Mark White

Let me start off this week’s column by wishing a happy 50th birthday to my wonderful wife, Cecelia. She turns 50 today (Dec. 28). Few people are as enthusiastic about their birthdays as my wife is. She would do a month long celebration of her birthday if I would let her. Even though I give her a hard time about being so enthusiastic about her birthday, I am glad that she enjoys it so much. Here’s hoping you have a great 50th birthday Cecelia. You deserve it. Now to touch on a few other assorted topics before I conclude this column: • In the coming days, our newly elected officials will take office,...

I can still remember the first Shop with a Cop program that took place in Williamsburg in 2004. Williamsburg Police Officer Kenny Shaw and Whitley County Sheriff’s Deputy Jerry Noe, unbeknownst to each other, had started raising money for a shop with a cop program for their respective departments. After they found out about each other’s efforts, the two projects were merged into one. The result was the collection of over $6,300 used to take 64 less fortunate children on $100 shopping sprees at the Williamsburg Walmart that Christmas season. I can still remember the night that it took place. Nearly every police car from the Williamsburg Police Department and the Whitley...

Just a reminder that the 2022 City of Williamsburg Feels Like Home Christmas in a Small Town Parade is slated for Saturday evening on Main Street, and the Jellico Christmas Parade is scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday. A lot of work goes into the planning of community events, such as parades, as well as work put into designing and making floats for such an occasion. A few years back, Williamsburg started offering cash prizes for floats in three categories, church, business and school in an effort to increase the number of participants, and it typically works. First place winners in each of the three categories get $150, second place gets $100, and...

Our founding fathers were some pretty smart folks. When they created this country, they did so with the idea of giving the people a way to peacefully address their grievances with the government. On Nov. 17, we got to see this in action locally as about 100 people gathered at the Whitley County Cooperative Extension Office for a town hall meeting with the U.S. Forest Service over a proposal to log a portion of the Daniel Boone National Forest on Jellico Mountain, including clear cutting about 1,000 acres of land. The meeting was supposed to last for 90 minutes and gave time for the forest service to address the audience about...

There is no IF about it. You KNOW that under age vaping IS a SERIOUS problem in your community when the local school board sends out an open letter to the community urging stores that sell vaping products to place them behind the counter, like Corbin did last week. We aren’t just talking about teenagers here. Corbin Elementary School Principal Chris Webb told the Corbin Board of Education during its recent monthly meeting that the school is taking quite a few vapes off fourth and fifth graders. Back in March of 2019, I interviewed then Williamsburg Police Chief Wayne Brid about underage vaping. At the time, we were talking about it in...

Seldom have I seen a candidate work as hard as Seth Reeves did in his campaign for district judge and not win an election. Seth was all over the place and campaigned for over a year only to come up about 200 votes short. His work ethic is very impressive. He has some good ideas. I got to know Seth a lot better as he was out campaigning over the past year, and he impresses me. I don’t have any doubt thought that he will one day be a judge, whether it is district, circuit or perhaps even federal. Congratulations to incumbent District Judge Cathy Prewitt who beat Reeves on Election Day. She...

With two people running for sheriff as write-in candidates in next month’s November General Election and one person running for third-district constable as a write-in candidate, you might be thinking that this must be some kind of record for write-in candidates running for office in Whitley County. If so, then you would be wrong. In 2011, a total of nine people filed to run as write-in candidates for Whitley County Jailer. It was unusual to say the least. In early 2011, after eight days in office, Les Moses resigned as jailer leading Whitley County Judge-Executive Pat White Jr. to appoint Moses’ predecessor, Ken Mobley, as the acting jailer. The appointment was until the...

Several years ago before I joined the staff of the News Journal, the newspaper used to do an April Fools’ Day edition with a fake front page filled with ridiculous, made up stories in honor of the day that no one could possibly take seriously. It was all in good humor. My favorite that I heard about concerned a made-up story about the Williamsburg Police Department’s new “drug-sniffing gerbille.” I think Troy Sharp was then the assistant police chief when he played along for the interview. As I said, the April Fools’ Day stories were stuff that no one could possibly take seriously, well, almost no one. As Troy told me the...

Last fall when I was filling in for our sports editor, I had the privilege of being on the sidelines as Head Coach Brent Jackson led the Corbin Eighth Grade Football Team to its second consecutive state title. Also, on the sidelines, was Jackson’s wife, Jenni Lou Jackson, who had a very important job. I’m not sure what her title was but she monitored the assistant coaches, who sometimes ventured out too far onto the playing field as they were yelling instructions to their players. Jenni Lou would gently tug on their hoodies pulling them back onto the sidelines and off of the field before the play started. There are a lot of...

Downtown Corbin isn’t what it once was when I was kid when you still had downtown department stores and it was a hub for local shopping, whether it was clothing or furniture. It isn’t what it was when I started in journalism about 30 years ago after most of the downtown retail shopping had moved elsewhere, and there were at least a few empty store fronts. Unlike many other small cities, things didn’t stay that way in Corbin’s downtown. In 2003, Corbin voters approved alcohol by the drink sales at restaurants that made at least 70 percent of their proceeds from food sales. In many ways this was the beginning of a downtown...