Jereial Byron Fletcher

Jereial Byron Fletcher died on Sunday, March 7, 2021, at home with his family, after a diagnosis of metastatic cancer. The life of this extraordinary man began at his parents' home in Nickelsville, Virginia, on December 28, 1953. Educated in Scott County, Virginia public schools, he was an honors graduate from Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, a double major in English and Education. Throughout his 45-year-long career in higher education, he carried forward the mission statement of Berea: "To offer a high-quality liberal arts education that engages students as they pursue their personal, academic, and professional goals." He was proud of Berea's history as the first integrated Southern coeducational institution of higher learning, where all students worked and studied and served their community. Fluent in Appalachian studies and every discipline of English language and literature, Jereial taught at Virginia Tech during his Master's degree program and worked as a counselor for Upward Bound. After graduating from Tech, he and his wife Ramona, a fellow graduate student, moved to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he completed all the coursework for the Ph.D. in English. A resident of Bluefield since 1980, Jereial completed later graduate studies in Higher Education at Virginia Tech for the Ed.D. coursework and exams, culminating in the CAGSE. All of these went into the wide-ranging expertise that enriched his teaching, first at Bluefield College for four years, and then at Southwest Virginia Community College since 1984, his service there lasting 37 years. Many thousands of students passed through his courses, and they were enriched and inspired by him. His mentoring of new faculty and his service as Chair of Humanities and Dean at SWCC ensured that his comprehensive knowledge and devotion to the ideals of service will continue long afterward. His innovation and dedication to VCCS and to regional, statewide, and national organizations made his impact even greater. He was preceded in death by his father, Victor Byron Fletcher, and his mother, Rebecca Lucas Fletcher, his uncle Cecil Dwight Fletcher and aunt Lula Foster Fletcher, his cousin Clarion Fletcher, and many Addington and Fletcher and Lucas relations whose genealogy lines were carefully documented going back centuries. He was a fount of knowledge on Scott County, Southwest Virginia, and East Tennessee history, culture, and geography. He was a keen paddler of rivers and a farmer and protector of the land that was his birthright. Jereial Byron Fletcher was a poet. He loved folklore and stories and jokes and linguistic puzzles. An advocate for Appalachian Studies, he was a member of the founding committee that created the Appalachian Heritage Writers Symposium, a key force in the VCCS New Horizons annual conferences, Editor and board member of the VCCS community college journal Inquiry. He hosted many writers who visited SWCC, including James Still, author of River of Earth. He was a James Still Fellow at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, a Chancellor's Fellow in the VCCS, and mentor to professionals seeking Virginia teaching credentials in the Career Switchers program. He read Old and Middle English, French, Spanish, and Hebrew. He introduced friends and students to Gurney Norman and James Still and many other mountain and southern writers. He loved Geoffrey Chaucer and the British Romantic poets, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, and Robert Penn Warren and had an encyclopedic knowledge of British and American literature. He leaves behind his wife of 43 years, Ramona Semones Fletcher, and his daughter Rachel Colleen Fletcher. He loved his family and was loved by them. No words can speak to their loss. Survivors include his sister Beatrice Fletcher Dingus (Wayne), brothers-in-law Michael Semones (Helen), Andy Semones, Vincent Semones (Karen), Joe Semones (Jill), Danny Semones (Anita), and sister-in-law Nancy Semones Knox, as well as mother-in-law Anna McMillan Semones, fellow kayaker and traveller and gardener and lover of nature. He leaves behind many cousins and nieces and nephews. He also leaves many friends and colleagues, former students, everyone fortunate enough to spend time in his company: you know who you are and how much you meant to him. His "first officer" and friend Tammy Austin, valued Division Administrative Assistant at SWCC, kept him organized and punctual; together, they knew or could find the answers to questions all and sundry. The voice of Alpha Baldridge, in James Still's novel River of Earth, could speak for Jereial Fletcher, when she said, "Forever I've wanted to set us down in a lone spot, a place certain and enduring, with room to swing arm and elbow, a garden-piece for fresh victuals .... I'm longing to set me down shorely and raise my chaps proper." Jereial believed in the essential truths of poetry, going again and again to William Ernest Henley's "Invictus": I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. His family is grateful to Amedisys Hospice for compassionate care in the final hours and for the excellent services of Mercer Funeral Home in Bluefield, WV. A celebration of Jereial's life will be held when it is safe to do so. Those wishing to make a donation in his memory may contribute to the SWCC Educational Foundation or to The Clinch River Valley Initiative/Nature Conservancy partnership working to create a Clinch River State Park in Virginia.

Jereial Byron Fletcher

December 28, 1953 - March 7, 2021