Kandy Barnard
This is the first of a two-part series about Cleo Hicks Williams.
Cleo Hicks Williams was born to Basha Adeline Taylor Hicks and Joel Lawson Hicks on Sept. 7, 1934. She was one of 10 children, with six brothers: James, Ivane, Lewis, Lloyd, Oval and Vernon, and three sisters: Ivy, Lily and Mary. She was the eighth child, and all the children were born at home.
Cleo was born during a hard-time transition, at the tailwinds of the Great Depression and the mounting tensions of World War II looming on the horizon. She was raised on Junaluska Creek, which was known for the making of moonshine, an illegal trade that most of the menfolks were involved in. There were not many jobs during this time-period, and making whiskey put food on the table.
Most of the law looked the other way because they knew it was the only way some could feed their family. And they did not like the “feds or the revenuers” snooping around in their business. Cleo’s father, Lawson Hicks, was said to have been the best moonshiner whose whiskey was crystal clear and the fact that it “beaded up” on the surface proved it had a lot of alcohol content. Cleo had stated that even the Cherokee County sheriff and the Andrews chief of police “was some of Dad’s best customers.”
In May 2005, Cleo Hicks Williams published a book titled Gratitude for Shoes, and was honored with a town celebration for the book that depicts growing up poor in the mountains of Western North Carolina during the 1940s through the 1950s. She said her goal for writing the book was “to dispel the myth that mountain people are stupid, lazy, feuding “hillbillies,” and to portray them as highly intelligent, resourceful and hard-working people they truly are.”
Cleo’s book is a literary treasure with heartbreaking accounts of how she suffered humiliation from her parent and others, constantly making her feel inferior, never showing her love or kindness and mocking her goals to rise out of poverty. But she did.
Cleo arose like the Phoenix and made her dreams of being a nurse come true.
In her book, she details the hardships her family endured being raised on Junaluska Creek. She writes about walking down the mountain barefoot in the frosty grass that crunched under her feet and the embarrassment of stepping up into the school bus without shoes. Like most of the children in this area, they only got one pair of shoes a year in the fall, and they were usually worn out before summer.
Several years later, after Cleo graduated from high school, she went to work for Dr. VanGorder at the Rodda-VanGorder Hospital & Clinic. She had made the decision to move in with her brother, Ivane (Sweetie), and her sister-in-law, Ruth, who had a little boy named Ronnie, and was thrilled she got her own bedroom.
To be continued.
Kandy Barnard is a columnist for the Cherokee Scout. To talk about the Andrews Valley, call her at 828-361-3268 or email kandybarnard@gmail.com.