What is it like to be around greatness everyday?
LaVella Hyter is absolutely the person to answer this question. Bring your imagination because this answer isn’t a sentence. It’s a picture of history through memory and feeling.
LaVella Hyter on the Greatness of Roberts Settlement
Hyter – like her brother, Vincent Newsom, and their other six siblings – spent a great deal of her childhood living and running around at Roberts Settlement. Her sisters would do the laundry and other cleaning in the house. Hyter, who could have been confused with her father’s shadow, much preferred working the land and caring for their pigs and dairy cows. Having learned to handle a John Deere tractor at the age of 8, it wasn’t unusual for Hyter to be in the fields from sunup to sundown. Perhaps she’d meet her mother midday to receive a sandwich and homemade lemonade in a Mason jar at lunchtime.
Even now, decades later, Hyter remains a lover of the outdoors. “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl,” she says.
One indoor activity, however, was held with such reverence that Hyter worked hard to take part in it: quilting. Each year, Hyter recounts, it was determined who in the settlement was in need of a quilt to ward off winter’s weather. And then, the women would gather.
Hyter’s great grandmother, Lucetta (affectionately referred to as “Mom”), would host all the women in her home. The quilters of Roberts Settlement would assemble with their tools: Mom would set up the large quilt frame in the front room; each attendee would bring their own bag of brightly colored fabric. Also making it to the party were the needed utensils of each quilter’s specific role: the place where knowledge and skill converged, and where yearly repetition yielded exquisite outcomes. Hyter recalls the year she had great excitement over watching the tassels being attached to the quilt edges; she paid close attention to the process. The following year, she was granted permission to put in some of the tassels herself. Success had been achieved.
Hard work and perseverance to the outcome isn’t something only applied to quilting. Look at many aspects of Roberts Settlement and all that it is today; the evidence quickly mounts. The Legacy Walk is a beautiful path with vibrant visuals which visitors can move through to understand more of the history of the settlement. It’s a stunning homage to all that the settlers endured and accomplished through its decades of active existence. Taking more than seven years from inception to installation, the Legacy Walk is a case study of the larger trend of greatness among the Roberts Settlement descendants. It took seven years of dreaming, planning, fundraising, and working to create this piece that not only serves beauty to the community but also delivers an honest look at what it takes to create a new life, in a new place, with new challenges – and be successful. “Our ancestors took an ox cart, or what have you,” Hyter reminds us, referencing the journey so many made from North Carolina up to Hamilton County. Being faced with known and unknown challenges along the way was hard for the settlement ancestors – but it also formed a dedication and a resilience that has been passed down to today’s generations.
Hyter recounts an airplane ride where she enjoyed conversation with her seatmate. Both women were on their way to their respective family reunions. Unprompted, Hyter’s new acquaintance asked if she was part of the Roberts Settlement. “The humility that we have, the humbleness … Every bit of our character comes from our ancestors,” and what they’ve been able to accomplish. Hyter says that she and her peers live “on our ancestor’s shoulders”.
And so, what is the answer to this question: What was it like to be around greatness everyday? For Hyter, it’s that greatness served as a model and inspiration, a charge to live up to and continue, the legacy of their ancestors. LaVella Hyter declares, “We grew up to be what we saw.”
That effect is contagious. “People always remember Roberts Settlement. Once you’ve been there, you never forget … You’re always welcome.”
LaVella Hyter, now retired from a rewarding career in strategic claims management for Fortune 1000 companies, devotes her time to the causes she cares about most. Hyter is serving in her 7th year as President of the Roberts Settlement; is on the Board of Trustees of Bethel AME Church – Noblesville; and, is a former board member of the Noblesville Diversity Coalition. Rural life will always remain near and dear to her heart.
