Mark White

Our Publisher, Don Estep, already touched on this in his column, but I just wanted to briefly talk about the News Journal’s first place General Excellence win in the Kentucky Press Association’s Excellence in Kentucky newspaper contest. We compete in the large weekly division, which is has always been one of the toughest divisions in my opinion. It feels like our competition gets stiffer every year, but I am happy to say that once again managed to get the win. I’ll be the first to admit that it is nice to get recognition from your peers. It feels good, and it doesn’t happen every day. In fact, we only compete for...

Here is a not so fun fact. Did you know that it is in fact possible to cough so hard that you pass out? Most of the people that I have asked that question to over the past week answered no to that question. As a matter of fact, no is the answer I would have given to that question until about one and one-half weeks ago before I ended up in the emergency room. It started out as a nagging minor cough for the first four days before morphing into the worst cough that I have ever had in my life. It knocked me for a loop and to the...

From a personal standpoint, the last week has been a bit of a rollercoaster for me. On Jan. 5, I got a call that my aunt, Patsy “Pat” White, had passed away. We buried her Monday afternoon. Pat was there for pretty much every big event in my life from high school graduation to standing in for my deceased mother and lighting the unity candle at my wedding. She was there for pretty much every birthday often times baking the cake, as my mother was far from Betty Crocker in the kitchen. It was usually red velvet cake and always with red velvet icing. Pat loved decorating for Christmas. She would have her...

You just can’t fit all the news from a year into a top 10 list, like the one running on our front page in this week’s edition of the News Journal. Sure, we get the big news events in there, but that doesn’t mean there still weren’t quite a few other interesting and memorable news stories in 2023, such as the death of Corbin native and famed former Eastern Kentucky University football player and head coach Roy Kidd, a Corbin man winning $1 million in the lottery, and the arrest of a Florida man, who falsely claimed there was an active shooter during NIBROC. Here are a few of some of...

If we could harness the spirit of giving year round that exists at Christmas time, then there is no telling what we could accomplish. I’m not just talking about the spirit of giving from those, who donate to a worthy cause and those that volunteer to help make it happen. I’m also talking about the children getting help too. Saturday morning, I went out to Immanuel Baptist Church where volunteers had stayed up all night wrapping Christmas presents for the Southeast Kentucky Empty Stocking Fund Christmas party. Over 600 children received a wrapped Christmas present, a new pair of shoes, new socks, books and a blanket among other items. Children ages...

For the last 30 plus years, it seems like nearly every time I went to cover a wreck or a fire in northern Whitley County, Woodbine Fire Chief Rick Fore was there directing firefighters about how to extricate someone trapped in a mangled vehicle or telling firefighters where to go to help extinguish a burning building. Whether it was day or night, it didn’t really matter. Rick was a pretty much a constant. Seldom did I ever go cover a call that Woodbine was responding to where Rick wasn’t there. This is especially significant when you consider that, like all of our volunteer firefighters, he didn’t get paid a penny to...

If you were watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Thursday morning and you thought that you caught a glimpse of someone familiar participating in the parade, then you may have been correct. Former Williamsburg High School Band Director Zach Shannon was one of the about 400 people marching and playing as a member of the Band Directors Marching Band, which is composed of music educators from across the country. He was one of the trombone players. For the television performance, the band played “Strike Up the Band,” “Simply Gifts,” and “Seventy Six Trombones.” Shannon is now the band director and a teacher at Southern Middle School in Pulaski County. Congratulations to Shannon, who...

While seemingly everyone else from Corbin was either watching or listening to the Corbin vs. Boyle County football game on Friday night, which had a disappointing outcome, my wonderful wife, Cecelia, and I did something a little different. We checked out the Millstone Community Theatre Guild’s performance of “Dinner at Eight, Dead by Nine,” which was held over at Grace on the Hill. A second performance was held Saturday in London. It was a dinner theater performance of a play set during a dinner theater performance. There was a lot of talking directly to the audience and interaction with the audience. It was an entertaining way to spend the evening. I had...

When it came to voter turnout last week, Whitley County voters could have done better. According to the Whitley County Clerk’s Office, which oversees elections in Whitley County, about 30.5 percent of registered voters went to the polls to cast their ballots for governor and other statewide offices during the 2023 November General Election. By comparison, during the last governor’s race four years ago in 2019, about 38 percent of Whitley County’s registered voters went to the polls to cast their ballots. So what accounted for the higher turnout four years ago? I think that a couple of things were at play here. First, there was incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin, who four years ago...

Whitley County certainly has its share of problems from drugs to poverty, but fortunately our local schools aren’t one of these problem areas. In fact, they are quite the opposite. Last week, the Kentucky Department of Education released 2022-2023 school report card data, which gauges schools on several criteria, such as test scores and student readiness. I won’t pretend to understand all of it, but the bottom line is schools received a color rating based on that criteria with blue being the highest followed by green, yellow, orange and red, which is the lowest rating. Overall, our local schools did well. Some did really well. Out of the three school districts in Whitley...