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“Osmosis” Went On to Make More Llangollen History
“Osmosis” Went On to Make More Llangollen History
By Leonard Shapiro
Llangollen Farm in Upperville has a rich and colorful history, particularly when it was owned by Jock Whitney and his then wife, Mary Elizabeth Altemus who often entertained lavishly, with guest lists often containing high profile names from the worlds of business, politics, horse racing and entertainment.
Also growing up on the farm in the 1950s was Jerry Payne, the oldest child of Mason Payne, who managed the dairy operation, and his wife Becky, who worked as a cook. Before many of the parties, young Jerry often was dispatched to nearby streams to pick wild watercress for salads and mint for the juleps always served on Kentucky Derby Day.
Jerry attended the old Marshall High School, and rode the bus to school every day. That’s where he befriended Tom Davenport, who’s family owned a farm in Delaplane nine miles away. Tom was two years younger, but they became great friends, bonding over their love of the outdoors, sports, and hunting and fishing and staying in touch for the rest of their lives until Jerry passed away this past March at his home in Georgia.
Tom Davenport became one of the nation’s most talented documentary film makers and also founded Folkstreams, a nonprofit with a mission is to “find, preserve, contextualize, and stream documentary films on American folklife” on the web. Also, to “have each film accompanied by helpful materials prepared by the filmmakers, folklorists, and others about the making of the films, the lives of the film subjects, and the cultural traditions shown in the films.”
One Davenport documentary, “Where Do They All Go (2013),” focused on none other than Jerry Payne, known by the nickname “Osmosis” back in high school because of his love of all things biology.
Tom Davenport recalled that, “Jerry described his family as ‘hunter gatherers.’ His father and mother came from Appalachian backgrounds, with only grade school educations, but Jerry’s mother encouraged him to get an education so he could leave the farm. Jerry once said, ‘When I got to college and they closed the door of the classroom, we were all equal.’”
Jerry attended Virginia Tech and supplemented his scholarships by working and studying through a cooperative program at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. He then transferred to the University of Tennessee to continue in this co-op program while completing his bachelors degree.
He went on to earn a Masters at Clemson, then went back to Oak Ridge and worked as a regular employee in the National Laboratory for two years in small mammal ecology. He returned to Clemson to earn a doctorate, and carried out his research in animal decomposition.
Working with a beloved teacher, entomologist Dr. Edwin Wallace King, Jerry did a remarkable study of insect succession, using dead baby pigs he collected from local farms.
The decomposition study attracted national attention in Time Magazine and Scientific American and became a foundation of modern forensic science. Jerry donated his 16mm time-lapse footage of a decomposing baby pig to the Smithsonian Institution, and on Youtube the clip has over two million views.
After earning his doctorate, he accepted an appointment with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, settling in Byron, Georgia, and working at the Southeastern Fruit and Tree Nut Research Laboratory where he remained until retirement in 1994.
In an article that appeared on the Folkstreams website, Jerry once described his work as that of an “agricultural scientist in the field of entomology and a research entomologist,” adding that, “working in fruits and nuts” he actually got to do ecology as well as a broader range of studies.
According to Tom Davenport, after retiring from the Agriculture Department, “Jerry and his wife Rose devoted themselves to their 80-acre nature preserve near Macon, Georgia, which they walked nearly every day in the tradition of Darwin and his wife.
“Both he and Rose excelled at the taxonomy of birds, butterflies, and native plants, and they were active in naturalists circles in Georgia where they often bird and butterfly watch with their friend Father Francis Michael Stiteler, the abbot of the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit near Conyers, Georgia.
“He really was a remarkable guy, and quite a character,” Tom Davenport said. “Back then, he was like a big brother to me. He knew so much about natural things. I learned so much from him. I was just in awe of him.”
More rich and colorful Langollen history, for sure.
