All For Benny

{Editor’s note: The people seated at the street length dinner table at Saturday evening’s third annual All For Benny Downtown Dinner, listened to some brief comments made by hometown Hall of Fame journalist Al Cross.

For those who were not able to attend Saturday night’s Clinton County Community Foundation event, here is the text to the presentation made by Cross.}

Thanks for inviting me to speak tonight. There are very few places I would rather be, because this is still home, in many ways. It’s where I became a journalist and learned most of life’s big lessons, on baseball fields, high-school gyms and the studios of WANY.

I thought a good bit about WANY this week as I watched the country-music documentary on KET, because radio is a huge part of country music and WANY had some folks like Darrell Speck, Elmer Goodman, Cecil Pryor and Ray Mullinix, who knew a lot about music, and knew some of the performers who were in the first four episodes of the show.

It made me wish I had listened more closely to Elmer on his Bluegrass radio shows when he talked about great musicians like the Stanley Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, the Osborne Brothers and Bill Monroe, who more or less created Bluegrass music. KET has its own very good documentary about Bluegrass, called “Big Family,” and I recommend it, too.

My wife Patti’s story about Bill Monroe is that he tried to court her grandmother. Tonight, I have a different story about Bill, that is a lesson for those of us who try to build community in rural America.

Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys came into their own in 1945 when Bill hired as his lead guitarist and singer Lester Flatt – who was born 40 miles from here, in the southwest corner of Overton County – and Earl Scruggs, a banjo picker like no other, from North Carolina. They were so good, and Bill paid them so little, that they soon went out on their own in 1948.

Now, Bill Monroe could hold a hard grudge, and he kept Flatt and Scruggs off the Grand Ole Opry for years. Flatt and Scruggs didn’t like hearing his name, and that became known, so when people would ask them to play tunes that they once played with the Bluegrass Boys, they would use that name, not Monroe’s. Pretty soon they just started calling for “Bluegrass,” and that’s how the name stuck. The man who put it together, and his main rivals, couldn’t stand the mention of each other’s names.

That rivalry – and one Monroe had with the Stanley Brothers – hurt Bluegrass music, and surely diminished their stardom. This shows how personal feelings and personal interests can get in the way of a greater good, and that’s often a problem in small towns.

You’ve probably heard the stories about how Albany could have had this business or that business, but established businesses, fearing competition, put obstacles in their way. I don’t know how many of those stories are true, if any of them, but I do know that it’s been a problem in rural America.

That’s one of the points in a very good book called 13 Ways to Kill Your Community, by Doug Griffiths. The rest of my talk is built around some of its other points, which I will give in the negative but explain in the positive:

Shop Elsewhere. Every dollar spent in a community can reach as many as seven other hands before it leaves the community, especially if the business is locally owned. Now, this is a two-way street; businesses have to provide the price, quality, selection, or service that folks demand. But I have always been willing to pay a little more to support truly local businesses, owned by people who support events like this.

Don’t fix up. A community’s appearance is the most telling sign of its own pride, it’s the clearest indication of faith in itself and it is the clearest outward sign of its future, and a little money spent on paint and landscaping can go a long way. It can inspire others to do likewise. I looked across the street tonight and saw the new front of Clinton Jewelers, which has been there since 1950; it looks better than ever.

Ignore Youth. Youth have energy and ideas, are great volunteers, and are the future of your community. Look for opportunities to get them involved, and respect their suggestions. Often, they have the core of a good idea.

Ignore Immigrants and Newcomers. They can bring an entrepreneurial attitude and community spirit. They see their new homes as places of opportunity, but too often they are not recruited by local organizations. Get to know these people; you might be pleasantly surprised at what good neighbors they can be.

Don’t Assess Your Community’s Needs or its Values. Every community lacks something, and it needs to ask what that is: What sort of services, facilities, businesses does it need? Every community has values, which should be at the core of what the future is going to be about. As you strive to improve, what values do you want to honor and safeguard? Do those values need to adapt to changing times?

Live in the Past. We need to honor our history, but we also need to realize that it hasn’t taken us where we would like to be. But we can’t complain about past injustices that can never be fixed; we have to look ahead, and over the hill. It’s fine to say “Come see it our way,” but we also need to see where our community fits in the wider world, and find out what works in other communities. Most of them are happy to share their knowledge.

Don’t Cooperate. On this one, I am largely preaching to the choir, because the fact that you are here shows that you want to support one of the best cooperative efforts we’ve ever had here, the Clinton County Community Foundation.

Community foundations are one of the best ways to involve people who would like to help out, but need to have confidence that their money is used well. Our foundation is already proving that, with the bequest of the late Hazel Dicken Garcia to the foundation. There are scores of other people like her, who grew up in Clinton County and still treasure it, who could follow in her footsteps.

Outside money can help, but the real energy has to come from here. Albany and Clinton County are too small to have rivalries between groups that have essentially the same mission, to make a better community. Folks need to communicate, and they don’t need to have any hidden agendas. Too often, when someone tries to do good in a small town, others will say, “What’s she got up her sleeve?” or “What’s he runnin’ for?” Albany and Clinton County have not been immune to that disease.

Community and economic development is a complicated business, so you need to ask an important question: Are your governments and civic organizations cooperating like they should to attract and keep jobs and businesses in Clinton County? And if they’re not, what can they do to work together for everyone’s benefit, without worrying who gets the credit?

This is a question for everyone, not just the people affiliated with these governments and organizations. So that brings me to the last item on Doug Griffith’s list of ways to kill your community:

Don’t take Responsibility. Some people blame everything, every wrong and every challenge, on someone else. We need positive thinking, a belief that good can be done – and that comes from the bottom up, not from the top down.

And good can be done. Here we are, between two beautiful lakes, the edge of the mountains and the Cumberland River, but our full tourism potential has not been fully realized. I salute Tony Sloan for creating Marina at Rowena, which gives us two docks on each of the two lakes. We need to find ways to bring more of those tourist dollars into town. I’ve long thought there should be some grant money available for a shuttle bus that could also provide transportation for local residents.

Some great good has been done by the Clinton County Healthy Hometown Coalition. A broad range of local folks, including my niece, Lora Brewington, saw the need to build on an existing coalition to improve the county’s heath, and they thought the best place to start was with children. It was one of six such coalitions funded by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, and it’s working! The county is moving up in the annual County Health Rankings, and is no longer identified as a high-obesity county by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means the school system no longer gets certain grant money from the CDC, but a lower obesity rate is something that will pay much more dividends in the long run.

That may be a lesson, too. It shows that outside help is often needed, but local action is also essential.

And sometimes, action requires risk. Too many political leaders are timid, afraid they will upset people by taking actions that may be unpopular with some. But in many cases, those actions will create greater good that may not be seen in the current term of office. Public service can’t be all about the next election.

And in the private sector, good business isn’t always about a growing bank balance. Sometimes you have to make investments for a greater return in the long run.

In addition to the private sector and the public sector, there’s another sector, and it’s where we are tonight: the civic sector. In community development, it can be just as important, if not more important, than the other two, and it takes good people to step up and help out, with good will and good faith. Your presence here tonight means you are doing that. We’re All for Benny, and all for All-Benny. And for that, I thank you.

Hall of Fame journalist Al Cross, brother to Attorney David Cross, was the keynote speaker during the third annual All For Benny Gala held on Saturday, September 21, 2019.