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The Wytheville Grotto existed from 1950 to about 1958, operating as a very informal group of people who liked to cave together. This was one of the first grottos to include members away from the town proper, and at the time the group was chartered, the NSS apparently was unconcerned. By 1953, however, Dr. William Halliday, as chairman of the Grottos Committees, became extremely concerned that members were listed as living in Dillwyn, Blacksburg, Roanoke, Bristol and Saltville as well as Wytheville; one of the grotto's members was living in Charleston, WV, and serving as the chairman of the grotto there; and the group scheduled no regular meetings. Apparently, there was a movement afoot, due to this deplorable situation, to deactivate the grotto.
Writing with great concern to Dr. Halliday, Jean Lowry, one of the grotto's charter members, noted in a letter dated 10/13/53: a grotto is more than just a group of people interested in caves who happen to live in the same locality. They have to be congenial, and they have to have similar notions of how to do things. We all agree pretty well on everything, from a dislike of red tape to conservative notions on safety. ... [We] have the unique advantage of being located in the midst of almost untouched cave country. With impromptu cave trips running so frequently (lately they've been two to three times a week), we just don't have time for other meetings. As Betty [Sabatinos] told you, the little business that is necessary, is conducted by mail. ... So please don't throw a monkey wrench into it just because we're unconventional. After all, the NSS did approve our constitution when it granted our charter. And if our meetings consist of chewing the fat on the back porch while waiting for latecomers to caving trips and that suits us, why should it worry you?"-- NSS I/O Committee Files.
In a tape recording provided to Anne Whittemore, Jean Lowry tells the background and activities of the Wytheville Grotto. Read on!
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Jean Lowry, a founder of the Wytheville Grotto, in Nebo Cave.
Photo by Wayne Whitt. |
I started caving back when I was in college at Kansas State during our junior year geology field camp. All during our senior year we got out about once a week, got thoroughly covered with mud and had a fine time. After I graduated there wasn't much opportunity for caving in the places where I lived and worked for a number of years. Finally I took a job with the Virginia Geological Survey in Wytheville. If you've been through Wytheville which hasn't changed much over the years, you'll know it's not a very likely spot as far as recreation goes. At first I didn't know anybody, and poked around in a couple of holes on my own, with great precaution. I let a few local people know where I was going and when I should be out. I was never taken to exploring caves solo. After I got to know a few people, we got a group together to go out on weekends and frequently at night, because I was the only one who worked for the state and had Saturdays off. Most people had to work later on Saturdays than they did on other days. And, of course, it was the Bible belt, and people didn't think we should be caving on Sunday either! We'd go out usually about 8:00 PM, come home at midnight, 1:00 AM ... or 2:00 AM, sometimes just in time for breakfast! Our group was pretty small to start with.
Dick Sanders was one of the first to join up with me in going into some of these caves, and the two of us got into some lovely messes. It could have been a lot worse. I remember in Prize Cave we reached a drop and had no way to get down. I decided to improvise a rope ladder out of quarter inch-nylon; that is not exactly the best kind of rope. But it was all I had. Well, I made loops in it. I got about four feet below the ledge, intending to hang onto the lip to survey the situation. The rope had stretched so much that I found I was in a predicament. A loop was stuck in a crack of the sole of my shoe. I wasn't able to climb back up because I couldn't chin myself. And I could not go on down with the loop stuck in my boot. I was sort of dangling there, getting desperate. Dick, lying on his stomach, had no way to reach me, or do much about the situation. Finally, I just put my feet over against the wall, and walked up the wall until my feet were higher than my head. Then Dick grabbed my ankles, and I worked my way back up the rope. It was a stupid thing to do.
Another time we were at a cave beside Reed Creek; may have been Ketron Cave. While we were in the cave it rained. When we came out to the eight foot entrance climb on slick, nearly vertical rock, we decided to use that same ill--fated piece of quarter--inch nylon for a safety line. Dick was around a corner and swears he never even felt me slip. But I did, and went down the last four feet gracefully in slow motion with the rope stretching. We were all really green at it. We knew nothing about rope work, but had to pick it up as we went along.
Dick and I went up to West Virginia to one of the NSS meetings in Franklin. Driving up late at night in February we had a little problem. The lights went out on the car. We were having a time of it: no filling stations around there, no lights in the houses, everything pitch dark. Dick had a six--volt flashlight balanced on the window of the car focusing on the edge of the road, and we drove some 30 miles into Franklin that night by the beam of the flashlight. In the morning I went over to the filling station to see about getting the lights fixed while we were caving. That is where I met Larry and Betty Sabatinos; they had come down from Ohio to join the group, and had saved money by sleeping in their car that night. It was pretty cold. So Dick and I invited them to use our facilities to get cleaned up. We sort of hit it off right away. They were on their way to Washington for a national meeting, and we suggested that they make a great big detour on their way back through Wytheville to see some of our caves. Well, they enjoyed themselves so much, and found that there wasn't enough time to go in all of them (I think we took them into seven caves in two days), that they eventually decided to move down from Ohio. (On a later trip to the Wytheville area, Larry reported that they explored 90 caves in one month.) Then, there were four of us.
We created quite a stir. They couldn't find any place to store their canoe. We'd drive through the back roads in a car with Ohio license plates on it and a canoe tied to the top, in an area where the biggest streams could be stepped across in one big jump! We began to pick up a few other people. Larry invited a boy over at the filling station who went along several times; we got to know a fellow who worked in the shoe repair place in town. Wayne Whitt, and he became one of our best and most expert cavers. Usually there was about a handful, three to six that would go out pretty regularly. Dick, Larry. Betty, wayne, sometimes Wayne's wife Doris, the manager of the Piggly Wiggly in Wytheville. Louie Rutherford his wife and daughter would sometimes go with us. I had an office up over the Vance Hardware at the main corner in Wytheville right near the post office. I had to share my office with the oil and gas inspector who worked for the state. Couldn't get him in a cave, but he had a secretary, a local girl, named Virgilene Sharitz. I asked her to go one Sunday, and then I guess she had second thoughts about it for she asked if we'd mind if she brought her father along. And we said no, bring him along. That's how Virgil Sharitz started caving, and became one of the presidents of our cave club. It was a very informal group at first.
One of the younger kids who used to go with us was Junior Mailerßß. He was the son of the Seventh Day Adventist doctor, and was about sixteen years old at the time. Never saw him get upset, no matter what went wrong; always level--headed. We thought we were using pretty good judgement in making him our first president when we made our application to become a grotto of the NSS. We didn't hear anything from the NSS for quite awhile. At first we thought it was because we had so few members listed. We had tried to give a list of all the people who had affiliated individually in the area, and also listed four or five people we'd never set eyes on. We thought we had the minimum number listed, but decided maybe they were objecting to the fact that all of them didn't live in Wytheville. One day I talked to someone from Washington and asked them if they'd find out what the hold--up was. It turned out that the objection was Junior's age; they didn't think sixteen was an appropriate age for a president of a grotto. I kind of exploded, and told them we knew our people better than they did. If we thought that Junior was mature enough to be our president, it was none of their business. After another week or two of delay, we finally got our charter.
continued
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