Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2013 - 60

Michael clark

Damien and Betsy Heath

Elaina Arenz-Smith

Owner, New River Mountain Guides, Access
Fund Athlete Ambassador; West Virginia
Elaina Arenz-Smith started climbing
when she was a student at UT-Austin. She
used to visit West Virginia every summer
for two weeks, and fell in love with the community in Fayetteville, and finally moved
there 10 years ago. A year later, she bought
New River Mountain Guides from the former owner, a friend.
“I had a lot of experience teaching climbing and working as a guide, but hadn’t
thought of making it my living until the
opportunity presented itself.” Since 2004,
she’s grown the business by double digits
and started programs including kids’ climbing camps, women’s programs, yoga/climbing retreats and par tnerships with
professional climbers.
“I love how warm and welcoming the
people of West Virginia are, and the New
River Gorge climbing community is very
inclusive…
“There are days when I go climbing and
I don’t see another soul other than my
climbing partner. It’s an easy place to escape
to and reconnect with the things in life that
really matter.”
60 | BlueRidgeCountry.com

Owners, Lot 12 Public House; West Virginia
Food is something of an art for Damien
and Betsy Heath. Damien, a chef who trained
in Wilmington, N.C., Baltimore, Md. and
Ireland, met his wife Betsy in Shepherdstown,
W.Va. After working in North and South
Carolina, they decided to come back to
Berkeley Springs to open a restaurant in
Damien’s hometown, where both his parents
are artists.
The restaurant is named for exactly where
it’s located – the original Lot #12 in the Town
of Bath. The house dates from 1913.
“Everything was there – we just had to
clean it up a little bit,” says Damien. “It’s
nice and elegant, but we don’t want to be
the stuffy, jacket-required” kind of
restaurant.
But beyond the restaurant space, the
Heaths are part of the local food movement,
Dreama Gentry

Executive Director, Externally Sponsored
Programs, Berea College; Kentucky
Dreama Gentry’s job title may not express
fully the extent of her work’s impact. Gentry
directs an annual budget of $20 million and
a staff of 140, with the goal of encouraging
young people in rural Appalachian Kentucky
to go on to college. It's based at Berea College,
which has built a long history of reaching out
to empower first-generation college students,
many from impoverished areas.
Gentry understands where they’re coming from. “My dad was a construction
worker, my mother was a secretary. They
never pushed me to go to college, but when
I decided I wanted to go they supported
that.”
She was an only child, and had strong
academics, and her role models were
teachers.
Most students at Berea College work their
four years in school, and Gentry’s job was in
public relations. Her biggest challenge was
having to answer the phone – her family
never had a phone at home, and “I’d always
been introverted and shy.”
After college, Gentry went to law school
at University of Kentucky, practiced for a

members of Slow Food USA, Local Harvest
and other organizations, working with local
farmers, greenhouses, coffee roasters and
growers with the goal not only of serving
fresh, organic and local food but supporting
sustainable agriculture.

while in Bowling Green, but wanted to do
work that made a difference. She came back
to Berea with two sons and a husband. At
that point, her position was part-time; she
had one other employee, and they worked
with one middle school and one high school.
Federal funding and vision did the rest: they
now work with 19 school districts made up
of more than 13,000 youth.

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Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2013

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