The Mast Family name, commonly associated with the Mast General Store of Boone and Valle Crucis, actually dates back to the very beginning of Watauga County history. Nora Mast Wilson, 91, recalls the sequence of events that brought her family here as if it were just yesterday. 

Of the Masts of Switzerland, two brothers and three sisters sailed the seas to the North East coast of America, settling in Pennsylvania. The younger of the brothers, John Mast, became restless after a few years and ventured south on foot through wilderness (there were no roads) to Randolph County, N.C.  There he began a family and a new life. 

It was his descendents who relocated to Watauga and helped make a small mountain community the success it is today. 

Nora was born the tenth child in her family on Oct. 12, 1907. She brags of being born on the day Columbus first set foot in the New World (not to mention just a few years down the road from 1492).   Ten days later her mother passed away, leaving one final request that Nora be raised by her father’s childless brother and his wife as their own. 

Though raised by her aunt and uncle, her birth family was very much a part of her life. Her father was the first to equip the county with telephone lines in 1908. In that day, if you wanted a telephone, you had to first set up your own pole and then called Mast to take care of the wiring. 

Not only did he take care of his community’s communication needs, he also brought them cheese. He was instrumental in starting the very first cheese factory of the South. His second wife, Nora’s stepmother, managed to round up just enough milk for him to make the first cheese of Watauga on their very own kitchen stove. The factory developed from there. Until this time, cheese had not been available to the area due to lack of transportation.  You could say he brought flavor to the community! 

As a young girl, Nora walked  one mile to and from a two-teacher school house each day. With no AppalCART available at the time, she was lucky to only have to make this trip four months out of the year. Due to the massive amounts of snow that covered Watauga in a thicker blanket than our winters today, school only ran from late summer to December. 

The school day work load included recitations of arithmetic tables, grammar, history and written assignments.  Written work required tablets of rough paper and “penny” pencils that had to be sharpened with a knife.  How would they have managed with metal detectors at the door? 

At this time, church and school were closely knit. The entire school would attend revivals at the church next door during the school day. Nora believes that “The world will be fine when we get back to the way it was.”  Discipline was rarely a problem, and when it was ... there were switches to take care of it. 

As a teenager, Nora attended the then titled Appalachian Training School, a combination of high school through college level classes. She boarded on campus in a dormitory for girls. There was one other dormitory for boys, though the two were not to associate with each other in class, the cafeteria, or on campus. The only opportunity for coed socialization was on Sunday afternoons in a supervised fellowship hall of the girls dorm, making dating difficult. 

A social life itself was difficult to maintain because free time was unheard of. The dorms were patrolled after school hours to make sure that the students stayed in their individual rooms for studying. During these time periods, trips to the bathroom down the hall were even rare. 

Nora’s professors and mentors, some of the founding professors of Appalachian, including Rankin, Greer, Wright , Wilson and Dougherty are all names that are recognizable today as education buildings on campus. Surprisingly, not one of the original buildings in the History of Appalachian is still standing. Unfortunately none were preserved for historical purposes. 

Recreational sports such as baseball and basketball were encouraged by the school, though private leisure time was non-existent. Nora claimed a forward position on the women’s basketball team. The  women were only allowed to play half-court games and required to wear a uniform of long black skirt-like bloomers, black knee-high stockings, a white blouse, and black neck tie. Boys, on the other hand, were able to play full court, and wear uniforms similar to those worn today. 

The female students had greater restrictions on campus than their fellow male students, an unfortunate marker of that time period.  Even simple visits downtown for girls were limited to twice a semester in a chapheroned group. 

At age 17, Nora gained a piece of freedom when her family purchased their first Ford, one of the very first automobiles in Watauga.  Her friends claimed she was quite a speeder, hitting up to 35 miles an hour at times. She then began a commute to school each day, making time to take care of her ailing uncle. She didn’t drive much at night- that required  manually lighting the carbide headlights in addition to cranking up the car itself. 
During WWII, gasoline was rationed  by way of coupons, each family being allotted a designated amount. By this time in 1931, Nora had married Odes Wilson and together they managed to save up enough coupons to make it to Washington D.C. 

D.C. was only one of the many places Nora visited. She loved to travel and even made it as far out west as Yellowstone. It was there where she first noticed  “mailboxes” attached to the windows of the nicer automobiles. When she finally got enough nerve to inquire of the need for a mailbox on a car, she learned it was a new invention ... the car air conditioner. It ran by means of a fan and water- simple but effective. Upon returning to Watauga with a “mailbox” on her car, her air conditioner became the talk of the town. 

Though her husband passed away in 1981, Nora continues to lead an active lifestyle, still  speeding down the road at 35 mph, and living on her own beside the very house she grew up in.  For 91 years,  Nora has led an extraordinary life,  never limiting the possibilities of each new day. We can all surely learn from her example. 

As the Appalachian Annual described her in 1927, Nora Mast Wilson is definitely, “Full of life, sense and wit, lots of fun, and plenty of grit!”