Remembering Danny Wingate: Keeper of Blue Ridge traditions

GRAYSON CO., Va. (WDBJ) - Danny Wingate was a master of many traditions.

Whether he was using horses to pull vintage farm equipment, working as a blacksmith, or splitting oak shingles by hand, he practiced many of the crafts associated with the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Wingate died January 15 at the age of 72.

We first met him more than 20 years ago, mowing a field on his Grayson Co. farm with equipment that had been in his family since 1947. He told us he enjoyed the connection with the past, and the opportunity to work with his horses: two Percherons named Kate and Ann.

“In my family, several of my great uncles on both sides of my family, on my grandmother’s and my grandfather’s, they were some of the last people in this county that actually farmed with horses,” Wingate told us. “Our family’s always had horses as far as I can tell, and always been lovers of horses, so I enjoy having them. I enjoy the connection.”

Wingate also demonstrated another skill: splitting oak shingles by hand. When we visited in 2001, he was working on an order the National Park Service would use to re-shingle Mabry Mill and other buildings along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

“What I’m doing is I’m taking these big oak logs. And I’m reducing them down to little pieces five inches wide and three eighths of an inch thick,” Wingate explained. “And I’m doing it the traditional way, the way it’s always been done. And because it works for me.”

Roddy Moore met Wingate 50 years ago.

“You know he was a shingle maker. He was a rail splitter. He was a blacksmith. He was a leather worker,” Moore said in an interview this week.

The Director Emeritus of the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College, Moore often consulted Wingate when he had a question about a regional tradition. And he turned to Wingate when the Blue Ridge Institute needed a weathervane for its new building.

“And Danny said, well I’ll make one for the institute and I’ll make a plow, because you all are turning over new ground all the time. And so that’s why we have a plow weathervane on the cupola on the Blue Ridge Institute. And so every time you drive by, you can sort of nod and speak to Danny,” Moore said.

Moore told us losing Wingate was like shutting the cover on an encyclopedia of southwest Virginia.

Family and friends of Danny Wingate will gather for a Celebration of Life Sunday afternoon at 2:00 at Asbury Church in Rural Retreat.