Aurelia Turpin Kennedywas known as much for her skills in making a mean Sherpa rice dish and peanut butter and jelly sandwichas she was for her fearlessness as a pioneering whitewater paddler and astute businesswoman.
Kennedy, 84, co-founder of the world-famous Nantahala Outdoor Center, died Sept. 14 at her home in Bryson City, after years of battling health issues, according to her daughter, Cathy Kennedy.
Those who knew her best say Aurelia Kennedy will be remembered for her kindness, her unbounded generosity, fierce love of her family and her fellow humans, as well as travel, adventure and living life to the extreme.
Cathy Kennedy said there will be a celebration of her mother’s life sometime in November.
“It’s important to us and it was to Mama that it be a life celebration and not a memorial service. She said, ‘I want a party,’” Kennedy said her mother wrote in her last fivewishes.
Aurelia Kennedy died on her 65th wedding anniversary to Payson Kennedy and two days before her 85th birthday.
Kennedy'sname and aura are inexorably linked to the Nantahala River and the NOC, which she helped create from scratch before it grew into the Southeast’s — and possibly the country’s — largest whitewater paddling outfitter and instruction center nestled in the heart of Swain County’s Nantahala Gorge. She was born in Atlanta to parents Raymond Carroll Turpin and Winifred Arthur Turpin.
RELATED: Nantahala River reopens to whitewater paddling, fishing
Known to friends and family as “Relia,” she graduated with a teaching certificate from Georgia State University, taught nursery school at the integrated Atlanta Cooperative Preschool Center in the 1960s and later taught first grade in the Atlanta public school system and in Andrews, North Carolina, according to an obituary written by her husband.
In the summer of 1972, Relia, Payson and their four children and friends started the NOC on property purchased by her lifelong friend, Horace Holden.
Payson made his indelible mark on the whitewater world when he workedas Ned Beatty’s stunt double in the 1972 classic, “Deliverance,” which was filmed on the Chattooga River. It was a notable year for placing whitewater paddling and river running on the map. That year the sport also made its Olympics debut in Germany and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Bill made waves in Congress.
But nothing did more for the sport, and outdoor recreation, in Western North Carolina than NOC, thanks in huge part to Relia Kennedy.
Paddler, businesswoman, adventurer, humanitarian
She had first canoed the Nantahala in the summer of 1954 when she was a counselor and canoeing instructor at Camp Merrie Woode near Sapphire.
She is believed to have been the first or second woman to have canoed Nantahala Falls.
Over the years, Relia did it all, including guiding raft trips on the Nantahala and Chattooga rivers, as well as the Usumacinta River in Central America and the Sun Khosi River in Nepal, teaching, serving on the NOC Board of Directors and working as manager of the various food service operations, including the NOC’s flagship restaurant, River’s End.
"I ran the restaurant. I never worked in one before, so I ran it like a big family and multiplied everything by eight," Kennedy told the Citizen Times in 2002. "After three years and some tears, I found I was well-suited for it."
The River's End Restaurant still sits partially perched over the Nantahala River off U.S. 19 West. The Kennedys later added other eateries, including the upscale Relia's Garden. Itno longer operates as a restaurant open to the public but supports NOC’s other food service operations and serves groups.
In “NOC Stories: Changing Lives at the Nantahala Outdoor Center since 1972,” a compilation of stories by Payson Kennedy published last year, John Burton, Olympic canoeist and former CFO for NOC, dedicated a chapter to Relia Kennedy, in which he called her “the heart, the generosity, the caretaking, the love,” of the NOC community.
RELATED: Nantahala Outdoor Center legacy detailed in new book
Burton said the first time he met Relia was in 1974 when he traveled from Philadelphia to paddle the Nantahala River.
“Hi John, I’m Aurelia. You look hungry. Come in and have something to eat,” was the name of the chapter, and the first words Burton said he ever heard from her.
“I remember the feeling of ease, of inclusion, of family, of food-as-healer, or food-as-connector,” he wrote.
Burton said though Kennedy was a gifted paddler and won many short whitewater slalom races, her brilliance showed through in running the restaurants in a brutal seasonal business, with spurts of long lines of grumbling tourists, and hard-to-keep workers. He said Kennedy was often seen at River’s End with her signature red bandanna, busing tables, washing dishes and waiting tables when someone unexpectedly quit.
Sherpa Rice, a recipe inspired by the Kennedys’ travels in Nepal, still delights hungry visitors at River’s End Restaurant after a day on the river.
The company grew to include a retail store, lodging, guided rafting and kayaking trips on seven Southeastern rivers, and world-class whitewater instruction, spawning the Nantahala Racing Club and dozens of Olympic athletes.
RELATED: Bryson City's Leibfarth wins gold at Pan Am Games
RELATED: Why did Asheville, WNC lose Whitewater Hall of Fame bid?
“One of Relia’s greatest loves was rambling in the woods while always keeping a sharp eye out for mushrooms and other wild edibles,” Payson wrote of his wife.
She taught wild food foraging courses for the NOC and at the John C. Campbell Folk School. For 15 years she was a leader of offseason NOC adventure travel trips in Central America, the Cayman Islands and Nepal.
In 1987 she began spending two weeks each spring backpacking on the Appalachian Trail with a group of nine women, and in the fall, she and her good friend, Khakii Handley of Asheville, also began doing trips. In 2002, at age 68, Kennedy and Handley completed their hike of the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.
RELATED: Get in Gear fest focuses on WNC's outdoor recreation economy
Another of Relia’s greatest loves was adventure travel with Payson in the NOC’s offseason. They traveled in more than 25 foreign countries, including most of Western Europe,Cuba, Vietnam, China, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia and Norway,Crete, Fiji, and even more U.S. states, mostly by bicycle but also on foot or skis, rafts or sea kayaks.
She rafted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, the Bio Bio River in Chile, and the Sun Khosi and Kali Gandaki Rivers in Nepal as well as shorter trips on numerous other rivers. She trekked to elevations over 17,000 feet at Mount Everest and Annapurna and across the Ganja La (pass) in Nepal.
She did six trips with Habitat for Humanity to build houses in Honduras and Fiji. One of her most memorable trips was a January excursion by local buses into Tibet and on to Lhasa in 1986 before Tibet was officially open to Westerners, Payson Kennedy wrote.
During her travels, Relia developed a strong interest in Buddhism and she began years of intensive study, becoming a devout Buddhist.
With those beliefs, Payson wrote, Relia wished to be remembered as wanting “to bring peace and kindness and to reduce suffering in herself and others.”
In addition to her husband, Relia is survived by her brother, Raymond Carroll Turpin Jr. of Atlanta; daughter, Catherine Aurelia Kennedy of Bryson City; daughter, Frances Kennedy Norwood of Raleigh; son, John Payson Kennedy IV of Copenhagen, Denmark; son, Stewart McRae Kennedy of Durham; five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Payson said a celebration of Relia’s life will be held at the NOC when her son, John, is able to travel here from Denmark, most likely in early November.
“From influencing Nantahala Outdoor Center’s focus on interpretive training with guides, to the continued investment in our local communities, Aurelia's footprint in and around the NOC will always be remembered and her incredible energy, spirituality, and graciousness forever missed,” says a post on the NOC Facebook page.
Sending thoughts
Thoughts, prayers, stories, memories, and notes may be addressed to: The Family of Aurelia Kennedy, 13077 West Highway 19, Bryson City, NC 28713.
