Tom Gish

Tom Gish, the crusading owner of The Mountain Eagle newspaper in Whitesburg, died Friday, Nov. 21, 2008. He was 82.

Mr. Gish had been suffering from kidney failure and heart problems.

“He was the bravest and most honest man I ever knew,” said his son, Ben Gish, who is editor of the newspaper.

Thomas Edward Gish was a United Press International bureau chief when he and his wife, Pat Gish, a reporter for The Lexington Leader, bought the Letcher County weekly in 1956. They started running it in January 1957.

The Mountain Eagle became the first newspaper in Eastern Kentucky to seriously challenge the environmental damage caused by strip mining. The Gishes scrapped the paper’s motto: “A Friendly Non-Partisan Weekly Newspaper Published Every Thursday.” The new motto: “It Screams.”

The Gishes pried open the meetings of public agencies and took on corrupt politicians, rapacious coal companies and bad schools.

They were respected nationally but made plenty of local enemies. In 1974, after the newspaper published stories about local police mistreating young people, an officer paid arsonists to throw a kerosene firebomb through a window at the newspaper, destroying the building. Mr. Gish said he later learned that coal company money was behind the crime.

The paper came out on schedule the next week, published on the Gishes’ front porch. It had a new motto: “It Still Screams.”

“They were breaking new ground — no one had ever seen a weekly newspaper in this part of the world that actually covered the news,” said Tom Bethell, who worked at the Mountain Eagle in the 1960s and now is a contributing editor.

Al Cross, a former Courier-Journal reporter who now directs the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, said the Mountain Eagle expanded its reach far beyond Letcher County. It reported, for example, on policies at the Tennessee Valley Authority that encouraged the worst kind of strip mining.

Gish was never hesitant about writing the truth, those who knew him said.

“He was the consummate journalist,” said David Thompson, executive director of the Kentucky Press Association. “When I talk about the media being the watchdog for the public, I’m thinking about Tom Gish.”

Carroll Smith, a former Letcher County judge-executive who sold copies of the Mountain Eagle as a boy, said the Gishes and their newspaper have moved the county forward as long as he can remember. “They didn’t pull punches,” he said. “We were born and raised in the coalfields, but when the coal industry would get out of line, they would report it. When a politician did something wrong, they would report it.”

Gish was a Whitesburg native. Pat is from Paris in Bourbon County.

For the Gishs, becoming the owners of a small newspaper was the fulfillment of a dream.

But, they later wrote, they hadn’t realized that Eastern Kentucky’s economic and social problems were so deep.

“We didn’t know that one of every two mountain adults couldn’t read or write,” they said in a 2000 article. “We didn’t know that tens of thousands of families had been plunged into the extremes of poverty, with children and adults alike suffering from hunger and some dying of starvation.”

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The Rev. John Crystal Morris

The Rev. John Crystal Morris was born in Rector, Ark., in 1899. The man whose life spanned all or parts of three centuries was 108 years old and still writing his newspaper column for the Ohio County Times-News in Hartford when he passed away Oct. 27, 2008 – just three weeks shy of his 109th birthday.

Morris began his career as a contributing columnist at 101 when he started writing for the Ohio County Messenger in 2001 and continued until 2004, when that paper closed. He then began writing for the Ohio County Times-News. Living in a nursing home, Morris wrote his column on an electric typewriter. The typewriter had paper in it the evening he passed away, according to Sam Ford, a longtime friend and former employee of the Ohio County Messenger.

“John spent about 80 years preaching behind the pulpit,” Ford wrote in an e-mail. “As an evangelist, he traveled around the country. Prior to the beginning of this decade, he was living in Las Vegas. When he came back to live with his son, the Rev. John David Morris, he was only able to preach sermons on rare occasions, his age no longer allowing his body to stand behind the pulpit.

“When I was working for the Ohio County Messenger, he contacted us about starting to write a column for the paper,” Ford wrote.

His column was called “Something to think about.” Some columns were of a religious nature and others focused on his memories of the early 20th century and how much life had changed, Ford said.

Along the way, Bowling Green television station WBKO honored Morris by naming him a Hometown Hero. And the Society of Professional Journalists held a regional meeting at Western Kentucky University in April 2004 to honor Morris for his achievement of being the oldest known newspaper contributor around.

Ford presented the SPJ award to Morris’ son, John David Morris, who accepted on behalf of his father.

“Mr. Morris was a journalists’ journalist and a true inspiration to our students,” Pam McAllister Johnson, director of the WKU School of Journalism and Broadcasting, said.

In addition, Morris received a commendation from the Kentucky Senate and the state House of Representatives. He was also named a Kentucky Colonel.

“I am trying to do the best I can with what I’ve got,” Morris said in a 2004 interview with the Ohio County Times-News. “I try to tell the truth with everything I write out. Sometimes it is a mighty poor best, but I always try to do the best that I can.”

Morris traveled a great deal through his life and preached in Texas, Illinois and many other states. He preached his last official sermon at 103, Ford said.

“Dad was ordained in 1922 and never let up from then on,” John David Morris said of his father. “When he came back to Ohio County, he was 101 and rode in the middle of a U-Haul truck all of the way.”

John David Morris, 79, said his father passed away peacefully: “He ate supper, laid down and went to sleep.”

He was considered Ohio County’s oldest citizen. Survivors include two sons, four daughters, one stepdaughter, 18 grandchildren, 31 great-grandchildren, 44 great-great- grandchildren and seven great-great-great-grandchildren.

•••••

Dixie Holbrook

Dixie Lee Holbrook, long-time resident and writer for The Elliott County News, passed away Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008, at her home. She was 95.

Holbrook was well-known for her Green column and her patented Weather Whacker Report that her column always led off with. She had a unique style of writing that caught the attention of readers young and old quickly.

Often her column would flashback to yesteryears to tell of a fishing/hunting trip, driving lesson, or just how things were in the “good ole days.” Then in the spring she’d remind readers that it was time to plant this or that and often gave a helpful hint on how to get them started.

The funeral arrangements were not available.

•••••

Lowell Denton

Long-time Flemingsburg Gazette Publisher Lowell Denton died Oct. 15, 2008. He was 85.

Denton sold the community newspaper in 1999 to Guy Hatfield. The newspaper is currently owned by publishers Garry and Danetta Barker.

Denton was a Fleming County native who graduated from Flemingsburg High School in 1940 before leaving home to fight in World War II where he served in a tank battalion. He returned home to attend the University of Kentucky and later bought his hometown newspaper in 1951.

Denton owned the Gazette for almost five decades before selling the weekly so he could go into retirement.