shamir, contains the cadet’s names, the Virginia State seal, the Confederate flag and VMI’s seal. “Scattered stars represent the disruption of the country during the War… and dark sweeping lines that dip in the center represent the Shenandoah River,” Blakey explains.

The Spectrum of History

Although stained glass has been around for centuries, its American heyday coincides with the antebellum period following the Civil War when the American industrial machine was churning and opulence and beauty were highly desired. The excesses of the Victorian era, the American neo-gothic and craft movements and art deco of the early 20th Century produced the perfect atmosphere for stained glass. It flourished in homes, businesses, and especially in churches.

Beginning with the economic woes of the 1930s, however, stained glass fell out of vogue–with one notable exception: ecclesiastical settings. Churches continued to commission windows, becoming the keepers of these silica rainbows.

Often church windows were given in memory of church members. Some famous. Some not. The reredos window in Lexington’s R. E. Lee Episcopal Church memorialized Robert E. Lee and his wife Mary Custis.

Though windows are often dated, dates don’t always reflect the window’s age. Many Valley churches were built with plain glass windows. Only when funds became available was stained glass installed. Even then, some windows were dedicated–and dated–after windows had been in place for a time.

Restoring Rainbows

These storytelling works of art can last for centuries when properly maintained, Raynal says. A large part of his full-service business is restoration–a job that defines labor intensive–and is a story in itself.

First a window is removed from its setting, which is sometimes the most deteriorated part, Raynal says. Next, the pattern, including the came, metal joints that secure the glass, are charted. One window in Raynal’s shop–a circa 1920 window–has more than five different sizes of cames to be painstakingly measured. Windows are then disassembled by pulling and scraping the old came from each piece of glass. One by one. Thousands of pieces of old glass. Miles of came. Labor intensive. “That’s why it’s so expensive,” Raynal says.

Once glass is cleaned and assessed to see if any pieces need to be repaired or replaced, restoration begins. Raynal always uses the original glass and frame, unless the frame or glass is beyond repair.

Raynal, who traded engineering for stained glass three decades ago, understands its appeal. As a minister’s son, Raynal grew up gazing at stained glass windows–like so many of us. Though costly and time consuming to create, it is an art whose outcome is appreciated by so many. Perhaps because even at night, these kept rainbows shine.

COVER STORY | The Long Ride Home

At 4:15 a.m. the traffic is already heavy on I-81 heading north. I watch the parade of tractor trailers passively from the window. My ride is in the hands of William Coffman, driver for the Shenandoah Valley Commuter (SVC) bus. The service leaves Woodstock five mornings a week, making stops along the way until it reaches Washington, D.C. In two hours it will deliver its cargo—Valley residents who make a daily commute to the city to work.

Metropolitan Washington, D.C., has been ranked as the third worst city in the country for congestion, following closely on the heels of New York and Los Angeles. We are moving quickly in the nearly vacant High Occupancy Vehicle lane; from the bus window I notice in the other lanes a steady stream of cars, vans and SUVs, all inhabited by a single person. Eighty percent of those driving into the city are commuting alone.

Extreme Commuters

Jeff Gill of Edinburg, a fellow bus passenger, knows what those solo commuters are going through.

“I tried driving in, but by the time I got to work I was fit to be tied,” Gill related. “When I drove, something would always go wrong. On the bus you’re relaxed. You can fall asleep. You don’t have to deal with traffic.”

A native of northern Virginia, Gill discovered the Valley while visiting relatives who had retired to the area. The visits became a weekend ritual until Gill and his family decided to move in 2000.

“Northern Virginia was getting too crowded,” he said. “I didn’t want to live in the city, deal with traffic, anymore.”

Brooke Mabry, an attorney with the Justice Department, camped in the Valley as a child. She fell in love with the Bryce area and planned to build a vacation home there; but the vacation home became her permanent residence.

“In the Valley I could build the type of home I wanted,” said Mabry, who moved from Arlington a year ago. “I can work in the city, but live in a cabin in the woods.”

Mabry takes her commute in stride—a 20-minute drive to Woodstock to catch the bus, followed by a two-hour bus ride.

“It’s not a commute, it’s an adventure,” she said with a laugh.

Marie Weaver of the Valley Commuter Assistance Program (VCAP), an organization that covers Frederick, Clarke, Warren, Shenandoah and Page Counties, said Valley residents who drive to D.C. are classified by the government as “extreme commuters” because they spend more than two hours one way getting to work. Supported by the Northern Shenandoah Valley Regional Commission and local governments, VCAP helps coordinate ride sharing services for local residents who travel outside the Valley to work. Clients drive from as far as West Virginia and travel as far as Rockville, Md., to get to work.

Live Where You Want

Anyone who has been stalled in northern Virginia traffic on a work day would ask, why live so far away and make the commute?

Although he has worked in the Valley, Gill, a National Guard veteran who served in Iraq and currently works for the Secret Service, cites the opportunities and the pay as reasons why he commutes to D.C. “The motto of VCAP is ‘Live where you want to and work where you want to,’” Weaver said.

Steve Hecker of Woodstock moved to the Valley to buy a specific kind of house that isn’t built in northern Virginia. Hecker finds benefits to having distance between home and work. “When you’re home you feel like you’re really off work because you’re away from the hustle and bustle of the city,” he noted.

Statistics offer an easy explanation for why so many people want to live in the Valley and work in the city. In 2006 the median home value in Fairfax County, the area surrounding D.C., was $538,940 and the population density 2,455 people per square mile. In the same year, Shenandoah County’s median homes cost only $177,631 and the county boasted a very rural 77 people per square mile. According to statistics compiled by the counties, average wages for the same positions can be up to three times higher in Fairfax than in Shenandoah County.

Bruce Coulliette has an interesting perspective on commuting from the Valley. The Strasburg native not only heads into the District each day for his job in the Department of Homeland Security, he is also part owner of the Shenandoah Valley Commuter bus service. Coulliette says the typical rider on his bus moved to the Valley in the last five to seven years due to the high cost of northern Virginia housing.

“The lines have been blurred between the Valley and northern Virginia, and the Valley is becoming a bedroom community for northern Virginia and D.C.,” he noted. “We started the service because we saw the need for a transportation link between the two.”

Coulliette moved to the Valley in 2004 for the same reason as many of the passengers on his bus.

“Housing in northern Virginia wasn’t reasonable and I’d always wanted to live in the mountains,” he said. “The Appalachian Trail is close to my home and during the summer, I don’t see my neighbor’s houses if I don’t want to. I enjoy aspects of both. I enjoy the District during the day and the Valley at night and on the weekends.”

Facing Traffic Together

For those who don’t want to face the traffic alone, options exist. The Shenandoah Valley Commuter bus service runs two buses each day, one starting in Woodstock and one in Strasburg, with plans to add a third bus originating from Winchester this fall. On an average day, each bus has 30 passengers.

VCAP offers car pool match, van pool, buses and a guaranteed ride-home service that provides transportation for commuters who may need to leave early for an emergency or stay late. Commuters can take advantage of the extra ride up to four times a year. Fuel prices have caused a greater interest in the organization’s services. The average car driver spends nearly $50 to drive from Woodstock to D.C. and back.

“High fuel prices have hurt people’s pocketbooks, and [the high prices] are responsible for getting lots of people out of their cars,” Weaver said. “Interest in our services has tripled over the last six months.”

“Using the bus is cheaper not only financially, but also physically,” she added.

But even having someone else drive doesn’t eliminate the burden a long commute places on family life. Commuting to D.C. can mean nearly 16 hours a day spent away from home. Leaving early in the morning and arriving home late in the evening can mean some parents never see their young children awake during the week.

Many use the bus ride to catch up on work or sleep so they can devote their time at home to their families. Hecker’s employer has allowed him to work a four-day week; he spends Mondays with his one-year-old son. Gill telecommutes one day every other week to spend a day at home with his five-year-old.

But Valley commuters say the compromise is worth it, and they plan to stay and raise their families here.

It’s 7 p.m., nearly dark, when the SVC bus pulls back into the Wal-Mart parking lot at Woodstock. The few remaining riders vacate their seats quickly, offer good-byes to their co-riders, and climb into their cars for the final leg home to dinners, families and a good night’s sleep. I can sleep in in the morning; but for the riders of the SVC bus, and the hundreds of Valley residents like them who make the week-day commute into the city, 3 a.m. will bring the start of a new day.

Down To Earth

Staunton’s Cynthia Sterrett spent some of the Clinton years in the stress-filled Air Force One communications bubble. Now, she has replaced flying with facials.

When Air Force One takes off with its onboard offices for the president and his staff, with every executive accoutrement from copiers to fax machines, with its medical annex, pharmacy and conference room, with its private quarters for the president and first family, one former passenger might recommend the plane add a spa.

Cynthia Sterrett, who was part of Air Force One’s crew from 1993 to 2000—a job that defined stress—is now a commercial aesthetician, a business designed to de-stress.

“Flying on Air Force One, you’re in the middle of current events,” Sterrett says, sitting in her cottage home, far away from the maelstrom of Washington. Like her antithetical careers, Sterrett is a study in contrasts. Petite with soft features, her bearing would hardly be described as military, yet when she discusses her Air Force life, it becomes obvious she has the fortitude and unflappability her first job demanded.

When the president and his staff are on on board Air Force One, “they expect to conduct their business as if they were in Washington.” It made for a stressful job. “Intense. You just do it,” she says, explaining how she handled the pressure. “Sometimes we didn’t have time to eat our meals that the flight attendants would bring in,” but she adds, “We worked like a well-oiled machine….When you’re working under the stress, it becomes your life.”

During the Clinton administration Sterrett was part of Air Force One’s critical communications team, handling all message traffic for the president and his entourage, and making sure it all–phones, fax, data–flowed without interruption. Sterrett’s job was to ensure that communication lines were secure, clear and that the President or anyone on board would not be saying, “Can you hear me now?”

When she retired from the Air Force at the end of a 22-year career, Sterrett traded flight plans for facials, and stress for sanctuary. After studying aesthetology at Von Lee International School of Aesthetics, Sterrett was licensed by the Maryland State Board as an aesthetician–a non-medical expert in skin care who provides salon treatments, such as facials and massages.

Cruising at 37,000 Feet Sterrett’s airborne office, manned by four communications operators, was responsible for connecting any of the 87 telephones on board via the appropriate circuit. “Sometimes [the system] was totally saturated,” she says. It was pressure in a pressurized cabin cruising at 37,000 feet.

Every call—almost without exception—was sent or received according to a designated time table, which factored in all the world’s time zones. If the president were going to make a call, then the comm suite operators would set up the call with military precision, making sure all lines were secure and safe. Operators also stayed on the line to make sure it remained clear. “If, for whatever reason, a call dropped, the operator had to reestablish connectivity immediately,” Sterrett says, emphasizing immediately.

The most challenging communications Sterrett handled were heads of state calls. “We had a specific protocol to follow,” which would involve President Clinton, another head of state, and two interpreters–a multi-lingual conference call at the highest echelons of power.

Once in a while, but not often, an unplanned call slipped through. On one campaign flight to Billings, Mont., then-President Bill Clinton decided on a whim that he would like to talk to a reporter on the ground. Fortunately,” Sterrett says, “it was one of those days when the satellites were working well.” The call went off without a hitch, while the comm crew watched themselves descend, thanks to a TV crew on the runway. The comm suite had two UHF receivers on board, so they could watch Air Force One land, Sterrett explains. “We would tune into local TV. They always had press on the ground.”

Sterrett remembers Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign well. “Very grueling,” she says. “The last two weeks of the campaign, we were on the road for two to three campaign stops a day. It’s a different energy. It’s a campaign.” She met the president after the two-week campaign trip. “President Clinton shook each crew members’ hand and thanked us for a job well done.”

Overseas flights for the comm crew presented their own set of challenges, but also opportunities. When the president visited troops in Bosnia in 1998, Sterrett was along. “Occasionally, we would have some time off.” Sterrett visited Paris and Rome (her favorites), and destinations in the Far East. “Even on crew rest, we were always on pagers and ‘on call’ 24 hours-a-day and had to stay in the vicinity,” she says.

Taking Off from Staunton A Staunton native, Sterrett enlisted in the Air Force in 1978 and was first assigned to ground communications. Her early career took her to Texas, Colorado, Mississippi and a three-year stint in Germany at Rhein Main Air Base. In 1983, Sterrett switched from ground to airborne communications–a move that eventually led to her assignment on Air Force One.

While stationed in Omaha, Neb., Sterrett worked with the Strategic Air Command’s critical “Looking Glass,” which kept one airborne command post in the air aboard an EC-135 aircraft around the clock, 365 days a year.

Midway through that career, Sterrett applied for “special duty assignment” at Andrews Air Force Base where she flew on board Gulfstream and C9 aircraft and provided communications for secretaries of state and defense, the first lady, congressional delegations, to name a few; and she was tapped for duty as an augmentee, or substitute, on presidential flights. After two years as an augmentee, Sterrett was hired full-time aboard Air Force One.

Coming Home to Relax A visit to a spa before retirement first sparked Sterrett’s interest in aesthetology and led to her new passion. When it came time to land, career-wise, she returned to the Valley and opened Cynthia Sterrett Skin Care, an occupation diametrically opposed to the dizzying center of the commander-in-chief’s business.

Although Sterrett admits she misses the day-to-day camaraderie of the crew, she stays in touch with them. “I still have my military family,” she says. And she loves being back near her parents, Betty and Harvey Hickman, her sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, who all live in Staunton.

She also loves her new, de-pressurized career. Sterrett provides customized, scientific skincare to clients that include other business owners, professionals, teens, gentlemen and often entire families. Her aesthetic treatments and specialty facials provide a service that is available generally only at resorts and five-star hotels. “It is a beneficial luxury in a fast-paced world and absolutely necessary to maintaining healthy, glowing skin,” she says.

Though conveniently located just off Staunton’s busy North Augusta street, Sterrett’s charming cottage oasis is tucked away so completely that it is a trip to another world, one defined by tranquility. “Yes, I’ve come 180 degrees from working in communication,” she says. “I never took time to smell the roses.” Now she is surrounded by lily of the valley, magnolias, heather, and a park-like yard that must be the earthbound equivalent of the wild blue yonder.

“This is phase two of life,” she says, with a smile of contentment. “It’s coming down from that craziness.”