Mark White

I thought I would take the opportunity in this week’s column to brag on some local folks, who have received awards for various accomplishments or who will soon be receiving awards or who have received some recognitions. In case you missed it, WYMT reporter Buddy Forbes did a nice story Thursday on retired News Journal Publisher Don Estep being selected to receive the East Kentucky Leadership Foundation’s Media and Technology Award. Here is a link to the story at https://www.wymt.com/2025/04/17/retired-corbin-newsman-receives-eklf-media-technology-award/. Don will receive his award on April 24 during the East Kentucky Leadership Conference on the Manchester campus of Eastern Kentucky University. I am happy to see my friend and former...

The City of London is losing a staple of the community, but whether local residents in London and elsewhere heed this as a warning to support other community businesses instead of shopping online or at a big box discounters remains to be seen. “Laurel Grocery Company has been a proud provider of wholesale groceries to independent grocers in Kentucky and surrounding states for 103 years. Yet challenging market conditions, due in part to the rise of big box discounters and growing competition by e-commerce, have presented serious challenges to our business model. After exploring a number of options to improve our position, we have made the difficult decision to close...

Once or twice a decade, Whitley County gets a murder case too horrendous to ever forget. I am talking one of those that bothers pretty much everybody, who knows much at all about it, and you have to fight back feelings of outrage when you think about it. The killing of three-year-old Amoura Smallwood is one of those cases. She died on Feb. 19, 2023. The official cause of death was blunt force injuries to her little head and body due to non-accidental injuries, but this doesn’t really come close to describing what actually happened to her. When first responders got to the little girl, who wasn’t breathing at the time, her...

Congratulations to Forcht Broadcasting Radio and Digital President and CEO Neil Middleton, who was awarded the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) Award for Outstanding Service during the Kentucky Sweet 16® boys basketball tournament last Thursday. Middleton was honored for his four-decade career in Eastern Kentucky sports media. Starting his television career at WYMT in 1987, Middleton’s recognition comes for his contributions and media coverage to schools, coaches, players and fans throughout his storied career. Middleton was the long-time director of the WYMT Mountain Basketball Classic and served as a board member for several organizations in Kentucky’s Appalachian region, including: the Center for Rural Development, One East Kentucky, Alice...

Back before a United States Supreme Court ruling in 1999 that prohibited police from bringing members of the news media into private homes, I accompanied police numerous times as they were executing search warrants. Usually they were looking for drugs. Let me clarify here that by accompany I mean I was usually inside the homes less than five minutes after police kicked in the doors. I am not going to lie. It was pretty exciting, particularly when you are 20-something, single and don’t have anybody waiting for you at home asking where have you been half the night. I was usually at the police department about an hour or so before they left...

Kudos to the folks over at Cumberland Valley Electric Cooperative, the Whitley County Road Department, local fire departments and many others, who responded to the aftermath of last Saturday night’s storms. Power went out at my house in northern Whitley County about 2:08 a.m. Sunday. (I woke up when my CPAP machine for sleep apnea went off because of the power outage and looked over at my Fitbit in case anyone is wondering how I know what time it happened.) The wind was pretty wicked and I could hear tree limbs hitting the house multiple times. When my wonderful wife, Cecelia, and I went out to grab some breakfast, we were greeted...

While me and my wonderful wife, Cecelia, were watching The Price is Right Live at The Corbin Arena a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but think of my grandmother on my dad’s side. Back when I was a kid, Grannie hardly ever missed an episode of The Price is Right with Bob Barker. She watched it religiously every day on CBS at 11 a.m. if I recall the time that it aired correctly. (Truthfully, I am not sure whether it was the show she liked so well, or if my elderly grandmother just had a thing for Bob Barker. I figure that either one was a realistic possibility…LOL.) When I was...

I can still remember part of my freshman orientation at what was then Cumberland College when I started there in the fall of 1989. Back then orientation only lasted about two hours with a few administrators making short speeches. I remember a short skit or two that were presented by the student government association, which featured student government vice-president David Paul Estes, who is now owner of Whitley Broadcasting. An administrator then called our names and someone led small groups of us to meet with our freshman faculty advisors for the first time. Out of the three people in my group, I let the two young women go in front of me. Then it...

Imagine for a moment putting a bunch of teenagers in charge of guarding keys to liquor cabinets. Chances are one of three things is going to happen. You’re going to have several good ones, who are going to do what they are supposed to do and everything will be fine. There are going to be a few, who will genuinely misplace the key to the liquor cabinet. This will cause some chaos, some big searches and lots of drama trying to find keys that shouldn’t have been lost. Sometimes things will turn out alright despite the misplaced keys. Other times, those misplaced keys are going to end up in the wrong hands...

A little bit of Whitley County history happened Thursday and most people probably didn’t realize it. Whitley County Sheriff’s Deputy Heather Lindsay (Rowe) graduated from the Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training law enforcement basic training academy, i.e., the police academy in Richmond. As her husband and fellow Whitley County Sheriff’s Deputy David Rowe noted in a Facebook post, this makes Heather the first female road deputy in the history of the Whitley County Sheriff’s Department. I’ve had the privilege to get to know Heather, who spent a few years working security over at the Whitley County Judicial Center before deciding she wanted to become a road deputy. Among other duties she...