The House At Burton Fork

Tom buys a house and makes the school paper...






















...and the Dayton Daily News.

    ...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:

...And the outhouse needed to be rebuilt, but the house did have electricity and a  well for water.

Hauling in wood-burning stoves for heat.
See the well on the right.

Hauling in a donated oven.

    The place wasn't overly fancy on the inside,

...but with a few mattresses on the floor for furniture it was a cozy enough place.

    And more importantly, the Appalachia Club was able to continue its community service work in  Magoffin County on weekends during the school year,

...as well as continue its summer program.

   45 years later the Appalachia Club is  still alive and well at the University of Dayton though the club moved  from Burton Fork to a new location probably 20 years ago. After Tom's house and barn had stood abandoned for a few years the local authorities asked his permission to burn down what remained of the buildings.  Tom gave them permission to do so.
    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.

    I matted it myself and I made the frame from a piece of wood.