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Friday, December 05, 2008

Byron Crawford, chronicler of rural Kentucky, writes his last column for The Courier-Journal

Our longtime friend and colleague Byron Crawford, who traveled Kentucky to do rural features for Louisville's WHAS-TV, then spent 29 years as the state columnist for The Courier-Journal, wrote his last column yesterday. It's in the Louisville paper today. He was among the employees who applied for and received a buyout as the Gannett Co. Inc. paper did its part in the company's latest downsizing. He has become an institution, and The C-J won't be the same without him.

Crawford, a native of Lincoln County in the rural heart of the state, thanked readers and subjects "for trusting me with some of your most personal stories," and "for giving me directions when I was lost on the backroads along the Mississippi or on Pine Mountain. . . . My assignment has been to roam Kentucky from end to end, telling the stories of its fascinating people, places and folklore. I have tried always to remember that my voice and my opinion were never as important as those of my story subjects." And he apologized "to those whose important stories I never got to tell. There were just too many roads and not enough time."

Crawford carries a reminder of those roads. He noticed this summer that the left side of his face had more age lines, and figured that "a million miles of sun on the driver's side has left its mark. So, if these lines represent roads I have traveled and stories I have written, then I suppose they are also a part of each person who I have met along the way, and all of you who have read the lines I have left on this page. There is something intrinsically comforting to me in that thought as I reach the end of this line." (Read more)

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