Pioneers of a Finer Frontier

Pioneers of a Finer Frontier

BY TERI R. WILLIAMS PHOTOS BY RUTH ENGLISH

A soft-spoken country boy and an outspoken powerhouse unite to continue the traditions started by generations before them.

Bessie

The fire happened on September 22, 2004. When the ambulance arrived, Bessie was laying in the front yard with burns over 65% of her body. Before she collapsed, she managed to put out the fire that would surely have burned the trailer to the ground where she lived with her parents and four sisters. Bessie came second in the order of her four girls. She had celebrated her thirteenth birthday five days earlier. “School had been canceled for a couple of days. It had something to do with the fuel crisis at the time, and gas prices went crazy. But Mama was a mail carrier and still had to deliver the mail. Daddy built bridges and had to be gone sometimes weeks at a time. But mama left us with a long list of chores to do to keep us busy.” Of course, they were putting it off until the last minute. Hannah, the sister just under Bessie in age, went to the kitchen to cook french fries, which was something she had done many times before. Setting a pot on the stove, she poured in the bottle of oil. It only took a quick look in the freezer to realize there were no fries, but those few seconds were long enough to forget she had turned the burner on.

When smoke came boiling into the living room from the kitchen, the girls panicked. Emily ran to the sink and filled a glass with water. Tossing the water at the pot of burning grease only caused the oil to splatter and the fire to spread. Bessie grabbed a flat lid to smother it. Reaching behind the pot to turn off the burner, both her arms and face were immediately scorched. Hannah grabbed a towel to beat back the flames still pouring out of the burning pot of grease. In all the commotion, the pot flipped and fell. The hot grease poured straight down Bessie’s legs and feet.

“I ran into the living room and began rolling on the floor,” she said. “When I stood up, I saw huge pieces of my skin laying there. I reached back to my hair and my ponytail came off and fell into my hand. One of my feet had already swollen up like a bowling ball.”

The girls were terrified at the sight of their sister’s burning flesh. But all Bessie could think about was the burning trailer. She ran out the front door and went around to the back of the trailer for the water hose. Entering the back door, she doused the kitchen from floor to ceiling. “I just kept thinking, ‘Mama is gonna kill me for getting the kitchen wet like this,’” she said with a sideways grin.

Miraculously, Bessie did manage to put out the fire and save the trailer, although the kitchen was ruined. Once the fire was out, she ran back to the front yard and collapsed on the ground. When the ENTs arrived, Bessie was taken to the ER in Vidalia where she was immediately sent by ambulance to the Joseph M. Still (JMS) Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia. “It’s one of the most elite burn centers in the United States,” said Bessie. “I was lucky it was so close.”

Somehow both of her parents were there when she arrived. “Daddy was working on a bridge in Sylvania. I don’t know how he got there so fast. They had given me something for pain, so I was in and out. I couldn’t open my eyes or sit up. It was this terrible, dreamlike feeling.” But even drugged, Bessie remembered the doctor’s foreign accent and his next words. “He said, ‘Tonight, we will take the right foot, and we will see tomorrow with the left foot if we can leave it or not.’ I told myself, ‘Bessie, don't you fall asleep. If you fall asleep, you're going to wake up without a foot.’ But my daddy just lost his mind. He hollered at the poor man, ‘You ain’t cutting nothin’ off my daughter!’” she laughed.

The reality was that Bessie’s right foot had been burned down to the muscle. It was taking a huge risk to even attempt to save the foot. The risk of infection could be deadly. But Bessie’s daddy meant that they were going to do everything and then some to try to save his daughter’s foot.

The healing process was long and tedious. It

involved wound drains, saline rinses, compression dressings, hydrotherapy, skin grafts, long term antibiotics, several surgeries, individually tailored stockings and gloves to prevent large keloid scars, and intense physical therapy. After months of trying to save Bessie’s foot, a decision had to be made. “I was waiting to see if they were going to do another surgery for a cadaver skin graft on my foot. The doctor who saw me was the sweetest little woman. She pointed to these tiny little pink dots on my foot and said, ‘Don’t cry, baby. No surgery for you. Your skin has started growing.’ That was Jesus,” said Bessie.

Before the accident, she had been like most seventh grade thirteenyear-old girl, she explained. “That’s when you start thinking, ‘Am I pretty? Do people like me?’ But I just got snatched into a whole ‘nother world of things to care about. I just wanted to be able to walk again.”

Bessie did walk again. In fact, she attended Brewton-Parker College her freshman year on a volleyball scholarship. You would never know the beautiful, outgoing young mother had ever been so badly burned unless she you knew her story. But the experience had a deep effect on Bessie and her sisters. Even though no one in their family had ever pursued a medical career, three of the four, including Bessie, would become registered nurses (RNs).

For her sophomore year, Bessie went to STC and worked her way through school graduating as an RN in 2015. A year later, she and her high school sweetheart, Bob Coleman, became the proud parents of a baby boy they named Rowan.

In 2020, after five years of working in the ER at Evans Memorial Hospital in Claxton, Georgia, Bessie decided it was time to take a break. The year had been a tough one, especially for those who worked on the frontlines during the covid pandemic like Bessie. “We saw a lot of people die in those first months,” said Bessie.

In 2019, she and Bob had moved out to his father’s ranch, which many know as Buckhorn Creek Ranch, to help Bob’s father, Steve, and his wife, Debbie. Even though they had decided to discontinue tours and visits to the exotic animal farm, there were still animals to feed and orchards and gardens to tend.

“I love nursing,” said Bessie. But for now, I’m doing a different kind of nursing.” Bessie glanced toward the baby goat she had started bottle feeding after his mama had rejected him. But bottle-feeding baby goats was only one small part of what moving to Buckhorn Creek Ranch meant for Bessie and Bob. It was time to take Bob’s woodworking business to another level. And Bessie was just the person to make it happen.

Bob

Bob’s family history in Toombs County began in 1896 before the county was even founded. That was the year Moses Matthew Coleman Sr., (1851-1928) came to Lyons and built several stores including the old Elberta Hotel. According to an article from the Vidalia Advance in 1928, he was one of “Toombs County's pioneer citizens,” (findagrave.com). In the Vidalia Onion Museum, his son, Moses M. Coleman Jr., (1901-1984) is credited with helping to “pioneer” the popularity of the Vidalia Onion in 1931.

The next Moses Coleman was Bob’s grandfather, known as “Mose” Coleman Jr., (1926-2019). A true entrepreneur, he founded Coleman Sales, Inc. and published eight books documenting information from headstones he surveyed in cemeteries in Toombs and surrounding counties. Bob’s father, Steve Coleman, taught history at Vidalia High School. But it was his father’s exotic animal farm that brought some two thousand visitors to Buckhorn Creek Ranch during the annual Vidalia Onion Festival in 2019. (The ranch was officially closed in 2020). Bob’s upbringing was unconventional. The youngest of four children, his earliest memories

were of the two-hundred-acre ranch as a Russian boar hunting preserve. When he was about seven-years-old, his father began to build a new kind of preserve gathering exotic and native animals for what would become Buckhorn Creek Ranch. “When my friends would come over,” said Bob, “it was obvious that no one got to spend time with a camel on a daily basis like I did. And we were as wild as the animals spending all our time in the woods.” Eventually, the ranch offered guided wagon tours so that visitors could help feed the herd as they learned about Bison, European red deer, Watusi cattle and all the other animals and fowl.

After graduating from Toombs County High School in 2011, Bob went to Gainesville State College outside of Atlanta. His plan was to major in journalism and psychology. While there, he met a guy named Jay Shepherd. “Jay had injured his back when a jeep he was working on rolled over on him,” said Bob. “Since he was pretty much confined to his house, he started doing every woodworking project he could think of. I started spending time with him, and it didn’t take long for me to remember why I loved working with wood so much as a child.”

Bob’s interest in woodworking had developed naturally from time spent in the woods and watching his dad work. “My dad taught me how to use simple tools when I was young. I always loved the idea of making something a lot more than buying it.”

It only took a year of working and going to school in Atlanta to convince Bob that city life was not for him. Coming home to Toombs County was a not only a return to the family farm, but also to his high school sweetheart, Bessie Pittman. In 2016, Bessie and Bob’s son Rowan became the sixth generation of Colemans in Bob’s family line to call Toombs County home.

Bob spent the first two years after his return home working with his dad in his wood shop. “At first, it was just about spending time with him. I had been learning woodworking skills from him all my life and didn’t realize it until now,” said Bob. “Pointing to a house down the hill surrounded by trees, he said, “That’s where I grew up. I remember watching my dad build our house when I was three or four years old. He built all the buildings here.”

Bessie and Bob began helping at the ranch long before they made it their home. Whenever busloads of children came or day camps were held, Bessie and Bob were on hand. “While one group went out in the wagon to see the animals,” said Bob, “my dad would do an archery demonstration for the kids who were waiting, and I would talk to another group about working with primitive tools. We gave lots of different classes and did some day camps. Everything here from the exotic animals to the orchards and bushcraft skills was about teaching kids something meaningful.”

Even after the decision was made to close the ranch, the animals that remained still needed daily care. There were also several acres of orchards and gardens to tend. “We’ve basically been apprenticing under Bob’s dad Steve and his wife Debbie,” said Bessie. With a child of their own now, there’s a new reason to demonstrate what it means to value and care for the land and the animals that depend on it. “We’ve got our little boy to love and teach how to care for the animals and work on the farm. Eventually, we hope this whole place will be a reflection of our nurture and love for each other and the land.”

Bob has turned the woodworking skills he learned from his father and his friend Jay into a business. In addition, he and Bessie take care of the animals and work on the family farm passing on their knowledge to son Rowan.

A Finer Frontier

In the pioneering spirit of the family before them, Bob and Bessie are making their own contribution to the Toombs County community. “Bob is a true artist,” said Bessie. “But he’s more of a good ‘ole country boy.’ He’s kind and soft-spoken, and I’m the extrovert of the century.” Bob gave her a smile. “When we combined forces, I took over marketing, so he could focus on new projects. We named our new venture ‘A Finer Frontier.’”

Now, instead of depending on word of mouth, Bessie put Bob’s woodwork on social media. She also set up an Etsy shop. “We go to every artisan market and arts and crafts festival we can find,” said Bessie. “We’ll set up a tent and table anywhere.” She has discovered her own untapped woodworking skills adding beautiful cedar chests, jewelry boxes, and other forms of boxes made from reclaimed wood to their repertoire.

Among Bob’s most popular products are his beautiful hand-carved spoons. Another bestseller is personalized wooden plaques. “With the CNC machine [computer numerical control router],” said Bob, “we can personalize plaques of reclaimed wood with letters, numbers, even scenes and images from pictures.” He pointed to a beautiful wood carving engraved with an image of their niece Vivian.

Another bestseller has been his handmade earrings that utilize everything from the tips of cast-off deer antlers to left-over wood shavings from the wood shop floor.

Every hand-crafted product is made from wood and/ or other natural/sustainable materials. “There are plenty of felled trees in the woods from hurricanes or that have been struck by lightning,” said Bob. “We’ll drag it out of the woods, cut it up at the saw mill, and stack it into boards. We sometimes barter with people who bring a tree to our saw mill. We may cut it up for a portion of the wood. Or perhaps they’ll want us to make a bench with a name or a verse engraved into it or a beautiful wood table for the family to gather around because it was on their land for a hundred years.”

“A local guy brought us an ancient piece of black walnut he happened on fishing in the Altamaha River,” said Bessie. “Bob used the wood to make the most beautiful spoons and bowls.” But bartering isn’t necessarily limited to the wood they receive from use of the saw mill. A few months ago, Bessie came up just as a customer asked Bob what he owed for a customized plaque. Noticing the wild boar piglets in the back of his truck, Bessie insisted on one as part of his payment.

When toilet paper, bleach, and other items disappeared almost overnight from grocery store shelves in the wake of the covid-pandemic, Bessie and Bob realized just how quickly provisions could become

Bessie sells Bob's hand-crafted wood designs online and at artisan markets. She's even added a few pieces of her own.

inaccessible. “My daddy was getting me ready for the apocalypse from the time I was three years old,” Bessie said with a smile. “He was quoting Revelations to us all the time.” Turning more thoughtful, she said. “And now that I see this mess going on, I asked Bob, ‘Where do you think we can get some more chickens?’”

The couple’s intent is simple: “We want to be responsible with what we have,” said Bob. “My idea is to implement something new every year or so that will help us become less dependent on outside sources for our basic needs. When I get my dad’s age, hopefully I’ll be as creative at making and growing things as he is.”

Because of the work of the generation before them, Bob and Bessie can go further with the good they have in their hearts to do. “If we had to start from scratch and plant the fruit trees and gardens, it would take us twentyfive years or more to get to this point,” said Bessie.

The handmade crafts Bessie and Bob create speak of their honor for the past and their hope for the future. Together, they are extending the roots of another generation of Coleman pioneers. Each work of art teaches us that everything we need is right here. In the woods, the rivers, the lakes, and backyard ponds. In fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and friends. In communities supporting local artists and family businesses. We each have something someone else needs today. Even if it’s just a wild boar piglet. A Finer Frontier is a family story told in reclaimed wood, itself a story of redemption. And redemption is possibly the most powerful story of all.