Some people say the trouble started a few years back, when the Walton's Mountain Museum decided to put a moonshinin' still in a replica of Mama's kitchen. Writer Earl Hamner Jr., the hometown boy who created "The Waltons" television series, had to protest. His mother had been a teetotaler.
That was bad enough, but when museum officials ousted Hamner's brother from the board after a recent squabble, the family decided to break all ties with the tourist attraction that their lives had inspired. Within days, Hamner had withdrawn his Emmys, scripts and other mementos from the facility, throwing into doubt its future. In the past, it has drawn 30,000 fans a year and about $280,000 in revenue. Then Hamner unveiled a bigger surprise: plans to build a competing museum down the road.
"I don't see any way it can be patched up," said Hamner, 79, from his office in Studio City, Calif. "The museum has dealt itself maybe a fatal blow. As a friend of mine said, 'They've cut down the tree but left the monkeys up there.' It's the doing of a very small group of people, and a lot of people have to suffer for it."
"The Waltons," which ran from 1972 to 1981 and gave the world the catchphrase "Good night, John Boy," was drawn from Hamner's childhood during the Great Depression in this speck of a community about 20 miles west of Charlottesville. As the eldest of eight children, Hamner turned memories of growing up in Schuyler (pronounced SKY-ler), in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, into the wholesome Walton family and its neighbors. With his rolling Virginia accent, Hamner also served as the show's narrator, and to fans -- including a new group of Europeans who have discovered "The Waltons" recently in syndication -- he remains a beloved figure.
But the head of the Schuyler Community Center, which runs the museum out of the old, red-brick schoolhouse the Hamners attended in the 1930s and '40s, said he is confident the museum can remain afloat, even without the family stamp of approval.
"As far as I can tell, it can survive without Earl," said Buck Whitehurst, 40, the board president. "We had the 10-year anniversary recently, and it was very successful. It would be better if we had the support of Earl, but we also have to take the other stuff, too."
What transpired here almost sounds like an episode of "The Waltons," with good intentions ending in hurt feelings.
Reached by winding, tree-shaded roads, Schuyler is an unincorporated community, with a Baptist church, a couple of country stores, a bed-and-breakfast inn, a post office and a collection of older frame homes, including the white, two-story house where Earl Hamner Sr. and his wife, Doris, raised their brood.
Counting the surrounding countryside, greater Schuyler has about 1,000 residents, but it was probably more bustling in past times. A soapstone factory here used to employ 1,200 workers, including the senior Hamner, and was responsible for bringing electricity to the area. Although the fictional Waltons lived on Walton's Mountain, there is no corresponding Hamner peak, just a series of rising hills.
On a recent rainy afternoon, a couple of visitors were at the museum, paying $5 each to look at the re-created Walton's kitchen with its wood stove and butter churn, and the old still, now housed in the Baldwin Sisters' Recipe Room. Three women who work there threw up their hands and refused to comment on the controversy. "We just work here," one said.
A lot of people in Schuyler refuse to talk publicly about the controversy, although the latest dispute remains, frankly, the talk of the town.
"Schuyler is a small community, and they've had over the years, if you look in our paper's archives, several of these little disputes," said Mike Morell, a staff writer at the weekly Nelson County Times. "This latest one where they kicked Earl's brother off the board was the last straw."
These days, Morell said, some in the community are focusing their ire on plans for the new museum, now referred to as the Nelson County Museum of Rural History.
Supporters of the Walton's Mountain Museum "are kind of acting like they're the only people in the community who should have a museum on the Depression era and that anything else will be taking money away from them," he said. "They've sent letters to the [Nelson County] Board of Supervisors stating that they don't think the county should provide money for it -- there's already one in Schuyler, and that should be enough."
Hamner Jr., who was of course the model for John Boy Walton, is quick to stress that his problems with the museum never involved the people he grew up with. "The people I know in Schuyler, who incidentally I love and respect, they have not changed," Hamner said. "They are the salt of the earth, they are wonderful, they are decent, they are kind. These, I want to repeat, are not the people I've written about. In almost every case, they are from Charlottesville or Washington or New York."
The Walton's Mountain Museum came about in 1992, after the old Schuyler school closed, and residents decided to preserve it as a community center. Woody Greenberg, then on the Board of Supervisors, recalled conversations he had with Doris Hamner about the strangers who would come knocking at her door, seeking out the real Waltons. He had the idea of turning part of the center into a museum, featuring replicas of the sets of the Waltons' kitchen and living room, and John Boy's bedroom, as well as Hamner's memorabilia. Greenberg secured a $30,000 state grant for the project. Hamner pitched in $10,000, and when the museum had its grand opening, 6,000 people attended.
But almost from the beginning, there were troubles.
"That museum has never been a professional-type museum," said James Hamner, 66, Earl's youngest brother. The model for Jim Bob Walton, he is the only Hamner sibling who never moved away from Schuyler. "It's been used for some people's good and not for others. Things we suggested went by the byway."
As for big brother Earl, "he's been treated dirty," James said.
Hamner Jr. said he now regrets the way the museum was set up. "We never expected conflict, so we never built in any voice for us."
The latest tempest came this year after James, a retired systems analyst who served as treasurer of the museum, wrote a letter of recommendation on museum stationery for a museum employee who was about to be sentenced in an embezzling case. Before long, James was voted out.
Earl came to the defense of his brother. First, he tried unsuccessfully to get Whitehurst, the board president, to resign, according to Whitehurst. Then, in May, he fired off a letter to the board, noting that "a member of my family was caused pain, humiliation and mental anguish. . . . I am sure you will understand that I cannot continue to give you my support or allow you the use of my name."
Board members resigned right and left over the summer, and gossip flared.
But Whitehurst says that people are rallying around the community center. There are plans to add yoga classes and other revenue-boosting efforts. "We had to take certain actions to protect our community center, and we'll deal with the consequences as best we can," he wrote in a letter to The Washington Post.
Those consequences are likely to take shape on a plot of land on U.S. 29 in the 1county seat of Lovingston. There, another old school building is undergoing $2 million in renovations to become the Nelson Center, and nearby, Greenberg, a family friend, hopes to re-create the Walton family homestead, including a barn and outbuildings.
Hamner Jr. is helping to raise funds for the new museum. As for the Walton's Mountain Museum, he said, the annual "Waltons" reunion weekend in October didn't draw a single actor from the series. In the past, with his blessing, as many as eight or nine actors showed up in Schuyler.
"The actors gave it sort of a glamour, and my family gave it legitimacy and warmth," Hamner said. "So now there's nothing there but the furniture."
