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I am firm in my belief that a teacher lives on and on through his students. Good teaching is forever and the teacher is immortal. ~ Jesse Stuart

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Clyde Roy Pack

12 October 2009 Written by Anthony B. Stephens

Published in Featured Author's and Books

"Even though my family had little in terms of material goods, I wish everybody could have experienced a childhood like mine." -- Clyde Roy Pack, Muddy Branch

Clyde Roy Pack is an associate editor at The Paintsville Herald, where he also writes an award-winning humor column. He was an elementary and high school art and English teacher for 33 years before retiring in 1994. He lives in Paintsville with his wife of 47 years, Wilma Jean Penix Pack.

Books by Clyde Roy Pack

Muddy Branch: Memories of an Eastern Kentucky Coal Camp (2002, Jesse Stuart Foundation)
Coal-Camp Chronicles (2005, Where? Press)
Going Back: The Happy Adventures of a Coal-Camp Kid (2009, Where? Press)

Stacy R. Nelson

12 September 2009 Written by Anthony B. Stephens

Published in Featured Author's and Books

"I always wanted to be like him (Jesse Stuart), I wanted to be a writer." --Stacy R. Nelson

Stacy R. Nelson was delivered by his grandmother on a kitchen table in northeastern Kentucky in January of 1949. A one-time U. S. Army communications specialist, band member, songwriter, poet, railroad foreman, and antique log home restoration expert, Stacy's true passion has always been his writing.

Stacy's uncle, Jesse Stuart, was his greatest inspiration. "I always wanted to be like him," Stacy remembered. "I wanted to be a writer."

In recent years, Stacy lived "like a pauper" so he could devote all of his time to writing. "One winter," he said, "I practically lived on venison, cornbread, and beans, heating my house with firewood I cut from the hills. . . But that winter I added yet another manuscript to my growing list of unpublished works."

Books by Stacy R. Nelson

Gone Native (2008, Publish America)
In the Valley of the East Fork, 1774 (2009, Publish America)
Beneath the Weeping Skies (2009, Jesse Stuart Foundation)

Thomas D. Clark

11 October 2009 Written by Anthony B. Stephens

Published in Featured Author's and Books

“ A community without a sense of History, is not a community at all.” -- Thomas D. Clark

Thomas Dionysius Clark (July 14, 1903 - June 28, 2005) was perhaps Kentucky's most notable historian. Clark saved from destruction a large portion of Kentucky's printed history, which later become a core body of documents in the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. Often referred to as the "Dean of Historians" Clark is best known for his 1937 work, A History of Kentucky. Clark was named Historian Laureate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1991 — one of many honors he received.

Early years

Born in Mississippi to a cotton farmer and a schoolteacher, Thomas Clark received his primary education in a neighborhood school to the third grade . After that he made it only to the seventh grade at his mother's school. He dropped out of school to work at a sawmill and as many southern boys did in those days, helped out on the family farm. At sixteen, he took a job on a dredge boat that scoured the bed of the Pearl River. His mother urged him to get back in school. From an interview, Clark recalls:

"I left the boat in September 1920. Without a job. Without a future, really. I accidentally met a boy who told me about an agricultural high school Choctaw County Agricultural High School. I went down and within 10 minutes of getting off the train I'd registered. The old superintendent didn't ask me one thing about my education. He didn't know if I could read or write. Said you look like a big stout boy. You look like you'd make a good football player. So I was admitted as a football player. I went to that school for four years [and obtained] reasonably basic preparation."

University of Mississippi

Clark had decided that farming, manual labor and river work were not going to meet his needs. At the urging of his parents, he entered the University of Mississippi in September 1925. While there, he met his first mentor, historian Charles S. Sydnor, who held a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Even though Clark had no classes under Sydnor, the two had "deep conversations" about the rich heritage of the old South. Sydnor encouraged Clark to follow his interests into post graduate studies in the field of History.

It was at Ole Miss that Clark discovered the significance of his birthday and understood for the first time what Bastille Day was about. Clark "fell in love with learning" at that time, improved his use of the English language and began to develop writing and study habits that framed the disciplines through which he was to accomplish great things later in his life.

Clark had financed his education at Ole Miss with a cotton crop on land his father had given him but before he graduated the funds had all but run out. He then found a golf course that needed tending and took the job. It turned out that budding writer, William Faulkner, also having a hard time with finances, helped Clark tend the golf course. Clark was later quite surprised to see that Faulkner had "hit the bigtime" with his writing. He graduated with honors earning a BA in 1928.

University of Kentucky

Clark, through his new-found interest in history had begun attending meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA). It was there that Clark claims to have been exposed to the profession of the historian through two major personalities he saw at the AHA meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana (December 1928):

Ulrich Phillips - with Slavery: The Central Theme of Southern History
James Breasted - with The New Crusade,

Upon hearing the presentations Clark recalls, " I came home thoroughly convinced I wanted to be a historian."

Receiving scholarships to both the University of Cincinnati and to the University of Kentucky, he chose the latter. Clark went on to receive his Master's degree in history but when he would go further, the financial dilemma struck again. At the last minute, he was offered a fellowship at Duke.

Duke University

From David Hamilton's Conversation with Historian Thomas D. Clark:

Hamilton: You took a doctorate at Duke. I understand your initial train ride to Durham was an eventful one?

Clark: Yes, a historic moment. I took the old southern train from Meridian, Mississippi. Rode it up to Atlanta and Spartanburg and up to Gastonia. And there was a tremendous mob of people around the station [at Gastonia]. The train was stopped. We sat, as I recall, almost an hour. That was the strike. That was the beginning of the breaking of the old feudal system of textile labor relations. That was an historic moment in the South. And I was there. Right in the middle of it without knowing what it was all about.

That December the AHA met in Durham and I went. Duke used its graduate students as guides and so forth. I took E. Merton Coulter of Georgia, John Oliver of Pittsburg, and Professor Lynch of Indiana out to see the new campus rising out of the ground and they became lifelong friends of mine. I heard James Harvey Robinson deliver his presidential address ["The Newer Ways of Historians," American Historical Association 35 (January 1930)]. I came up close to the Association . . . [for] the second time, which had an impact on me.

At Duke, Clark centered his research on the American frontier, the development of Midwestern railroads, and slavery issues of the South. While there, he met Martha Elizabeth Turner who was to become his wife of 62 years and mother of his two children . He completed his doctorate in History in 1931. From there, it was back to the University of Kentucky, where he was to teach history by day and develop library resources by night.

Professorship at UK

Clark became a professor at the University of Kentucky in 1931. With few resources at his disposal, he almost single-handedly built Kentucky's history department into a major doctoral program in southern history. At one point its star-studded faculty included Albert D. Kirwan, Clement Eaton, James F. Hopkins, Holman Hamilton, Steven A. Channing, and Charles P. Roland. Clark began a 70-year-long enterprise at cataloging, organizing, rescuing, and preserving Kentucky's history. He established at UK a culture of respect for the heritage and documentation of the past. He re-organized the History department, bringing revolutionary innovations to the way the subject was researched and taught. His comprehensive methods were inclusive and exhaustive in scope and detail yet presented to his students in a logical and eloquent manner.

Upon receiving news that irreplaceable historical documents were being abused and defaced in Frankfort, Dr Clark rushed to the scene from Lexington. There he found that pages of military records of Kentuckians involved in the Battle of 1812 the Mexican war and the Civil War were being used as temporary sleeping cots and pipe lighters. He appealed to the newly-elected Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler to have the documents moved to the Lexington campus. If not for this intervention, vast portions of Kentucky's History would have been missing from the Archives that are preserved to this day. Clark's subsequent appeals to the Legislature and the Governors let to the eventual establishment of the Kentucky Archives Commission in 1957.

Dr. Thomas Clark became head of the history department in 1941 and a distinguished professor in 1950. His good natured down-to-earth style and gentle charm made him a favorite among students and fellow faculty which made it possible for him to recruit the vast amount of help needed to build and maintain the growing Kentucky archives. He labored to lead the effort toward completion and retained the workforce even after his retirement as department head in 1965 and his final retirement as professor in 1968.

Later Life

Clark remained a respected and influential advisor to various government agencies throughout his tenure at the University. He was outspoken in matters of timber and natural resource conservation, fiscal responsibility, [constitutional and education reform and especially Human Rights. He was capable and articulate in framing current policy against the lessons of history and careful to skillfully represent only primary sources whenever possible - a praxis which earned him immense respect, not only in Kentucky and the US, but around the world. His public visibility earned him a name for taking an appreciation of History to the people - not hiding in the halls of academia.

Clark fought to preserve cultural heritage for the benefit of future generations and to promote public awareness and appreciation of the same in his own day:

“ A community without a sense of History, is not a community at all. ”

Clark remained an active member of the AHA and spoke on countless occasions in many venues both academic and non-academic. He was a proponent of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1991. He lived to see the dedication and opening of the Kentucky History Center in Frankfort in April 1999. The Center was renamed after Clark in 2005 as the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History.

Clark died on June 28, 2005 at the age of 101.

Books by Thomas D. Clark

Beginning of the L&N, From New Orleans to Cairo, the Illinois Central (1933)
A Pioneer Southern Railroad from New Orleans to Cairo, (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1936)
A History of Kentucky (Prentice Hall, New York, 1937)
The Rampaging Frontier: Manners and Humors of Pioneer Days in the South and Middle West (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, Indiana,, 1939)
The Kentucky (Rivers of America Series) (Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1942)
Simon Kenton, Kentucky Scout (Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1943)
Pills, Petticoats, and Plows: The Southern Country Store (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1944)
Southern Country Editor (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1948)
The Rural Press and the New South (Baton Rouge, 1948)
The Emerging South (with A. D. Kirwan) (Oxford University Press, New York, 1961)
The South Since Appomattox (Oxford University Press, New York 1967)
Kentucky, Land of Contrast (Harper & Row, New York, 1968)
Three American Frontiers. Writings of Thomas D. Clark, (University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, 1968)
Pleasant Hill and Its Shakers, (Shakertown Press, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, 1968)
Agrarian Kentucky
Exploring Kentucky
History of Indiana University (4 volumes) (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1970)
Pleasant Hill in the Civil War (Pleasant Hill Press, 1972)
South Carolina, The Grand Tour, 1780-1865 (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, S.C., 1973)
A Century of Banking History in the Bluegrass: The Second National Bank and Trust Company (John Bradford Press Lexington, Kentucky, 1983)
Frontiers in Conflict: The Old West, 1795-1830 (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1989)
Footloose in Jacksonian America: Robert W. Scott and His Agrarian World, (The Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Kentucky, 1989)
Clark County, Kentucky, A History, (Winchester Clark County Heritage Commission, 1995)
The People's House: Governor's Mansions of Kentucky, (with Margaret A Lane) (University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, 2002)

Loyal Jones

10 July 2004 Written by Anthony B. Stephens

Published in Featured Author's and Books

"All work in Appalachia must be based on the genuine needs as expressed by mountain people themselves. Whatever work is done must be done with the recognition that Appalachian culture is real and functioning." --Loyal Jones

Loyal Jones is a popular speaker, writer, and educator who helped advance the Appalachian studies movement of the 1970s and is recognized for his knowledge and use of Appalachian folk humor.

Biography

Born in Marble, North Carolina, on January 5, 1928, Jones grew up among mountain people who loved to tell srtories, and throughout his life he has collected humorous narratives and used them in his various careers. As a young man jones joined the U. S. navy and later attended Berea College in Kentucky, where he completed a bachelor's degree in 1954. He also served for a time in the U. S. Army and went on to finish a master of education degree at the University of North Carolina in 1961. In the ensuing decade, Jones established himself as an advocate for Appalachian causes, serving as associate director and then executive director (1967-70) for the Council of the Southern Mountains, an agency established in 1913 that was prominent in the 1960s War on Poverty.

Work at Berea College

From 1970 until his retirement in 1993, Jones directed Berea College's Appalachian Center, where he taught Appalchian studies, organized workshops and festivals, administered student service programs, and established a sound archive of interviews, stories, and music. Due to his early work, which included editing a bvook entitled Reshaping the Image of Appalachia and writing numerous articles on the region, the educator helped facilitate the development of Appalachian studies as an academic field. While at Berea, he published biographies of musicians Bradley Kincaid and Bascom Lamar Lunsford, a collection of religious humor, and along with singer-songwriter Billy Edd Wheeler four collections of Appalachian humor: Laughter in Appalachia: A Festival of Southern Mountain Humor (1986), Curing the Cross-Eyed Mule: Appalachian Mountain Humor (1989), Hometown Humor (1991), and More Laughter in Appalachia: Southern Mountain Humor (1995). His books Appalchian Values (1994; with photography by Warren Brunner) and Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands (1999) deal with more serious regional topics but are still laced with humor.

Writing

Jones began writing in college, but did not publish until several years later. He has been a prolific writer since with literally dozens of published articles concerning Appalachian culture and its people to his credit.

One characteristic of Jones’ writing is optimism about the resiliency of mountain people and their culture, says Ron Eller, former director of the Appalachian Center at the University of Kentucky.

"Jones’ message has been that Appalachia should be judged by its own values—family, land, traditionalism—rather than mainstream values of accumulation, wealth and power", Eller said. “In many ways, he represents the best of Appalachia, the part of Appalachian society that values people for what they really are.”

In his years of writing and speaking about the region, Jones has become one of its best-known and best-loved figures. His most recent book is Appalachian Folk Tales (Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2010).

Accomplishments and Awards

Member and chairman, Berea Area Human Relations Committee, 1965-1970
Board member, chairman, and treasurer, Kentucky Foothills Development Council, 1970-78
Member, Governor’s Task Force on Education, 1975
Member, Governor’s Task Force on Welfare Reform, 1979-80
Member, advisory committee, An Appalachian Experience, program in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 1978-80
Member, agenda or program committees, Appalachian Studies Conference, 1980-84, 1986-89, chairman, 1989
Member and chairman, Hindman Settlement School Board of Directors, 1978-present
Director, annual Celebration of Traditional Music, 1973-1993
Co-director, Festival of Appalachian Humor, 1983, 1987, 1990.
He has also served as a board member for:
White House Clinics, Health Help, Inc. in McKee, Kentucky
On the advisory committee for the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame and Museum
As a Berea College Appalachian Fund trustee.
Long-time member of Union Church in Berea
Thomas Wolfe Award (WNC Historical Society)
Mountain Spirit Award (Christian Appalachian Project),
Laurel Leaves Award (Appalachian Consortium)
President’s Medallion (Berea College)
Appalachian Educator Award (Carson-Newman College)
Appalachian Treasure Award (Morehead State University)
Cratis D. Williams Appalachian Service Award (Appalachian Studies Association)
Award of Special Merit (Berea College Alumni Association)
Service to Appalachia and Berea College Award (Berea College Appalachian Fund)
Outstanding Contributor to Appalachian Literature and Culture Award (Appalachian Writers Association)
Denny Plattner Award for poetry (Appalachian Heritage)
Special W.D. Weatherford Award (Berea College)
Service Award (Berea College)
Jim Wayne Miller Award (Hazard Community College)
Culture and Arts Award (East Kentucky Leadership Foundation)
W.D. Weatherford Award for Faith & Meaning in the Southern Uplands (Berea College)
Willie Parker Peace History Book Award (North Carolina Society of Historians)
Honorary doctorate in humane letters (Union College)

Legacy

In 2008, the Berea College Board of Trustees passed a resolution to rename the Appalachian Center at Berea College the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center in recognition of his distinguished career and notable accomplishments as the Center’s founding director.

Books by Loyal Jones

Appalachia: A Self-Portrait (1979)
Radio’s ‘Kentucky Mountain Boy’ Bradley Kincaid (1980, revised 1988)
Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lundsford (1984, revised in 1988, reprinted in 2002)
Reshaping the Image of Appalachia (1986)
Appalachian Values with Warren Brunner (1995)
Faith and Meaning in The Southern Uplands (1999)
Country Music Humorists and Comedians (2008).
Appalachian Folk Tales (2010)

With Billy Edd Wheeler, Jones co-authored

Laughter in Appalachia: A Festival of Southern Mountain Humor (1987)
Curing the Cross-Eyed Mule: Appalachian Mountain Humor (1989)
The Preacher Joke Book (1989)
Hometown Humor (1991)
More Laughter in Appalachia: A Festival of Southern Mountain Humor (1995)

Billy C. Clark

10 October 2005 Written by Anthony B. Stephens

Published in Featured Author's and Books

"In nineteen years of growing up here in the valley, hunger was my most vivid memory and an education was my greatest desire."--Billy C. Clark

Billy Curtis Clark was an American author of 11 books and many poems and short stories, heavily influenced by his childhood growing up in poverty in Kentucky.

Biography

Clark was born June 26, 1928 and grew up in Catlettsburg in Eastern Kentucky during the Great Depression; He was a second cousin of writer Jesse Stuart. He had four brothers and four sisters, and was born to a mother who would wash clothes for extra income, while his father was a shoemaker who bragged of having made it to the second grade. He was living on his own by the time he was 11 years old, doing work to pay for high school, while living in a courthouse building. He would put out miles of trotlines and set traps to catch animals, drying the skins of the animals he caught on the courthouse's clock and selling the furs to make a living.

He enlisted in the military and served during the Korean War following his graduation from high school. After completing military service, he enrolled at the University of Kentucky, becoming the first member of his family to earn a college degree.

Writing

Clark claimed to have his first work published when he was 14-years old and a collaborative effort was underway at the time of his death to publish pieces he had written while in college together with the Jesse Stuart Foundation, to be called A Heap of Hills. The foundation has reissued eight of Clark's books that had been originally published by G. P. Putnam's Sons and Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

Reviewer Hal Borland in The New York Times describes the "ballad-like quality" of his 1960 autobiographical book A Long Row to Hoe, that tells the story of his life up to age 19, growing up in a community that "had more than its share of 'river trash', drunks [and] derelicts" in which the developments of electric lights and indoor plumbing did not "put an end to frontier crudeness and backwater characters". The review laments the structure of the book, but describes it as a "good story, rich in character and details, larded with anecdote and legend". The book was selected by Time magazine as one of its best books of that year, describing it "as authentically American as Huckleberry Finn". Many colleges and universities use the book to introduce students to the culture of Appalachia and its culture and the Library of Congress selected it to be recorded on a talking record for the blind. Mark Daniel Merritt composed the score of River Dreams a musical adaptation of A Long Road to Hoe. The play was written by Betty Peterson, an English professor who had been a student of Clark's.

Platt and Munk Publishers included his Trail of the Hunter's Horn in a 1964 anthology of 30 Greatest Dog Stories that also included Call of the Wild by Jack London as well as John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley. The Book of the Month Club offered as a selection his book The Champion of Sourwood Mountain.

A mule named Kate would follow Clark and his friends to school. After the mule was arrested for trespassing, he and his classmates collected enough money to get the animal released on bail. Walt Disney Studios purchased the rights to his book about the mule, titled Goodbye Kate, which has yet to be made into a film by the time of Clark's death.

The University of Tennessee Press published his novel By Way of the Forked Stick in September 2000.

Clark was selected as writer-in-residence at Longwood University, after spending 18 years at the University of Kentucky in that role as a full professor. He was the founder and editor of Virginia Writing.

Personal

The Billy C. Clark Bridge, which crosses the Big Sandy River on U.S. Route 60 to connect Kentucky and Kenova, West Virginia, was named for him in 1992.

Clark died at age 80 on March 15, 2009 at his home in Farmville, Virginia.

Books by Billy C. Clark

A Long Roe To Hoe (1960; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2002).
Song of the River (1960; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1994).
Trail of the Hunters Horn (1957; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1995).
Mooneyed Hound (1958; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1995).
Riverboy (1958; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1997).
Useless Dog (1961; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1996).
Goodbye Kate (1964; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1992).
To Leave My Heart in Catlesstburg (1999, Jesse Stuart Foundation).
Creeping From Winter (2002,Persimmon Hill).
The Champion of Sourwood Mountain (1966; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2003).
Sourwood Tales (1968; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2001).
Miss America Kissed Caleb (2003, The University Press of Kentucky).

Harry M. Caudill

10 October 2011 Written by Anthony B. Stephens

Published in Featured Author's and Books

"And we just can't afford to sit back and watch all that (land) be destroyed so a few people can get rich now. One of these days the dear old federal government is going to have to come in and spend billions of dollars just to repair the damage that's already been done. And guess who will have the machines and the workmen to do the job? The same coal operators who made the mess in the first place will be hired to fix it back, and the taxpayers will bear the cost."[2] -- Harry M. Caudill

Harry M. Caudill was an American author, historian, lawyer, legislator, and environmentalist from Letcher County, in the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky.

Biography

Caudill served in World War II as a private in the U.S. Army and was elected three times as to the Kentucky State House of Representatives. He taught in the History Department at the University of Kentucky from 1976 to 1984. A common theme explored in many of Caudill's writings is the historic underdevelopment of the Appalachian region (particularly his own home area of southeastern Kentucky). In several of his books (most prominently Night Comes to the Cumberlands, 1962) and many of his published articles, he probes the historical poverty of the region, which he attributes in large part to the rapacious policies of the coal mining industries active in the region, as well as their backers: bankers of the northeastern United States. He notes that such interests most often had their headquarters not in Appalachia but in the Northeast or Midwest, and thus failed to properly reinvest their sizable profits in the Appalachian region. Following publication of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, President John F. Kennedy appointed a commission to investigate conditions in the region and subsequently more than $15 billion in aid was invested in the region over twenty-five years.[1]

Activist and Writer

In his later years he became an active opponent of the rapidly growing practice of strip mining as practiced by companies working in Appalachia, which he believed was causing irreparable harm to the land and its people. He spoke out and published in many magazines about the subject. Caudill pointed out that strip mining could be done responsibly as in England, Germany, and Czechoslovakia where topsoil, subsoil, and rocks are removed separately and placed back in layers in their original order.[2]

He also produced several volumes of folklore and oral history, which he collected himself from residents of the area centering on Letcher County and Harlan County, Kentucky.

Personal

Caudill died in 1990 and is buried in Battle Grove Cemetery, Cynthiana, Kentucky.

Legacy

The Harry M. Caudill Library located in Whitesburg, Kentucky, the main library of the Letcher County Public Library District, is named for Caudill.

Books by Harry M. Caudill

Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (1962; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2001).
My Land Is Dying (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1973).
The Watches of the Night (1976; Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2010).
A Darkness at Dawn: Appalachian Kentucky and the Future (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1976).
Dark Hills to Westward: The Saga of Jenny Wiley (1969; Ashland, KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1994).
The Senator from Slaughter County (1973; Ashland, KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1997).
The Mountain, the Miner, and the Lord and Other Tales from a Country Law Office (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1980).
Slender is the Thread: Tales from a Country Law Office (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1987).
Appalachian Wilderness: The Great Smoky Mountains (Epilogue written by Caudill; co-authored by Eliot Porter and Edward Abbey) (New York: Dutton, 1970).