A reality TV show joins an effort to restore the Tryon birthplace of a musical legend

Artifacts are shown at Nina Simone’s birthplace in Tryon.

Last Modified: Friday, February 8, 2013 at 1:05 p.m.

TRYON -- Eunice Waymon must have made the walk hundreds of times from her humble home on Tryon's east side to the grander home of her piano teacher across the railroad tracks. It was a journey of about two miles. Sometimes she would stop at the drugstore along the way. Sometimes she would walk with a friend. Mostly, though, she walked alone. It would be her lifelong way, even when she left behind the tranquility of Tryon and obscurity to become the world-famous Nina Simone in Philadelphia, New York and, eventually, France.

There are few indications that she was a sentimental person. She never expressed a longing for Tryon, or for America in general when she lived abroad. On the contrary, she frequently voiced disillusionment and outright anger because of racial inequalities. She often told the story of refusing to perform at a recital in Tryon unless her parents were allowed to keep their seats in front instead of having to move to the back of the room to make way for a white couple.

Yet in Tryon, for the past decade at least, there have been efforts to honor Simone by those who admire her talent and accomplishments and appreciate her legacy as a musician and a civil rights spokesperson.

Now there is a plan to preserve her birthplace as a lasting memorial. The effort would collect online donations for the restoration, which would be documented in a reality TV show.

Ten years ago, when Kipp McIntyre first saw the structure at 30 E. Livingston St. and heard it was the house where Eunice Waymon was born, he thought there must be some mistake. It didn't look old enough.

But Fred Counts, who had been a neighbor and schoolmate of Waymon's and who lives just down the street, assured him that it was. Closer inspection revealed the house had been modernized over its years as a rental.

When Waymon's older brother, Carrol, visited Tryon in 2006, he confirmed it; this was the house his family had lived in for a period of his childhood. And, yes, they were living there when, on Feb. 21, 1933, his sister, Eunice, was born.

When the Lyles house next door to, and from the same era as, the birthplace was deemed uninhabitable and torn down, it was a blow, McIntyre said, to the "heart and soul of the community." He knew he had to move fast. He bought the Waymon house in 2005 and began restoring it.

"As the levels of modernity were peeled away," he said, "the original structure was exposed for what it was — a period architectural example of how houses in that neighborhood were built around the 1930s."

Today when he sees the small, weathered house, he sees it not only as the birthplace of a musical legend, but as a reminder of a vanished way of life when its neighborhood was a vibrant community unto itself.

McIntyre spent years and all the money he had, he said, including an inheritance, working to stabilize a precarious foundation and to bring the house back to its original bones.

When siding from the 1970s was removed, workers discovered that some original boards on the house had deteriorated or were missing. Fortunately, the demolition of a church in nearby Lynn yielded boards that were an exact match.

The home's original windows had been replaced over the years, and replacements had to be custom built after consulting with neighbors. McIntyre was fortunate to find doors salvaged from a house in Mill Spring.

With the work required just to stabilize the house, however, the bills mounted. Realizing his resources were running dry, McIntyre reluctantly put the house back on the market.

That's where Dan Riedemann came in.

"When Dan called, the project had stalled completely," McIntyre said. "I had run out of money." His call "came as an answer to prayer."

Celebrity restorations

Nineteenth Century Restorations is a Kansas-based company specializing in home restoration. Owner Riedemann has launched a far-reaching project to restore houses that were the birthplaces and childhood homes of celebrities such as Johnny Carson, whose home in Corning, Iowa, will be the company's first project.

Others whose homes are slated for possible restoration include Woody Guthrie, Lucille Ball, Rosa Parks, Jimi Hendrix and, now, Nina Simone.

When Riedemann heard the Simone birthplace was for sale, he contacted McIntyre. What he wants is to restore celebrity homes as part of a reality TV show, with cameramen working alongside carpenters. The homes' owners set up nonprofit corporations, accessible through his company's website. Donations go into a nonprofit charitable fund until enough money is raised to begin work.

Riedemann aims to raise $250,000 for the Simone house. The nonprofit entity would then purchase the home and pay for restoration and landscaping. Reidemann said his crew does "top-notch restorations" with the homes, while trying to leave money in the fund for future maintenance and costs associated with running a museum.

"We could be a really nice niche where reality TV and documentaries come together," Riedemann said. He envisions PBS or the History Channel as a good home for the show.

He hopes to line up a local production company to help with filming before his crew arrives in Tryon.

As a specialist in historic preservation, Riedemann has respect, he said, for people such as McIntyre, whose "hearts are in the right place."

"He is the only reason that house is still standing today," Riedemann said. He estimates completing the project would take six to eight weeks. He works with a small crew and recruits hired help and volunteers locally for each project. They work around the clock to get the project done as soon as possible because the restorations are disruptive to neighborhoods, he said.

Vestiges of the past

While returning the house to its roots, McIntyre held Free Jazz Fridays on the property, with music and storytelling among gathered neighbors. Some of them, like Counts, have memories of the Waymon family.

In her autobiography, "I Put a Spell on You," Simone, who died in 2003, remembers the simple structure of three rooms on Livingston Street as "a big house" with a yard where the children played and where there was room for her father's vegetable garden ("rows and rows of string beans, collard greens, tomatoes, corn and squash," she writes) and some chickens.

From the house, which sits on a small rise, three churches are visible, the closest being St. Luke CME Church, which Waymon's family attended and where she was the designated pianist at the age of 10. The church there now was rebuilt in the 1960s on nearly the same spot. Across the road and through the trees from the house is the hilly and historic Tryon Cemetery. Simone's parents are buried nearby at a graveyard on Jackson Street.

Tryon's historically black east-side neighborhood was once self-sustaining, McIntyre said, with businesses intermingled with homes. In her autobiography, Simone recalls the Lyles store just down the hill, and the dry cleaning business and barbershop her own father ran close to home.

Counts remembers another store nearby, too.

"We were right in the middle of things," he said, "as far as schools and churches went."

Today the older homes of the neighborhood are interspersed with newer ones. The churches are there still, but the businesses are gone.

"This is not so much about Nina Simone," McIntyre said of the restoration effort, "as about Eunice Waymon and her family."

A bronze statue downtown celebrates the performer Waymon became — the talented and sometimes tormented Simone. The house, he hopes, will shed light on the young musical prodigy growing up in wartime America, specifically in the segregated South.

"Folks rise to the occasion because of the communities they were nurtured by," McIntyre said, adding that Waymon's humble beginnings and the loving care she received from her community and church helped her become the legendary performer and civil rights leader that she was later.

In addition, two members of the white community — Katherine Miller and Muriel Mazzanovich — helped Waymon obtain formal music training. Miss Mazzy, as Waymon called her, was the wife of artist Lawrence Mazzanovich, and became her piano teacher, introducing her to classical music. A fund was set up by townspeople, and their donations helped send her to high school in Asheville and, eventually, to The Juilliard School.

Simone's legacy

Music publisher and record producer Ivan Mogull met Waymon shortly after her Juilliard days, when she had just become Nina Simone. He heard her playing the piano in a Philadelphia bar and was impressed with her mastery of a song he knew had just been released. A friendship developed that would lead to a partnership in music publishing.

Mogull, who now works with The Orchard, which he calls the world's largest independent distributor of digital music, said he plans to release a tribute album of some of Simone's best songs, and he envisions using the restored birthplace as the album's cover.

There is still an interest in Simone, McIntyre said. With the house preserved, he added, when people visit Tryon they will see "a complete restoration inside and out, a relic of her life as it appeared in 1933." It will be something the community, especially its youth, can be proud of, he hopes.

"If we let places disappear," McIntyre said, "we become less of a community for it."

He is thankful for the local support received on the project so far, and hopes that the community and Simone's many fans around the world will donate to the cause so the restoration will be completed.

"This house is not going to slip back into obscurity," he said. "It's going to be a gem for North Carolina and the whole Southeast."

For information on how to donate to the restoration, and to see a gallery of photos of work done so far, visit the website 19thcenturyrestorations.com


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