More than 600 people who died in 2023 were remembered in obituaries published by Hoptown Chronicle. All of them had some connection to Hopkinsville. Some of the departed were widely known. Others were known only to their family and friends.
They had worked in dozens of occupations — as teachers, ministers, plumbers, midwives, restaurant owners, musicians, seamstresses and truck drivers. They were doctors, waitresses, factory workers and builders. They served in the military. They coached Jr. Pro basketball teams.
They taught piano and Sunday school. They flew planes, toiled over tax returns, cut grass, hunted, fought fires, drove tractors and raced cars.
We have highlighted several of the notables who died in 2023. Here are their stories:
A lifelong farmer
Born in Christian County during the Great Depression, Malcolm Rice Oatts had to find ways to supplement his income when he started farming as a young man. He sold cars for a while and worked nearly two decades as a deliveryman for Model Milk Co. in Hopkinsville. For many years, he made time for ag vocational classes, establishing a reputation as a progressive grain farmer and earning regional and national awards for conservation and no-till practices. He was named Christian County’s Farmer of the Year in 2011.
Oatts was still farming at age 85 when the Kentucky New Era interviewed him in 2017 at his farm on Russellville Road. He said he wanted to keep going as long as he could.
“I don’t golf. I don’t fish. I don’t hunt,” he told the newspaper. “I’ve got to do something, so I’ll keep farming.”
Oatts died Jan. 9 at his home, a 150-year-old farmhouse he’d worked years to acquire as his ag holdings grew. He was 90 years old.
A centenarian
Few people expect to live for 100 years. Agnes Blane lived even longer. She was 105 when she died on Jan. 16 at Christian Health Center. A native of Stewart County, Tennessee, she taught locally at Belmont and South Christian elementary schools. Blane was a member of Christian Heights United Methodist Church and the Delta Kappa Gamma Teachers Association.
The fire chief
After winning election as mayor and taking office in 1986, Hopkinsville businessman Herb Hays promptly chose new chiefs for the city’s police and fire departments. The two ousted employees filed lawsuits and challenged Hays’ authority to replace them, but the new appointments stood.
Hays’ pick for fire chief was Jesse Lancaster Jr. He had joined the fire department in 1959 when Hopkinsville’s central station was still downtown on East Ninth Street. Lancaster was serving as the assistant chief when Hays promoted him. He remained with the fire department until 1990, retiring as chief.
Lancaster was also a builder and worked in his family business, Lancaster Brothers, and served on Hopkinsville City Council. He died March 3 at Christian Health Center. He was 93.
A fair champion
Year after year, Evelyn Roeder collected countless blue ribbons in the Western Kentucky State Fair’s home and garden competition. Her award-winning vegetables, flowers, food and home goods made her a grand champion in one of the most competitive attractions at Christian County’s annual fair.
Roeder, who grew up in Indiana, was a homemaker and farmer with her husband Albert Roeder in the Herndon community. They celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in 2018. In addition to keeping a vegetable and flower garden, Roeder was a horseback rider and a photography enthusiast.
At age 88, she died on March 4 at Jennie Stuart Medical Center.
Music and medicine
Before he became a cardiologist, Maysville native Sam Hendley Traughber practiced music therapy at a Veterans Administration hospital and played trumpet in a U.S. Army band. Traughber earned his medical degree at the University of Louisville and completed his residency at Vanderbilt University. He established his Hopkinsville medical practice in 1969.
Traughber served as chief of staff, chief of medicine and director of the Coronary Care Unit at Jennie Stuart Medical Center. He was actively involved in the community as a member of First United Methodist Church, Hopkinsville Jaycees and Rotary, the Athenaeum Society and other groups.
After practicing medicine in Hopkinsville for roughly three decades, he retired to Destin, Florida, where he sang in a choir and played trumpet again for a Methodist church. Traughber died on April 13 at his Destin home. He was 87.
Her civic engagement
Like many of her peers who died in 2023, Grace Rucker started life in Christian County during the hardest of economic times — the 1930s. It didn’t seem to hold her back.
Rucker’s resume reads like a lesson in how to live a life of engagement. She was a member of Casky Baptist Church, the Christian County Republican Party, Christian County Republican Women, Junior Auxiliary, the Business and Professional Women’s Club and the Saint Elmo Homemakers.
She was both grounded, learning to operate farm machinery in her youth, and ahead of her time, creating a successful career in real estate. She was a broker-owner with Baker Realtors and served as president of the Hopkinsville-Christian County and Todd County Board of Realtors. Not to waste any of her talents, she also drove a school bus and a Book Mobile for a few years.
Rucker died April 23 at her Pembroke residence. She was 84.
Her call to ministry
How does a woman from Iowa, approaching the age when many think of retiring, land in Kentucky to begin an entirely new career? Kimberly Beth Zarley would have told you that God led her to this place.
For 30 years, Zarley worked in Des Moines, Denver, Chicago and St. Louis as a graphic designer and art director. She designed magazines and books for national publishers. Her homes reflected her love for color and design. But in 2009, Zarley decided to make a major shift and enrolled in seminary to become a minister.
She received her first call to serve a congregation in 2018 as associate pastor of First Christian Church in Hopkinsville. She bought an old home in the Mooreland-Alumni-Latham neighborhood and established friendships here that endured after she left to serve other churches in Missouri. She kept her Hopkinsville house even after she relocated to Missouri because she felt like it might be a place to settle in retirement.
After a recurrence of kidney cancer, Zarley died on May 8 in Iowa. She was 67.
During her second year in Hopkinsville, Zarley wrote a story for Hoptown Chronicle about her search for the Christmas spirit while attending seminary in Houston.
Leading with women
In August 1965, a group of young African American women met in a Hopkinsville home to form a bridge club. Two years later, they agreed to shift the focus and gave their group a new name, the Modernette Civic Club. Soon they would become a respected organization that focused attention on important issues in Hopkinsville. Among many efforts, they raised money for scholarships and established an event that attracted hundreds of attendees and respected speakers every year during Black History Month.
Gladys Ann Shade Sivels was among the founding members of the Modernette Civic Club. Sivels was a teacher at Lacy Elementary School and a longtime member of Virginia Street Baptist Church, where she sang with the senior choir and played piano. She died on May 10 at age 82.
She favored fashion
Women’s hats for dressy occasions mostly fell out of favor many years ago. But not for women like Annie Frances Clardy Quarles, a traditionalist in matters of fashion.
Quarles owned and ran two Hopkinsville shops, Frances’ Hat Corner, and JQ Fashions and Art Gallery. She also worked in the Christian County Clerk’s Office and for Jennie Stuart Medical Center.
A member of Virginia Street Baptist Church, Quarles could be counted on to arrive at services in her Sunday best, including a fine hat. She taught Sunday school and sang with the Mass Choir. She was a member of the Business and Professional Women’s Club, and she sold Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Quarles died on June 11. She was 92.
His patients were like family
A native of Chicago, Dr. Robert Bressler was board certified in immunology and internal medicine with offices in Hopkinsville and Clarksville, Tennessee. He was widely known as an allergy doctor who had a genuine rapport with patients. Many said he treated them like family.
Bressler was also an avid sports fan. He helped connect young players in Hopkinsville with college opportunities and was a key supporter in the revival of the girls basketball program at University Heights Acadmey.
He died on June 27 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He was 72.
The president’s wife
Margaret Crim Riley came to Hopkinsville in the mid-1960s when her husband, Dr. Thomas Riley, was chosen to be the first president of Hopkinsville Community College. The Rileys raised five children, including David L. Riley, who was an editor at the Kentucky New Era at the time of his death in 2005.
Margaret Riley and her husband were involved in several historical groups and studied genealogy. She served 17 years as coordinator of Community Relations and as medical librarian at Western State Hospital. After her husband retired, they moved to Lexington. She died July 20 in Lexington at age 96. Her husband preceded her in death.
A downtown pharmacist
Herbert Patterson Brandt, better known as Herb Brandt, was an Idaho native who joined the U.S. Navy during the Korean War and served as a hospital corpsman. After his military service, he went to pharmacy school at Butler University and graduated in 1958. He worked for Eli Lily Co. and then bought a drug store in Hopkinsville at Seventh and Main street. He renamed the business Corner Drugs and kept it open until 1988.
Brandt continued working as a pharmacist for other store owners until 2008, but he remained best known for the store on Ninth Street. That location is now home to Milkweed Health and Harmony Emporium. Brandt died on Aug. 28 at his home. He was 93.
The town founder’s descendant
Ben S. Wood III was the great-great-great-grandson of Hopkinsville town founder Bartholomew T. Wood. As such, Wood was an avid student of local history and owned several downtown properties at various times during his life. He co-owned the Christian County Historical Society building on East Ninth Street with his lifelong friend, Christian County Historian William T. Turner.
Prior to his retirement, Wood owned the Copper Still Liquor Store chain in Hopkinsville. In 1955, Wood’s father established what they believed was “America’s first drive-in liquor store” at Fourth and Clay streets. Wood resided at his family’s Blue Lantern Farm on the Cadiz Road.
He died Sept. 21 of complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was 78.
He was a downtown fixture
Businessman Alfred P. “Bobo” Cravens was a fixture in downtown Hopkinsville whose historic properties became the subject of controversy during the last months of his life.
A native of Christian County, he earned a bachelor’s degree in business at the University of Kentucky and served in the U.S. Marine Corps. He spent most of his life in Hopkinsville as the proprietor of Blue Streak Printers, an East Ninth Street business that evolved into a virtual museum of old printing machinery.
It was no stretch to say Cravens was a character. For many years he threw a Christmas Eve party for people who were homeless or down on their luck, a group he fondly called the town “bums” when he welcomed them into his print shop for food and small gifts.
He was a member of the Kiwanis Club and served on the local Salvation Army’s board of directors. He attended First United Methodist Church.
Cravens died at age 92 on Sept. 23 in Lexington, where he had been living in a nursing facility for the last several months of his life. Six weeks later, on Nov. 4, The Phoenix building he owned at Ninth and Main streets was demolished.
An American soldier
He grew up in California but chose Hopkinsville as the place he wanted to raise a family after joining the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment at Fort Campbell.
Hours after texting with his wife at their Kentucky home, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Shane M. Barnes died on Nov. 10 during a military helicopter crash in the Mediterranean Sea. He was 34.
Barnes’ family learned a few days before Christmas that his remains had been recovered at sea. A burial is planned later at Arlington National Cemetery.
A veterinary center director
As a veterinary pathologist, Dr. Wade Kadel was a longtime director of the Breathitt Veterinary Center in Hopkinsville. He was a Springfield, Missouri, native and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Kadel was an avid fisherman and spent a great deal of time on Lake Barkley. As a member of Hopkinsville Rotary, he served as club president and auction chairman. He chaired the first Rotary Auction that was televised in Hopkinsville.
He died Nov. 30 at Deaconess Gateway Hospital in Evansville, Indiana. He was 85.
A spirit of forgiveness
On Christmas Eve of 1982, Frank and Elizabeth Morris were mourning the death of their 18-year-old son, Ted Morris, in a crash caused by another young man they would soon learn was a drunken driver.
Elizabeth Morris became consumed with a desire to punish the driver, Tommy Pigage. In an Associated Press story published in September 1985, she admitted she wanted their son’s killer to also die.
But in one of the most remarkable stories of forgiveness, the Morrises eventually overcame their feelings of rage. They forgave Pigage and helped him overcome his drinking problem and the guilt that haunted him after the fatal crash.
Elizabeth Morris died at her Hopkinsville home on Dec. 14. She was 78 years old. Among the officiants at her funeral Dec. 18 at Hopkinsville Church of Christ was Tommy Pigage.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
