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By Tim Thornberry

Kentucky Farm Bureau News

Candid Conversation presents a discussion about the topical issues related to Kentucky Farm Bureau (KFB) priorities, the agricultural industry, and rural communities, in a question-and-answer format. In this special edition, Kentucky’s Storyteller Byron Crawford shares his memories of the more than 5,000 stories and columns he has written during his long and celebrated career. 

• KFB: For those who may not know your background, would you mind sharing a little of your history and how you became Kentucky’s Storyteller?

BC: I grew up in Lincoln County on a family farm along Hanging Fork Creek, which runs into Dix River, which runs into Herrington Lake. Our small farm was one of three that had once been a larger farm that belonged to my great-grandfather, but my dad still farmed on all the land, which was still in the family.  So, as a kid, I roamed over –and grew up working—on those farms.  My parents were both farm people who had grown up in big families during the Great Depression.  We raised tobacco, corn and hay, milked a few cows, had some beef cattle, and had sheep at one time.

I grew up an only child, but not one with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had plenty of cousins so there were always other kids around, but I often wonder if I had had a bunch of brothers and sisters would my imagination developed to the point that it did. I feel, in writing, that has kind of aided me. 

Of course, the storytelling part came about gradually over many, many years. I worked for the Courier-Journal newspaper as the Kentucky columnist for 30 years. Before that, I had worked for WHAS-TV and radio for another six years doing, for most of that time, stories about people all over Kentucky, interesting people, and telling stories that they had told me. My storytelling is a credit to the literally thousands of other people, most of them Kentuckians who had stories to share and who shared them with me. And I guess eventually it soaked in so much to my life and career that someone put the storytelling part on there. 

In retirement I now write for Kentucky Living magazine, the back page.  Some years ago, an editor decided to write the words ‘Kentucky Storyteller’ beside my little picture at the top of the page, and I guess it stuck. But we all know that Kentucky is full of good storytellers, and it’s their stories I’ve been telling all these years.

• KFB: Is there any particular memory that comes to mind from your time on the family farm?

BC: I remember the time, as part of being in FFA, that I grew a little over an acre of tobacco of my own and the first year. I borrowed a mule from someone because I wanted to know how it felt to plow the ground with a mule. Needless to say, I did not bother the mule the next year!

But my time growing up on the farm had a dramatic effect on me. I often tell people that my trips to the stockyards and the feed mills with my dad on just routine farm business had a tremendous influence on my storytelling. I heard some of the great storytellers who were around that part of Central Kentucky, and then my family members were good storytellers. My dad was good at that, and my mother was a tremendous storyteller. 

 

• KFB: What was the first story you ever wrote professionally?

BC: The first story I ever wrote was for WHAS-TV. Before that, I had written for radio news. I had gotten into radio pretty much right out of high school. Even when I was in high school, I was into radio, but they were routine stories like the ones that came in on the Associated Press wire.

However, for TV it may have been a fellow who believed that there was a buried treasure on top of a knob in Bullitt County, and I went up there with him. And that sort of kicked off my feature reporting for the station, which grew into a syndicated program called Side Roads that I did over Tennessee, Southern Ohio, and Kentucky. So, I think that was the first story that I guess I did. By the way, I never found that treasure in Bullitt County, but that experience grew into other stories about buried treasures in Kentucky that I’ve had good success with. I’ve never found one of them, but I suspect that someone had found them before I got there!

And when I went to the Courier-Journal, Frank Hartley was the regional editor, and I had never written a story for print ever, not in high school, not anywhere. And Frank showed me the Kentucky page of the paper and he had marked off a place on it about the size of the top of a shoebox, and he said, “You see this place here? Three days a week, this is where you will fill with a story, and if you can’t come up with anything, this will be blank.”

But at that time, I knew of one month’s worth of stories that I could do three days a week. Fortunately, that grew into about 30 years’ worth in the time I worked for the Courier.

 

• KFB: I remember being on a trip to Casey County with you several years ago when you talked to an older gentleman who lived across the road from where we happened to be that day. I thought surely the way the two of you were conversing that you knew each other but found out you had never met him before. Have you run into situations like that a lot through the years?

BC: I don’t know how to explain that except that I think if people read you long enough or they watch you on television long enough, they get a sense of identity with you that they know you even though maybe they’ve never met you. And in listening to them, you kind of get to know them. I had an older fella tell me one time after we had been talking about earlier life on the farm in Kentucky, he told me before I left, “Well, I don’t know if you lived during this time we’ve talked about. I don’t think you have, but you’ve sure been around somebody who did.” I’ve listened to so many Kentuckians, especially older ones who told me about their experiences, that I could identify with them and the stories they told about the old ways and old days. 

 

• KFB: From my own experience, I’m sure there are a lot of people who have gotten much enjoyment out of telling you their stories.

BC: I have considered it an honor to be able to tell the stories that some of them told. And I tell young writers, reporters especially, and feature writers, don’t take this lightly when you write a feature story about somebody. Writing three or four times a week may be our job. It may be old hand stuff to us, but to that one person who’s telling you a story about their life, something special that happened to them in their life, that may be one of the highlights of their life to be able to share that with many other people. Not many people have time to listen much anymore and there are a lot of folks out there who just would love to share some of their memories or some of their thoughts or wonderful episodes in their life with someone, and there’s no one to listen.

 

• KFB: We don’t often see the kind of feature writing, and storytelling, that we used to see in print media, but I think there is a lot of value in these types of stories. I would imagine you feel the same way.  

BC: “I wish there was more media coverage of rural Kentucky, because I think it’s an overlooked part of our culture.  I think that’s why people enjoy some of the stories that you and I write about our travels around the state, it’s interesting people and places, and, occasionally, about life here as we have known it.  The older I get, the more I appreciate growing up on a family farm in Kentucky.”

 

• KFB: Of all the stories you’ve done, all the people you’ve met, all the places you’ve been, is there any one single thing that always comes to mind first?

BC: Well, after you’ve written more than 5,000 stories, it’s tough to single one out as your most memorable—but I wrote more than one story about the campaign by two veterans, and many others, to get Lt. Garlin Murl Conner of Clinton County the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism in World War II.  Conner, who made it home and spent much of his life working for the KFB and voluntarily assisting other veterans with benefits, died in 1998, but was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2018).

 

• KFB: If someone just getting into this business asked you for advice, what would you tell them?

BC: —“One thing I would tell them is to make sure they have a genuine interest in people—and that their interest goes beyond just putting some words down on the page.  We need to always remember that, when someone entrusts us with their story, regardless of how many others’ stories we may have written, what we write about that person may live on as a keepsake in their family for many years to come.  So that makes what they tell us—and how we present it—something of value.”

Note: Many of Byron’s stories have been featured in his four books, the latest being “The Back Page,” a collection of his columns featured in Kentucky Living Magazine. 

This article was originally published in the May 2024 issue of Kentucky Farm Bureau News.