The Land of My Father's Father
Sally Craig, Black Mountain News, April 1998

A young widow is on the road with her three small children, a little girl and two younger boys. The buggy goes slowiy now, for the horse is weary. It's been a long haul up from Clinton.

They pass through the last little town, Black Mountain, though back when the woman was her daughter's age, it was called Grey Eagle. Almost there. They start up the mountain toward their destination, a new Presbyterian retreat center.

Eighty years later, the young widow's great-grandson writes a song about the same cove. "Where the grey eagle flies ... to the land of my father's father..." He too is on the road, but his only passenger is a guitar.

When David LaMotte moved to Black Mountain in 1990, he became the first of his family to actually live here. But over five generations, the LaMottes have put down many roots in this valley. The taproot is a cottage in Montreat.

The little girl in the buggy, only seven when her dad died, was Sarah Hunter, and she grew up to marry Dr. Louis LaMotte, a Presbyterian minister. They had three boys, Louis, John, and Edward, and they lived for many years in Maxton, N.C., where Dr. LaMotte was president of Presbyterian Jr. College.

They bought the cottage in 1939. Since then, it has been the place of gathering and renewal for the LaMottes and their extended family. It's unoccupied right now, but it certainly doesn't feel deserted. David captured the house's vitality with "So many years of love accumulated here, that it's almost alive. The velveteen house."

John LaMotte, the middle son and David's father, remembers childhood visits with great warmth. The boys could bring a friend, so all the fun was doubled. When it rained, the cottage's front porch became a pirate ship. Little boys scrambled all over the lattices, which had become the ship's rigging. On the sunny days, they rock-hopped up and down the stream, and they swam in Lake Susan. But bathing gear was tightly specified back then. At age 8, John got sent home for not having a top to his bathing suit.

Montreat also gave John his true love. In the summer of 1952, following his junior year at Davidson, he met Olivia Bishop, a rising sophomore at Montreat College. On summer staff at the Assembly Inn, John worked at the front desk and Olivia operated the elevator. When John's shift was over, he rode up and down in the elevator --- a lot. Three years later, they married.

After graduating from Union Theological Seminary, John followed his father into the ministry. Early on, he accepted a three-year term in the mission field. John and Olivia, along with two small children, set off first for Switzerland, where they spent over a year, then for Congo. Even before that country was called Zaire, it was in turmoil. Twice the upheavals forced the family to move. In time, John was able to establish a theological seminary, which is still in operation.

Back in the USA, John served pastorates in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Reflecting on a life in the ministry, John says it was a wonderful life, and it's hard to imagine himself in another profession. "God has been incredibly good to us and has provided in a serendipitous fashion for us in every way." As for the people he served, "Church congregations really shower you with love, take you to their hearts."

Olivia had graduated from Montreat College with a degree in Bible and Christian Education. Being a minister's wife and rearing four children made a full plate, but, when the children were older, Olivia stepped out. She was co-founder and president of Habitat for Humanity in the Roanoke Valley, serving as a full-time volunteer there for many years. She worked long hours to help John establish Wake Forest Presbyterian Church. She volunteered at crisis counseling centers, she served as a college trustee, she filled many positions in the church structure.

The summer visits to Montreat were a welcome respite from busy lives. With three children and a baby, just getting there was an adventure. From son Johnny's memory: "This was your basic American family in a white Rambler station wagon that smelled like McDonald's fries. You know french fries are the easiest thing for kids to slip between the seats. All the kids squabbled about where to sit in the car. Then Mom and Dad bought this piece of foam rubber to fit in the back of the wagon. We called it 'the bouncy pad.' We counted cows along the way, seeing who could get the most. If we passed a graveyard on your side, you lost your cows."

Montreat meant cooling watermelons in the stream and jigsaw puzzles and square dancing on Friday nights at the Barn. And, in the summer that David says "lives in infamy in our family," visiting with friends up from Florida. Many, many friends.
John had gone off to some church task for a long while, so Olivia and the kids were coming to Montreat for most of the summer. Before leaving Sarasota, Olivia said they'd miss everyone, so everyone should just come on up to Montreat, no need to call ahead, just drop in. The Florida friends took her at her word. By the end of the summer, sixty-three of them had dropped in. When the Sarasota church held a roast for John and Olivia to mark their ten years there, one gift was a painting of the Montreat cottage with the mailbox stuffed with children and people sticking out of every door and window. The artist had been one of the drop-ins.

That picture doesn't hang in the cottage, but paintings by John and Olivia do. Maybe there will be more paintings, now that they've retired, if they ever stop for a while. When John retired in 1996, they bought a house in Black Mountain. First the move, then a six-weeks trip to Europe, then they accepted an interim pastorate in Fernandina Beach, Fiorida, where they are now. Another family tie, for they are near Amelia Island, where Olivia's famity has lived for three generations before her.

If David LaMotte's grandparents provided roots for him and his siblings in the Montreat cottage, his parents have provided the wings. Their trust in their children's own judgement is, in the words of one family friend, "a testament to all parents, to give their kids a chance to do what they can do." For David, "I've felt honestly encouraged to seek out my own road and follow my own calling instead of being pressured to follow some packaged agenda for my life."

And it wasn't just in choice of work or mates or places to live. John and Olivia's faith in their children embraced even the spiritual path, the core of their own lives. Their daughter Kathy says, "I learned from my parents that spirituality is an individual thing. They didn't insist that their kids take their truth. What they taught us was to find our own truth."

Kathy is the eldest child. By the time she was four, she had lived on three continents. Growing up, she learned to dread the term 'ipreacher's kid." Her reaction to that label was to rebel. "At this point in my life, I could not be more proud to be my dad's daughter, but back then ... well, being a minister's oldest kid is tough."

But through all the rough times of youth, through all the separations as the children grew up and followed their own lives, there was always Montreat. "It was a touchstone, where you came back to get grounded again. It was the common thread, the place we always returned to, the place where the family would gather."

Kathy recalls a child's anticipation as the station wagon crossed the miles. "Going to the mountains! Gosh, after the beaches of Norfolk and Sarasota...we'd come up through Florida, through the South, then boom! the mountains! I get excited just remembering how we felt." Arriving at the cottage "was like stepping through the wardrobe." Aslan wasn't waiting for her, but the wonderful stream was. There's Kathy, sitting on a rock, water swirling around her, the extrovert at rest, the rebel at peace.

Now Kathy gets to hear the stream anytime she wants to, for she just moved here. "Coming to Black Mountain is a coming home for me. You know, there's a spirit here over and above the beauty." And living here is different than summer visits. "The power of springtime was something I'd never really experienced. "

New life in a beloved place, new business in a beloved pursuit. Kathy and Judi Ashe are about to open a pottery studio at the foot of Cherry Street, right across from the Old Depot.

The road from a math degree to a pottery studio is like that stream by the cottage. Some rocky passages shape the way, and the stream changes direction now and again. Kathy has managed a shoe store and done video production, though her main focus has been in human services, like tutoring, crisis response, and, for the last several years, coordinating programs to prevent teen pregnancy in Roanoke, Va. Then "the left-brain one in the family" discovered that she too was an artist.

Kathy had never thought she was at all creative. The first pottery course was for grins. She made "horrible little pieces, just horrible." But as the wheel turned night after night in the studio, the work evolved. "It was a huge opening up, like discovering a new arm, some part of yourself you didn't know you had."

She began teaching pottery to others in Roanoke, and now she's going to do it all full-time. The gallery/studio is called Hands On, and Kathy looks forward to when the studio can start taking students. Teaching is her real love. "In a tiny way, it's being part of a dream-fullfillment thing for people --- to get to try working with clay. I don't want to over-dramatize this, but it's an honor to be part of that process."

At the beginning of a new chapter in life, Kathy is both excited and serene. "I've had such a strong sense of guidedness in this process. I hardly feel like I'm making any of these decisions. Everything I need has come to me."

Johnny is two years younger than Kathy. Like the rest of his family, he's artistic and articulate. Unlike the others, he's still in Sarasota.

The LaMotte creativity shows in artistic pursuits, such as his pen-and-ink sketches and serious black-and-white photography, but it also colors the way Johnny goes about more ordinary work. Perhaps many home healthcare workers are loved by their clients, but probably few cook wonderful meals to which an isolated couple can invite their friends. Or buy flowers for a elderly gentleman to give his wife for her birthday.

Now Johnny's moving out of home healthcare work toward a new business. Whatever it consists of, he will give back to the community in some way. "There are many forms of tithing. Do that first, and everything else will follow."

The cottage in Montreat is "the closest thing we have to a family home, since we moved so much." A day in the Montreat of Johnny's childhood began with chatting with wonderful neighbors over the rock wall. If you wanted rainbow trout for breakfast, you just went on down to Lake Susan and caught one. Then you'd rock-hop down to a U-shaped set of buildings that was the community's social center. There you could help Dad fill up the station wagon or supervise Mom doing the wash at the laundromat or drop a postcard to a friend stuck in Florida. Back to Lake Susan to careen down the water slide or swim out to the raft. Back to the general store for ice cream. Rock-hop over to your special place at the playground. Sit and dream. After a while, grab a buddy and follow the stream up the mountain, all the way to the top.

Montreat even sounded different then. "All the bridges across the creek were creosoted wood, so you could hear a car crossing those logs two blocks away. Rumble, rumble, rumble ... and the stream was a lot deeper, it made a really neat burbling sound that you could hear everywhere." But the cars were few and far between. Sitting on the front porch in the evenings, usually all you could hear beyond the burbling was just plain silence.

Margaret, two years behind Johnny and born in Congo, walks her father's path, at least in part. Like him, she's a Davidson graduate, and she's now attending Princeton Seminary. As for Margaret's continuing the family strand in the ministry, her parents "bent over backwards to not expect this of any of the children. Still, it's gratifying that one is."

The form of Margaret's professional life beyond seminary is not yet clear. Her flexibility about her future is, for her parents, typical of people of faith. "They know they'll have what they need when they need it, including guidance." In any case, authentic ministry is not limited to the ordained ministry. "All the children have made a real ministry out of what they do. They've carried on a tradition of service in the forms of their own gifts."

Like all the children, Margaret has pleasant memories of Montreat. "My strongest (memories) are sensory: the fertile, musty smell of the place, the sound of the rain on the roof. In addition to stream-time, I have many fond recollerctions of rainy afternoons spent curled up in a porch rocker, reading dusty novels."

Perhaps a novel by her husband will fill an afternoon for some grandchild not yet born. Lee Torrence, is a'9Os man: the artist meets computers. He and Margaret had a graphic design business in California, and now he does all sorts of design and technical writing on computers. Someday, when the children are older and life has settled down a bit, Lee will turn to the creative kind of writing.

David's mid-teens brought two huge turning points --- the first guitar and ieaving Florida. The Yamaha was a Christmas gift from his parents. (Of course he still has it; he took it to Paris earlier this spring.) Then, in the middle of his 10th grade year, the family moved to Roanoke, Va.

High school is a tough time, and changing schools makes it a lot tougher. For David, it was culture shock. In Sarasota, he'd attended the same school for six years, a small school, only 60 people in his grade. His class alone in the Roanoke school had 500 kids, and not one cared a flip about a new kid.

"I learned a lot about lonely, and I learned a lot about alone." He also learned the difference between the two. With few friends to hang out with, he listened to a lot of jazz, but he also discovered some riches in solitude. (The real pay-off is right now, when he's on the road constantly. Alone-time in the car makes possible the intensity of performing, not to mention interacting with all those peopie. )

The solitary years also brought a new life in Montreat. David became a conferee. "Those Youth conferences were important in my journey in real positive way. I have immense respect for them, both then and now." Joining Montreat's summer staff during college summers was a natural move.

Another turning point, college graduation. David made two big decisions. to really go for it in music and to make Black Mountain his home.

"When asked if I'm from here, I usually tell people that my heart has always lived here, but it took a while for my body to catch up. This area is very special to me. Not only do I feel more in touch with my family history here than anywhere else, but I'm also nourished by the community of friends I've found here. It's incredible, and increasingly rare, to live in a real community where people know each other and look out for one another.... It's good to feel connected."

What did the parents who had just put him through college say when he announced his intent to follow music? Quite simply, they were very supportive. In "Days of Peanut Butter," David recalls their attitude: "Follow your heart, that's what Mom would say. That's how you'll start making things go your way. You can you do whatever you choose, just dream and work and pray, and believe those dreams will all be true one day."

The family's support has continued in many ways. Margaret and Lee did the design and layout for two albums, one of which is dedicated to the three grandparents that David knew. (Olivia, like her mother-in-law, lost her dad at an early age.) Everyone in David's family takes his music seriously. "It doesn't feel like any of them wish I would get a 'real job.' They all accept that this is my path and, in spite of it being pretty unconventional and not the most stable of career choices, it's what I need to do."

The career is seven years, three months, and four albums old, and David has worked like blazes to make it happen. Michelle Jividen, who handles details at home base while David is on tour, puts it like this: "David is a workaholic in the best sense of that term. He's committed, he's organized, he's focused."

Building a solo performing career from scratch is a major challenge. Write the songs, work out the chords, perform, record, tour --- and then there's the business side: lining up gigs, a thousand details of album production, the mailing list, the newsletter, the website. (Note to the fans: The new website --- at www.davidlamotte.com --- will be up shortly).

Now that WorkinFolk is doing David's tour coordination, his life is a tad less hectic. But just a tad. The pace of touring has shot up. "I've never done this much before. In the seven months prior to my thirtieth birthday, I will have performed in half the states in the U.S."

So what's it like to tour all the time? "Like living inside a kaleidescope --- my life is very colorful, very interesting, but kind of fragmented." Undoubtedly, there's great freeedom, given that you show up on time to perform. But "it's a very strange lifestyle. Most people never taste it, and, if they do, they don't want a second bite."

David is reflective by nature, and he's always checking himself on why he's doing this music thing. To become rich and famous? Nah. Rich and happy don't seem to be partners, and famous is a hard way to live your life. Ego? Sure, that's part of it. Getting a beautiful letter about how your song is woven into someone's life is a wonderful experience, "a tremendous honor." And yes, it feels super when people clap for you. "But you have to learn to take it like dessert."

The desire to do this career with integrity comes through time and again in David's remarks. He wants his work to ultimately be "real and true," not about his ego. He knows the danger of confusing who people think he is and who he knows himself to be, and he's frank about some "hard chapters." Whatever the career ulitmately consists of, he wants his songs "to be helpful to people besides me."

LaMotte songs are poignant, funny, spirited, thoughtful, passionate, and sometimes all of the above. David's ability to see life through other eyes brings to life an ant, an 83-year-old man just denied a driver's license, a chauvinistic Southern "gentleman" about to be done in by his long-suffering lady. A five-year old "flies" off a roof after seeing "Peter Pan," hope lives on after church burnings. The sunset of a relationship is sketched with humorous Iyrics against ominous chords. "Box of Wood" is a singer's tribute to his partner and road buddy, the guitar.

David is always mindful of his audience's role in the strange and wonderful communion that can occur in a performance. "In the Light," his anthem to his audience, is his favorite song to play. "Though the words have barely changed, the guitar in the song has evolved a whole lot. When I play it, I really enjoy playing the guitar about as aggressively and freely as I ever do."
The Grey Eagle Tavern & Music Hall has heard much LaMotte music, and a good house always waits for David there. "This is his room, this is his town," says Bert Ivey, one of the owners. "David is real focused on the quality of the sound in the room. He does a really thorough sound check, and I respect him for that. He focuses on people behind the scenes, too. He definitely has a quality about him --he's not like some pompous rock 'n' roll star."

The next turning point will take place at the Grey Eagle. On April 24, David's concert will go past midnight, for on that next day, he turns 30.

Beyond this milestone, the road will go to some new places, like learning the piano, like stretching on the guitar, into jazz, into flamenco. David wants to go deeper in his writing, write more character sketches. The next album will be for children, and he's about to play his first stadium concert, for four to five thousand people.

Other destinations have to wait for his priorities to shift, but he has no doubt that day will come. "I want to have a family ... want to skydive ... (long pause) ... and do a couple of years of overseas aid work." Overseas aid work? Like where? He doesn't know. "Somewhere where I feel I can do some good."

Full circle.

For David's parents, John and Olivia, the future holds returning to Black Mountain in August and maybe real retirement. For his sister Kathy, the potter's wheel calls, and if it calls others too, she'll help them get started.

For all the LaMottes, the future will likely bring increasing appreciation of each other. As Johnny put it, "The family is growing ever closer as we grow older. We all have a great deal of respect for every individual, regardless of whether we understand each other's choices."

For the cottage in Montreat, the future holds another generation of eager visitors, Kathy's Michael and his bride, Johnny's Matthew, and Margaret's Nate and Hannah. How will they carry on the LaMottes' ability to listen inside, to follow an inner voice? The form of following may be spiritual or artistic or in some kind of service, but they all spring from the same inner stream.

Like a little boy scootching through the secret passages of a well-loved old home, you never know where it might appear next.