By Amanda Larch Hinchman
For HDMedia
Elkins — One West Virginia folklorist, musician and documentarian has been named a 2026 National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellow, the country’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
Nominated by the West Virginia Humanities Council, Gerald “Gerry” Milnes of Elkins, West Virginia, is the seventh West Virginian to receive this lifetime award, given in recognition of artistic excellence and efforts to sustain cultural traditions for future generations.
“I’m overwhelmed,” Milnes said. “A lot of incredibly important people have gotten this award, and to be included in that list of names is quite special to me.”
Other 2026 National Heritage Fellows include Mexican folk musicians; a Latin percussionist; Hawaiian twined basketry artists; a flute maker; a saddle maker and leather artist; and more.
Milnes and the fellowship cohort will travel to the nation’s capital in September for a three-day event, including an awards ceremony at the Library of Congress.
Milnes is also the recipient of the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship, which recognizes one person annually who has made significant contributions to public appreciation of folk and traditional arts. He said this recognition is especially meaningful because he knew and worked with Hawes on many projects when she was director of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Folk Arts Program.
Over the years, Milnes nominated two fellow West Virginians who were named to the same National Heritage Fellowship: Melvin Wine, a fiddle player from Braxton County, in 1991 and Dorothy Thompson, a hand weaver from Canaan Valley, in 2000. Milnes even accompanied Wine to Washington, D.C., as he accepted the award.
“In a way, I’m like a conduit to all the hundreds of folk artists that I was able to get to know, learn from and work with,” Milnes said. “I feel like they’re responsible for me getting this award because they were truly great artists who carried on traditions. I was privileged to document them.”
A public reception honoring Milnes will take place from 6-8 p.m. May 21 at the West Virginia Humanities Council’s headquarters, 1310 Kanawha Blvd. East in Charleston.
“Without Gerry’s dedicated work, many of West Virginia’s songs and stories might otherwise have been lost,” Eric Waggoner, executive director of the West Virginia Humanities Council, said in a news release.
Born in 1946, Milnes moved to West Virginia in 1975 where he has worked as a folklorist, author, filmmaker, musician and educator and has contributed to projects like the feature film “Matewan” and the PBS documentary “The Appalachians.”
“Gerry is a role model,” state folklorist Jennie Williams said in a news release. “When I started my work, I sought out Gerry for guidance, and I have since deeply valued his stories and our friendship.”
For 25 years, beginning in 1988, Milnes was the folk arts coordinator at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia, where he created an archive of thousands of recordings and photographs documenting music, crafts, customs and daily life of traditional Appalachian culture.
Milnes said he was able to fulfill his dreams through his career — it’s what he’s wanted to do all his life. By the time he was hired by the Augusta Heritage Center, he’d already been doing the same kind of work on his own.
“When I got the job, the director of the center said, ‘I want you to just keep doing what you do,’” Milnes said. “So I couldn’t have been happier. My greatest interest in life is with folklore and folk art and traditional arts, so that’s what kept me going.”
At Augusta, he also established the West Virginia Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program, matching apprentices with folk and traditional artists, including fiddle and banjo players, blacksmiths, basket makers, hand weavers and more.
Now overseen by the West Virginia Humanities Council, Milnes himself participated in the apprenticeship program to impart fiddle techniques, tunes and stories to his apprentice Annick Odom.
One of the highlights of Milnes’ career is collecting and recording a fiddle tune, “The Battle of Droop Mountain,” which only one person in the world — a musician from Greenbrier Valley — knew how to play at the time, saving an old song from falling into obscurity and allowing it to live on for future generations.
“I’m sure he was the only one in the world who knew that tune, and he was over 90 years old when I got it from him,” Milnes said. “If he hadn’t played that for me and I hadn’t recorded it, it would have been lost, and that event would never have been commemorated through a tune.”
Though retired, Milnes continues to write, conduct research and pursue his interests. His most recent book, “The American Log Cabin: Folk Architecture and Lore on the Old Frontier of West Virginia” is available now, and he’s working on another project about the history of the Appalachian dulcimer.
West Virginia’s folk culture has carried on for generations — something that doesn’t happen in many other places, especially more urban areas, Milnes said.
“There’s something about rural life among common people that has kept those kinds of traditions alive,” he said. “I think it’s really a special place for its strong traditional arts.”
There are abundant opportunities to learn from and see traditional artists at work, such as festivals and craft fairs, and with organizations throughout West Virginia providing programs for youth to preserve and pass on folk music, Milnes said he is hopeful for the future.
“There’s lots of ways it’s headed into the future, and there’s a lot of young people who are different from the masses, in that popular culture hasn’t taken them away from their interests in playing traditional music, for instance, or learning traditional crafts,” he said.
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