MARSHALL -- Gov. Josh Stein was at Zadie's Market/Old Marshall Jail in Marshall Sept. 27 to celebrate the community's response to Tropical Storm Helene on the 2-year anniversary of the historic storm.
Zadie's and Old Marshall Jail owner Josh Copus, a local ceramic artist, and team started working on the community brick project on the one-year anniversary of Helene at the historic jail, built in 1905 and closed in 2012 when inmate facilities moved. It now serves as a boutique historical hotel and restaurant.
The brick project, what Copus calls "a folk monument," features more than 4,000 bricks designed and stamped by Marshall and Madison County community members, as well as visitors and volunteers.
"This whole thing is like a social practice art
installation," Copus said. "The way we cash flow it is just with the restaurant and the hotel. But it's so much more than just a business. This whole thing is an art piece for me."
Marshall resident Gerald Ponder laid the bricks for the monument. Copus said a team of people contributed to making the project possible, including Dennis Rector and Frank Sabatino, who helped with the lighting. The project was funded by the National Historic Preservation Trust, which, along with American Express awarded a $50,000 grant in August 2025 to Corner Kitchen in Asheville and Zadie's as part of their Backing Historic Small Restaurants program.
Zadie's and Corner Kitchen are two of 50 small or independently owned restaurants nationwide selected for the funding.
According to Copus, the team, including his apprentices Ayden Kryzmarzick and Joseph Clayton and a team of volunteers, spent much of October and November 2025 producing the bricks in collaboration with brick factory Taylor Clay Products in Salisbury.
"We hauled them from Salisbury to here, wet," Copus told The News-Record Sept. 29. "We produced them, put them on pallets, wrapped them up, shipped them up here, unloaded them, organized them, and created a system for managing them. After we created all the bricks we hauled them back to Taylor Clay to fire them and then hauledthem back here for the installation. It was a lot of work.”
The project was free to all.
"It's about giving people an equal opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings and sentiments," Copus said. "That's why I call it a folk monument, because it is a monument not to historic positions of power. It's a monument to the power of people collectively."
Copus said the project is committed to the principles of freedom of speech and individual expression.
The project is about creating a time capsule moment of what people felt was important, and creating a permanent record of those feelings, rather than about being a flood monument, Copus said.
"Every brick is a monument to whatever the maker needs it to be about," he said. "It's about you and about what you need a monument to. There are bricks in there people cried when they made, and then there's a 'Cheese Pizza' brick."
The Sept. 27 art monument celebration followed a memorial for Pat Franklin, a beloved and influential community member who most recently served as the board chair for longtime music venue The Marshall Depot, and served many years with the Madison County Arts Council, as well as working for the Department of Social Services.
One of the bricks Copus made carried a simple message: "Pat Franklin is important."
"The way I engage with the brick factory is, I fill in the spaces between the notes. I try to capture some of the stuff that needs to be said," Copus said.
Stein's Marshall visit
Stein visited Old Marshall Jail in November 2025 and had a brick made with "Hope, Love, and Determination" inscribed on it.
"That is what you all represent to me. That is the spirit you fill in me to give me the fire, energy and motivation to do this work. So I want to thank you for doing just that," Stein said in Marshall Sept. 27.
"What you did is showed up and did what you had to do that day," the governor said. "Then you came back the next day, and did what you need to do that day. Then eventually, it looks like this. It's an amazing accomplishment."
Stein said rebuilding small businesses in downtown Marshall, as restoring people's spirits and sense of community is equally important.
"This is real. Giving something tangible for people to come and just feel is part of what it's going to take to get to where we want to be," Stein said, thanking Copus for facilitating the project.
Stein recalled the day he met Copus in late 2024, around the time Old Marshall Jail was hosting the recording sessions for The Resonance Sessions an album whose proceeds benefit the Madison County Arts Council and Rare Bird Cultural Arts, the nonprofit organization associated with Rare Bird Farm, in Spring Creek. The album was pressed on vinyl by Citizen Vinyl in Asheville.
After Copus flagged him down in the street and convinced him to visit the restaurant, Stein walked in on eighth-generation Madison County ballad singer Donna Ray Norton recording "Fine Sally."
"After I got done singing, Josh Stein came up to me and said, 'Girl, you just did that,'" Norton told the crowd Sept. 27.
He later asked her to perform at his inauguration ceremony.
Prior to introducing Stein in Marshall Sept. 27, Marshall Mayor Aaron Haynie said the 2-year anniversary is about "honoring yesterday, living in today and believing in tomorrow."
"At the end of the day, it's the people that rebuild communities. Our job is not to recreate the past. Our job is to take the love that we have for this community and build something for the future," Haynie said.
But while it's important to commemorate and the community's resilience, the anniversary carried reminders of significant trauma, too.
"Not everybody is celebrating this anniversary in the same way that we are," Haynie said. "For some, Sept. 27 brings back incredible memories of loss - of homes, buildings, livelihoods, and for some people, they lost ones that they loved. So while we celebrate this afternoon, let's never forget that our people are still hurting. Let's check in on our neighbors."
When Helene ripped through the region on Sept. 27, 2024, heavy rains caused catastrophic flooding of many rivers, including the French Broad, devastating Marshall and destroying homes, roads, bridges and businesses. Helene killed more than 100 people and caused nearly $60 billion in damage across the state.
"A community does not just show up when things are good. A community shows up when things are hard," Haynie said. "A community stays, a community remembers, a community helps, a community heals, and a community rebuilds."
Importance of art
Copus told The News-Record that in moments of tragedy, art is more important than ever.
"It's whatever you need it to be. It's the room of requirement," Copus said. "At the core, the brick project is a story collection project. It's also a listening opportunity. It gives people a chance to talk, and we just listen and record the information. And it's community outreach. It makes people feel included in a way that I think is really valuable."
Copus said he was grateful and touched by the large turnout Sept. 27.
"It fills my cup. That is my motivation: to provide a space I would want for myself, and give that to other people. So much of what this place has become is a product of people filling the space, which is how it becomes collaborative," Copus said, adding that the brick project was largely staffed by volunteers.
He said seeing the reaction Sept. 27 on the face of Gerald Ponder, who has been laying bricks for more than 50 years, was one of the highlights of the emotional day.
"A lot of people toil in obscurity. I'm someone who moved in 'from off,' but also, I'm an Appalachian American," said Copus, who was born and raised in Southwest Virginia. "It's easy for me to understand people's attitudes and mentalities. The thing that defines most of this is hard work."
As someone who is interested in understanding the history of the place, Copus said one of the most encouraging aspects of the project is, like many of the people celebrated in the bricks, it will carry a lasting legacy.
"For me, this thing, in 100 years is going to make people ask questions and say, 'Who was Pat Franklin? Why was she important?' That's the key: to create curiosity through that, and give people an end to figure it out on their own. The bricks get better with age. They only become more interesting as we move through time."
Johnny Casey is the Madison County communities reporter for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel. He can be reached at 828-210-6074 or jcasey@citizentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Gov. Stein visits Marshall's community art piece 2 years after Helene
