WOMAN DEDICATES HER LIFE TO PRESERVING LOCAL HISTORY AND CULTURE

September 17, 2021

A young girl wanders aimlessly through the streets of Dollar Bay, Michigan, a small town - less than 26 square miles, less than 2,000 people. She knows every dip in the road, every crack in the sidewalk. She comes across an old building and, camera in hand, pushes aside the creaky door and marches inside, ignoring the faded sign that reads “Private Property - No Trespassing.”

One might picture this child growing into a delinquent, a troublemaker, but no. Erica LeClaire, 25-years-old, was always a model child, despite her mild acts of trespassing.

“I was an angel!” she said. “I did everything anyone told me to do. I got straight A’s. I was not going to step a toe out of line - unless it was one of those things that was widely accepted that everyone just did.”

LeClaire spent much of her childhood wandering through the abandoned buildings that littered her hometown. Buildings remained untouched through years of economic inactivity, and LeClaire said although they are technically private, they’re basically public.

Growing up, she enjoyed visiting the places her parents hung out when they were young and seeing how those places had changed over time. She enjoyed taking pictures of the unique architecture and playing capture the flag with other local kids.

“Main Street, which ran down the middle of town, was the dividing line, and then it was fair game for the rest of the town. It was probably eight blocks each,” she said. “Because it’s this weird mix of old buildings that hadn’t been touched in 50 years, it was very interesting - especially when we played at night.”

LeClaire felt a strong connection to history in her hometown, what she would call a strong sense of place - a complex, multidimensional concept regarding the emotional connection between people and their surrounding environment - a term that is commonly heard within the field of historic preservation. This strong emotional connection to her environment led LeClaire to develop a deep and lifelong passion for history and its preservation.

“It didn’t really matter what else was going on, history was always what I loved,” she said. “History has always been what I would do, it was just a matter of what that looked like.”

After graduating as valedictorian, LeClaire went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in history from Michigan Tech and a master’s degree in architecture with a focus on heritage conservation from the University of Arizona. Now she works as the director of preservation at the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County, a position she received soon after graduating in the spring of 2020.

“You can have all the skills in the world, but if you don’t feel the passion for something I think you’re never going to be as strong at it as you could be,” said Jessie Landl, the executive director at PSABC and the person who hired LeClaire. “Erica has all these fantastic skill sets, but on top of that she is so passionate about what she does that she brings that extra level of energy and enthusiasm to her job.”

One of LeClaire’s greatest strengths is her ability to relate to and communicate with people from a wide range of backgrounds, a skill which proved to come in handy with her preservation work. From developing and maintaining relationships with property owners to gathering the public’s opinion on current development proposals, a good deal of LeClaire’s job involves interacting with the public and acting as a mediator between local communities, developers and government.

“It’s incredibly challenging to get people to think about preservation as more than just standing in front of bulldozers,” she said. “Preservation works in tandem with development, or at least it can work in tandem with development, to create even better development and better growth for places.”

Her people skills came in handy over the summer when she helped organize a team of community members, volunteers and local organizations - such as the Appalachian Barn Alliance - to carefully disassemble and safely store one of Buncombe County’s oldest structures: a freedman’s cabin, the Boyd or Boyd Boyd Cabin.

“The Boyd Cabin has been something that the preservation society has known about and has tried to figure out for years,” she said. “We’ve been working as an organization with the property owner for a long time to figure out what on earth needs to happen. Since I came on it became a little more dire because the condition was just deteriorating, so part of my interview actually for this job with Jessie and Jamie was ‘What do you think is happening?’ or ‘How would you deal with this cabin?’”

She played a big role in the project, receiving praise from Landl, who said LeClaire led the team. Yet LeClaire remains humble.

“I didn’t really know what I was doing,” she said. “But I’m happy to listen to people who know more than I do and tell other people what to do based on that.”

The project proved to be a success - or at least, as much of a success as it could be.

“It was at a point where there was no other choice other than to let it go,” Landl said. “We feel like this was the best step at this time and just really proud that we were able to get it to the point that it’s at now, where it’s safe and protected and hopefully will have a future.”

This was a unique project for LeClaire, who studied in Arizona, where the materials and building plans were significantly different.

“I have a feeling it's not something that will be happening super regularly, but you never know, maybe this will just become a big part of my job. I'm not sure yet,” she said.

LeClaire’s accomplishments in history go further back than her time in Asheville, all the way back to her freshman year of high school, when she competed in National History Day. She made it past the local and state levels and entered the national competition, prompting a family vacation to Washington.

“It was a lot of fun because I got to compete and I got to talk to judges and meet all these really cool people, but then we also got to do all the fun stuff like go to the Smithsonian,” she said. “(We) went to Baltimore, which was awesome. Saw some really cool places.”

The theme for the competition was innovations in history and LeClaire chose to do her project on the birth control pill, a fairly controversial topic in her small, conservative town.

“I kind of did it because I wanted to be annoying and shoving it in people’s faces,” she said. “But it was really cool. I talked to my grandma about what it was like when it first came out and how that changed things for them - or didn’t change things for them - and it was really cool, really fun.”

Despite growing up in a more conservative area, LeClaire’s parents were never very conservative themselves. Like most parents, their beliefs and ideals rubbed off on LeClaire, and she grew up being one of the few kids in her school who openly said she was a feminist, often pitting herself against the majority.

“A teacher at one point made a sexist comment and I called him out for it,” she said. “After class I stayed and I said something to him and he was like, ‘Well OK, whatever,’ and then other students and a couple of my classmates were joking about it and making it a thing, so I went to the principal.”

LeClaire said things became a little better after that, but unfortunately, changing local attitudes was not so easy.

“I mean you’re just not going to change people’s minds,” she said. “And 16-year-olds are dumb. They’re really dumb, and they don’t care, they’re just going to repeat what they’ve heard other people say.”

But that didn’t stop LeClaire from trying. She took part in the local Democratic Committee, canvasing the neighborhood and working with progressive causes. When she moved to Tuscan, Arizona with her husband, Justin Nicholas, to attend graduate school, she continued to volunteer her time to advance social issues, specifically reproductive justice.

LeClaire met her future husband in Michigan while working at the movie theater, and the two have shared a love of movies ever since.

“Pre-COVID, we were seeing at least one movie a week, if not more, depending on what was coming out,” she said. “We’ve seen all the Marvel movies many times. We’ve gone to Avengers Trivia, or Marvel Cinematic Universe Trivia, and just the two of us came in third place with groups of six or seven.”

LeClaire began working when she was 15 years old, before meeting her husband, and during her freshman year she found a job in the field of history. During the summers, she worked for a local historic mine site - the Quincy Mine - giving tours of the largest steam-powered hoisting engine in the world. She thought the building was cool, but had very little knowledge of or interest in the mechanics.

“When I got the mechanical engineers on the tour, that’s when I got a little bit concerned,” she said.

LeClaire didn’t like being a tour guide, but she sought to work in the field in whatever way she could, and when she and her husband moved to Minnesota, she found another job giving tours at the historic Mayowood Mansion - a job that ended up shaping her future.

Her time at the Mayowood Mansion profoundly influenced her decision to go into the field of historic preservation. She arrived right after the mansion underwent a massive rehabilitation project. The house rested on a hill and was gradually sliding downward, and the property owners were tasked with keeping the house’s historic integrity and character intact while also preventing it from falling into the river.

“I got to see the results of all that work, and I got to look at pictures of the whole process, but I wasn’t able to be a part of the process,” she said. “I was able to look at who was involved in that project and figure out what their roles were and kind of cherry pick what I liked of it and that’s how I picked a graduate program.”

Unfortunately, LeClaire’s parents were never in a financial position to help pay for her education. She and her husband both worked various jobs throughout her college career, but even then, she couldn’t avoid taking on student loans and racking up debt. However, if it weren’t for her husband’s support she would be in a much worse financial situation.

LeClaire and her husband were married four years ago, and together they hopped around the country, living in a total of four different states. They don’t have any children, but they do have two dogs, a responsibility LeClaire said sometimes feels similar to children, but not quite.

LeClaire grew up in a big family - with two older sisters and three younger brothers. She subsequently developed a competitive attitude which she carried throughout her educational and professional life.

“I was an overachiever to the max,” she said. “I was going to be at the top, I was going to be the smart one.”

With big dreams and a positive attitude, LeClaire used to think she could do anything. Then, during her sophomore year as an undergrad, she cracked.

“It was not a good situation,” she said. “Following that semester, I was on academic probation. It was awful. I was tired all the time - I was not in a great space.”

Eighteen credit hours and three jobs will do that to a person.

But LeClaire didn’t stay down for long, and with the help of her close friends and school advisors she jumped back.

“I learned a lot from it,” she said. “Learning how to say no is very difficult at times, at least it was for me, and that was a huge wakeup call for me.”

LeClaire still fears failure, a fear which she said links together many people of her generation. She said people experience a certain feeling of dread, of not living up to the expectations of others - and the expectations we place on ourselves.

“Am I doing enough?” she asked hypothetically. “I need to be doing something else, I need to be doing better, I need to be doing more.”

She still must remind herself that failure is not that big of a deal - in fact, it’s bound to happen, and we can’t stop it. She brings this line-of-thinking into her work.

“Preservation, in general, is a losing battle,” she said. “Places are going to fall into disrepair, not everything can be saved. So inherently, we’re starting from a losing position - it’s just about how badly we lose.”

In the end, LeClaire earned her bachelor’s degree and went on to earn her master’s. In the future, she may eventually earn a doctorate.

She always planned to pursue education, but since entering grad school, she hasn’t had any set goals. She doesn’t know where she will go from here, but she remains optimistic.

“I’ve never anticipated staying in one place or in one job forever,” she said. “I get antsy way too quickly for anything like that.”

Fortunately, her work in Asheville keeps her engaged - everything is new and interesting, no two projects exactly the same. There’s never a dull moment, and for now this is where she wants to be.

“Of course, I want her to work here till retirement - I want to keep her forever - but I can see she has the type of spirit that kind of wants to experience a lot of different places,” Landl said. “I can see Erica doing preservation work throughout her career, but I can see her sort of traveling the world and doing that, doing preservation in not only other cities but other countries as well.”

In the meantime, LeClaire hopes to make whatever impact she can in her community, just as when she promoted social justice as a child.

“I just want to save all the things - just want to stop climate change and give everybody a place to live,” she said. “Those are very large-scale problems that preservation can contribute to finding the solutions for, and that would be great, and hopefully I can play a small part in doing that, at least in Asheville.”

She hasn’t changed much from the young girl wandering through abandoned buildings and checking out biographies on Sojourner Truth and Ben Franklin from her elementary school library. She’s faced many obstacles and failures along the way, but she continues to learn from them.

“I’ve moved around when I needed to move around, my husband and I have made the decision to take big leaps when we needed to, and I feel like I’ve put myself in a good position looking towards the future,” she said.

For now, she plans to just continue learning and figuring things out along the way, but her passion for historic preservation will only continue to grow, because it’s not just about keeping old buildings from being torn down.

“Preservation is about a place, it’s about the community that built it,” she said.

LeClaire said history adds to the uniqueness of places like Dollar Bay and Asheville, a uniqueness which has inspired writers from local legend Thomas Wolfe to Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home and alumni author-in-residence at UNC Asheville.

“I think what the writer’s job is is to find the things about a place that are distinct,” Cash said. “Whether it’s the spirit of the people, whether it’s the landscape or the geography or the culture or the history.”

Cash – whose novels often take place in North Carolina and Southern Appalachia – moved to Asheville when he was 18 years old. He fell in love with how old the city felt and has since referred to Asheville as his home.

“This is a place - and North Carolina more broadly - that is so rich and interesting, because it’s a place that’s in such conflict with itself - politically, culturally, geographically - that I think I would never run out of things to write about,” he said.

History adds character, it helps establish what it means to be somewhere - a sense of place. However, LeClaire said preservation is about more than just history.

“Preservation is a tool to help build the community,” LeClaire said. “To help show people where we’ve been and, hopefully, inform where we’re going.”