Kump Education Center to celebrate centennial Saturday
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ELKINS -- Kump Education Center will celebrate its Centennial Summer on Saturday with fresh pies baked in local kitchens and traditional quilts preserved by Log Cabin Quilt Guild members.
The Quilt Exhibit will open at 11 a.m.; the Pie Action will begin at 1 p.m.
The Kump Center Pie Auction has become a local tradition, celebrating our heritage of homemade baked goods. Early Kump family pies often included apples from the family orchard, but now the Kump Pie Auction offers a wide variety of flavors including every fruit concoction from blueberry cream to strawberry rhubarb.
The taste treats are unlimited. There may be butterscotch, chocolate maple, lemon meringue and Kentucky Derby pies. Even some cakes have come to the Kump Pie Auction, with names like chocolate eclair, German chocolate and praline turtle cake. If sweets are not on your list, look for the savory pies like the unicorn pie with meat and herbs.
Before and after the pie auction, visitors may go upstairs to see several heritage quilts from Log Cabin Quilt Guild members spread on the original Kump family beds. Kaila St. Louis, who managed the pioneer log cabin at Seneca Rocks, has an eye for traditional stitch craft and has made a private collection of local heritage quilts from estate sales. Kaila's baby quilt is on Edna Scott Kump's youth bed, where you will see Dottie Lutz's 1925 flapper doll from the old B. Wess General Store.
Log Cabin Quilt Guild member Judy Van Gundy inherited several quilts from the Van Gundy family in Pennsylvania. These quilts are well-documented, and they are excellent examples of traditional quilt designs and stitch craft.
Paula Billups Kadyk, one of the great granddaughters of Gov. Herman G. Kump, has placed on display a quilt that her father, Pete Billups, used while he was suffering from polio. It is decorated with appliqued grape clusters that Pete rubbed for comfort while he was in a hospital away from home.
In the room where Fannie's daughter Edna Scott Kump slept, visitors will be able to see Fannie's unfinished quilt that inspired the online book "Fannie's Crazy Quilt." Also, there is a new wooden fan-like barn quilt on the Kump barn to remind readers to look for "Fannie's Crazy Quilt," available at Amazon Online Publishing. .
"We are delighted to know that the 2025 Forest Festival Queen will be a Kump Cousin," said Director Heather Biola said. "In 1925, when Mr. Whiteman was completing the Kump house, Cy Kump, the great grandfather of Maid Silvia LXXXVII, was just starting college at Virginia Military Institute. The Kump family was always involved in the Forest Festival activities since the festival began in 1930 as a homecoming event."