By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
I’m always on the lookout to find impactful Kentucky authors who have somehow flown under my radar. Recently, I learned about Berniece Terry Hiser from Kathryn Witt’s fascinating article in the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky. Berniece spent most of her last years living in Walton with her husband, Ora Hiser.
Judging by her writing interests, though, she was most attuned to her native Eastern Kentucky. Interestingly, Berniece published her first book at the seasoned age of 70. She would publish another, a children’s book, eight years later.
She was born in 1908 in the tiny community of Cowcreek (also shown as Cow Creek), in Owsley County. Witt notes that Berniece’s father, Wilson Edgar, was “the last surviving Kentucky veteran of the Spanish-American War.” She attended Pine Mountain Settlement School, in Bledsoe, Kentucky, and entered Berea College at 16. She graduated there with an English degree and then attended UK where she received a MA in secondary education and library science. She pursued a teaching career and taught in schools in Kentucky and Indiana, retiring in 1974.
Berniece’s best tag might be as a folklorist, and she studied under William Hugh Jansen, an English professor at UK. That would be reflected with her first book, Quare Do’s in Appalachia: East Kentucky Legends and Memorats, published in 1978 by the Pikeville College Press. It’s a collection of 30 folktales gleaned from her upbringing and study of the subject. The term “memorat,” notes Hiser, are folktales that actually happened.
In 1986, she published a children’s book, The Adventures of Charlie and His Wheat-Straw Hat. It’s based on a folktale told in the Hiser family and is set during the American Civil War. In the book, according to the Kirkus Review, young Charlie’s father is off fighting in the War and times are hard for the left behind family. Charlie wants to own a straw hat to ward off the sun as he walks to school, so Granny makes him one “decorated with cloth from his dad’s old plaid shirt.”
Charlies hides his hat from a band of intruding soldiers, along with helping a farmer save his cattle and sheep from them. He’s rewarded by the farmer by being given a ten-dollar gold piece. Hiser tells the story in the vernacular of the mountains, second nature to her.
In Witt’s article, she notes that Hiser authored about 50 manuscripts, including poems, folklore collections, and romances, and as a folklorist, was “well-versed” in folk remedies, folk singing, dulcimer picking, and mountain crafts such as weaving. She adds that Hiser “maintained a card file of herbal, faith, and other treatments.”
From residing in Walton, Hiser moved to Williamstown to be at the Grant Manor Nursing Home as she aged, and she died there at age 86 on January 7, 1995. She is buried at Pleasant View Cemetery, in Grant County, next to her husband, who died in 1999.
Kentucky lost one of its most noble spirits on April 28 with the passing of Jerry Tucker, co-founder with his wife, Sandy, of the Galilean Home, in Casey County. Sandy died in 2007, and Jerry promised to carry on their mission.
The couple started the outreach in 1974 for abused and severely handicapped children, and over its history, served more than 2000 individuals—with no government funding. The Galilean Home currently has about 35 residents, along with operating a private school and a restaurant and gift shop.
Quincy Burt had a front row seat to the outreach program. He came there as a child in 1989 and later became an employee, working closely under Jerry Tucker from 2012 to 2019.
Tucker greatly impacted Quincy’s life.
“I can’t think of anyone that has been more committed to serving others than Jerry Tucker,” mused Quincy. “He is, rightfully, known for caring for children of all ages and abilities. He is, rightfully, known as ‘Dad,’ ‘Daddy,’ ‘Papaw,’ ‘Paps,’ ‘Papa Oso,’ and just about any other moniker for father you can think of. What he cared about most was being called ‘good and faithful servant’ by God and he lived like that.”
Quincy serves today as Development Director for Orphan Care Alliance https://orphancarealliance.org/, in Louisville, and his desire to serve, he said, comes strongly from his relationship with Tucker.
“I am forever shaped by how I saw him live his life. He showed me what it is like to truly walk out what Jesus said about loving others more than yourself. I can attribute my lifetime of finding ways to serve vulnerable children and families to how he almost never said no when someone needed help.”
Rest in peace, Jerry Tucker.
