Don Estep

Football in Corbin is very similar to basketball in Kentucky. The local fans eat it, digest it and live it from year to year. In 2020, Tom Greer, a former Redhound player with plenty of coaching experience, became Corbin’s head coach. This week Greer announced his retirement. In four years at the helm Greer established a record of 46 wins against only five losses. That ranks as the best winning percentage in the 100 year history of Corbin football. What ranks as high as his record is his character. That is something every Corbin fan and especially the parents of the players can appreciate the most. Greer’s Christian leadership sessions will be...

The University of the Cumberlands is the most affordable college in Kentucky, public or private, according to the recently published College Consensus. The organization published Cumberlands’ annual on-campus tuition rate for undergraduate students which is only $9,875 a year. I served for 19 years on the Board of Trustees at Cumberlands, but that was several years ago. I don’t ever remember cutting the cost for students. On-campus students became the focus of affordable tuition in 2019, when Cumberlands slashed tuition costs by more than half. Later, the university included free textbooks and removed all fees as part of its One Price Promise initiative for its entire student body. This is fantastic...

My journey today is about travel. My wife and I love to travel. We have traveled to most of the states and a few foreign countries. However, I have reached the point in time, because of my age, that we no longer can makes the trips we otherwise would take. Another reason is that I hate airports, and driving on the Interstate is insane. Therefore, our future vacations may be closer to home. As a child my parents never had vacations. The longest trip I took then was to Louisville to visit my sister. Otherwise, our annual trip to Big Spring Union Baptist Church just above Middlesboro in the Virginia, Tennessee...

Monday, I met with H.E. “Hank” Everman, a true historian, at the Corbin Public Library. Many of us with age have our history in our memories. Not Hank. He specialized in American History and Social Studies at the University of Kentucky, from which he graduated in 1963. He earned a Ph.D. in 1970 from LSU. He taught at LSU and returned to Kentucky in 1970 to teach at Eastern Kentucky University. He has written numerous articles for state and regional quarterlies, encyclopedias, and magazines. His reason for visiting the Corbin Public Library was to deliver boxes of historical documents and pictures about Corbin’s history. After categorizing the material it will...

You know the saying, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” I regret not recording the many stories my late sister, Bena Mae, told me on our many talks in the last years of her life. We talked about it but procrastinated. I would sit in awe as I listened to what she had experienced in her life. At age 80 she developed leukemia and fought it until her death at age 89. I visited her often at her home in Clinton, Tennessee. Also, we talked on the telephone everyday. Many of you will remember her column in this newspaper called, “Simple Pleasures.” It appeared here for 25...

Here at the News Journal our reporting staff can write a column stating their opinion on any subject on this page. I make this opportunity available to them because it is a way for you to get to know us better and for us to express our feelings and thoughts no matter how much effect they may have. There are some subjects that I have visited over and over. For example, I have harped on the condition of Kentucky Street in Corbin many times. I don’t expect the Department of Transportation to react to my opinions, but rather it is a way that I can bring to you my knowledge...

There are several types of trailer hitches for vehicles. Some are attached to the bumper. Others have a sleeve for the hitch to be attached. And then there are those that drop down and extend out. The one that extended out far beyond the vehicle is the kind that I tripped over in the dark after the championship game of the 13th Region basketball tournament at the Arena in Corbin. I was walking between cars in front of my wife and sister-in-law when the accident occurred. I fell face down and slid, scraping my hands and knees. In addition to my wife and sister-in-law, another couple came to my rescue and...

Our grandson in Lexington passed his driver’s test and got his drivers license last week. That was a cause for celebration because it will relieve his mother from having to take him to the many school activities. The first time he took the driver’s test he failed because the front of the car touched a barrel when he had to parallel park the car. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I had to parallel park my SUV I may not pass the test either. It has been years since I have parallel parked my vehicle. In a way I don’t know why that is still a part of...

Those of us with a little age tend to remember events of the past and relish in talking about them. Thus, a meeting like the one I attended last week at the Corbin Public Library to talk about the history of Corbin was fun. Diane Mitchell has been a leader in preserving Corbin’s history and she invited a group of us with advanced age to meet and talk about what yesteryear was like. We even got to see an old film of the dedication of the underpass in 1935. I could only identify three people in the film out of a crowd of thousands. They were John L. Crawford, the...

One of the most pleasing headlines we have had in this newspaper came last week when it read, “A United Front: Mayors Pledge Cooperation.” It was a story about Corbin and London coming together after decades of rivalry over the property along the Cumberland Parkway, off I-75 Exit 29 in what we refer to as North Corbin. As I look back and ask, what if that terrible law, that was passed decades ago and did not allow annexation into a third county, prohibiting Corbin from annexing into Laurel County, had not been passed? Then, that area would now be one of the most thriving business areas in southeastern Kentucky. Instead, development...