Am I the Only One . . . whose grandfather made the front page?

Donna Hale Chandler

However, to compensate for all the meanness of one grandfather, I was given another who always told me that I was his favorite of all the grandchildren.  I’m sure he told every one of us the same thing but I would glow each time he whispered in my ear that I was the best.  His name was Ira Hale and he was married to Nancy Hale.  To all of the (us) little ones, they were Mom and Pop Hale.

At one point in time Pop Hale was the Chief of Police of Louisa, Kentucky.  He was very serious about ‘keeping the peace’ and his sons often laughed with each other saying that Pop wouldn’t hesitate to throw any one of them in jail if they broke the law.  There would be no favoritism shown when Pop was on duty.

Mom and Pop lived at the head of a ‘holler’ with no running water.  There was a water pump in the kitchen, a real modern convenience as most people had to go outdoors to pump water or draw it from the well.  There was also a water pump on the back porch that the sons would use to ‘wash up’ before entering the back door into Mom Hale’s always busy kitchen.  With Pop having the important position in town and earning a decent salary, he decided that he would turn one of the bedrooms of their old house into an indoor toilet.  This was an enormous undertaking but once finished it was a wonder to behold, complete with a claw-foot bath tub right in the center of the room.

Moving into the modern world put Pop Hale on the front page of the local newspaper, which printed the story of the Chief of Police who had inside plumbing.  He was truly a man ahead of his time and was missed by many who loved him when he died of black lung from working in the coal mines in his younger days.