Seventy-Six Years in the span of Professor Clare
52 years spent larnin' the Knott County Kids

  The following was printed in the Courier-Journal in 1939.  It is about Professor    Clarke, teacher at Hindman, Kentucky.  A reunion was organized by three of his  former students, Mr. Belle Fields, Whitesburg, Mrs. Mary B. Smith, Hindman, and Mrs. Martha Keyser, Columbus,Ohio.

A KINDLY MOUNTAIN PROFESSOR IS HONORED BY HIS STUDENTS

It was a very bright and brassy sun that poured down on Hindman this August Saturday   that Professor Clarke met with his pupils.  Dour John Wesley in a mahogany frame hung behind the wagging, kind old head, and a nervous bee fussed with the Sunday-School  map of Palestine.
"You cant make leaders..."the slow voice was saying.  "Leaders are born.  Everyone f you boys and girls was born what you are.  Not I nor any man could have made you into good people. Nature made you into that..."
Look at him as he talks to that hot, intent semicircle of elderly men and women.  A gangly boy he must have been fifty-two years ago, scrambling into Knott County down hillside and creek bed.  A gangly boy of 23 with a quick and friendly look and a brand-new lawyers shingle to hang up in the county seat of Hindman..."  and as I hit the road up  there I saw a great, cool   meadow with flowers. A little girl was waling in that meadow, singing her heart away-singing     like a bird and taught by some Teacher...the very first  soul I saw in Hindman, and everybody    here knows her name..."Katie Adams, "Called the students.  And the look of the elderly woman with the bright eyes was of pleasure and painful surprise, as though that little, singing child had stood for a moment beside her.
                                          
                                               REECE AND THE BEAR

There was a little lawing in Knott in 1888.  The fledgling county, barely three years old it was then, settles their squabbles directly and life was kept constantly interesting by such   disagreements.  The child Katie and all these other boys and girls of fifty years ago went to school in a Hindman spattered by gunfights.  And they all went to school in the   Professor's little house, for Lawyer Clark, seeing the need of teachers in that hill country adapt ably turned Professor Clark and so by accident stumbled into his life's purpose."..take French Combs.  French was a grown boy when he came to me-leaven or twelve, perhaps.  But my, how that little lad's eyes did follow me everywhere I moved.  Maybe you've seen an owl's eyes watch you so....poor young owl in captivity."The professor  brightens, and he looks around.  "But I'll tell you all again about Reece Bolen and the bear.  where's Reece"  Didn't Reece Bolen come?" Reece did come, a great burly man with a red face, a fringe of gray hair and a gusty, chuckling grin.  he stepped out front where everybody could see, and the story began. "Reece's father sent him into town one week, with 35 cents for his schooling and that       
money'd got to last Reece for a time.  But coming along the road into town he met the  man with that bear and nothing's but Reece went along with him.  The man got the bear in a barn and along went Reece and paid a whole nickel.
                
ASKING RETIREMENT FOR HIM

"But a nickel's worth of bear wasn't enough for young Reece then.  the man go to talking and said if he could raise a bit more money he'd take the bear out and let him climb a tree.  Young Reece stood there and he thought, and just wanting to see that bear climb a tree was too much and out came a dime.
"Off went the man and the bear, and Reece followed along, 'way to the end of the  highway. Then he came to , and he thought about school, and 15 cents thrown away on bear.
"He was certainly a sad boy when he got back to me that night.  And I said, "Reece,   here's history, here's reading, here's arithmetic, been waiting a whole day for you while you go running off after a bear.  What have you got to say about it?  "And what do you think Reece said?"
Everybody knows what Reece said, everybod6y has heart it many times before, but   everybody waits with laughter suspended to hear it again.
"Professor Clark,  "that boy there said, "history, reading, arithmetic ll be here all the time, but likely as not if I live to be an old man I'll never get to see another bear." There were more speeches. French Combs and the Day brothers from Pikeville worked on a resolution in which the George Clark Student Association asked that the Professor, who still teaches in Knott County schools, be names the first teacher to retire under provisions of Kentucky's new teacher retirement act.                               

                                     GUARDED SCHOOL WITH GUN

All these people had gathered for a day of praise for their old teacher, and a day of  praise they made it.  First came the lunch, in the basement of he Methodist parsonage, then the presentation of the testimonial gold watch, made by former State Senator H.H.  Smith, the master of ceremonies. Then the afternoon meeting, at which the pupils spoke,  then the night meeting, at which Senator Smith, Hindman lawyer, told the story of Professor Clark's fourteen years as Knott County's first teacher, and of how he walked to Frankfort to beg the aid of Governor Buckner against the county feudists, and afterwards patrolled his school with drawn gun on nights when the brawlers were abroad.  And when the meeting was over, the words of French Combs had summed up   for the men and women there the meaning of their meeting and of the life of the man for whom it was held.
"A man is not great for the length of time that he lives.  He is not great for anything exceptwhat he does, and this man raised the standard of citizenship in an entire section of the county.  it is for that we are gathered here today to honor him."