Live and Death of a Mountain Resident

from News-Record and Sentinel, Madison County North Carolina
Feb.7 2007

[note from AG: Madison County is in the remote mountains along the Tennessee border. Residents of the other mountain counites consider Madison County to have the highest number of unemployed, uneducated, lazy and violent white Southerners of any county in the state. Madison borders Buncombe County, home of Asheville. Asheville is a prosperous city of 100,000. Residents of Asheville are particularly contemptuous of Madison County, and the advice of many Asheville citizens to their children is: "Never cross the Madison County line."]

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MAN STABBED: Madison man killed for his sleeping spot.
A childhood of poverty and neglect set the tone for James Lovin's life, which ended last week when he was stabbed to death while sleeeping beneath Asheville's Smoky Park Bridge.
Lovin, one of eight children of George and Edna Lovin of the Old MIll Road area, had lived on the streets of Asheville for years. But family and a long-time family friend say the key to his homelessness might be tracked back to his childhood in Madison County and a life of deprivation.
"I was probably one of the last ones in the family to see him, maybe a bit over a year ago," said John Lovin, a cousin who says he tries to keep track of his extended family. "I tried my best to just find him a place to live. He would have stayed if he'd had a place, I'm sure."
John says James suffered throughout his life; from neglect, near-starvation, a lack of education and society's disregard for his life and that of his siblings.
Reva Metcalf, who was engaged to marry James' uncle before his death in a vehicle accident in the 1960s, said she often thinks "how different life might have been" for James and his siblings, but she says the dye was cast in the 1970s when his family was torn apart and scattered after his father had his mother jailed.
"The last time I saw James, it was about a year after Social Services took him" in the 70s, Metcalf said last week. She says she and her father tried to help the family, begging officials to free the mother so she could care for her family.
"Them children needed their mother at home, but [the sheriff] wouldn't let her out of jail," Metcalf recalled.
James stayed with her for over three months then, she said, but ended up with Social Services. He stayed in school until he turned 16, she believes, but after that worked odd jobs or did farm work with his father.
James was killed a week ago Sunday, stabbed twice and beaten while trying to sleep in a sheltered area beneath the bridge that carries Interstate 26 across the French Broad River near West Asheville.
Asheville Police Capt. Tim Splain says two men have been arrested in connection with James' death, one charged with murder and the other for kicking and beating the sleeping man.
"I can't tell you there was any prior disagreement" involving Lovin and the two suspects, Splain said. "I just know the two people who are acccused of this crime...had made statements to other people in the homeless community that they were claiming that spot" and were warning other homeless people to stay away from it.
"There's a lot of competition out there among some of the homeless folks" for good, protected sleeping places, he said. "That spot was sheltered and fairly well protected. I can see where that could have been a desired location."
[note: The temperature was 12 degrees, with winds of 25 mph on the night of the stabbing. AG]
John Lovin says his cousin went to Asheville because the city has soup kitchens that feed the homeless. That was over a decade ago, and Metcalf says she has often wondered how James was doing.
"He didn't have anywhere to go," she said. "I used to ask Edna [his mother] about it, and she said he was living on the streets of Asheville."
Did he worry about the risk of living under bridges? His brother Larry says no, but "I believe it was on account of his drinking."
Larry himself has spent years with no defined home, and now lives in a make-shift camping trailer in east Madison near Metcalf. He said another brother, Roger, is also homeless in Asheville, and hasn't been seen for years. "I don't know where he's at," Larry said.
Metcalf said the same. "He's missing."
Capt. Splain said he knows Roger, and knew that he and James were brothers. In fact, he "went to Roger's [arrest] file to find the next of kin" to call about James.
John, Larry and Reva Metcalf say the root of James' decline can be traced back to his childhood, when his mother tried to raise eight kids.
"She'd walk to P&E Grocery on Upper Bailey Branch and buy groceries, about three boxes of food," Metcalf said. "She'd start out walking with one box and carry it home, then turn around and go get another until she was done. That's the way she had to do it."

Later, Metcalf says she got her license and drove Edna to the store. "I'd do whatever I could, but I never saw nobody [else] helping them," she said matter-of-factly.
John says his uncle must have figured the kids might be better off raised by someone else, which could have been the reason he told the sheriff that his wife was unfaithful. It was a lie, she says, but she was taken away and jailed for a week. Upon her release, she faced no charges, but the damage had already been done.
"I don't guess there was any way he could have taken care of them," John said, while Larry, who avoids talking critically about his childhood, finally said, "I guess [Dad] sometimes considered us a burden."
George Lovin died last year. "He didn't want the kids," Edna said. "He acted like he wasn't the father."
John and his family have been locked in a years-long court battle of what they say was their family land, and he says James and his other cousins might have turned out better if they'd inherited land free and clear and had a place to live.
But for James, that doesn't matter now. A memorial service was held for him last Friday, and at least one man faces first-degree murder charges in connection with his death.
Metcalf said Edna knew James was homeless, and had even seen him once when she'd gotten a ride to Asheville.
"She said she'd seen James on the street one time," but couldn't stop because she was just a passenger. "She said it was the only time she saw him."
Metcalf doesn't blame Edna for the downward spiral her family endured. "I know Edna never wanted her family to end this way," she said quietly. "I didn't see no fault in James. He growed up poor...but he didn't deserve to live that way."
But sometimes she says she gets mad about the circumstances that split apart Edna's family, and what she sees as the community's lack of concern.
"I think--why was I born and raised in a county that is so bad," Metcalf said angrily. "If you're poor, there's nothing for you [here]. Sometimes I look around at my house and think, if I could, I'd sell it and move away."