As purposeful as the New River that
winds through her native Ashe County, Gayle Hamby Winston has coursed through
an extraordinary life of uphill challenges and sudden turns. She is a business woman with a strong will to get things done and she can be stubborn
and tough when striving to do what she believes is best. She is a staunch
Democrat and a real people-person, a lover of fine food and wine and a fervent
promoter of art and artists of all genres. While she cherishes the land and
heritage of the High Country, she is also genuinely interested in the world and
people who "aren't from here," and that makes her a gracious and
welcoming hostess. I find her a fascinating contradiction of extremes.
“Why do I choose these kinds of
things to do?” Gayle laments as she tells me stories about the work she has
done over the years. She has produced plays on and off-Broadway, farmed herds
of cattle, and opened and operated six North Carolina inns. Even now, in her eighties, at River House Inn and Restaurant on the New River in
Grassy Creek, she continues to elevate inn-keeping to an art form.
“I wanted to go places and see the world,” she
says about leaving Grassy Creek where she is a tenth-generation native. After
graduating with an English degree from Bridgewater College in Virginia, she set
out for New York City to become a journalist. “Those were the best years of my
life, my twenties in New York. It seemed like a small town then, and everyone
was so nice.”
She first interviewed with Norman
Cousins, editor of The Saturday Review of Literature,
her favorite magazine. He didn’t need an intern but introduced her to James
Linen, publisher at TIME Magazine who
hired her for National Affairs. “At the time,” Gayle recalls, “all the writers
were men and Republicans, and the researchers all women and Democrats.” She
joined the Newspaper Guild of America and worked on the Negotiating Committee
across the table from Mr. Linen.
One of her co-workers was Leslie
Clark Stevens III (Steve) who had written a play, Bullfight, and coaxed
her to help him produce it. “I had no knowledge of producing,” she says, “but I
thought the law firm that represented Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller was
a good place to begin. We created a limited partnership and rented the Theatre
de Lys, then signed union contracts and started rehearsals.”
“We were scared to death on opening
night,” says Gayle, “but we got wonderful reviews and the play was extended for
seven weeks. Ed Sullivan came to see it and aired an eleven minute segment on
his television show. I was hooked.”
“The next play was Champagne Complex, a three-character
comedy starring Polly Bergen, John Dall and the incredible comedian, Donald
Cook. It ran only three weeks on Broadway but has been performed hundreds of
times in Summer Stock.
“After that, for The Lovers,
we wanted Charles Boyer, a matinee idol of the 20s and 30s. At the time, he was
in another play with Sophia Loren in Rome. I sent him a cable saying, 'I will
be in Rome and would like to meet you to discuss a play.' He refused but I
tried again after I got there. I called his room and said, ‘I have this script.
Could I bring it up to your room?’ He said he didn’t have time, he had a press
conference, just leave it at the desk, but I persisted and hand-delivered it.
He invited me to dinner at Alfredo’s and again six nights in a row.
“He liked the script.” Gayle
laughs. “But he was not available to do it.” She had earned a friend though,
and years later, in Los Angeles when relatives came to visit, Boyer made an
appearance.
“On New Year’s Eve 1957,” Gayle
reminisces, “I turned down an invitation from Ted Kennedy for Ron (Winston),
whom I’d just met!—my husband to be. He lived in California and when our phone
bill reached $400 a month, we decided to marry. I moved to California and we
lived in Laurel Canyon, a beautiful place. But we soon lost all our favorite
possessions to a canyon fire—a giant Charles Schultz drawing of Snoopy on the
wall, our marriage certificate, our Dansk dinnerware…
“Ron was at work and I was at home
that day. It was 102 degrees outside, and I had drawn the draperies, so I knew
nothing of the fire until I heard the sirens. When I looked, fire engines were
right across the road. In shorts and sandals, I grabbed my car keys and ran,
but it was already too late to get to the car. So I ran for it in the other
direction over rocks and finally a wall, and from there, watched them spray
water on the house while the fire dropped into the living room and spread.”
With nothing but the clothes on
their backs, the young couple started over. Ron was directing Playhouse 90 and Gayle helped with
camera blocking, so they rented an apartment in Beverly Hills. Soon, though,
they longed to be back in New York, and moved east.
“We took a one room apartment on 67th
Street, and I went to work as fund-raiser for Adlai Stevenson. Ron co-wrote and
directed Ambush Bay, worked on episodes of The Twilight Zone and several feature films with Robert Wagner. One
day as he was about to fly out to find a setting for a new film, he got caught
in traffic near the L.A. airport and rushing to catch his plane, suffered a
heart attack and died. He was only forty.
“At that time, we had the nicest
apartment with a balcony near Lincoln Center, but I had already bought my
Great-grandfather’s house on 42 acres of farmland back in Grassy Creek. They
had been about to sell it and it seemed a shame to let it go. So, I moved to a
smaller apartment in the city and spent a lot of time in Grassy Creek. By 1982,
I was here almost full time, and my landlord gave me $35,000 to give up my
apartment in New York.”
“The first thing I caught in my
rabbit trap (we called it a rabbit gum) was a groundhog. My neighbor said, ‘If
it’s young, they’re good.’ So when my friend Nancy called from New York and
asked what I was doing, I said, ‘Cooking groundhog.’ She wanted to know how,
and I told her, ‘like everybody does, with shallots and mushrooms and white
wine.’”
As part-owner of the Troutdale
Dining Room, she worked long hours and made little money, but she invested in
another small farmhouse in Grassy Creek which she restored and rented. An
electrical storm caused a fire which destroyed the house, and several
outbuildings. “It was sad,” Gayle says, “just a little house way back in a
hollow.” But this was not to be her last or most devastating fire.
"I was working at the
restaurant and coming home at 1:00 a.m. and getting up at 6:00 a.m. and
farming," she says. “A neighbor—just a kid—came down the road and said,
‘You need some cows.’ He had some, of course, so I bought five.
“Then he said, ‘You need a bull,’
and I bought one of those too, a Charolais that weighed 2600 pounds! The kid
was scared of that bull and when he unloaded it from back of his truck, he jumped
up on the truck out of its way and there I was.”
Gayle sighs, shakes her head and
grins. “Within seven years, I had 350 head of cattle and 4 bulls. I fed them,
doctored them, even castrated some, transported them and had two a year
slaughtered for food. I grew hay and one year alone loaded a two ton truck of
hay. Worse, a cow got sick one winter and the vet told me there was no point in
her coming out. I had to borrow a shotgun to kill it and haul it off.”
All this by a girl who loved New
York—its art, celebrities and fine dining.
“The only time I made any money on
cattle,” Gayle admits, “was the last year, when I sold them all.” But the
experience was filled with challenges she could take by the horns. “One time,
while I was back in New York to visit, a neighbor came and took one of my cows,
claiming it was number 65 in his herd. He refused to bring it back, so I took
him to court.”
Gayle represented herself and
determined that her cows had originated on the G-5 Ranch in Abingdon, Virginia.
“My mother went with me to get a copy of their brand. It looked a lot like 65.
The judge said, ‘Bring those cows to me.’ Well, there was a barber down from
the courthouse and we got him to come and shave the cow so we could prove it
was G-5, not 65. The courtroom was jam-packed and everybody was having
fun. The judge wanted to go see the brand on the other cattle before ruling. He
later told the opposing lawyer, ‘Your opponent just did a better job,” says
Gayle, “but it was my cow!”
“I raised tobacco from seed, and one year,
sold 24,000 pounds. I grew my own food and canned. I had lots of apple trees.”
Comparing her life here with the city, Gayle says, “This is the best part of
the world. Life here is so direct. I picked up sticks to make a fire and
carried water from the spring, killed and canned my own food.”
Cartoonist Al Capp (L’il Abner)
once asked Gayle when in New York, “Where are you from, Dog Patch?” She shot
back, “No, but I am from Dog Creek.”
“I was still at the Dining Room and
it was finally making money, but that’s when partnerships become difficult. One
Friday night, I left work intending never to have anything to do with the
restaurant business again. Then, someone asked me, ‘are you going to the
auction of the Glendale Springs Inn?’”
Curious, Gayle discovered that the
seller had divided the property into fourteen parcels. The inn would retain
only the land it was sitting on. Indignant, she went to the auction.
“There were no bids,” she says. “So
I asked if I could bid on the property as a whole which I did. This restored it
to one parcel, and when a second bidder upped her by a thousand dollars, she
thought she was done with it. Along came a friend, though, who asked her to bid
again and promised to buy it from her if she got it. “I did,” she says,
smiling, “and they didn’t. And I had to borrow all that money when interest
rates were at twenty percent.”
While she had not meant to end up
with the Glendale Springs Inn, she was inspired to buy another house in the
Grassy Creek community and turn it into an inn of her own. The five bedroom
house (c. 1900) had green chestnut stairways and black walnut woodwork, tile
fireplaces, a widow’s walk and a porch with gingerbread trim. There were a
couple of stone outbuildings, a small smokehouse and a cannery, and ninety-one
acres of land.
“I had it jacked up,” she says,
“and completely restored—plumbing and a new septic system. I furnished it, put
in claw-foot bathtubs, and had all the linens ready in boxes.”
One day the renter, who had lived
there throughout construction, came home and found the house burning. “It
burned to the ground,” says Gayle, half-glancing at photographs. “I’m still not
over it. All I got was $50,000 from insurance which went to the bank.”
This is how she came to run the
Glendale Springs Inn. During those years, she grew asparagus and shitake
mushrooms and kept hives for bees and collected honey. “So pretentious,” she
says of herself, back in the restaurant business. “I posted an all-French menu
in the window.”
But this brought yet another lucky
twist of fate. A man named Mark Woods who had created the Shakespeare Festival
in Winston-Salem happened by
the Inn while camping with friends. “When he saw the menu,” Gayle says,
grinning, “he said, what is this place in the middle of nowhere?” Mark returned
often and Gayle loved his idea for a playwright’s project where writers and
actors could come together for intensive work on new material.
Then, in 1983 when she learned that
a large swath of natural riverside property which had once belonged to Dr.
James Larkin Ballou, a physician, inventor and environmentalist, was about to
be chopped into half acre lots by out-of-state developers, Gayle immediately
thought of the playwright’s project. Again, she bought the property but the
dollars failed to match plans for the playwrights, so Gayle developed the whole
property as River House Country Inn and Restaurant.
She saw to it that ‘Doc’ Ballou’s
former home and land continue to be part of a healing place, and he would
likely be pleased with Gayle’s vision. Even his former medical office and farm
outbuildings have been preserved and converted to interesting guestrooms. Her
talent, a fastidious attention to every sensory detail, is a healing art in
itself.
Sitting
on the porch of the Inn in a peeling white rocker, his Pinot Gris almost gone,
a guest listens to classical piano and the rush of the New River. Candles are
lit beside him on a concrete pedestal where he sets his glass near flowers and
mixed nuts. Behind him, one of the cooks pinches basil from a plant in the herb
garden at porch’s end and slips back into the kitchen through the patio and the
bar. Across from him, a woman smiles. It is six-thirty, and Gayle has come out,
dressed for dinner, her white hair put up. As she reaches out to greet the
couple, the woman says, “The minute I turned off the bridge onto the gravel
road along the river, my breathing slowed and I began to relax.”
They
choose Black Tiger Shrimp as appetizer, Duck Breast for the main course and Fig
Tatin for dessert, but don’t miss the gray heron swooping down into the river
for something equally delectable. This time, Gayle has created an easy-going,
elegant place, both comfortable and unpretentious and guests feel rich here, in
every way.
It is a find that astonishes
travelers who happen upon it in a remote corner of North Carolina. The inn,
decorated with antiques and art, stuffed with books, and planted with flowers
and an herb garden is welcoming, and the hearth is homey but complete with a
bar, a fine wine list, and a talented chef Gayle. Guests come back for her
gourmet breakfasts, her maple-currant bread pudding and elegant wedding cakes
among dozens of other specialties.
When
asked if she has more ideas, Gayle exudes, “Oh yes. If I can just live long
enough! I want to turn the old dairy barn into a grand place for barn dances,
conferences and performances. The old milk parlor should be a bar. It still has
an overhead trolley for silage,” she adds. “And above that, in the old granary,
I’d like to have a yoga studio for classes, a massage room, and a sauna.”
Quickly, she goes on. “In the silo—isn’t it magnificent?—I think there should
be a spiral staircase inside with books lining the wall all the way up. I would
raise the roof and put in glass for a view from the top.” Her enthusiasm builds
as she speaks. “And the tobacco barn will be four new rooms with a common
space, you know, Tobacco Barn, No Smoking.”
Since the
birth of River House, Gayle has created and sustained weekly Summer Sunday
Salons featuring musicians, writers, and actors and the annual "Winefest
on the New" featuring North Carolina wines and wineries. Weddings beneath
the extraordinary Sycamore tree at river's edge have become another specialty.
Gayle is
so like that elegant, towering Sycamore. River House, the haven she has created
is a treasured find, but for me and many others, knowing Gayle, a person of
such stature and form is the ultimate good fortune. She is the reason people
come. The places she creates are merely an expression of who she is.
In 2009, with guests arriving from
all over the US and the British Isles, Gayle celebrated her 80th
birthday. Friends created a musical event performed by friends and attended by
friends so numerous that it was held at the Ashe Civic Center. Soon after,
Governor Beverly Perdue awarded her the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, North
Carolina’s highest civilian honor, for her life of service.
When Representative Cully Tarleton
presented the award in a ceremony at the Ashe County Chamber of Commerce in
West Jefferson, he said, "Gayle Winston is the personification of a true
renaissance woman. Her involvement and leadership in the hospitality industry,
travel and tourism and the arts has benefited citizens all across North
Carolina. If ever anyone has earned this prestigious award, it's Gayle."
What is Gayle proudest of? Because conservation of Ashe County lands has
been her life-long passion and she has successfully protected nearly eighty
acres of her land through the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, she
jokes, "I like to tell my banker that my suitors, today, are not after my
body, they're after my land.” On a more serious note, she is proudest of the
friendships she has accumulated over the years, from all over the globe. She
says, “I have the best friends of anybody!” And of course we know she’s not
finished yet.
See: Chopped Liver Pate, 2017 by Gayle Winston
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