"The Autobiography Of John E. Buckingham Appalachian Financier" by John E. Buckingham, et. al---Book Review

John E. Buckingham was born in Paintsville, Kentucky, in 1874 and rose to power as a former student and loyal assistant to John C. C. Mayo, the individual who is generally given most credit for arranging the purchase, development, and eventual decline of the coal fields and the coal industry in the entire Big Sandy River Valley.  Buckingham served loyally as the most obvious right hand man to Mayo beginning shortly after Mayo began buying and selling thousands of acres of mineral rights in Kentucky under the notorious broad form deeds.  Buckingham was eventually listed as the president, CEO, or chief operating officer of a half dozen or so small banks in the coal towns, including Wayland, Blackey, Hi Hat, Paintsville, and other coal camp towns in the eastern region of Kentucky.  During the Great Depression, all of those banks except the one in Paintsville went bankrupt and were liquidated under the National Recovery Act.  Yet, amazingly, Buckingham was elected to both the presidency of the Kentucky Bankers Association and the office of State Treasurer of Kentucky.  He had a street named after him in the coal town of Van Lear, Kentucky, which is most famous for having been the hometown of both Loretta Lynn and her sister, Crystal Gale.  Buckingham Mountain, which is located on the ridge which separates Right Beaver Creek from Left Beaver Creek, is also named for John E. Buckingham.

Buckingham wrote an autobiography which is entitled “The Autobiography of John E. Buckingham, Appalachian Financier,”  and was originally published under the auspices of a vanity press during Buckingham’s lifetime and was eventually republished with a second vanity press, Gateway Press, Incorporated, in 2008.  The book was rereleased in 2008 from Gateway Press with the names of Robert M. Conley as editor and John Buckingham Browning as “consultant”.  Browning is the grandson and namesake of John E. Buckingham.  The book does give some first-person insight into the life and accomplishments of John C. C. Mayo and John E. Buckingham.  But any reader should approach it with a jaundiced eye.  Other than the Paintsville bank, which survived the depression by being merged into another institution, Buckingham did not mention by name a single one of the other banks which collapsed during the depression.  He also only used the term “depression” only once in the book and always referred to that horrible period in American history by the somewhat bleached out misnomer of “the panic of 1929”.  Buckingham also discusses several other economic failures in coal mining, lumbering, oil, and gas in terms which are clearly intended to portray both himself and John C. C. Mayo in charitable terms regardless of the topic. The book was obviously a major attempt to self-aggrandize in an apparent attempt to leave a lasting favorable impression of the author on his readership.  The book was also only very superficially edited and is replete with errors of spelling, grammar, and syntax. 

A Call For Gun Control In Appalachia In 1941

The attached news story below was taken from the Floyd County Times of April 10, 1941, just a little over 78 years ago.  I was quite pleased to find it in a county newspaper anywhere in Appalachia but even more pleased to find it in the primary local newspaper I read as a boy in Floyd County Kentucky, the county in which I spent the first 6 years of life and one which has played a significant role in the lives of myself and my entire extended family since the day my third great-grandfather Aulse Hicks immigrated to the area from Western Virginia sometime between 1790 and 1810.

Floyd County Times, January 2, 1941

In his charge to the Floyd Circuit Court grand jury a few days before the story made the paper, Floyd Circuit Judge Henry Stephens, Jr. stated "Reduce the carrying of pistols, and you reduce murder. I desire that the grand jury investigate all  classes and kinds of crime and especially the carrying of concealed deadly weapons.  Thousands of dollars could be saved in Kentucky through the circuit courts, if the law was such that the first offense of carrying a concealed deadly weapon was punishable by from one to five years in the state reformatory."  Judge Stephens was correct in this statement in 1941 and he is still correct today more than 78 years after he said these words in his charge to the grand jury.

Five of the twenty worst states in America, based on their per capita gun deaths by 100,000 citizens, are wholly or partially in Central and Southern Appalachia.   Alabama, whose Northeastern region in the area of Sand Mountain, is the fourth worst state in the union for gun deaths with 17.6 gun deaths annually per 100,000 citizens.  Tennessee, where nearly the entire eastern half of the state is Appalachian, is 10th worst with 16.4 gun deaths yearly per 100,000 residents.  West Virginia, which is wholly in Central and Southern Appalachia, is 13th worst with 14.3 gun deaths per 100,000 citizens.  Kentucky, which has nearly all the eastern half of the state in Central and Southern Appalachia, is 17th worst in the nation with 13.7 deaths for each 100,000 potential living victims in the commonwealth.  Georgia, whose northeastern counties are in Central and Southern Appalachia, has 12.6 gun deaths per 100,000 residents and is the 19th worst state in the nation for gun deaths.  These are deplorable and indefensible statistics if we are honest about the issue of the horrible need for comprehensive federal gun control legislation.  The number of lives which could be saved all across the nation, not just in Appalachia, with such legislation would be worth far more than enough in human life, legal costs, and total lives saved to more than justify the uproar which such rational and well justified humane legislation would engender.  The 2nd Amendment does not guarantee the right to unrestricted ownership of weapons as groups such as the NRA would have you believe.  It guarantees the right to "well regulated" ownership of guns and, if we are honest, we know that guns have never been well regulated in America.  It is long past time for us to work to make Judge Stephens' dream come true.   

"Public Health In Appalachia Essays From The Clinic And The Field" Edited by Wendy Welch--Book Review

Welch, Wendy, Editor: Public Health In Appalachia Essays From The Clinic And The Field (Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland And Company, 2014)

This book is one work in a series of books from McFarland and Company in Jefferson, North Carolina, called the Contributions To Southern Appalachian Studies series which in the last twenty years has produced roughly forty books.  It is a book I should have read and written about promptly after it was published in 2014 since one article in the book quotes substantially from an article which I co-authored in 2005 with Dr. Heather Ambrose, Ph.D. on the topic of "Culturally Appropriate Counseling and Human Services in Appalachia: The Need and How to Address It" which was published online by the American Counseling Association and which we delivered in a presentation at the 2005 National Conference of the ACA.  However, that quotation and citation is not the best reason for me or anyone else to read this book.  The real reason you should read it is that it is a compilation of ten very cogent and informative essays written by more than a dozen human services and/or education professionals in the Central and Southern Appalachian region.  The subtitle, "Essays From The Clinic And The Field", explains very aptly why I consider this book to be a fine resource for human services and education professionals working in the region.  It is taken directly from the mouths of more a dozen of the "horses" who have been pulling the load in some very tough professions in the region and who clearly demonstrate their professional skills and cultural competence in their writing.  

In the opening paragraph of the Foreword, John Dreyzehner addresses one of my pet peeves for nearly all my life which I have always confronted in the header to this blog.  Mr. Dreyzehner has begun his introduction to the book by saying: 

"Many years ago a young college student from Chicago signed up for a brief Catholic mission experience deep in rural Appalachia.  One of the first things the ignorant young man noticed was that the locals and the host clergy didn't pronounce "Appalachia" right.  What they said sounded more like "apple-AT-cha".  Fortunately, he did not try to correct them, nor they, more kindly, he in saying "app-a-LAY-cha".  That was the beginning of an education in cultural sensitivity and cultural literacy.  There was a lot to learn." (Dreyzehner, Public Health In Appalachia Essays from the Clinic and the Field, p. 1)

I cannot think of a finer way for any non-native resident of Appalachia to begin a discussion of the region.  My own aforementioned header to this blog uses nearly identical words to address the same topic:

"An ever growing site of non-fiction,flotsam, fiction,memoir,autobiography,literature,history, ethnography, and book reviews about Appalachia, Appalachian Culture, and how to keep it alive!!! Also,how to pronounce the word: Ap-uh-latch-uh. Billy Ed Wheeler said that his mother always said,"Billy, if you don't quit, I'm going to throw this APPLE AT CHA" Those two ways are correct. All The Others Are Wrong." (Roger D. Hicks, see above)

This book makes a meritorious attempt in several of the articles to address that need for cultural competency and the same article which quotes my work, written by Bob Franko, also quotes and cites  the work of my friend and mentor Loyal Jones from his book "Appalachian Values" on which I have based much of my writings about the need for cultural competence in writing about or working in Central and Southern Appalachia.  It was quite refreshing to see anyone directly addressing the widespread and deliberate mispronunciation of the name of our homeland.  One of my very early blog posts,  and I am proud to say one of the most frequently read on this blog, directly addressed this issue.  I also frequently mention the excellent, early Appal Shop movie "Strangers and Kin: A History of the Hillbilly Image", which is one of finest attempts ever made to address the negative attacks on Appalachia and Appalachians.  Those of us who have fought this battle for most of our lives can truly appreciate the effort by Franko and Dreyzehner.

But there are numerous other reasons to appreciate this book and the greater series from McFarland and Company.  Nearly every article in the book has direct applications for both professionals working in the region and native Appalachian who simply want to be understood by the greater America around us as an unappreciated and frequently maligned minority which are generally denied minority status.  The first section of the book contains four articles which address a quartet of the most serious problems facing the region today: cancer, diabetes, drug addiction, and inadequate dental care. The second section is comprised of three articles about culturally appropriate health care delivery systems.  All three of these articles are well written by individuals who understand exactly what they are talking about.  Steve North, M. D. wrote a very good article about telehealth in Appalachia.  But I must take offense with the general need for telehealth in Appalachia or anywhere else in a country which mistakenly claims to be the most advanced in the world.  I am still offended that in America we have reached a time where it is necessary for people in any part of the country to participate in telehealth in order to participate in the health care system.  I also take offense when I am seen at one of the best hospitals in the entire southeast and I am unable to see a person who is actually a medical doctor.  I have worked with and know several highly qualified nurse practitioners and physicians assistants but I will never believe that this country could not, if politicians and health care administrators would allow it, produce a health care system in which every patient would meet with a physician at the moment of initial contact.  Such a system would require us, as a nation, to actually create new systems of taxation, education, and healthcare delivery. Such a system would allow every qualified applicant to be accepted into a medical school without fear of losing their future freedom of choice because of paying off education loans.  Other countries with far less average gross domestic product pay for a college education for every qualified applicant.  We should also.  If those applicants choose to become nurse practitioners or physicians assistants instead of becoming doctors, we should support them just the same.  A free public college education for every qualified applicant in America would vastly increase our gross domestic product, average income, and general effectiveness as a nation.  But for the time being, I do admit that the current system of using medical practitioners who are less qualified than full medical doctors does give us the ability to delivery minimally effective health care to the greatest number of patients especially in remote areas of Appalachia, the Deep South, and the far west.  But it should never be accepted as the best or most widely used system. 

The third section of the book contains three articles on cultural theory and clinical policy.  One of those articles written by Tauna Gulley, RN, on fatalism and its effects on Appalachian youth.  Fatalism is one of the old topics which has been repeatedly used as a club with which to beat Appalachia and Appalachians.  In my opinion, this article could have been left on the cutting room floor and the overall book would have been better.  Fatalism is an easy place to fall back on if an author is attempting to continue the denigration, defamation, and defeat of Appalachia.  It is not nearly as prevalent or important as some people believe. At the time of publication of this book, Ms Gulley was a professor of nursing at the University of Virginia College at Wise.  Today, she is the coordinator of a nursing program at the University of Pikeville and apparently now holds a doctoral degree.  I do not know her or her educational or personal background.  But it has generally been my experience that the topics of fatalism, familism, and internecine squabbles, when used in reference to Appalachia are most generally used by non-natives of the region as a way to justify  what they mistakenly believe to be our shortcomings as a people and a region. 

Do not allow the couple of negative assessments I have made of individual articles to overly color your opinions of this book.  The strengths of the work strongly overcome any weaknesses a couple of articles may exhibit.  Read the book and benefit from it.  Read it with a critical eye and use the parts of it you are willing to accept at face value.  Use the parts with which you disagree to broaden your own knowledge base about how to overcome or counterbalance the alleged weaknesses those authors may discuss.  And realize that the opinions of any particular author may well not represent those of the editor or the other authors.  This is a book from which to learn. It is a tool.  Use it wisely!