Bridge Builder: A Look Back at My First Term as Judge/Executive of Mccreary County, Kentucky

By Jimmie W. Greene and Samuel D. Perry

BRIDGE BUILDER is the story of a man and his dream to move
his home county into the modern era. His stubborn pursuit of openness and
accountability provoked hostility from some, but admiration from most. His
populist idealism and his promotion of the common man endeared him to his
constituents and he never lost touch with his origins or his source of support.
BRIDGE BUILDER is a must-read for all politicians. It makes a
lasting contribution to Kentucky history and students of local government will
be reading it for a very long time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456745356

Jimmie W. Greene

Jimmie W. Greene served for seventeen years as Judge/Executive of McCreary County, Kentucky. His four terms altered McCreary County politics. Personal demons and political enemies failed to stop his pursuit of transparency in government. His lives in Honey Bee, Kentucky and remains active in local politics and community life.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FORWARD

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book grew out of a casual conversation I had several years ago with a man who has become a close personal friend. He and I were sitting together at the McCreary County Public Library, engaged in small talk and waiting for patrons of the library to stop by our table to purchase copies of our books. At some point in the conversation, my friend asked me if I intended to write about my first term in office as McCreary County Judge/Executive. When I replied that the thought had not entered my head, he responded by informing me that my first term of office had been the equivalent of a political tsunami in McCreary County, that it had made an indelible mark upon local politics, and that I needed to tell the story.

I had never thought of my first term in that manner and I was, frankly, quite flabbergasted that anyone would regard it as being that significant. After all, I had served four terms in office and had accomplished much of which I was proud in each of them. But, I knew that the man to whom I was talking was not given to false flattery and insincere comments. So, I listened to him and this book is the result. The man to whom I was talking, and who set me on this path, ultimately, became the book’s co-author.

There are many people who deserve an acknowledgement for having participated in the publication of this book, but nobody deserves more credit than Samuel D. Perry. Sam, as he is known by his friends and colleagues, is a native McCreary Countian, having been born at Honey Bee, a tiny hamlet just up the road from my native Parkers Lake. Although military service and a career in the U.S. Forest Service kept him away from McCreary County for much of his life, he came back home as he neared retirement and has lived here ever since, and, for that, we are all fortunate.

Since his retirement, Sam has worked hard to preserve the rich historical and cultural heritage of McCreary County. His Following Trails Grown Dim column in The McCreary County Voice newspaper was an early favorite among readers and his talks to civic groups have deepened the appreciation McCreary Countians have for their homeland. His book, SOUTH FORK COUNTRY, first published in 1983, remains in print and is a best-seller with visitors to the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. He has always been willing, and eager, to share his treasury of accumulated knowledge with anyone who expresses an interest in the Big South Fork River region, a land of which he, and I, are both immensely proud. If that is not enough, it cannot be overstated that Sam is, also, a very good writer, having honed his skill by years of writing for the popular history market. I am fortunate that he undertook this project and offered to help me write this book. I cannot thank him enough.

Another person who has made a major contribution to the book is my beloved wife, Lois. For more than thirty years, Lois has been at my side, providing strength when I was weak, comfort when I was ill, wise counsel when I was prone to act foolishly, and support when I was on the verge of toppling over, both physically and emotionally. Words do not exist that can, adequately, express just how much I appreciate her. As the book moved forward toward completion, Lois was, always, willing to listen, as I read rough-draft chapters aloud to her, her keen mind alert for errors or misstatements, and ready to critique, if necessary. Fortunately, those were infrequent occasions, as Sam had tremendous success in getting into my head and expressing, in his own insightful way, just what it was I was trying to say. So, thanks, Lois, for being there for me when I needed you the most, which has been, quite frankly, ever since our paths converged more than three decades ago.

I also want to thank my boys, Patrick and Bevo, for making me proud to have them call me Dad. You make it so easy to be a good father. It is for you and your children and grandchildren that I have written this book. I may have done some good things with my life, but nothing gives me a greater sense of accomplishment than to see you and know that you are mine. Thanks, guys.

My brothers and sisters in Christ at Walker’s Chapel Baptist Church have been constant and enduring sources of comfort for me. They don’t seem to mind when I am filled with the Holy Spirit and make loud noises in church and they don’t seem bothered when their singing brings tears to my eyes. Through the years, they have become my second family and I am, sincerely, appreciative of their love for me.

My comrades-in-arms at Charles E. Moore Post 5127, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, and American Legion Post 115 are like brothers. Thank you for your dedication to the cause of liberty in our nation and for watching my back when necessary.

To Oscar Shad Walker, Jr. and Bruce Murphy, who worked alongside me during my seventeen years of service to the people of McCreary County as Judge/Executive, I owe a debt of gratitude. I could not have done it without you. So, thanks. Your effort made me a better Judge/Executive and McCreary County a much better place to live and do business.

To the people of McCreary County I extend my sincere gratitude. Through four election cycles, you demonstrated your faith in me by entrusting your homeland to my care. It was an awesome responsibility that you bestowed upon me. I can only hope that I lived up to your expectations. I know that I am a better man for having been your elected leader for so many years. I will never forget your many kindnesses and your generous spirit. You are, truly, the bedrock of this nation. May God bless each and every one of you.

Throughout this book, I have used McCreary County’s oldest newspaper, McCreary County Record, as a source of primary documentation. For the assistance the staff of the newspaper has provided to me, I am very grateful.

Finally, and above all else, I thank God for giving me the strength, the enthusiasm, and the longevity to write this book. Without His enduring presence and guidance, neither this book, nor anything else I may have accomplished, could have been possible. I give Him all the praise and glory.

FORWARD

I stepped back and looked at what I had done. The frame appeared to be a bit out of plumb, but not too badly, considering my skill with hammer and nail. I reached out and pulled the corner of it down a bit, then looked at it again. Perfect. The few spectators nearby seemed to think the same as they nodded their heads in approval.

The date was September 14, 1999 and I had just finished posting, on the wall of the McCreary County, Kentucky courthouse, a framed copy of The Decalogue, a document more popularly known as the Ten Commandments. Little did I know that in so doing, I was igniting a firestorm that would make the name McCreary County known throughout the world and begin a debate that would wend its way from an obscure courthouse, sitting atop an insignificant hilltop, in an unheard of county in south-central Kentucky, to the halls of the Supreme Court of the United States.

When I was a boy, growing up beside the old railroad depot at Parkers Lake, Kentucky, I heard it said, many times, that it is the little things we do in life that cause us the most trouble. In my career in the U.S. Air Force, in my civic endeavors, and in my life as an elected public official, I have found that to be true. The small things are the ones that are, often, overlooked or ignored. Perhaps, that is why they are such problems for us. We simply don’t see them until it’s too late to do much about them.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that posting a simple set of rules for civilized behavior, rules upon which Western Civilization was built, would become the source of so much division, so much rancor, and so much misunderstanding. But, it did, and posting the Ten Commandments on the wall of the courthouse, for good or bad, has become my legacy, or, at least, a good portion of it.

Posting the Ten Commandments is the part of my legacy that has received the most attention. However, it was not the only thing I did during my seventeen-year tenure as Judge/Executive of McCreary County. I have been told that it was, actually, one of the least of my accomplishments. I am not so sure about that. I suspect that the passage of time will be the final arbiter.

My first term of office was a learning experience for me. It lasted four years and ended in a disappointing loss in the Republican primary to a comrade-in-arms whose ideas for improving McCreary County found more favor with the citizenry than did mine. I felt really bad about having given my all for four years and, then, losing it, suddenly, to a constantly evolving political climate, but, in looking back, I can readily see that the changes I implemented during those four years are continuing to bear fruit and for that I am grateful. Like I think it will, ultimately, do in the Ten Commandments case, time is continuing to demonstrate that the decisions I made during my first term in office were the right decisions. How those decisions were made is what this book is all about. I trust that you will enjoy permitting me to share some of them with you.

Chapter 1

KINDLING THE DESIRE

I don’t recall, exactly, when I began to cultivate the desire to serve as Judge/Executive of McCreary County. I didn’t have it as a boy, hanging around my Grandpa P.P. Walker’s store in Parkers Lake. Back then, I was too busy running trot lines down at the mouth of Mulberry Creek on the Cumberland River, or waving at the passenger trains as they rolled through my sleepy little hometown on the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, or playing ball with neighborhood friends, which I did every day I wasn’t in school. I didn’t have it when I graduated from McCreary County High School in 1946, and I certainly didn’t have it when I worked at a sawmill after I graduated. I didn’t even have it when, just a few months later, I raised my right hand and swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States as a member of the U.S Army Air Corps, which later became the U.S. Air Force.

It is possible that I was inspired by my uncle George Walker who died in office in 1955 while serving as County Judge of McCreary County. Public service was a way of life for Uncle George. Perhaps, I picked up some of his desire to serve others as I grew into manhood. If so, I shall be, forever, indebted to him.

It is possible, too, that, at some point in my Air Force career, I encountered something, or some set of circumstances, that made me appreciate the county where I was raised. I know that I didn’t always appreciate it, believing it to be somewhat backward and far-removed from the better things in life. In that respect, I don’t think I was much different from most young men and women in the county who sought the good life in Cincinnati or Muncie or Detroit as soon as they finished high school.

On occasion, the Air Force sent me into some exceedingly hot-spots, mainly in Asia. One of them was Korea. I spent ten months there, flying aboard cargo aircraft and B-26 bombers as a radio operator. I also served in Japan, in the Philippine Islands, on Okinawa, and in Vietnam. In each of these duty stations, I got to know the people, some of them quite well. In fact, it was in Japan that I met and married the mother of my two sons.

Whether it was in Korea or Japan, the Philippines or Okinawa, I quickly learned that the people of those countries had one thing in common. They all lived in nations that were, essentially dictatorships. They all lived in nations that were governed by a strong central authority, one usually supported by significant military might. They all suffered from a lack of true democracy.

Amazingly, however, the people living in those countries did not seem to be bothered by their inability to have input regarding how they were governed. To a degree, that is understandable. For most of them, they had endured the horrors of war for so long, they were willing to exchange a certain amount of their personal freedom, self-respect, and independence for the security afforded to them by a political strongman.

At some point in my military career, I started to realize that my own people back in McCreary County were, in many respects, not all that different from the people I lived among in Asia. The more I thought about it, the more I came to understand that my own people, the people who lived under the very same Constitution I had taken an oath to defend, were, also, living in a dictatorship, of sorts. While it was true that it could, in no way be compared to the dictatorships found in Asia, it was, nonetheless, a dictatorship. Perhaps it was at that point in my life that I came to the conclusion that I might be able to make a difference, that I might, somehow, be able to bring true democracy to the people I loved most, the people of McCreary County, Kentucky.

Freedom and self-respect can be taken away by dependency just as quickly as they can be taken at the point of a gun. For most McCreary County citizens, dependency upon a strong central authority for the essentials of life had been a part of their culture for half a century. They had lived under the gun since the county was created in 1912, giving up, bit by bit, their freedom and independent spirit for the security of a job and it had weakened them. I wanted to do something about that.

Like the people of Asia, the men and women of McCreary County have a rich heritage of struggle and sacrifice. This heritage has enabled them to survive in a harsh environment. Most of our people have been here for more than 150 years, on the same land their forefathers settled in the 1830’s and 1840’s. Here, the soil is thin and it is hard to make a crop. It is a land of narrow ridges, deep hollows, and perpendicular cliffs that soar ninety to a hundred feet over creeks that roll, merrily, to the Big South Fork River and the Cumberland. Here, our grandfathers planted their meager crops of hickory cane corn and ran their hogs in the woods in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Here, they fought off renegade Cherokee Indians and outlaws posing as Union and Confederate patriots during the War Between the States. Here, too, our grandmothers screamed in terror when their long skirts caught fire as they bent over the fireplace or wailed in agony during childbirth as they sought to bring us into the world. Too frequently, they wept as they saw their precious children carried away by typhoid fever, cholera, bloody flux, and monotonous hog-and-hominy diet. But, they, stubbornly, stayed on the land and they endured, and we are the result of their efforts.

Serious settlement of the land between the Big South Fork and the Cumberland did not get underway until the nineteenth century was nearly a quarter over. By that time, all the good land in Kentucky had been taken. All that remained was the vast region of steep hillsides and dark ravines known as the Eastern Coalfields and Cumberland Plateau, of which McCreary County is a part. By 1825, a few hardy families had ventured west from southern Whitley County and established homes on Jellico Creek and there was a tiny cluster of log cabins at Coolidge on the Jacksboro Road and at the crossroads of the Jacksboro Road and the Beatty Road near Pine Knot. Other than that, the land was unsettled. And for good reason. What sensible person would want it? What man in his right mind would, knowingly, risk his life, and the lives of his wife and children, to settle a land where the sandstone bedrock was so close to the surface that digging a decent grave was almost impossible, a land that offered no promise of survival, and which fought back every inch of the way? What kind of home-seeker would be happy to live in a land that was surrounded on three sides by rivers that blocked access to the outside world most of the year, and whose forests were filled with wild beasts that seemed to be creatures from a hellish nightmare? Who would choose to come to a place that had the unsavory reputation of being a place where hoodlums and outlaws and other human riff-raff could hide from the law and prey upon innocent wayfarers? Who indeed?

Only a rebellious, stubborn, temperamental, take no prisoners and show no mercy type of emigrant could be attracted to the Big South Fork. Only a people who had nothing to lose and all to gain by coming to the region could hope to prevail in this wild and forbidding land. And they came. First, in a trickle, then in a flood, and by the time of the War Between the States, they were growing their corn on every ridgetop they could clear and erecting gristmills on every creek that didn’t go dry in the summertime.

The struggles of our forefathers to survive on the land that would become McCreary County forged them into a people accustomed to deprivation and hardship. It turned them into fiercely independent and self-reliant people who would give a stranger the last piece of cornbread in the cupboard, if he asked for it, but who would not hesitate to put a bullet in his brain if he tried to take it away from them.

All of that changed in 1880 when the first locomotive on the new Cincinnati Southern Railroad roared through what would become McCreary County. The coming of the railroad changed life in the region and we have never been the same since.

Construction of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad opened the Big South Fork region to land speculators and entrepreneurs and they came to our homeland in droves to take what they could from our people without giving much in return. Learning that many of the people living on the ridgetops and in the creek bottoms had no legal title to the land they had farmed for decades, the speculators obtained patents to thousands of acres of timberland, turning hundreds of our uneducated and naïve forefathers, instantly, into squatters on someone else’s property. Some, like Captain John A. Geary, worked out agreements with those living on his patented land, enabling them to remain in place. Others were not so kind.

The entrepreneurs were not, necessarily, interested in owning land, per se, but they did want what was growing on it and what lay hidden beneath the surface. So, they were happy to make deals with the patent-holders and purchased thousands of acres of prime timberland from them and from gullible mountaineers. When they were unable to purchase tracts of land for the timber it contained, they were content to purchase the mineral rights to the land, using the notorious broad-form deed. In divesting the people of the Big South Fork region of their timber and mineral rights, the entrepreneurs did, however, offer the natives an alternate way of making a living to that of subsistence farming. They offered them jobs in the mining and timber industries.

So, almost to a man, our grandfathers and great-grandfathers went to work for outside interests like the Bauer Cooperage Company, the Beaver Creek Coal Company, and the Bear Creek Coal Company. In order to serve these corporate interests, the subsistence farmers of what would become McCreary County were transformed, seemingly overnight, into expert tree-fellers and hewers of crossties for the railroad as well as highly-skilled miners of coal. Within a single generation, the extractive industries based in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan owned the heart and soul of an entire population, the men, women, and children who lived within the drainage of the Big South Fork.

The largest landowner in the region was the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company. This Michigan-based corporation arrived in 1902 and, eventually, became not only the largest landowner, but, also, the biggest employer. Each year, like clockwork, when the region’s hearty young men became old enough, and strong enough, to lift a coal shovel, they trudged away from their hillside farms to seek gainful employment in the mines of the Stearns Company. There, they were transported deep into the bowels of the earth to fill their lungs with coal dust, dodge overhead power lines, and sling heavy shovelfuls of coal into cars in a glorious crusade to line the pockets of the already rich Company bosses living in Michigan and in the Company’s headquarters town of Stearns. At the end of each shift, the miners left their subterranean workplaces, covered with the black grime of the mine, knowing that, as long as they slung the coal and manned the tipples and showed proper respect to the white-shirted bosses, they would not have to eat fried pork three times a day or hoe corn all day in the hot July sun or worry about finding enough money to buy coats and shoes for the family before cold weather set in. The Company would see to that. All the miners had to do was work hard, keep their mouths shut, have nothing to do with union organizers, and step off the sidewalk when the Company men approached them. It was simple system that the Company had developed and it was guaranteed to work to the benefit of both parties, especially that of the Company. Most people seemed to like the arrangement. But, not all.

Martin Campbell owned and operated a hotel and general store at Pine Knot. There, he lodged travelers on the railroad and the Jacksboro Road, sold piece goods and grocery staples, and permitted the front porch of his place of business to be used as an informal community social center. Men like William B. Creekmore, Samuel and John Morgan, Edward Harmon, and Thomas Wood met at the store frequently to talk politics and ponder the general state of affairs of a nation that was, rapidly, becoming a global power. Joining them, once a month, was the Whitley County Attorney, John Crittenden Bird. The men did not see eye-to-eye on everything they talked about, but upon one topic of discussion, there was unanimous agreement. They did not like what they were seeing taking place in their homeland. They did not like seeing their people rapidly descending into a state of servitude, losing their self-respect, and their time-honored traditions, in a desperate effort to appease the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company, just so they could have a measure of economic security.

In the land drained by the Big South Fork River, two Kentucky counties, Whitley and Wayne, butted up against each other at the river, while a third, Pulaski, plunged, like a threatening dagger, toward them, creating a political situation that was a constant source of discouragement for the people living along the river. Each year, property tax revenue generated by the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company and the Cincinnati Southern Railroad was siphoned off by the governments of Whitley, Wayne, and Pulaski counties and used to better the lives of the citizens living in and near Monticello, Somerset, and Williamsburg. And for those tax revenues, what did the folks living up on Rattlesnake Ridge or at Bear Wallow or over on Bear Creek receive in return? Good schools? No. Adequate law enforcement? Only in the Stearns Company coal camps. Prompt and decisive dispensation of justice? Not hardly. Modern roads? None of any consequence. No, the people living in the far reaches of the three counties received only lip service and promises that everyone knew would never be kept. If our forefathers wanted good schools for their children, they were told to move to a coal camp and go to work for the Company. If they wanted protection from the violent element in the region, residence in a coal camp would afford protection in the form of a town marshal. Modern roads? Who needed them? Coal miners had no need to travel other than to the mine portal or the Company store where they could purchase needed goods on credit or with the Company’s own unique version of coinage called scrip.

Martin Campbell and his comrades knew that the people living in the remote portions of Wayne, Whitley, and Pulaski counties needed their own governmental authority. They needed their own sheriff’s department and a cadre of deputies so that preachers would not have to place a loaded pistol on the pulpit beside the Bible to keep ruffians at bay during religious services. They knew that the people needed a county judge who could dispense justice fairly and quickly and a jail where threats to the public welfare could be incarcerated in a timely manner and close to home. They knew that their children and grandchildren deserved decent schools and adequately trained teachers. They knew that the people needed a tax collector and a treasurer who could turn the burgeoning revenues of the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company and the wealth of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad into assets to be used by the people of the Big South Fork region instead of having those monies taken away by the governments of Wayne, Whitley, and Pulaski counties. They knew that their people needed to control their own destiny. They knew that they needed their own county government.

Campbell and his cohorts concluded, after a lot of serious thought and debate, that their friend, William B. Creekmore, was the man who stood the best chance of getting the state legislature to listen to the complaints from the Big South Fork region. It was upon the shoulders of this slight, heavily-mustached, man that they chose to lay their hopes and dreams for self-governance and independence.

In 1909, Creekmore announced that he would seek the office of State Representative from Knox and Whitley counties. With the support of every eligible voter in western Whitley County, he was elected. In the 1910 session of the General Assembly, Creekmore introduced legislation calling for the creation of a new county to be composed of portions of Wayne, Whitley, and Pulaski counties.

From the beginning, the odds were against Creekmore and his compatriots. Although officially adopting a neutral position in the controversy that followed Creekmore’s proposal, the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company, privately, opposed the creation of a new county. Preferring to do business with the three governmental structures in Kentucky with whom it had established strong ties rather than with a new, untested, political faction, the Company sought to kill the legislation. Assisting the Company in its efforts was the Cincinnati Southern Railroad.

When James Bennett McCreary was elected to his second term as Governor of Kentucky in 1911, the movement