2021 Inductees into Our Hall of Fame
Paula Rosenblatt Finck
Paula Finck is an arts educator by training, a poet and artist by temperament and practice, and a lifelong activist and community organizer.
Growing up in a politically split household in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and living in a cooperative boarding house in college may have been early experiences driving her desires to resolve political conflict and work collaboratively with others.
Paula started a family with her husband Henry and moved to Pittsburgh in the 1960s, where they were active in the civil rights and anti-war movements and promoting local issues. She went door-to-door soliciting neighbors to sign a petition banning large trucks from using their street. She made a tape recording of the roaring truck traffic to hammer home the point at City Hall, and it worked.
In the 1970s she was program and store manager at the Jambalaya Artist Cooperative, serving the needs of artists and performers from all walks of life, and she was deeply involved in starting and operating Pittsburgh’s first food cooperative. Paula also organized her pre-Internet neighborhood compiling and distributing the “Neighborhood Talent and Resource Registry,” a directory of neighbors offering their skills and talents to each other.
In 1980, inspired by the writing of Helen and Scott Nearing, she and Henry moved to rural West Virginia to live a simpler life. There, Paula taught art in a local public high school for ten years. She also founded “Women of the 21st Century,” bringing women together to network and share experiences; started a poetry group; and served as the first president of “ArtsLink,” a two-county arts organization bringing grants, performers, and other cultural resources to the people. After the 9/11 attacks she co-founded “The Spirit Group” to study world religions with friends and neighbors as an act of healing and understanding.
The 21st century brought many changes, including a new home in North Carolina and the passing of Henry.
Inspired by the example of Granny D (Doris Haddock), Paula became a local advocate for campaign finance reform. She joined the “High Country Writers” group and combined her passion for poetry and community by co-founding “Behind the Stacks,” a group for local poets.
In January 2017, local activists turned to Paula for help in gathering people in the Boone community to march in sisterhood with the Washington, D.C. Women’s March. She rallied hundreds more for another solidarity march in Boone the following year. Paula also connected with “Small and Mighty Acts,” a community-based social justice organization.
As a dedicated, self-professed “public citizen,” Paula frequently turns her writing skills toward letters to the editor and to her elected officials. At age 91 and counting, nothing excites Paula more than a good cause and working with like-minded citizens to create a better world.
For these reasons, the Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Paula Finck among the 2021 inductees into our Hall of Fame.
Rennie W. Brantz
Third Annual Boone Heritage Festival in Boone NC at the Daniel Boone Park or Horn in the West
Rennie Brantz announced his retirement this year after almost two decades on the Boone Town Council and as Mayor of Boone. He was first elected to a four-year term in 2005 and was easily reelected every time he ran. He was appointed to the mayorship in 2015 to fill out an unexpired term, and he was reelected mayor twice more. Because of his keen and deep interest in history (he was hired to teach history at Appalachian State University in 1974; he retired in 2017 from the university) he was instrumental in creating Boone’s Historic Preservation Commission and the Boone Historic District. He was very instrumental in saving Boone’s historic downtown post office.
As a professor of history, it’s not an exaggeration to say he was “beloved by students.” He received the award for Outstanding Teacher, Outstanding Freshman Advocate, Outstanding Service Award, and Teacher of the Year. He was a founder and director of the Freshman Seminar program, which was created to ease the passage of green high school kids into successful college students. He served many years in the late-’80s and early-’90s as faculty advisor for the ASU College Democrats.
His specialty was German history, particularly the 20th century and especially The Holocaust. He founded and coordinated the Center for Judiac, Holocaust, and Peace Studies, and for some 17 years he was well known for leading student-study-abroad trips to Europe.
He is a serious man who has made serious contributions to the vibrancy and improvement of the. In recognition of his contributions to the life of the town, on September 16, 2021, the town council voted to name the North Street Park for Mayor Rennie Brantz.
The Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Rennie Brantz among the 2021 inductees into our Hall of Fame.
Lynne Obrist Mason
Lynne Mason’s early career in social work owed much to the influence of her father, Paul Obrist, a professor of psychiatry at UNC-Chapel Hill who was a strong advocate for social justice. Lynne was working for New River Behavioral Health Care when the redevelopment of an existing trailerpark for a new motel on Blowing Rock Road led to the displacement of 43 families. Lynne spearheaded the effort to relocate them in suitable housing, an experience that highlighted for her the severe shortable of affordable housing in this community and inspired her own candidacy for the Boone Town Council in 2001. She served 18 years through multiple terms and retired as Mayor Pro-Tem.
While serving in local government, Lynne continued her social justice work as director of services and then executive director of Hospitality House. She oversaw its fundraising and the eventual construction of the $2.6 million facility. She was also coordinator for WeCAN, the Watauga Crisis Assistance Network, a faith-based ministry that assists families facing eviction, utility cut-offs, fuel shortages, etc. As a member of the Boone Sunrise Rotary club, she has coordinated community service projects like the river cleanup and Habitat for Humanity workdays.
Lynne and her husband Andy are the founders and owners of the Lost Province Brewing Company, which they began planning in early 2013, and which opened its doors in downtown Boone in August 2014. It is an independent, family-owned and operated restaurant and brewery that is committed to paying living wages to all its employees, providing health benefits to full-time employees, and working with local farms and local musicians, with a strong commitment to supporting our local community. Lost Province has hosted many Democratic candidate appearances.
For these and other reasons, the Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Lynne Mason among the 2021 inductees into our Hall of Fame.
Celia Graham Roten
Celia Roten led the Watauga County Democratic Party as Chair during a pivotal moment, 1999 and into the turning of the Century, when the new management of the Party was establishing an identity and a vision and an organization capable of winning elections. Celia said in a press interview soon after she became chair, “As Democrats, we need to stay ahead in the battle of ideas. We have to conceive it to achieve it. We need to think big and let people know who we are and what we stand for.”
A major player among the “new management” of the Watauga Democratic Party back in the late ’90s, Celia became the Party Chair in 1999, following the chairmanship of Dave Ragsdale. Celia was a prime mover among new precinct leaders all over the county, and as the new chair, she insisted that the Watauga Democrats had to havea float in the Boone July 4th parade, something that the Party had not been participating in. That year — 1999 — the WataugaDems won “The Mayor’s Prize” for most colorful float in the parade. The Democrats had arrived. Celia Roten made everything she touched beautiful and memorable (assisted always by her beloved husband Carl Roten and their daughter Dr. Cara Roten-Henson and her husband Rusty Henson. It was Rusty who outfitted and drove the big truck and trailer for the July 4th float, which he has continued to do every year since. Celia’s son Ivan Roten teaches in the College of Business at ASU.)
Celia remained a solid rock for the Party after her term as chair ended, becoming a Watauga representative on the State Executive Committee, traveling to statewide meetings for many years. She helped with arrangements for the naming of the New River as an American Heritage River, when Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and other statewide politicians came to the High Country. She entered a statewide chili cookoff put on by the NC Democratic Party in Raleigh and took first place.
She was a member of the Appalachian State University Applied Design Department (formerly Home Economics) for 27 years and has a scholarship named for her in “Apparel Design and Merchandising.” She served on the Caldwell Community College Board of Trustees, 1999-2003.
The Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Celia Roten among the 2021 inductees into our Hall of Fame.
Virginia Anne Burgess
Though born in the Bayside neighborhood of Queens in New York City, Anne Burgess had a deep connection through her mother to Watauga County and to the Middle Fork Valley between Boone and Blowing Rock, where her Coffey relatives had settled. She spent most of her growing-up years in Greensboro. When her mother and her uncle together bought the old Tom and Mary Greer farm near what is now Tweetsie Railroad in 1952, Anne inherited an anchor that pulled her home to Watauga. She still lives in what was once the Greer two-storey rock barn.
Her great passion was art, particularly drawing, and for a time she earned her New York apartment rent by selling her pieces in sidewalk art shows and in restaurants and bars in New York City. Eventually, after moving permanently to Watauga County, she sold four covers to the New Yorkermagazine and a number of pen-and-ink “spot drawings” used as column fillers. She is still an active artist in her favorite mediums of pen-and-ink and water color and has been an devoted member of the Artmix collective of local artists. Anne’s art has illustrated a number of children’s books.
Anne met Leo Mast in 1993 during the community organizing drive in Sugar Grove to preserve the old Cove Creek School. Anne and Leo married, and Leo was the driving force behind the Cove Creek Preservation and Development group and was included among the first honorees of our Hall of Fame in 2011.
After Leo’s death, Anne returned to the property her mother and uncle bought in 1952 near Tweetsie, and in the late-1990s she became the moving force in launching the vision of a Middle Fork Greenway Trail that would eventually link Boone and Blowing Rock. Under the leadership of the new MFG Trail director, Wendy Patoprsty, and Blue Ridge Conservancy, and with the help and support of ASU and the community, the remnants of the old Payne Branch Dam have finally been destroyed, reconnecting long-separated colonies of aquatic wildlife. The difficult work of easement acquisition and fundraising continues on other sections. The trail will eventually connect the sidewalks of Blowing Rock to the Boone Greenway as well as to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. Anne said, “It is hoped that the Middle Fork project will inspire other communities to build hiking and biking trails so that someday, the sooner the better, we may all be connected by foot travel.”
For her visionary leadership and artistic creativity, the Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Anne Burgess among the 2021 inductees into our Hall of Fame.