cannabisnews.com: Luck Ran Out





Luck Ran Out
Posted by FoM on August 28, 1999 at 16:16:11 PT
By Devon Spurgeon, Sun Staff
Source: Sun Spot
Hippie family lived in trees, on old boats and on the kindness of strangers until the law caught up. It was only marijuana, they say, but the Jarvises are not out of the woods yet.
ELK LICK, W.Va. -- The six children of Ronald and Eileen Jarvis came of age in treehouses over swamps and in a rickety 60-year-old boat.For seven years they lived a real-life version of "Swiss Family Robinson." No one knew where they were. And while they traveled from West Virginia to Maryland to Florida, they never stepped into a classroom or visited a doctor's office. They made money doing odd jobs and selling handmade wooden carvings.Then, in June, U.S. marshals caught up with them.Ronald and Eileen Jarvis are back in West Virginia, in jail awaiting trial on drug charges. Their children -- daughters in West Virginia, sons in Florida raising money for their parents' defense -- are talking for the first time about their life on the run. And they are longing for a return to that life together.The Jarvis parents are accused of growing marijuana. Eileen, 53, is charged with one count of manufacturing marijuana and Ronald, also 53, is charged with conspiracy, with 11 other growers, to manufacture marijuana from 1979 through 1992.Federal agents who inspected their 138-acre West Virginia farm in 1992 valued the crop at more than $200,000. Next to the family's one-room, ramshackle home, Deputy Sheriff Richard Bennett of Lewis County said his officers found 500 pounds of marijuana.The Jarvis children maintain the marijuana was for their father's recreation -- an explanation that doesn't impress law enforcement officials. "Five hundred pounds of marijuana," said Bennett, "is an awful lot of recreation."Ronald's mother, Josephine Jarvis, 79, shakes her head about the suspected 50 marijuana plants investigators spotted by helicopter. "Ron was stupid, and I have told him that. He had it growing out here in the open," she said.Still, the Jarvises are no ordinary drug suspects. For seven years, they charmed strangers who even now wish the family only well.Even Bennett said: "This family was different. They were artists and have a good family, more of a 1960s-type family." A piece of landRonald and Eileen Jarvis met in a Georgetown disco in the 1960s, their relatives say. Both had long hair; he drove a motorcycle. They were unabashed hippies, and after they married, they moved to West Virginia as part of a "back to nature" subculture.Their life savings went into a farm on a scruffy piece of land crawling with snakes and ticks. The isolated property is 20 miles from the nearest town, accessible only by one-lane dirt roads. They had no electricity or running water. Eileen planted a vegetable and herb garden. Ronald built a one-room house out of evergreen trees.In the 1970s, Eileen gave birth to Yancy, then to two more sons in the one-room house.Molly and Lily were born in a rusted yellow school bus that had been abandoned on their property. Anna was the last child, four years younger than Lily. None of the children has a birth certificate.The couple spent mornings teaching the children how to read and write. The walls of their house were decorated with letters of the alphabet. In the afternoons, they played on a tire swing and made pottery out of sludge from a nearby stream. Yancy carved faces out of tree stumps.The family sold wooden furniture and crafts in mall parking lots to stay afloat. They needed little cash because they made their clothes, grew their food and had no telephone or utility bills.But on a sticky August day in 1992, their pastoral life ended. Federal agents flying over the backcountry in search of illegal crops found what they say were suspicious plants on the Jarvises' land.Anna, then 6, remembers the whirring of a low-flying helicopter and the ticks that were out en masse that day.Ronald and Eileen made a split-second decision to run -- leaving their dinner of chicken and rice burning on the wood stove. Eileen took three of the children and sped off in the family's white van."I understood what was going on, and I was pretty [upset] because my life was all gone," said Lily, who was 10 when they left. "I knew we were never coming back. It was pretty strange and scary."With police crawling over the property, Ronald crept back into the house to get Anna's Raggedy Ann doll and his gold pocket watch.He and his sons spent the night in the woods, watching breathlessly as agents came within a foot of their hiding place at one point.Two days later, the family was reunited and got a friend to drive them to Annapolis. But first, they left their van in the parking lot at the bank with a note under the wiper, explaining to loan officers that the family "would be leaving town" and could no longer afford payments.In Annapolis, the family scraped together enough money to buy a battered 50-foot-long boat. Black paint flaked off the sides of the 60-year-old ketch and water poured into the hull. It was towed to the Backyard Boats Marina in Shady Side. The Jarvises asked to stay at the marina a few weeks -- long enough to repair the vessel."At first I thought: What a raggedy group of people on this derelict boat," said Ginger Griffith, the marina's general manager. "In my heart, I knew they must have been very weird or on the run, but I never asked."The eight slept on the boat and used the marina's showers and bathrooms.Ronald and his sons worked on the boat late into the night, replacing each plank using antiquated hand tools.Eileen worked in the marina's main office. "She was the most effervescent, competent, reliable and congenial worker you could have asked for," Griffith said.Residents of the bayside community remember her homemade watermelon juice and holistic remedies for their colds. A lithe blonde with porcelain skin, Eileen looks like her daughters.A few weeks at the marina turned into two years.The family built a treehouse in a nearby glen and made a bench from saplings taken from the grove behind the marina. The limbs were twisted together by hand, without nails, glue or screws.But in November 1994, the Jarvises and their parrot, Lorenzo, vanished again. They left behind their cat, some clothing and their painstakingly rebuilt boat."It was sad leaving there," said Molly, 19, fiddling with the earrings on her multiple-pierced ears. "It was the first place we went -- before it was just us."The townspeople had tipped them off about federal agents asking questions around town. The Jarvises had become part of the community by then -- patrolling the piers during storms and lending a hand to anyone needing help."I think our government is totally out of line spending this much time and effort to harass this family," Griffith said.Griffith said Eileen called her later to apologize about running away. She told Griffith that she would do whatever she needed to do to keep her family together.The Jarvises fled to Central Florida, where they lived at first in a trailer at a campground. Eileen worked in the front office. Ronald and the boys found jobs at a sawmill.Six months later they moved across the Suwanee River. Ronald tied fabric between trees and made a tent for his wife and girls. He moved with his sons to St. Augustine, where they worked construction."We would swim a lot and try and find something to do," said Lily, now 17. The highlight of the week was when their father brought his paycheck back to the tent on the weekend.After their tent flooded, Eileen and the girls went to St. Augustine and lived for a time with Ronald, the boys and two family friends. Ten people slept on the floor of an apartment. In two years in St. Augustine, they moved in and out of eight houses, trailers and boats.In 1996, the boys went back to Shady Side to reclaim the boat. The rest of the family moved into a treehouse above the Suwanee to wait.They bathed in the river, the outdoors serving as their bathroom. Lily refurbished bicycles she found in a nearby campground. They used them to ride the 12 miles -- each way -- to the nearest grocery. Dinners were split-pea soup, wild mustard greens, rice and floral plants.The Jarvis daughters, still vegetarians, are all reed-thin.The family built fires to smoke out bugs. Sometimes, it lost clothes and shoes to rodents."If we would leave for a week the whole house would be destroyed by the rats," said Anna, now 13. "They were really big, but if they saw you, they would run."The girls said they spent days "swamp hopping," running around cypress trees and romping through puddles."The treehouse was neat because there was no one around. It was just us," said Lily.One day, after almost a year had passed, a game warden stumbled upon the Jarvises. Spooked, the family went to St. Augustine, then joined the boys in Maryland.After getting the boat, the Jarvises headed south again, eventually reaching St. Augustine. The girls found work at the marina, Anna baby-sat and did laundry, and the boys went back to construction. The Jarvises pooled their money.About this time, Molly met a boy she liked at a roller-skating rink. The girls got pagers so that friends could get in touch with them. Life seemed to be settling down.But on June 2, a muggy night -- much like the one when they began running seven years earlier -- the U.S. Marshal Service caught up with the Jarvises.It was the whirring of a helicopter hovering above that again alerted them. As Eileen peeled sweet potatoes for dinner, Anna started to scream.Police in a helicopter, a speedboat and 10 cruisers had surrounded the boat."They had big guns," said Anna, the only child who saw the arrest. Authorities ordered her to lie face down with her arms and legs spread apart. She choked back sobs. Her mind went blank.It was a few hours before her siblings returned home to find that their worst fears had come true.A `stopping point'"It was not supposed to happen," said Lily. "But now there is a stopping point. Before it was, `Just keep going.' "For years, the children never knew for sure where they would be sleeping come dark. They kept their shoes on all night and their few belongings in plain sight so they could be scooped up in a hurry."I think my dad is relieved," said Molly, who wears the earrings her mother wore the night of her capture."It is hard to find one person, but two adults with six kids! And we went back to the same places. They must not have been looking too hard."For now, the boys are in Florida working for money to pay their parents' attorneys. The girls are in Elk Lick with their grandmother. They visit their parents in jail every Wednesday and Sunday, but rarely go back to their old house.The grandmother is going to begin teaching Anna in the fall. The girls are fixing up the cellar so Anna can study there. They get knots in their stomachs at the sight of a uniform or the sound of a siren.But they say they have no regrets about their lives, about missing the usual rituals of youth: prom, high school football, going steady. "I thought all that would be really boring," said Molly, the 19-year-old, who wears rings on her toes and dreams of becoming an artist. "My mom would always say that this experience was building character."If their parents get prison time -- and Ronald Jarvis faces up to 20 years -- the children say they will move nearby."We never want to be apart," Molly said.Newshawk: FreedomOriginally published on Aug 28 1999 SunSpot is Copyright © 1999 
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Comment #12 posted by John Guthrie on December 11, 2005 at 02:08:30 PT
Where is everyone
   Does anyone out there have an email address for Sarah or Jessica or Ronnie&Eileen?  I am an old friend of the family and have been out of touch for a number of years. I would very much like to say hello to them again.
   My email address is john.guthrie adelphia.net, and they know me as Robbie.
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Comment #11 posted by Sarah Jarvis on July 01, 2005 at 13:32:37 PT
Sy nowdays
Sy is now living in virgina, He is married now amd I only have my aunt and uncles phone. not his... if you want you can email me   fuschia_dame_de_shalott yahoo.com and i can give it to you
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Comment #10 posted by kimc on June 05, 2005 at 17:54:04 PT:
sy jarvis
sarah - i'm an old friend of sy's from st. augustine and the last number i have 
for him is no good. do you know if he has a mailing address or some other 
way that i could reach him? thanks so much.
kim
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Comment #9 posted by Hope on November 03, 2004 at 14:09:04 PT
Yancy
That makes me so sad. I hope he finds peace soon. 
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Comment #8 posted by Sarah Jarvis on November 03, 2004 at 13:51:10 PT:
Yancy and his jail time
no not FOR my uncles growing pot.
 only for fighting or public drinking. and many other things...
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Comment #7 posted by Hope on November 03, 2004 at 11:44:56 PT
Yancy
That's horrible! Did he get jail time because of the marijuana?
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Comment #6 posted by Sarah Jarvis on November 03, 2004 at 11:40:31 PT:
yes it is just a plant
when you sit up on a hill grow your pot, smoke it and keep to yourself (as all pot smokers do) I do not beleive that ANYONE should mess w/ you, but what if you go out and sell it to underage children? let them smoke it w/ you? then I think you should be punished, but not as a murderer or a rapist.
 The children did not blame their parents for their lives I can't say it hasn't caused them pain or allowed them to make wrong choises. Yancy the oldest I beleive has suffered the most has spent most of his life in jail and when he is out he is tormented. all the children are doing what they want to do inspite of what has happened
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Comment #5 posted by Hope on November 03, 2004 at 11:26:01 PT
Thank you, Ms. Jarvis
I don't want to be nosy, but I have a curiosity based upon your story's relevance to our struggle to reform the laws.I'd like to know if any of the children ever held their childhoods against their parents. I hope they didn't. The Jarvis family sounds like a wonderful family. They sound like decent people who just had a different dream than many people. They should have been allowed to live that dream in a free country.Stories like theirs and others…horror stories…are why I’ve been dragging this soap box around with me for nearly thirty years.Sometimes it’s so hard…but I want to believe that right, and freedom, and truth will prevail. We can’t stand by and watch our government trample gentle people into the ground over a plant. We may have to see it…but we don’t have to condone it and I think we should all feel compelled to try to stop it.
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Comment #4 posted by Sarah Jarvis on November 03, 2004 at 11:09:28 PT:
how long
No he did not spend 20 years, only 18 months they got a good lawyer and they let him off, my aunt spent five months after she was released she then went back to ELk lick and waited till my uncle was released. they (Ron Elieen and the girls) moved BACK down to st augustine. were they are building houses and moving on w/ their life. my aunt and I talked about it and she says that she is glad that it is over that they didn't have to run she would lose so many personal memorys when they would run they could only take what was on their backs. now she has her garden, house and children around her... Molly now is a artist and has a little boy Lily is a painter also has a boy and one on the way. I think life has setteled down for them. anyting else (withthen reason) I would be happy to let you know
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Comment #3 posted by Hope on November 03, 2004 at 10:30:21 PT
Ms. Jarvis
Searching for information I can find nothing about what finally happened to Mr. Jarvis and his family. Was he put in prison for 20 years?Could you tell us "the rest of the story"?
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Comment #2 posted by Sarah Jarvis on November 03, 2004 at 09:23:40 PT:
I was there that day
For years after I would have dreams that life did not change as it did on that fatefull august day in 1992. I dream that I walk up to my aunt and uncles house and they are still there lonzo's screaming cuss words at the dogs bob marley music flowing from a loft upstairs and my aunt making her crafts. My heart yearns for those simpler days.
 I am the other side of that famiely. Molly and I are cousins, our fathers were brothers . our lives were the same no electricity,running water,homschooled ect... only my father did not get "busted" as my life stayed the same,Yancy's,Asea's,Sy,Molly,Lily and Anna's was at times frightning and unberable. there is so much to this story than that you told. 
  
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Comment #1 posted by InfantWalsh on September 03, 2003 at 13:47:07 PT:
This certainly does stink 
I cannot believe how crazy our damned government is.I wish better times for these intrepid free people.
My site shows how much I feel about Bush
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