Marlene Browning-Wainscott
It was the World War II veteran hat that gave only surface information about its wearer, Owen County native Jarl Lee Harris, that prompted Marlene Browning-Wainscott to start asking questions about his service.
She’s been asking veterans about their stories ever since, now going for more than a decade.
Browning-Wainscott is the 2023 Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives Who Powers You contest first-place winner. An Owen Electric member, she’ll receive a $1,000 check for her decades-long work in interviewing and publishing the stories of veterans in Owen County.
“I was shocked and humbled because I know there were so many other people who had been nominated. It is a privilege to share the importance of preserving the history of the veterans. I truly appreciate Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives and Owen Electric for the opportunity,” Browning-Wainscott said.
During that fateful first meeting with that first local veteran, Browning-Wainscott found out that Harris, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 96, was more than just an ordinary citizen, or even an ordinary veteran.
“I really wish I had someone to share my story with,” Browning-Wainscott recalled Harris saying from her chance meeting with him more than a decade ago at her business in downtown Owenton. “Jarl was known in this town as the sign guy. He was very artistic. He had painted signs for the historical society and the funeral home. He was the guy who went to McDonald’s to drink coffee.”
“No one knew who he was in terms of a veteran. And I said I would love to talk,” Browning-Wainscott said.
And they did.
Harris, the sign guy of Owenton, was also an incredibly brave warrior. He was a Purple Heart recipient who spent time in the U.S. Army serving as a paratrooper and a member of the 101st Airborne Screamin’ Eagles. He was part of the D-Day invasion. He liberated Nazi concentration camps. The 101st participated in many battles during World War II, including the Battle of the Bulge. Later, Harris would serve in both the Korean and Vietnam wars.
“I was like, wow, this is the story of a lifetime.”
The story told by Harris and written by Browning-Wainscott, was published in the local paper. But as it turned out, it was only the first veteran’s story she would tell. The reaction to the sign guy war hero’s tale was immediate.
“It made me realize that he was one of many who no one knew who had a story like that,” she said. “It was more about giving an opportunity for everyone to understand what had been done for our freedom and our way of life by people here in our community.”
Browning-Wainscott did not stop at one story or two or three.
She started with the World War II veterans. And then moved on to the Korean War veterans. And then finally the Vietnam veterans. She’s still doing interviews to make sure that every person has a chance to preserve their history and tell their own story.
“I was fortunate to be someone that they felt comfortable with telling their story,” she said. “Many of them had stories that were difficult.”
And the stories are about preserving the veterans’ legacies so that young people, and the people in the community, understand that “the guy walking into McDonald’s to get his coffee also served in three wars, received a Purple Heart and jumped on D-Day so that people have a chance to say thank you for your service,” Browning-Wainscott said.
Boyd Rowe
It was in the kitchen of his childhood home that Boyd Rowe, then a teacher, husband and father well short of even his 42nd birthday, was told that he needed to get his affairs in order because he had stage four terminal lung cancer and he’d be dead in six months. He’d never been a smoker.
“I had a small cough and it wouldn’t go away. I had a CT done and we found out I had 12 liver lesions. And then we went on to the Markey Cancer Center in Lexington and we found out that I had stage 4 lung cancer,” Rowe said. “They said they would keep me comfortable for as long as they could.”
But Bo, his nickname since childhood, didn’t prepare for death. He fought to live. And in the midst of fighting for his life, he helped to reform Kentucky’s laws on insurance and genetic testing for other patients like him.
South Kentucky RECC member Bo Rowe is the 2023 Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives’ Who Powers You contest second place winner. He will receive $500 for his second place finish.
“I’d like to thank Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives and South Kentucky RECC for this award, and remind everyone that if you have a lung, you could be diagnosed with lung cancer,” Rowe said.
Rowe’s fight with the terminal diagnosis began in 2021 with getting genetic bio marker testing to help him fight his specific type of cancer, ALK-positive lung cancer, which was not covered by his insurance. He got the testing anyway at a very high cost, and figured out that common chemotherapy wouldn’t effectively treat his cancer, but immunotherapy would. And it worked.
Two years after his diagnosis, the multiple tumors that had infected his liver, lungs, spine and brain are gone, and treatments that Rowe says “tricks his body” have so far been successful.
Then he took his fight for cancer survivors like him to Frankfort.
“On the Cancer Action Day last year we went to Frankfort and lobbied for House Bill 180, the biomarker testing bill. Biomarker testing was what allowed doctors to actually know the DNA of my cancer,” Rowe said. “The bill was passed with no nay votes. Now insurance has to pay for the biomarker testing. They used to say it was exploratory and we’re not going to pay for it,” Rowe said.
Rowe has appeared on WYMT to promote early cancer screenings. “I give lung cancer a face. This is not someone who is dying. I try to give people hope that there are other treatments out there like the targeted therapies. So that’s why I go out and advocate,” Rowe said. Relay for Life and a Facebook ad campaign for screenings have also been part of his advocacy. “Research is the thing, and we have to have research to find new medications to treat my disease,” he said.
Rowe had to give up a 20-year career as a teacher in McCreary County because of difficult side effects from the medications he takes. And he knows that those medications could stop working at any time, and his tumors could reappear. It’s already happened with one medication, which forced a switch to another, which has his cancer in remission again.
“My records still say stage 4 lung cancer. So you just go out and enjoy the day. You wake up. You see the sun rise. You enjoy nature. My son says I’m kind of like the Tim McGraw song ‘Live like you were dying’,” Rowe said.
But he made a promise to his wife, that he would live like he was living, and fight all the way. And he’s doing just that, not just for himself, but for anyone with a lung. “We enjoy the day and we thank God for a new day.”
Phillip Trent
Phillip Trent was living in Hart County and running a dairy farm when he had what he calls a conversation with God where he was told to go to “Rhema.” The only problem was, he had never heard the word before, didn’t know what it meant or even if it was a physical place. The word is Greek for utterance or “things said,” and upon consulting a pastor friend, he found out the meaning, and a little more.
“He told me what it meant and then he said, it’s also a Bible College in Oklahoma. And then I knew what God was telling me,” Trent said.
A Farmers RECC member, Trent is the third place winner in the 2023 Kentucky’s Touchstone Energy Cooperatives Who Powers You Contest. He’ll receive $250 for his win.
The rest of Trent’s story, after selling all of his possessions, his farm, his cows and equipment and moving his family to Oklahoma to become a pastor, started in 1984 when he became pastor of Immanuel Ministry Church in Horse Cave. His heart for service to others led to Trent becoming the director of the Abundance of the Hart food bank in 2000. Small at first, it’s now the largest food bank in the county, and one of the largest in the region. Much of the food comes from Feeding America, but also food drives. It varies each month but includes vegetables, meat, canned and boxed goods and sometimes eggs and milk.
“When we first started, we picked up the food in a pickup truck. A few months later we graduated to a lawnmower trailer, then to a full-blown trailer, and then more trailers,” Trent said. Eventually a senior program was added.
The food bank, a certified member of the Feeding America agency, distributes hundreds of thousands of pounds of food per year. Since 2000, the food bank has distributed nearly 5 million pounds of food. Around 500 families in the area are served every month.
“People come to me and say I want you to know how much this program means to me. We were in a fix of whether we bought our medicine or we ate. And you helped us make that decision. The food that you’ve given us have gotten us through this crisis,” Trent said.
Daily calls for food come to the food bank, and Trent said it’s not always from people who have transportation. A woman recently came on a lawnmower pulling a small trailer from more than a mile down the road to pick up a box of food.
“It is about food security. That’s what this ministry is about. And helping anyone in need,” Trent said.
Trent said his inspiration for continuing to run a labor intensive food bank at age 74, well past the age that most folks retire, comes straight from the Bible. “Jesus said I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was in prison and you visited me,” he said.