I was 18 years old and just booted from Alice Lloyd College for going into a boy’s dorm. Ed and Norma were leaving Pippa Passes, Ky for a new job in Bowling Green, Ohio. Bless them, they took my sister and me along with them. My sister took a job at the college there while I went to work for the phone company. Granted, I did not last long there since another person came along and took me off to Oregon. There were lots of changes in a short period of time, but I would not be where I am today if Ed had not gotten me out of those hills. I have been back to those hills three times in fifty years, the last time about thirty years ago. Ed, I am so grateful to you.
We were all destined for better–or at least other–things, Shelvedine, when we waved goodbye to Pippa Passes. But I made some good friends there for every bridge I burned, among them you and Lillian, the Traftons, the incomparable Edgle and Claudia Slone and a legion of bartenders in adjacent counties. Thanks for the nice words. I live to serve.