Billy C. Clark, who chronicled river life, dies at 80

In his first book, A Long Road to Hoe, Billy C. Clark chronicled his childhood spent in poverty in Catlettsburg, Ky., a town of 2,000 where the Big Sandy River meets the Ohio. Although he left Catlettsburg one year after graduation from the University of Kentucky, his stories were rooted in the location, drawing comparisons to Mark Twain's writing about the Mississippi. When word reached the community that Clark had died at his home in Farmville, Va., on Sunday at the age of 80, they mourned the loss of one of their own. (Photo by John Flavell)

Clark's books were largely out of print by the end of the 1980s, but he contracted with the Jesse Stuart Foundation, based in nearby Ashland, which started reprinting them in 1991, bringing him back into the literary spotlight. “He was an American original. Such a character and a great storyteller,” James M. Gifford, CEO and senior editor of the foundation, told The Independent, Ashland's daily newspaper.

Clark was the first of his family to graduate from high school. Following a stint in Army during the Korean War, he then went on to college on the GI Bill. “He was a go-getter," Marvin Meredith, a childhood friend of Clark's, told Mike James of The Independent. And after Clark moved away from the town, living in Washington, D.C., Lexington, Ky., and Virginia, he still returned at least once a year to see friends and family. “We tend to be that way in Catlettsburg. We have our loyalty to our place,” said Eleanor Kersey, a friend.

"Maybe his devotion to home was a gift from his mother," James writes. "The story goes that Bertha Clark was on a streetcar homebound from Huntington [W.Va.] when she went into labor. The driver raced to get the car across the river so that Billy C. Clark would be born on Kentucky soil." Clark will come home one last time; his funeral will be held Thursday in the town he loved so much. (Read more)