County pays tribute to editor who died too young

About 1,000 residents of a small Kentucky county turned out this weekend to pay their last respects to a fine rural journalist. Rick Anderkin, editor of the family-owned Mount Vernon Signal, died of liver failure last week at 49. He had a donor for a transplant, but medical complications prevented the surgery.

I didn't know Rick Anderkin well, but I see his weekly newspaper from time to time and thought highly of his work. He did a good job of holding up a mirror to his community, covering the issues and helping set the public agenda for the county of 17,000. "He was accessible to everyone and available 24/7 to cover stories," writes our friend Elmer Whitler, a county resident who complies and analyzes rural-health data for the University of Kentucky. "I often complimented Rick on the improvements he brought to the Signal since I first started reading it in the mid-1970s. He would simply say, in his humble way, “We try.” I came to appreciate through Rick the hard work and courage it takes to produce a rural newspaper in which the truth of local happenings are reported. Everyone, myself included, reads the Signal from cover-to-cover, including the reports on the county judge and fiscal court, letters to the editor, stories about anniversaries, ball games, car wrecks, and even the obituary section."

Elmer concluded his e-mail tribute, "There is almost total familiarity with everyone in the community (Wikipedia map), accomplished either through personal contact and interaction or through 'social reports' from friends and neighbors who know the rare person that you do not. Rick understood this culture very well and traversed its many complications and sensitivities in such a way that he always had the respect of those on whom and for whom he reported." Rockcastle County residents showed how they appreciated Rick's work. Elmer reports that 400 or more people attended the viewing and more than 600 attended the funeral, at which a memorial was given by Rick's son, Aaron Anderkin, the recently appointed executive director of the Rockcastle County Industrial Development Authority.

"I will smile when I think about the pride he held when he found out I would get the prime opportunity to come back and help change Rockcastle County for the better, just like he worked to do for years and years," Anderkin said. "As the editor of the Signal, Dad had the opportunity to interact with a lot of people from a number of circles and different backgrounds. He was a man who had this unexplainable way of leaving footprints on the hearts of most everyone he encountered. His business was all about people, and his life was all about people. And I believe those footprints came from his ability to connect with those people, to let them know he really cared about them." (Read more)