HOME IS HEART
(Part 1)

I’ve known Sue Chandler Vilcinskas since I first moved to Madison County and I count her as a friend. She is a native of the Revere community, also known as Sodom Laurel, and she continues to live there with her husband Vince and their son Charley. Their other son Ashley lives nearby with his wife and two daughters. Sue teaches at Brush Creek Elementary and is the new chairperson of the Democratic Party in Madison County. This interview is presented in two parts, with part two running in January.

This was one of the most wonderful places on earth to grow up. That’s why I came back here. I wanted my boys to have the same experience that I did growing up.

My dad and mom were Joe and Marthie Chandler. My mom is the daughter of Dellie Chandler Norton and my daddy is connected to Ben Chandler. I can go back and count several generations of my family in this community. The old man who is buried up at the end of the road, “Old John Chandler,” dates back to 1778. I recently found out through the Chandler Association that they named him “Buncombe John” because that separates him from the other John Chandlers in our family. The Chandlers have been in America since 1610, Jamestown. Not only am I a Sodom girl, but I’m part of the history of America, a founding daughter.

MGrowing up here made you feel like you were part of something greater than yourself. I belong to that Norton-Ray-Chandler group of people that connected all of us in one way or another. It was not like growing up together as cousins; it was more like growing up like brothers and sisters. Oftentimes, we get together as a group and talk about that and how special it is to be part of such a variety of different personalities and attitudes, but how close we are in so many ways. It’s our strength and I think there’s something to be said for “blood is thicker than water.”

I remember when we first got electricity. It would have been when I was in first or second grade and the light was just a single light bulb that screwed into the socket. It was so exciting to think that we got lights. I remember using oil lamps when I was a young girl and we never had a bathroom. We used an outhouse and had no running water; we carried our water from a spring. And I still drink out of that spring today.

I don’t ever remember a time when we didn’t have a store in the community that we could go to. The earliest memory I have is of Rube and Esther May Gosnell running the store right down the road. Their store became the living room for our big extended family. The younger kids would always look up to and admire the older group. When I was eight or nine and they were teenagers, they took us under their wings, and we would play games like “sugar if you catch ‘em.” Those are some really special memories because those are the people who made it special for us growing up.

We had chores and had to do those things because we were a family and were expected to help out. I remember carrying water and stove wood and we also used coal and had a potbelly stove. We always had a big garden and my mom would can. We never went without good food to eat. The one thing we did not have was a lot of meat. If we were going to have company or something we might ring one of the chicken’s necks. My daddy was good at butchering hogs so a lot of times he would help people butcher their hogs and they would always give us some of it. Hog killing time was a good memory, but we were mostly beans and potato type of people. We would say, “Oh lord, I don’t think I can stand another soup bean.”

After eighth grade you start thinking about your future, and how things are going to be, and you think, “Where am I going to be?” and “Where am I going to go?” I was always an adventuresome person and I had the opportunity in high school to become involved in a program called Upward Bound. I never really thought I would be college material, but in the mid-sixties the Upward Bound project started at Mars Hill College. My mother was bound and determined that I would be part of Upward Bound because she saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.

Upward Bound reinforced what my teachers in school had said, “You can be. You can do. You can accomplish things in your life. Take advantage of opportunities that are provided for you.” That always rang true for me. Nepal Adams, a teacher and my mother’s first cousin, always talked about opportunity and encouraged us. I had her for second, third and fourth grades, so she was a big influence in my life. Upward Bound was an eye-opener because I thought, “Wow. I can go to college. I can become something if I want to do it.” For them to put that faith in me, and encourage me, was just wonderful.

I started college as a PE major and, of course, life happens. You find yourself in situations that you might not choose and you end up growing up very quickly. I dropped out of college and was floundering. I found myself wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I decided I needed a change. I needed a different direction because I didn’t like the way my life was going. I think Upward Bound, and having Father Graves in my life, taught me not to fear change, that it was inevitable. So, I joined the Navy in 1974, three years after I graduated from high school. It was difficult in some ways, but it was also one of the most positive steps I had ever made.

I met and married Vince in 1975. It was one of those situations where you know your life is on the right track. Vince and I played tennis on our first date. He took me out to a nice pizza place and said, “Do you like anchovies?” Being from the mountains I had no idea what an anchovy was. I thought they were black olives. So, when our pizza came, I had to ask what those fuzzy, fishy things were. He said those were the anchovies. I was sort of embarrassed because here’s this guy from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where everything is paved and they know what anchovies are. That should have been a clue for him that this woman doesn’t have a clue about a lot of things. We got married here in the Church of the Little Flower with Father Graves.

What brought me back to Madison County was that sense of family; that sense that I can connect all the way back to “Old John.” My Granny Dell, my mother and father, and those things that were so ingrained in me. I felt it was a secure place for us to bring our boys up. Vince loved this place. If he had not loved it, things might have turned out differently for me. But he knew my heart yearned to be here with my family. Because he connected so well with them, it made it easier for us to come back. He liked the lifestyle and the easiness with which people accepted you for who you were and not where you came from. I think that’s what brought us back. It was always my hope to return home and to give back to the community.