By Willie Davis
For the Carter County Times
Kentucky lost about 400,000 of its sons and daughters in the 1940s and 1950s to the industrial north. My family migrated to Mansfield, Ohio in 1959. I was twelve. I came home from my first day of school upset because I was “just another Olive Hill hillbilly” to some of my new classmates. I didn’t understand this. My childhood had been wonderful in Hayward, Enterprise, and Soldier.
My mother explained bias as best she could to a seventh grader in a new community. I realized later that this was not Jim Crow bias. However, it was enough prejudice to linger in my mind for years. Please, don’t misunderstand me. I had a great Ohio and Michigan education, and two fulfilling professional careers. But the belief among some that I was lucky to have shoes when my family moved out of Olive Hill remained.
Somewhere in the 1990s I began researching Olive Hill. My family cemetery is in Lawton, and when I returned for funerals, I began talking with other family members and local residents about Olive Hill. I began to uncover a great Olive Hill creation story. I kept researching and realized that Olive Hill has a great history that somehow got lost over time, remaining known only to a few hearty souls.
Somewhere in the 2000s I decided to tell the Olive Hill story in a historical fiction novel. The more I researched, the more I realized the Olive Hill story was also a Carter County story. It was a story of how Carter County and its people gave all that it had in a time when it was most needed, until it was needed no more.
Olive Hill and Carter County became my heroes. Carter County was blessed with an abundance of natural resources. Olive Hill had an abundance of rare fireclay and the people with enough grit to mine and turn this fireclay into special bricks that helped build a growing country.
I believe the study of history is important. A person cannot choose where they are born, or how they are raised, but they can choose how they live. Better life choices are made with a better understanding of history. We need to learn more about our history. Olive Hillians and Carter Countians need to learn more about their history. It’s a proud creation story.
Willie Davis will be one of the two inaugural speakers at the first ever Olive Hill Stories public event hosted by the Olive Hill Welcome Center. His topic is ‘Put your Olive Hill glasses on.’
Contact us at news@cartercountytimes.com if you’d like to share your own Olive Hill Story.
