Harold & Virginia Winters Built a Life Together
Every family has a story. Ours was built by two ordinary people whose love for God, devotion to one another, and willingness to work hard created a home that shaped generations to come. This is the story of Harold and Virginia—and the life they built together.
A Young Couple in Love
My mother, Nancy Virginia Hale, was only seventeen years old when she fell in love with my father, who was nineteen. Dad wanted to marry her, but Mother was afraid her family might not approve.
She lived in a two-story yellow-and-brown home in West Logan, so with the help of her future sister-in-law, Alberta, Mother quietly packed her belongings and prepared to leave home. Alberta came from Huntington to help her dress for the occasion while my Uncle Eugene waited in the car.
Years later, Alberta recalled that Mother wore a beautiful soft blue princess-style taffeta dress with short sleeves.
On September 2, 1928, Rev. Caverlee united them in marriage at the First Christian Church in Logan. Eugene and Alberta stood beside them as witnesses. Following the ceremony, the young couple spent their first night together at the Winters family home near Pecks Mill. Raymond and Bessie happened to be home for the weekend, making it a memorable beginning to their new life together.
God richly blessed my parents with a large family. They raised seven children—Charles Thomas, Donald Ray, Daniel, Edmond, Nancy Lou, Jack Eldon, and Mary Sue. Each of us learned early the value of hard work, responsibility, and helping one another.
My Uncle Eugene often said that my brother Tom had an exceptional gift for mathematics. As a young boy, if someone told him how many hours Dad had worked for the railroad, Tom could quickly calculate exactly how much his paycheck would be.
Uncle Eugene also remembered that Mother’s brother, Archie Hale, possessed the same remarkable ability. Even as a grade-school student at Aracoma, Archie could add long columns of numbers faster than anyone else in his class.
Building a Home on the Hillside
Around 1938, my grandfather, John Winters, and my father purchased approximately four acres of hillside property about six miles north of Logan, just south of Pecks Mill. Their dream was simple—to build homes where their families could live close to one another.
Grandpa built his home first. Dad built his nearby, and later my Uncle Herbert built his home on the parcel between them. Before long, three generations of the Winters family lived side by side on the hillside.
Our home was small by today’s standards, but it was filled with love.
Dad built a modest four-room house on a steep hillside about a mile south of the Pecks Mill Bridge on the west side of Route 10. Every dollar mattered, so the house was constructed from rough sawmill lumber.
The exterior walls were covered with unfinished one-by-eight boards. Because there were gaps between the boards, narrow strips of wood were nailed over each crack to help keep out the weather.
The inside of the house reflected my parents’ resourcefulness. Cardboard from grocery cartons covered the walls first. Newspapers were then pasted over the cardboard, and whenever money allowed, wallpaper was carefully applied over the newspaper. Plain white paper covered the ceiling, while patterned wallpaper brightened the walls. Decorative border paper finished the room where the walls met the ceiling.
It may not have been much in the eyes of the world, but to us, it was home.
The house consisted of one bedroom, a living room heated by a large potbelly coal stove, a dining room where the boys slept in an extra bed, and a kitchen with a coal-burning cook stove complete with an oven and warming closets.
Behind the house was a small back porch where we kept the wash bowl for cleaning our hands. Later, part of the front porch was enclosed to create another small bedroom for the boys. Like most rural homes of that era, the bathroom was an outdoor privy located about thirty feet behind the house up the hillside.
Our little hillside farm was always busy. We had a chicken house, a pig pen, and two large gardens that supplied much of the food for our family. My parents worked tirelessly to provide a better life for their children, and from an early age we worked right alongside them.
There was always another project waiting. Part of the hillside behind the house had to be dug away to create enough level ground to walk around the home. Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt was hauled to the front of the property to build a small front yard. Eventually, we had a level area measuring about ten by fifteen feet—a wonderful accomplishment considering the steep hillside where we lived.
Water was precious. Several fifty-five-gallon barrels were placed beneath the roof so rainwater could be collected. That water was used for washing clothes, bathing, watering the gardens, and countless other household chores. Nothing was wasted.
Looking back, I realize my parents were teaching us lessons that had little to do with farming or building a house. They were teaching us perseverance, gratitude, and the value of honest work. Those lessons stayed with me long after I left that little house on the hillside.
The Search for Water
Before long, my Uncle Herbert and his wife, Katherine, built their home on the parcel of land between Grandpa’s house and ours. Three Winters families now lived side by side along the hillside, each home about 150 feet apart.
One of the greatest challenges they faced was finding a dependable source of water. Dad and Uncle Herbert decided to dig a well by hand between their two homes. Armed with nothing more than picks and shovels, they worked tirelessly, digging nearly ten feet into the rocky hillside. Their hopes were high, but after reaching solid rock without finding water, discouragement began to set in. Then, while both men were working in the hole, tragedy nearly struck. Uncle Herbert tossed a large rock out of the well, but it rolled back down into the excavation and crushed his foot. After that accident, and realizing the thick rock layers would make digging nearly impossible, they reluctantly abandoned the project.
Without a well, every drop of drinking water had to be carried nearly a thousand feet from a spring owned by a neighbor named Mr. Stevens.
The spring was located inside a cow pasture, and the cows often wandered through the area, making the water less than ideal. Even so, it was the only source available. Every member of the family helped carry water home, including children as young as five years old. A large family used a tremendous amount of water each day for drinking and cooking, and every bucket had to be carried by hand.
Eventually, Grandpa Winters had a deep well drilled beside his own house. It extended more than one hundred feet into the ground and used a long metal cylinder attached to a rope and pulley. The cylinder was lowered into the well and brought back up filled with nearly two gallons of fresh water.
What a celebration that was!
For the first time, all three Winters families had access to a dependable supply of clean drinking water. Although we still had to carry it home by hand, having fresh water nearby felt like a tremendous blessing. Looking back today, it’s easy to appreciate conveniences we often take for granted. But those years taught our family never to waste what God had provided and to be grateful for even the simplest blessings.
The Rhythm of Everyday Life
Cooking and heating our home depended entirely on coal.
Dad would purchase a truckload of coal, and it would be dumped along the edge of Route 10. Because the highway carried a great deal of traffic, we couldn’t leave it there very long. Every piece had to be carried up the hillside to our home as quickly as possible.
Our house sat about 125 feet above the road on a steep hillside where there was no driveway. Dad carved flat places into the hillside and set large stones to form steps leading to the house. In the steepest places, he fastened long poles to the trees to serve as handrails for the climb.
Each of us had a job.
Tom, who was ten years old, carried the largest bucket. Donald, at eight, carried a slightly smaller one. I was only six, so I carried the smallest bucket of all. Trip after trip, we filled our buckets with coal, climbed the long stone steps, and emptied the coal beneath the front porch where it was stored for winter.
Looking back, I realize we didn’t think of it as hard work. It was simply part of everyday life, and through those daily chores our parents taught us the value of responsibility.
There was always something that needed attention around our little farm. The gardens had to be planted, hoed, watered, and harvested. The grass on the steep hillside was cut by hand with a sickle. Large rocks and the trunks of the locust trees were whitewashed, giving the hillside a neat appearance that often drew compliments from people passing by.
Life was simple, but it was full.
School Days
After moving to our home near Pecks Mill, we began attending Mill Creek Grade School. My cousin Dicky, Uncle Herbert’s oldest son, joined us there when he entered first grade. Getting to school was an adventure in itself. We walked nearly a mile each way, crossing a narrow bridge over the river while sharing the road with large trucks and automobiles. Looking back, it seems surprising that children made that journey every day.
Mill Creek was a one-room schoolhouse where students in grades one through six shared the same classroom. Each row of desks belonged to a different grade. The wooden seat attached to your desk actually formed the back of the desk behind you, so whenever the student in front shifted in his seat, your entire desk would shake. Every desk had an ink well and a grooved place for a pencil. Our books were stored inside the desk beneath the writing surface, just above our knees.
Before long, a school bus began taking us to the larger school at Justice Addition, where each grade had its own classroom. My cousin Zetta Winters, Ralph Winters’ daughter, attended there as well, and she, Dicky, and I all went through school together. Dad’s younger brother Bill and his sister Betty were in high school and rode the same bus. We walked to Grandpa’s house each morning to catch it with them. There were mornings when Grandma was still trying to get Uncle Bill out of bed while the rest of us waited impatiently for the bus to arrive. If we were running late, Mother would quickly spread jelly, bacon, or eggs on a fresh-baked biscuit, place it in our hands, and send us hurrying down the road. As a child, I remember feeling embarrassed to eat breakfast on the school bus in front of the other children. Looking back now, I simply remember a loving mother doing everything she could to care for her family.
Learning to Work Together
Dad worked for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad in Peach Creek and usually drove an old automobile that had seen better days.
Many mornings it wouldn’t start.
He parked it at the top of the hill below our house, and Mother and several of us children would help push it from the dirt parking spot onto the paved road. Once the car began rolling downhill, Dad could usually pop the clutch and bring the engine to life.
During the winter months, icy roads often made the task even more difficult. Sometimes we pushed until the car finally started. Other times, a passing motorist would stop to help.
Those moments taught us something important about life. Families worked together, and neighbors looked after one another.
When I think back on those years, I don’t remember them as difficult times. I remember happy days filled with school, gardens, carrying coal and water, helping Dad, and working alongside my parents and brothers and sisters. Harold and Virginia loved their children deeply, and together we worked to build a better life.
Lessons from the Farm
Life on our little hillside included more than gardens. Dad built a pig pen beneath the chicken house, and during one visit to my mother’s parents’ farm in Salt Rock, we returned home with vegetables—and three little pigs. The car must have been overflowing with our large family, fresh produce, and those squealing pigs. The next day the little pigs rooted beneath the fence and escaped. My brothers and I had quite an adventure chasing pigs across the hillside before finally catching them. We learned very quickly just how fast a frightened pig could run!
On another occasion, Dad brought home a pair of goats so our family could enjoy fresh goat’s milk. Each day they grazed in the front yard, tethered by chains fastened to nearby trees. We didn’t have enough level ground for a cow, but the goats provided milk and made good use of the hillside grass.
My parents also built a hotbed where they started lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, and other vegetables from seed. Rich soil was prepared by mixing manure, grass clippings, fertilizer, and garden soil. A large sheet of glass covered the bed, allowing the sun to warm the soil and encourage the seeds to sprout. When cold nights threatened the young plants, Mother and Dad carefully covered each one with a glass jar until morning. Water from our rain barrels kept the little plants growing until they were ready for the garden. Water was always precious. During dry weather, the rain barrels sometimes sat so long that mosquito larvae—what we called “wiggletails”—would hatch in the stagnant water. Whenever a fresh rain began, we hurried outside to dump the old water so the barrels could fill again with clean rainwater from the roof. Even a summer rainstorm felt like a blessing.
A Father’s Strength
When Dad was about thirty years old, he suffered a serious back injury while moving freight for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. The injury pinched a nerve so severely that he eventually underwent surgery in Huntington, where doctors inserted two silver screws into his spine. The operation helped ease some of the pain, but it never completely disappeared.
Years later, before his death nearly forty years afterward, Dad wrote that he had not lived a single day without pain since that injury.
The Love of the Winters Family
One story from Dad’s surgery has always stayed with me. When the nurse came into his hospital room and asked who would be donating blood for the operation, all five of Dad’s brothers stepped forward.
Each one volunteered. The nurse was deeply moved by their love and devotion to one another. She reportedly said, “Surely he will recover.” That simple moment spoke volumes about the Winters family. Our family was known for loving one another and helping whenever there was a need. During Dad’s hospitalization, relatives cared for us children while Mother traveled by train to Huntington to be by his side. Everyone did whatever they could to help.
Growing up in that kind of family taught me the importance of loyalty, sacrifice, and caring for one another. Those values became part of my own life and ministry in the years that followed.
A New Beginning
After Dad’s surgery, he was unable to work regularly for quite some time.
Around 1945, our family moved to an eighty-four-acre farm on Crooked Creek. Although life was still filled with hard work, the farm provided new opportunities.
Mother and Dad cared for the livestock and gardens, and every member of the family shared in the daily responsibilities. My older brothers, Tom and Don, eventually went to work for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, following in Dad’s footsteps.
As I entered my teenage years, I learned to plow fields, care for the farm animals, and take on many of the responsibilities that country life required. Those years continued to shape my character and prepared me for responsibilities that I could never have imagined at the time.
Then, in 1952, our family made another major change.
We left the hills of West Virginia and moved to Winter Haven, Florida, where we made our home at 1214 Seventh Street Southwest.
Although we had left the mountains behind, the values that had been planted in our hearts remained the same.
A Mother’s Legacy
For ten more years, Mother continued to be the heart of our family. On July 19, 1962, Nancy Virginia Winters went home to be with the Lord. Her life was marked by quiet faith, sacrificial love, and unwavering devotion to her husband and children. She worked tirelessly to provide for our family, encouraged us through every season of life, and left an example of Christian character that continues to influence us today.
When I look back on my childhood, I don’t simply remember the little house on the hillside, the gardens, the coal buckets, or the many chores that filled our days. I remember two parents who loved God, loved each other, and loved their children. Those early years shaped the man I would become.
They taught me faith, perseverance, gratitude, hard work, and the importance of family—lessons that remained with me throughout my life and prepared me for the journey God still had ahead.