There is something quite gracious with this story.

It was a memorable storm on Barnes Run in 1947, lightening fracturing trees and blasphemous thunder making ones hair stand up, accompanied by buckets of water.

Ray and Thelma McCoy Roach had purchased several hundred acres of the Albert Ball plantation, moving back from Parkersburg to country life in Calhoun County.

It would be a few years before electricity was wired to the backwoods, and locals would still embrace crank'em up phones.

Barnes Run Road was pure and treacherous red clay, with potholes big enough to sink a Model T Ford.

My family had been visiting one evening and had settled in to endure the squall, when Uncle Ray glanced up the road to see a person with a hand lantern jiggling in the wind, to then step onto the front porch to see who was coming down the road.

Then we heard the high pitched voice of a woman singing the well-known hymn, "I'll Fly Away," between the thunderclaps.

"Some glad morning when this life is o'er
I'll fly away,
To a home on God's celestial shore
I'll fly away."

Ray walked to the road to welcome the woman into the house, discovering it was a neighbor about a mile up the creek, Leota Kerby Nutter (1899-1957), wife of Commodore Nutter (1896-1965), a woman that experienced mental health problems her whole life, a well-known woods wanderer. She and Commodore had married in 1916

Ray and Thelma gave her a change of clothes after which she reclined on the couch, then going to her residence to leave a note for Commodore, who was attending church at Hur. Later in the evening he came down the creek to take her home.

Leota was part of a small, rural neighborhood that continued to keep a watchful eye on the woman.

Commodore Nutter was a one room school teacher in Calhoun for 35 years, mostly walking to the site. He was a faithful attendee at the Hur Church a couple of times a week, walking about three miles from Barnes Run out the Kerby Ridge to a service, then faithfully, on bended knee, pray for his wife.

Commodore and Leota had two children.

Leota's mental health continued to decline and she was placed in Spencer State Hospital where she died in 1957.

Commodore later moved to Washington County, Ohio, where he was fatally injured in a tractor accident on his son's farm in 1965.

Many years ago I was shuffling through an old photo album to discover a beautiful photo of a young girl with a caption saying she liked to sleep in the Barnes Run cave, no name given.

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I cannot make the connection to the photo being Leota Kerby Nutter, but the location is a fit.

"I'll fly away, oh glory,
I'll fly away in the morning
When I die, Hallelujah by and by,
I'll fly away, I'll fly away."