All is not peaceful at the Walton's Mountain Museum
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 Within days, Hamner had withdrawn his Emmys, scripts and other mementos, throwing the facility's future into doubt after drawing 30,000 fans a year and about $280,000 in revenue. Hamner then unveiled a bigger surprise: plans to build a competing museum down the road.
"I don't see any way it can be patched up," Hamner, 79, said 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 southwest 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, with 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.
"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.
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, reared their brood.
The Schuyler area has about 1,000 residents, but it was probably more bustling in past times. A soapstone factory used to employ 1,200 workers, including the senior Hamner. Although the fictional Waltons lived on Walton's Mountain, there is no corresponding Hamner peak, only 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 woodstove 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."
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 county Board of Supervisors, recalled conversations he had with Doris Hamner about strangers who would knock 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, Hamner pitched in $10,000, and 6,000 people attended the grand opening.
But there were troubles, almost from the beginning. "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.
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. James was voted out.
Earl came to his brother's defense. First, he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Whitehurst, the board president, to resign, according to Whitehurst. Then, in May, Earl 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, and gossip flared. But Whitehurst says 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 told The Washington Post.
Those consequences are likely to take shape on a plot of land on U.S. 29 in the county seat of Lovingston. There, another old school building is undergoing $2 million in renovations to become the Nelson County Museum of Rural History, and Greenberg, a family friend, hopes to re-create the Walton family homestead.
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."