Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bourbon County, Culture, David Dick, Fiction, George Wallace, Jim Jones, Jonestown, Journalism, KY, Nicaragua, Obituaries, Plum Lick, Politics
I have a lot of memories of David, as my Grandfather managed his farm for years, and our families were somewhat intertwined. There is, in fact, a nice little anecdote about the year he helped work in the tobacco fields on my folks’ farm in one of his books–he talked about the roast my mom cooked for lunch in a way that I’ll always remember.
I’ll always be haunted by what I’ve read of his time at Jonestown (here’s a sample), and it’s a good lesson in the excesses of religious devotion, power, and control. I had a nice chat with him about Nicaragua right before I took my first trip there in 2001, although he said that he didn’t have much to help illuminate what the context would be like, as he was there when the Sandinistas were first coming to power, so he mainly covered arm conflict, or “Bang-Bang,” as he called it.
I always appreciated how he would say, “Oh, you’re the writer,” when I would re-introduce myself to him, even before I had a single word published. But most important to me, he gave a great eulogy at my Grandfather’s funeral, a service made all the more beautiful by the fact that his niece-in-law Carolyn Richart was the minister who performed it. My mom always said he was at his best when he wrote about people, and when it came to Granddaddy, he nailed it.
Thanks for so many good words, David, and send us a dispatch when you can.
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nicely said.
Comment by Amy July 19, 2010 @ 12:50 pm