...Continued from yesterday:
So, in the fall of 1971 the University of Dayton Appalachia Club was on the verge of losing its home in Magoffin County when Tom, 21 years old and in his senior year of college, cleaned out his savings from his high school paper route and college jobs and for $2400 bought a house with a barn on 30 acres of land about a mile off the road back in a mountain holler called Burton Fork.
True, this house was also a bit of a fixer-upper:
In 2012 a local resident offered Tom $9000 for the land and Tom sold it to him.
And that's the end of the story.
But in our family room hangs a gift I once gave to Tom. It's a picture I had an artist paint from a photograph of that house and barn that Tom bought when he was 21 years old so that a group of beautiful young people could continue reaching out to their brothers and sisters in need.