LIVING THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS. Donald E. Wilson

a tribal chief. His players both respected and feared him; just what a struggling football program needed. Dad told me that he permitted absolutely no nonsense, and more than once aimed his wrath in his direction.

      After a year on the freshman squad in 1925, Dad was forced to lay out for a year due to a hernia. But he played on the varsity team for the next two years, and by his senior year was a standout player who played most of every game, and often that entailed a full 60 minutes; offensive and defensive squads were not part of the game in the 20’s. He told me that during one especially rough game he fractured a rib, but merely taped it up and went on to play the rest of the game. In his last season the “Pioneers” as they were called, played 11 games, winning seven, that included defeating Louisville 19-0 and Cincinnati 25-6, an amazing feat for a team that had lost every game the previous season, and played the hardest and longest schedule the school ever attempted.

      1929!

      The class of 1929 graduated into a society and culture of unprecedented prosperity and an economic growth that dwarfed any previous century in American history. It seemed as if the nation had entered an era of permanent growth as demonstrated by a stock market that had soared in speculation. Even the small or average investor could buy stock with as little as ten percent down, and then could use his or her stock as leverage to purchase more stocks. Banks, investment brokers and businesses, were shuffling stocks back and forth as if there was no end.

      But, historian George Tindal labeled the whole economic frenzy “fantasy,” and someone in later years saw that economy as one built on a house of paper. But for Dad, that was not his immediate concern. That diploma never meant so much to any student as it did to him. He must have wondered if he was living a ‘dream come true.’ And I feel confident that miles away from Lexington in a little cabin in the Cumberland mountains his father had to be so very proud of him, and must have had no doubt that he made a very wise decision to seek a future beyond the Kentucky coal fields; the first member of his family to earn a college degree.

      Country Teacher and Jessie Stuart

      Following graduation, another phase of Dad’s dreams came true, as he obtained a job teaching history and coaching football at Greenup High School in the mountainous edge of North Eastern Kentucky. There he roomed with another bachelor, the principal, Jesse Stuart, the future author and Kentucky Poet Laureate. During their time together on and off the Greenup campus Dad knew that there was something special about Jesse, especially his interest in writing poetry. As the two men walked to school through the woods they shared their interest and love of the Appalachia mountains and the wonders of the East Kentucky wilderness. They shared memories of their rise from near poverty to become the first members of their families to leave their mountain homes behind and seek a future beyond them. But, while they left that environment, it never left them. And Jesse even took that love a step further and created his future expressing in writing his deep seated devotion to mountain life.

      Dad realized Stuart’s passion for Appalachia life firsthand as he noticed how deeply he was absorbed in the various scenes of nature, from the sounds of the birds, the beauty of the countless types of wild flowers, the sounds of the wind rustling through the leaves of dozens of types of trees, or the position of morning and evening shadows on the path. They would pause occasionally while Stuart composed poetry, and then used him as a sounding board for the result. On one occasion he remembers Jesse stopping suddenly transfixed with the sight of a large tree and the wind rustling the leaves. "Listen," he said. Dad replied, “its just the sound of the rustling leaves.” “Its much more than that” Stuart said. Then he pulled off one of the tree’s large leaves, and since he did not have his writing pad with him, scribbled a poem on the leaf’s surface. Whether or not the words he wrote appeared in the 702 sonnets he later put into his first book, Dad never knew. But in that book Jesse wrote several sonnets constructed around the wind and leaves, and wrote, The leaves are green and winds are blowing through. Such was the simple but profound manner of a man who was to became one of Kentucky and America’s most gifted poets and authors. That simple observation and so many more similar scenes taken from the Kentucky mountains were the sources to find their way into Jessie’s sonnets.

      Jesse told Dad that some day he was determined to publish his poetry. That "some day"was in 1934 when his compilation of 702 sonnets in Man with a Bull Tongue Plow was accepted by a publisher. The title and first line of his first sonnet in that highly acclaimed book came to him while plowing a field when he stopped and scribbled out the opening line: “I am a farmer singing at the plow.” The book was an instant success and was described by Irish Poet George William Russell as “the greatest work of poetry since Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Other critics called Jesse Stuart, America’s Robert Burns. In addition to three other books of poetry, Jessie went on to write eleven short story collections, seven novels, and five autobiographies.

      After serving in the Navy in World War Two, Jesse took Dad’s advice and wrote a book on his love for teaching, especially his years as Dad’s principal in Greenup; years he claimed were among the most rewarding years in education. The book was published in 1949 and is titled The Thread That Runs So True. In July of that year he wrote Dad a letter alerting him to the book’s release the following September; reminding him that it was the book he had encouraged him to write. He asked him to stop by Stewart’s book store, in Louisville and introduce himself to the owner and “tell him we worked together at Greenup, Kentucky. Tell him we were young fellows kicking up our heels and were ambitious in those days. But you can also tell him what we were up against. I think you will like this book Charlie. It really tells the story…it just really tells a story that should have been told years ago, and the story is this: it tells of a man’s struggles, the struggles of his associates, his little death-colored wages for a great work he had before him school teaching.” Then Jesse wrote a comment Dad and other thousands of Jesse’s followers heard repeated so often: “I believe school teaching is the greatest of all professions because it is the mother of all. Yet teachers are paid such low wages they leave the profession.” Then he paid Dad perhaps the most meaningful compliment he could have given him. He wrote, “Why aren’t you teaching? Coaching? You were a good teacher, one of the best football coaches, yet you were never paid enough to keep the wolf from your door.”

      Like most successful writers Jesse was curious as to how successful the book would be, and even asked Dad to add his comments to the Book Review section of the Louisville Courier Journal after the book was released. Whether Dad followed through on that request, I will never know. But it was not needed anyway, since the book received glowing reviews and even today is the primer for aspiring writers.

      While the book was accurate as to the reality of teaching, he did not use the actual names of his characters, and therefore the book was officially labeled fiction. However, years later he did tell Dad that he was the Coach Watson he wrote about in the book.

      I must make a final comment on Jesse Stuart’s influence on Dad. Though the two old friends went their separate ways, that book, “The Thread That Run’s So True,” describes the cement that kept them together. While a family of four combined with very difficult circumstances kept Dad from the teaching profession for over twenty years, that “thread” was a critical part of his fabric as a person, and Jesse Stuart was always his inspiration. Twenty-three years later Dad returned to the classroom in Shepherdsville, Kentucky for the final years, sadly, of his life.

      However, If Dad had a choice of how he wanted to leave this world, I believe it would have been in the classroom.

      That devotion to teaching was so strong it had a major impact on my life, and especially my love for teaching. The year it was published I entered college, and in my first semester in a literature class the professor asked us to write on the person who had the greatest influence on our life. I stated that it was my dad and in my comment, referenced the book that told of his life, “The Thread That Runs So True”, by then a best seller. Needless to say, the professor who unbeknownst to me, was a devoted fan of Jessie Stuart asked me to see him after class. I thought, oh, oh, I have messed up my first day of college. The professor wanted to know what I knew about Stuart. I was happy to tell him and I received an “A”on the paper.

      When