President’s Letter
We are celebrating the 20th birthday of Friends of Happy Retreat. We were incorporated as a West a West Virginia non-profit corporation on March 20, 2006. It took us nine years to acquire Happy Retreat in 2015, when Dr. Taylor Fithian and his wife Margie Fithian stepped forward to make the acquisition possible. Seventy years previous – in 1945 – Dr. Fithian’s grandfather, R.J. Funkhouser, bought Happy Retreat and spent nine years working with great care to preserve the house and its outbuildings.
We have made great progress since then in the restoration of the property. Equally important, we have established Happy Retreat as a center for culture and history for the community. We have hosted concerts, art shows, lectures on history, craft beer and music festivals, wine and jazz festivals, school tours and more. We have done important research on the African-American history of Happy Retreat.
We have worked with the City of Charles Town, which owns the 10 acres surrounding the house and outbuildings, to create walking trails through the woods that slope down towards Evitts Run, which flows along the western boundary of the property. The City has recently completed a foot bridge across Evitts Run that connects Happy Retreat with the graves of Charles and Mildred Washington.
We owe all of this progress to the generosity of hundreds of donors, large and small, and the support of the community. We look forward to the next 20 years!
Walter Washington
President