They were standing at the entrance of Dumlupinar University in northern Turkey when the University Rector Dr. Hakki Duger made his announcement.
"I want to make you a gift," he said.
A crew of six faculty from the University's satellite school, the College at Wise, had just spent two weeks visiting Dumlupinar University and its surrounding town Kutahya in the summer of 1999. Situated in the heart of a region known best for the beautiful Turkish tiles and pottery produced there, it was an unlikely locale for a gift presentation.
But the exchange indeed took place, and the planning phase for the erection of a Turkish fountain, which University President John T. Casteen III referred to as "zippy," is well underway. The University Board of Visitors, which oversees the College at Wise, gave the project the go-ahead last month.
With a targeted completion date set for spring of 2001, the fountain will stand 14 feet high and 10 feet in diameter, College at Wise Provost George Culbertson said.
"The fountain is a smaller version of the grand fountains built in public places by Ottoman dignitaries in the 19th century," Casteen said.
"It has a roof of the style found in such fountains and bright blue or cobalt tile work set in the Turkish style on the outer walls," he said.
So what prompted this small, Turkish university to build an architectural masterpiece in Wise County, Va.?
The answer to this question lies primarily in the research of College at Wise Prof. Brent N. Kennedy.
A self-proclaimed native Appalachian who "grew up in these mountains," Kennedy questioned the "official history" of his people. History states that Appalachians have a Scots-Irish background, but Kennedy and his brother both have dark complexions.
"We just thought we were very dark-complected Irishmen," Kennedy said.
Upon research, Kennedy found that he could trace his family history back to ancestors who were Turkish, Jewish and Portuguese, findings that did not coincide with the official history of the region.
In 1988, Kennedy fell sick while teaching at Georgetown University with a particularly acute case of sarcoidosis. As it would turn out, sarcoidisos is a disease most commonly found in people of Middle Eastern descent.
It seemed there was more to the history of the Appalachian people than books bore out. Indeed, there was a story of an entire people - the Melungeons - that awaited them.
Kennedy began fervently researching his own family heritage, and in doing so, came across a slew of information linking the entire region and those native to it to the Middle East.
"The question for historians," Kennedy said, "is how this happened."
Nobody knows the definite origin of the word Melungeon, but it is commonly thought to be a derivative of the ancient Arabic phrase "Melun Jinn," meaning "cursed soul" or "one who's been abandoned by God." Earlier theories link the word to the French "melange," meaning mixture.
"It was something of a mystery term around here for a while," Kennedy said. "But we were able to definitively document three waves of Arabic speakers - Portuguese Muslims, Arabs and Turks - who came to this area in the 15th century who could have brought the term with them."
Two centuries later, when England was colonizing the New World, they weren't always sending bonafide Englishmen as settlers. Instead, Kennedy said, they would also send people who lived in England and who were treated as though they were English, but their ethnicity was actually Turkish, Jewish or even gypsy.
"Contrary to what most people believe, around 80 percent of the people who came to the New World as settlers were boys," Kennedy said.
These settlers married into Melungeon families in modern day North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and Tenessee, bestowing their English last names upon their brides.
As a result, the history of the region states that the people are of Scots-Irish descent, which is simply not accurate. The Melungeons are a mixture of many different people, and the Mediterranean strain had been omitted from their oral history for years. Their dark complexions relegated them to the status of slaves, and the Melungeons sustained much persecution until relatively recently for their mulatto appearance.
Kennedy used his own family as the basis for his research, but achieved world-wide fame for his findings, attracting the attention of scholars in Turkey.
"We are their ancestors, 400 years later," Kennedy said.
A relationship began to grow between two Universities in Turkey and the College at Wise, which enrolls a number of Melungeon students each year. Exchange programs were implemented, and students travel each year to and from Turkey in an effort to foster greater understanding between the people.
The fountain, then, is a gift whose essence is deeply rooted in the region. The students at the College at Wise will have a constant reminder of this forgotten facet of Appalachia's heritage.
"It will be placed in a landscaped plaza as a reminder of the links between the two colleges, and as a kind of memorial to Turkish or eastern Mediterranean people who migrated to the southern highlands," Casteen said.
In this vein, quotes from Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the University, and Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, will adorn the fountain's sides.
And in return, the College at Wise has made a gift of a Jefferson bust to Dumlupinar University, to stand in their quad - an area similar to our Lawn, Culbertson said.
"They are very interested in Jefferson's philosophy of education," Kennedy said. "So we figured this would be a nice way to help send the Jeffersonian message abroad," he said with a chuckle.
The Melungeons are a thriving community in Appalachia today. Their motto is: "One people, all colors." They have annual festivals and make huge efforts to celebrate their ethnicity - all of it.
"The important thing to remember here is that we are proud of every drop of blood in us. This is just one of those paths of heritage," Kennedy said.
"We are all related. We are all one race. And we're just using what happened to us here in the mountains to prove that point," he said.
It just goes to show that one person can make a difference. Kennedy's research has allowed this small school in Southwest Virginia to achieve an admirable feat in diplomacy.
"Here we sit, in the middle of nowhere in the grand scheme of things, and we're really doing some unique things in international relations," Kennedy said. "And there's a kind of beauty in that"
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