Preserving the Life and Times of Jack Dawson

The late Jack Dawson, photographed outside his home next to a wheelbarrow of black walnuts collected throughout his property.

Preserving the Life and Times of Jack Dawson

By Annie Mickum

This past summer and early autumn, I had the opportunity to collect oral histories on the life of Jack Dawson, a true local mountain character, an individual born and raised on Hungry Run Road, nestled into Virginia’s Bull Run Mountains near The Plains.

In early July, I began work as a Folk History intern with the The late Jack Dawson, photographed outside Virginia Outdoors Foundation, his home next to a wheelbarrow of black creating an oral history project walnuts collected throughout his property. on Mr. Dawson’s life and legacy. In working with those who knew him best to preserve his story, the grace and resilience of his life came into clear focus.

Jack died in 2012 at the age of 95. In his early years, he spent his time working alongside his family and the greater Landmark community to plant, harvest, and maintain the surrounding farmland. By adulthood, Jack had acquired an unparalleled understanding of the land, its history, and the necessary care required for their preservation.

His days were spent in good conversations with his neighbors, quiet acts of kindness, and cups of coffee brewed so strong that their smell still hung in the air when I visited his home this past summer.

His garden, though now overgrown, was meticulously tended in its heyday. His TV, which was installed toward the end of his life, would blare so loudly that a neighbor stopping by for a visit could hear it loud and clear from almost two hundred yards away.

He was gentle and generous in spirit, never letting a visitor leave without something to take with them—an apple, a piece of candy, and certainly an abundance of stories to carry on for generations to come.

Jack was a historian and a specialist in all things local to Landmark and its neighboring communities. As his neighbor and dear friend Dr. Steven Jameson said, Jack “lived friendly with nature,” and was an incredible naturalist eager to share his knowledge with anyone who wanted to take a walk through the woods he grew up alongside.

Though his unique circumstances could be easily trivialized, having lived his life in a home without plumbing or running water, and having no means of private or public transportation, Jack’s life was built on the symbiotic foundation of rural community.

The knowledge and skills he acquired were nothing short of masterful, and though he had little in the way of material positions, he willingly shared all he had with those he knew and cared for. The legend of his kindness, commingling with his humble living conditions, could easily abstract his story into just that—a mountain myth.

In one of the very first interviews of the project, Landmark local Dean Elgin noted that on the day of Jack’s funeral in April, 2012, NASA retired the space shuttle Discovery, landing at Washington Dulles Airport, just over twenty-two miles away from town.

He recalled seeing the shuttle fly overhead during the service, and took a moment to consider all that had changed over the course of Jack’s life. I took that same moment during our interview to consider all the ways that, despite his seemingly isolated life in the Bull Run Mountains, and without the modern comforts of indoor plumbing or a car, Jack had somehow managed to reach the lives of so many, quietly shaping our community for generations to come.