CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A power company worker arrived at her house to fix something. He said, "What's your name?" She answered the way she always did, using her husband's first name.

"I told him, 'I'm Mrs. Criss.' He said, 'C'mon, you've got a name.' I didn't. I was nothing but a wife and mother."

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Through writing, Gazette-Mail columnist Alyce Faye Bragg finally found her identity. Gaining popularity as a speaker, she was photographed at a garden club event at Edgewood Country Club. She speaks again Wednesday for a public brunch sponsored by the West Virginia Christian Women.

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Today, everybody knows her as Alyce Faye Bragg, a Gazette columnist since 1991.

"I started writing because I had a crisis in my marriage," she said. "I didn't have any identity. We were raised that the husband was the head of the home. It's a country thing. I was Mrs. Criss. I wanted to be a person in my own right."

And so, 27 years ago, at the age of 46, she started writing. "I'd always wanted to write. But I raised six kids, all in school at the same time. I was busy being a wife and mother."

On Wednesday, she will share some tidbits about her rural roots during a talk at a "Seasons of Life" Brunch sponsored by the Charleston West Virginia Christian Women. The public event starts at 11 a.m. at the Chilton House in St. Albans.

In 1981, finally prepared to break the bonds of anonymity, she called Clinton Nichols, editor of the Clay County Free Press, and offered to write a column. "I told him it wouldn't be your usual thing about who visited who. He told me to write one and send it in. It was October, so I wrote about superstitions in the hills. It caught on from the beginning."

Ten years later, she got a fan letter from the late Gazette Editor Don Marsh. "He ran a column I wrote about chickens. He asked me to submit some columns. I tried to warn him. I said, 'This is hicky stuff. I can't write city stuff.' He said hicky stuff is what he wanted."

During her first year as a contributing columnist, a disgruntled reader submitted a letter to the editor imploring the newspaper to stop publishing her column. The reader referred to her as "that horrid anomaly."

"It hurt my feelings," she said, "but I got over it. That was just his opinion. Everybody to their own taste."

Dozens of enraged fans deluged the paper with letters of support.

"Now I can't keep up with the e-mails and letters," she said. "I try to answer all of it. I'm stretched 100 different ways, but I try to be all things to all people."

"I told him, 'I'm Mrs. Criss.' He said, 'C'mon, you've got a name.' I didn't. I was nothing but a wife and mother."

Not anymore.

Today, everybody knows her as Alyce Faye Bragg, a Gazette columnist since 1991.

"I started writing because I had a crisis in my marriage," she said. "I didn't have any identity. We were raised that the husband was the head of the home. It's a country thing. I was Mrs. Criss. I wanted to be a person in my own right."

And so, 27 years ago, at the age of 46, she started writing. "I'd always wanted to write. But I raised six kids, all in school at the same time. I was busy being a wife and mother."

On Wednesday, she will share some tidbits about her rural roots during a talk at a "Seasons of Life" Brunch sponsored by the Charleston West Virginia Christian Women. The public event starts at 11 a.m. at the Chilton House in St. Albans.

In 1981, finally prepared to break the bonds of anonymity, she called Clinton Nichols, editor of the Clay County Free Press, and offered to write a column. "I told him it wouldn't be your usual thing about who visited who. He told me to write one and send it in. It was October, so I wrote about superstitions in the hills. It caught on from the beginning."

Ten years later, she got a fan letter from the late Gazette Editor Don Marsh. "He ran a column I wrote about chickens. He asked me to submit some columns. I tried to warn him. I said, 'This is hicky stuff. I can't write city stuff.' He said hicky stuff is what he wanted."

During her first year as a contributing columnist, a disgruntled reader submitted a letter to the editor imploring the newspaper to stop publishing her column. The reader referred to her as "that horrid anomaly."

"It hurt my feelings," she said, "but I got over it. That was just his opinion. Everybody to their own taste."

Dozens of enraged fans deluged the paper with letters of support.

"Now I can't keep up with the e-mails and letters," she said. "I try to answer all of it. I'm stretched 100 different ways, but I try to be all things to all people."

She writes all kinds of things about her homespun, countrified life in Ovapa, but she never wrote about her identity problem. "A lot of women come along this line who never worked outside the home," she said. "After I married, I was a mother. Then your kids grow up, and if not a wife, what are you?"

She worked outside the home only briefly. "We had an asphalt plant in Summersville for about three years. I was a certified technician. I'd rather be baking chocolate chip cookies. They sent me to school to learn to test the asphalt. The state inspector told my son that the stuff was trichloroethylene and causes cancer. My son told him, 'Well, my mom has had a long and happy life.' He was joking. At least I think he was."

She doesn't start a column until shortly before the deadline, she said, but she works it out in her head as she goes about her household chores. "It just comes to me and kind of evolves. I don't think it's all that interesting myself, but a lot of people like it."

Now, between canning and column writing, she's writing a third book, "Laughter From the Hills," a collection of old columns and memories. "The name of the game is nostalgia," she said. "I can't get away from it."

Whatever she writes, she tries to keep it upbeat. "I like to read things that make you feel better, something positive. I'm that kind of person, an optimist."

She talks with the lilting young voice of a teenager. Inside, that's all the older she feels. "I'm 73, but that's my body," she said. "My heart is about 18. Well, maybe 20."

Her belated identity brings many requests for speeches. "I'm making my second appearance in Man the last of the month," she said. "They had so much fun the first time that they wanted me back."

Last week, she was featured speaker for a meeting of the Forest Ridge Garden Club. "They gave me a whole hour," she said. "For my talk on Wednesday, I only get 15 minutes. How can you reduce it to 15 minutes? I'll have to put it on fast speed, I reckon."

She probably got a kick out of the flier promoting her talk: "Alyce Faye Bragg, well-known author and columnist for Charleston Newspapers ..."

"Mrs. Criss" has come a long way.

Reservations for her talk are due Monday by calling 744-6914 or 546-8215 or through e-mail, cw...@yahoo.com.

Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 348-5173.