Cooperative Living February 2016 - 34

Irvin Katenbrink (left), U.S. Army Ret., moved to
Syria with his wife Jean in 1987. These days he
spends time at the packing shed (below).
the house in the summer, " Jimmy
remembers of his growing-up years in
Syria. With only two bathrooms and an
outhouse, things got crowded pretty
quickly. " In the summer, " Jimmy remarks,
" we'd bathe in the river. "
In those days, Graves' Mountain was a
Irvin
Katenbrink says, 'I
one other
town in the
country with
the name, and
that's in Indiana.
Syria is a small
wasn't lucky enough to be
born here, but was smart
enough to move here as
soon as I
could.'
place and getting
smaller, despite the influx
of second-home owners who have
bumped local real estate prices up to the
degree that restored farmhouses with land
now often fetch $1 million-plus. At the
time of World War II, Jimmy says, over
500 residents registered to receive rations.
" Those would have been people that came
out of the mountains right outside the
national park, " he adds. Today only about
200 people live in the Syria zip code.
NOT-SO-NEWCOMERS
Among them is Col. Irvin Katenbrink,
U.S. Army-Ret., who moved to Syria with
his wife Jean in 1987, after a 30-year
military career. The Atlanta native has
served in Korea, Vietnam, Germany, and
as an educator at the U.S. Military
Academy at West Point. The Katenbrinks
found Syria through an advertisement that
ran in The Washington Post for apple
picking at Graves' Mountain Lodge. After
that, the couple and their three children
kept coming back every October.
Once their kids had grown up, the
couple found themselves driving around
in the mountains and discovered a home
for sale. " Jean turned and asked me,
'would you like to live here?' " says
Katenbrink. The rest is history. The
Katenbrinks took up permanent residence
in Syria in 1987.
32 | Cooperative Living | February 2016
Jean has since passed
away, but Katenbrink still
lives in the house they
bought together. " It's on a
dirt road, " he notes. " There
are bears in the backyard. It's
quiet. It's peaceful, and the people
here are nice. " Katenbrink adds, " I
wasn't lucky enough to be born here, but I
was smart enough to move here as soon as
I could. "
And while plenty of rural areas might
have residents less than hospitable to
outsiders, particularly those from the city,
Katenbrink has found quite the opposite to
be true in Syria. " Jimmy and Rachel
(Graves) are very kind people, " he says.
" We were outsiders, but they were always
generous to us. "
In retirement, in fact, Katenbrink has
found himself in charge of the packing
shed, and jokes, " They won't fire you, and
they won't pay you either! "
The jesting is all in good fun, as the
Graves clan invites both Katenbrink and
myself to join them for a southern-style
Sunday lunch on a day that isn't Sunday.
Spread over a long table in the lodge
overlooking the mountain views are fried
chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes,
fried apples, pasta salad, cranberries, hot
rolls, corn pudding, and green salad. My
plate is heaping, but this is what hospitality
looks like at Graves' Mountain Lodge.
" We've had fried chicken every Sunday
for lunch for as long as I can remember, "
says Jimmy. And that was well before the
lodge, which Jimmy and Rachel opened in
1965, shortly after they married.
" Sometimes we had 35 people staying in
pretty self-sufficient place. " We had
gardens, killed hogs, smoked hams,
churned butter, " remembers Jimmy. " And
we still did all those things when we first
opened the lodge. The first year we cooked
on a wood cook stove. "
The lodge has since modernized, though
the rocking chairs on the front porches still
remain, as does the rural nature of the
place. All one will see from the front porch
of the lodge are mountains, orchards,
fields, and a couple of farmhouses. On the
busiest weekend, Graves' Mountain Lodge
can accommodate up to 400 guests, and
Jimmy says about half their guests every
year are repeats.
And while the human residents of Syria,
at least full-time ones, are dwindling, the
wildlife population is growing. " When I
was going to school, " Jimmy says,
" Madison County didn't have deer. " Now
the county, like so many in Virginia, is
overpopulated with them, and the same
would seem to go for black bears.
" The first bear I remember seeing on the
property was in the '80s, " says Rachel.
Jimmy adds, " Now some nights you'll
see as many as eight bears. " While the
bears will stay in the mountains when
there is a good acorn crop, they come
down to the farmland in the hollows and
valleys around harvest time if pickings are
slim in the national park.
" The bears seems to like Honey Crisp
and Ginger Gold apples the best, " says
Lucky, and he's not even joking. The
Graveses have had many years of severe
crop depredation because of bears.
But the bears, like the apples, are part
of the draw for visitors here. Plus, the lack
of cellphone service. Last fall, the Graveses
estimate more than 15,000 people showed
up for their annual Apple Harvest Festival.
In June, the lodge hosts the Festival of
Music, featuring bluegrass, Americana
and Roots music. There couldn't be a more
perfect spot for pickin', whether it's apples
or banjo. ...
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Cooperative Living February 2016

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