dies at 95

A long time contributor to the Clinton County News and one whose bloodline was rich in the newspaper publishing history of Clinton County, died last week.

Sam Brents, an Albany native and at the time of his death a resident of Cumberland Valley Manor in Burkesville, died last Friday at the age of 95.

Brents, a graduate of Clinton County High School, was a veteran of World War II and a long-time journalist, having studied journalism at the University of Kentucky.

After enrolling at U.K. in the late 1930s, his education was interrupted by World War II, during which time he worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during the construction of both Dale Hollow Dam as well as Center Hill Dam.

In 1942, Brents was drafted into the Army and during his time with the armed services, he served in the capacity of Company Clerk at various stations.

He again went to work for the Corps of Engineers after World War II, this time on-site during the construction of Wolf Creek Dam.

Brents finished his college education after World War II, obtaining a degree in journalism in 1947.

As a journalist, Brents worked for the Portsmouth Times where he was the sports editor, a job he was at first reluctant to accept.

In a feature article published in 2014, Cumberland County News (Burkesville, Kentucky) writer Sarah Stockton, quoted Brents about that first post-war journalism job in Portsmouth.

“I was asked what I wanted to do, and I said anything but sports. The editor told me the only job they had available was sports editor! I took the job and came to truly love sports,” Brents said.

In that same 2014 article, Stockton noted that Brents moved to Fort Worth, Texas to do graduate work at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. While there he met and married Marjorie Best. The couple moved around for several years and finally settled in Nashville, Tennessee, where Brents became the editor of Open Windows, a monthly book of devotions which is still published today by the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Brents family had a long standing relationship with newspapers in Albany and Clinton County.

In a 2014 article published in the Clinton County News, Brents noted that his father, S.V. Brents, purchased the Albany Journal in 1906 and published that newspaper through 1907, when he founded another local newspaper by the name of the Kentucky Mountaineer, which was only published for a short time.

Brents’ father was also a prominent attorney in Albany as well as often a candidate for public office. He wrote many articles for The New Era as well as for the Clinton County News, and was a close friend of Clinton County News founder and publisher A.B. Gibson, who would furnish the elder Brents with paper to use for writing articles.

Sam, Jr., in addition to being a journalist and huge sports fan, was also an avid puzzler maker.

For the past several years, Brents has submitted work puzzles he constructed with a typewriter at his home in Cumberland Valley Manor. Those puzzles appeared weekly on the Clinton County News history feature page that is put together by Co-Publisher Janie Gibson.

Brents’ weekly puzzle feature appeares under the header titled “It Puzzles Me”.

Gibson says she still has a supply of several work puzzles that Brents had submitted several weeks ago, and will continue to use the puzzles in his memory as long as the current supply lasts.

A separate article prepared by local attorney and historian David M. Cross outlining an overview of the Brents family through Clinton County history, appears this week on page X.

A complete death notice for Sam Brents, Jr. appears this week on page X.

Sam Brents, Jr., is shown above during a visit to the Clinton County News office in 2010, with a collection of newspapers that have been published in Albany, Kentucky. Brents, a journalist himself, was a long-time contributor to the Clinton County News. He died last week at the age of 95.