On Junior, John and Jesus

One thing about big families is that there are inevitably, if you stay alive long enough, lots of funerals. Thursday my cousin and I went to Hazard in the hallowed grounds of eastern Kentucky near Jenkins, where my paternal grandparents began their new Kentucky home 100 years ago.

The occasion was the funeral for John Dishner, a prince of a guy, father of young Blake, and husband to Melissa, daughter of our first cousin, Sondra, who is the daughter of my dad’s sister, Mary and her husband, the late Ed Dawhare. John died at age 36 of cancer, which he contracted a year ago. He had lived in Lexington, but as this magical mountain land has done for many of its own it did for John and his family, drawing them back to the wellspring of their youth.

So it was in this small town setting that it seemed the whole community came. All ages, all walks of life, gathered in this spirit-filled setting atop, ironically, a reclaimed coal mine, a by-product of mountaintop removal*.

From Lexington we take I-64 just past Winchester, then that famous veer right onto the Mountain Parkway, the path I’ve traveled hundreds of times since the 60’s on what I always considered the road to Kentucky’s Oz, the wonderland of Whitesburg, where I was raised. (Happy Chandler, who I loved, called it “the road to nowhere.” His assessment actually heartened me as an emerging young adult for it showed me that even great men make major misjudgments).

About halfway down the Parkway is an exit to Natural Bridge, deep in the Daniel Boone forest and one of the nation’s top sights. It is also where the Junior T. Williamson rest stop sits which is not only why we exited, but the inspiration for this writing.

My cousin, Joe, told me the story about Mr. Williamson. Turns out he was from Pikeville, where Joe grew up (his father, the late Warren Harding Dawahare, ran our store there after WWII until his death in 1966). Junior had a game leg and was a very simple, yet giving man. He worked at Pikeville High with the sports teams pretty much as an equipment manager. He washed jock straps and cleaned football cleats. He served.

Later, he went to Frankfort where he tended the legislators. He’d shine shoes and generally took care of them. He served.

In fact Joe said he did about all he was capable of doing—serving, serving literally hand and foot to others his whole life, with a smile, and with joy. His whole life he humbly served those who got the glory. But as Joe said, HE'S the one with the monument.

Then Joe added, “It's like Jesus said, “those last on earth will be first in heaven.”


*Ask the good people of Hazard about this controversy and they will earnestly show you the other side, the incredibly valuable flat land that enables so much new commercial and residential opportunities, such as this burial ground, hospitals, schools, restaurants and homes. There most certainly are two sides to the strip mining issue and we must honestly consider them all in order to fashion optimal policy.