Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05

The Price and the Faces of Progress

Dr. Jeffrey R. Sutton—Family Eye Care Center

Story by Sam Calhoun

Editor’s note: High Country Press continues to feature the stories of the people being displaced by the Highway 421 widening project.

“If this building could talk,” said Dr. Jeffery R. Sutton, owner of Family Eye Care Center, smiling to himself. “There is a lot of history here. I hate to see it go away.”

The building located at 188 East King Street is filled with history—20 years of history created by Sutton’s family and practice, and prior to that, a possible century-and-a-half of history that would pique any historian’s interest. The building will be demolished as part of the Highway 421 widening project.

To the layman, Family Eye Care Center is a typical, neat optometry office, with a comfortable waiting room, examination rooms and offices. But when people start hearing the stories associated with the history of the building, the building seemingly begins to talk, painting a picture of a residence inhabited by some well-known Boone families, and a building built with hidden compartments that may have served some interesting purposes once upon a time.

Yes, the building is a relative treasure trove for area historians, but it may be destroyed—just like the original records of the building that would help date its construction exactly—before anyone will know for sure.

In a few months, Sutton and his wife Linda will celebrate 20 years in business in the High Country, as well as 20 years in the building they consider their home away from home. In the modest frame structure on King Street over the past two decades, they have raised three children, served more than 13,000 patients and made lasting bonds with their adopted community.

“This truly is the Family Eye Care Center,” said Sutton.

It’s hard to tell if Boone chose Sutton or Sutton chose Boone.

Originally from Ohio, Sutton lived all over the country, following his parents who worked in the retail furniture business.

“You know, [the retail furniture business] moves you more than the military,” laughed Sutton.

In 1980, Sutton enrolled at Northern Illinois University. The school offered an Appalachian Culture Semester—a program giving students from Northern Illinois the opportunity to travel to Boone for an intensive semester of study of Appalachian culture and gain a minor in the subject. Sutton took the offer in spring 1980. The Midwest was about to lose a resident.

“I loved it here and I realized how miserable I was [in northern Illinois],” remembered Sutton. “The only high point of my time in Illinois was meeting my wife Linda.”

Bitten by the High Country bug, Sutton returned to Northern Illinois after learning all there was to know—at the time—about Appalachian culture. By the fall, he had transferred to ASU, forever saying goodbye to Illinois.

In 1983, Sutton graduated from ASU with a pre-professional degree. One year later, he got married and enrolled in the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia, Penn., once again leaving Boone.

“It was a huge culture shock,” Sutton said of his time in Philadelphia. The first of Sutton and Linda’s three children was born there, and after he graduated, Sutton and his family moved back to Boone to settle down.

A local practitioner had offered Sutton his practice, but the deal fell through in the first few weeks after the move. Sutton found himself in a town he loved, with a wife and a new child and no job. The future looked grim until a local developer approached him about a vacant building on King Street.

The building was condemned and surrounded by waist-high grass. The developer knew the building was old—perhaps the oldest in the area—but could not provide exact dates because the building’s original records were destroyed when fire engulfed Watauga County’s first courthouse. He did know that the building was the original home of Cecil and Flossie Miller and where Joe “Cheap Joe” Miller grew up. After the Millers moved out, the McCracken family lived there for many years before it sat vacant for 13 years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In those years, the TKE fraternity at ASU used the house as a haunted house every Halloween, but other than that, it had been left to rot.

Sutton and Linda decided to take the leap, bought the building and began work renovating and refurbishing the structure on the interior and exterior. Sutton’s work on the house and his research indicated to him that the house was probably around long before the turn of the 20th century, but it would be many years before he found out more of the story.

Sutton and Linda’s second child was now on the way and the couple worked to handle raising children and giving birth to a business. In those days, Linda acted as Sutton’s receptionist, splitting her time between taking care of the children in the back room and talking to patients in the front room. Sutton can remember patients coming into the office, realizing that the children were with someone else for the day and asking to come back when they were there. Sutton’s family was growing to include the Boone community; he had found his place.

One day, a UPS delivery person walked into the building without knocking and walked in on Linda breastfeeding one of her children. Linda was not happy about the surprise and instructed her husband to install an alarm system. Sutton agreed, and while he was snaking wire for the system through the walls of the structure, he realized the wires weren’t coming through on the other side. After further inspection, Sutton found hidden compartments, false walls and false ceilings throughout the building. Area historians came to look and theorized that the building was most likely used for the Underground Railroad and bootlegging. The house layout also allows someone to walk from the front of the house to the back without being seen, further suggesting its use as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Sutton made sure to preserve the false walls, false ceilings, hidden compartments for long rifles, wormy chestnut frame, original beadboard and original brick chimney in the structure—a dream come true for an Appalachian culture buff.

As the years moved forward, business boomed, the Suttons had a third child and they planted their roots even deeper into the community. The business stayed a one-doctor operation—as it is today—providing comprehensive eye examinations, diagnosis and treatment of eye diseases, a full line of glasses and contact lenses and emergency care. Today, the Family Eye Care Center is the only after-hours emergency eye clinic in town. Linda is still the office manager and she and Sutton support five full-time employees.

“We came here and started this practice, stared a family and committed our lives to this community—a community that has given back to us for 20 years,” said Sutton. “I’ve seen the rest of this nation, but I chose here. This is a great place. We have our lives established here. We invested in this community and it’s given back to us in a large way.”

Sutton learned of the Highway 421 widening project a decade ago after catching some North Carolina Department of Transportation officials in a falsehood. Since then, the only mention has been rumors, an NC DOT meeting two years ago and a confusing meeting with NC DOT officials two months ago. At the meeting two months ago, the officials presented Sutton with a timeline but then told him it was subject to change or abandonment.

“It’s the unknowns,” said Sutton. “It’s all good except for the apprehension of the unknown. And the apprehension goes much deeper than just the storefronts.”

Sutton loves Boone. By next year, all three of his children will be enrolled in college, and he has nothing but good things to say about the education they received from Watauga County Schools. He will relocate his business and keep his employees and patients, but he doesn’t know where at this time.

“I’m living the American dream, and now I’m in the home stretch and,” Sutton trailed off, “I really can’t dispute the need for the project. A lot of things in this town here have disappeared in the name of progress that should have been preserved, but I’d love to see this building preserved.”