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Earl Joseph
Lovitt was born in 1905 on Jellico Creek, Kentucky, Whitley County, on
the mountain
farm near the
old Stephens Mill. The family
moved to the Dr. Chitwood place near the mouth of Rians Creek in 1907. In
the fall of 1910, Melton G. Lovitt and Flora Meadors Lovitt decided they
wanted to raise their children near better schools than they attended; so
the family moved to the old Synder home on the Mike Richardson farm on Briar
Creek, two miles from the county seat town of Williamsburg, Ky.
Earl started
school in the one room Briar Creek School on the lot where Bob Wilder later
lived. Ms. Flora Whitehead was the teacher. Earl and Cawood Owens received
a book at the end of school for being present every day. In 1912, the county
built a two-room school on the Bon Jellico Coal Co. property and it became
the Bon Jellico School, which Earl attended from 1912 through 1919. Some
of the teachers that he had were Frank Davis, Rhoda Tye, Maude Foley, Harrison
Campbell, N.M. Hill, A.A. Ridener, Mary McCullah, and J.B. Johnson. This
was a seven-month school and at the end of the seven months he attended
the grade school department of Cumberland College in the building now occupied
by Roburn Hall. Mrs. N.M. Hill was the ‘best teacher’ he ever
had.
From
1920-1923 he attended high school and teacher training school, which was
know as
normal school. He walked from Bon Jellico every day, rain
or shine, mud
or snow two miles each way. Mr. Joe Lawson allowed him to stop in his grocery
store each morning and evening to change his muddy shoes for a cleaner pair—leaving
a pair behind the store door and doing the reverse each evening. Two of the
teachers were Miss Flint and J. Lloyd Creech. Under their teaching he made,
by a two-day
oral and written examination, a first class certificate good for four years
of teaching.
In
July of 1923, school trustee Mr. Isom Cordell recommended him as teacher
of
the Fair View School with about 39 students with a salary of $66.50
per month
for seven months. Eighth grade students were Wadley Cordell, Elsie Cordell,
Laurence Kennedy, Marie Lovitt, Reba Lovitt, and Gladys Campell. He boarded
with his Uncle
Marsh and Aunt Emma Lovitt for $6.00 a month and at the end of the school
year had $300 in the bank. Earl recalled, “The thing that bugs me
most was how I spent the $123.50 left after paying my tuition and room
and board. There was
nowhere to go and nothing to do. I do remember going to Jellico, Tennessee
and buying my first suit, blue serge one from Gartiers Dept. Store for
$27.50. In
the spring term of 1924, I attended high school at Cumberland. In the summer
of 1924, I bought my first car, a 1922 Model T Ford from Marion Woollum
for $180.00. Ernest Freeman bought the Ford new for $475.00. It was the
first and worst car
I ever had. If you worked on it all week, you could run it a little on
Sunday. But the car came in handy since I became principal of the two teachers
school
at Emlyn, Ky. and drove from Bon Jellico each day. My assistant teacher
was Miss Maggie Sullivan. The school year 1924-1925 had about 100 students
and my salary
was $73.00 per month. The school year 1925-1926 my assistant teacher was
Miss Susie Higganbotham. Gas costs 15 cents per gallon.”
The road
from Bon to Emlyn was mud and snow most of the time. If he could not
make it, he stayed with
Mr. Pleas Walker for free. In the spring term of 1925, he attended the
Eastern Ky. Normal School. The spring term of 1926 he attended the Williams
High School
with teachers Elbert T. Mackey and Arkley Wright. The five-week summer
term of 1926 he spent at Eastern. “I remember very well I left
with $50.00. Train fare there was $3.10 and return was $3.10. I stayed
five
weeks and came home
with $7.00 remaining.”
Mr.
W. A. Green, trustee, “thought it was time I came home to teach my
home school, and it was while I was at Eastern in 1926 that I got the
news that Bon Jellico was to be a three teacher school and I was to be
the first principal
of it.” Assistants were Leonard Inman and Mary Calliway. The
salary there was $84.00 per month. Whitley County schools were seven
months; so the coal company
furnished the money for the two extra months; Bon Jellico was a nine-month
school. For the 1927-1928 school year Earl was recommended by Mr. Green
as principal
of the Bon School but the superintendent Claiborne Wilson “…had
other ideas. It seemed that his good friend Miss Flora Sullivan had
lost her job at
Williamsburg grade school and he told me I did not have enough school
work to hold a principal’s place.” Earl became teacher
of the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. Glenna Copeland was primary teacher
with Miss Flora as principal. “I
have great satisfaction in remembering that Supt. Wilson was defeated
at the very next election. Of course I had nothing to do with that.”
“For
a few weeks in the summer of 1927 I was carpenter’s helper for
Mr. Green Creekmore. The only thing I recall about that was that
we put on a roof on Jim and Teenie Stout’s house and the pay was
$3.00 per day.”
“In
April, 1928, Mr. Jack Taylor hired me as company store manager, the day
after
school was out. . .. My helpers in the store were Roger West, clerk,
and Jim Pemberton, deliveryman. Our sales ran from $3,000 to $5,000
a month …but
during the depression some days would go all the way up to $15.00. …..In
the fall of 1932, I was appointed postmaster at the Bon Jellico,
Kentucky Post Office. The postmaster was paid in proportion to
the number of
letters mailed
at the office. We counted them each day and the post office commission
was divided between Mr. Taylor and me. An average monthly total
pay was around $15.00; occasionally
a politician would come by and do his mailing at Bon Jellico and
we would earn a few dollars extra. Mr. Taylor was the Bon Jellico
baseball
club
manager and
I was the field manager. We would close the Commissary every Saturday
for the ball games. Mr. Kay Hinkle was the manager part of this
time.”
In
1935 the Early Lovitt family moved to High Splint to work in the High Splint
Coal Company Commissary. He was co-owner of Sharpe
and
Lovitt
Chevrolet Company
and worked as Sales Manager for Brown’s Motor Company in
Corbin for 11.5 years retiring in 1979.
Verna
(nee Copeland) and Earl had
two daughters. After
the death of Verna in 1977, Earl married Glessie M. Eaton. Back Next
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