Appalachian Figures Nelson Robinette “Robb” Webb grew up in a Letcher County household where school calendars and mountain stories mixed around the table. Decades later, his voice opened Sunday nights for millions of viewers as the familiar sound that introduced 60 Minutes and the CBS Evening News.

Appalachian Figures From Kona on the North Fork to the wider world Martin Van Buren Bates was born on 9 November 1837 in Letcher County, Kentucky, probably in the crossroads settlement of Kona near Whitesburg on the North Fork of the Kentucky River. He was the youngest of a large farm family headed by John Wallis Bates and Sarah Walthrop (Wallis) Bates, early settlers whose land lay at the foot of Pine Mountain.

Appalachian Figures William Miller Drennen began life in a brand new coal camp on Elkhorn Creek and ended it as a nationally known judge who helped reshape the United States Tax Court.

Appalachian Figures If you grew up in Jenkins, you probably heard the name Burpo in two different settings. Older railroad hands remembered engineer H. L. Burpo at the throttle of the first passenger train into town. Younger fans might remember another Burpo: a tall left handed pitcher who clawed his way from the coalfields to a brief stint with the Cincinnati Reds.

Appalachian Figures Rodney Leon “Rod” Brasfield turned a quiet Lewis County town into a running character on one of America’s biggest radio stages. From the late 1940s through the 1950s, the Grand Ole Opry’s premier comedian regularly told listeners he hailed from Hohenwald, and he worked that hometown into his bits with affectionate precision.

Anita Cherry: Like Father Like Daughter  History was made in the winter of 1973 in the coal seams of Jenkins, Kentucky. Alongside Diana Baldwin, Anita Cherry became one of the first two women in the United States to work underground in a coal mine.

Appalachian Figures From Double Creek to Hindman James Still was born on July 16, 1906, in the Double Creek/Double Branch community near LaFayette, Alabama. After studies at Lincoln Memorial University (’29) and graduate work at Vanderbilt (M.A., 1930), he arrived at the Hindman Settlement School in the summer of 1931.

Appalachian Figures A voice from Knott County Verna Mae Slone was born in Knott County, Kentucky, on October 9, 1914, and died in Hindman on January 5, 2009. She and her husband, Willie Slone, raised five sons. In addition to writing, she became known across Eastern Kentucky for her quilts and cloth dolls.

Appalachian Figures Charles McElroy White grew up in the logging and rail hamlet of Hutton on the outskirts of Oakland, Maryland. He went on to lead one of the nation’s largest steelmakers during the most turbulent decades of American industrial history. His path ran from a mountain schoolhouse to the University of Maryland, from mill floors to boardrooms, and into the hearing rooms of Congress.

Appalachian Figures Why Baker matters Edwin T. Baker served eight years in the California Assembly, then two years on the Los Angeles City Council, during a moment when Southern California was growing fast and demanding a bigger voice in state government.

Appalachian History A round valley with a very old story Stand at the Pinnacle Overlook above Cumberland Gap and look down on the town of Middlesboro. The basin that cradles the streets is strikingly circular. For decades geologists mapped and argued about that circle’s origin.