Appalachian Figures A Harlan boy who never really left Green Wix Unthank started life in a coal camp town, jumped into some of the hardest fighting of World War II as a young paratrooper, then came home to spend more than sixty years inside Kentucky courtrooms. By the time he died in 2013, people in Harlan County simply called him “Judge Unthank,” a title that blended local respect with federal power in one mountain name.


