JSH’s KY embraces memories of Gatewood,
an American pioneer with gumption aplenty

By Jeffrey Scott Holland
KyForward contributor

It’s 10:47 in the morning as I sit here in my office, trying to wrap my head around the news received about half an hour ago: my friend Gatewood Galbraith passed away last night.

Others will recount his political life and career highs and lows elsewhere. Right now I’m thinking less about politics than our country’s loss of a true American – and it is without hyperbole that I’d like to compare him to Daniel Boone. Not because he was a pioneer and a trailblazer – though he most certainly was that – but because he was his own man, operating by his own rules, living life by a standard that is nearly extinct in modern society. Like other great men in history who fought against a rising tide, he was sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but always sincere and always determined to make the world a better place for us all.

Imagine what men like Daniel Boone had to endure just to survive in a world that wouldn’t slow down and just kept changing, again and again and again. Even the very calendar by which men marked time changed in Boone’s lifetime, from the Julian to the Gregorian in 1752. This meant that although his birthdate had been October 22, suddenly everyone around him went along with this new-fangled idea that his birthday was now November 2. It must have truly seemed to him, at that point, that the entire world had well and truly jumped the shark, drunk the Kool-Aid and gone utterly mad. Gatewood knew just how Boone felt; he too stood at such a juncture.

In his writings and lectures, Gatewood expounded on what he called “Synthetic Subversion”, a concept by which he illustrated how Kentucky (as well as the rest of the nation) gradually moved from an agricultural society into an industrial one, and how the net effect has been more negative than positive in his view. It’s not easy to be a politician while putting forth the view that our society has been going in the wrong direction for over half a century, but he was determined to stick to his own convictions, no matter what.

I first met Gatewood in 1991, as a volunteer for his first gubernatorial campaign, helping to distribute his flyers to rural counties that I felt weren’t being reached by his message. And in 2004, I painted his portrait (in my usual primitive neo-expressionist folk-art style) and we unveiled it together at an event to promote his book, The Last Free Man In America. The book, more than anything else, really helped to present Gatewood’s views to a lot of people who still had only a vague notion of what he stood for – thanks to the mainstream media’s frequently unfair portrayal of him.

Our paths crossed fairly often, since he and I both have spent a lot of time criss-crossing the Commonwealth. Just the other night, the gas-line explosion in Hargett made me remember one summer day when I’d stopped at the Hargett grocery to get snacks on my way to the Red River Gorge. A huge RV rolled up outside, and out stepped Gatewood, dressed in a gentlemanly olive suit and hat, immediately shaking hands with everyone. It wasn’t an election year and he wasn’t running for anything; he was just out and about, making his rounds. He had friends everywhere.

America needs a lot more men like Gatewood Galbraith today. As in Daniel Boone’s day, we once again seem to be at one of those times in history where everything is changing so rapidly that we can’t seem to keep up with it all. It’s messing up a lot of people’s lives, and yet the weird thing is, most of them aren’t even aware of it yet. But Gatewood nevertheless had hope for the future, and so do I – because part of our love for this state comes from its power of intention, its will, its gumption, its backbone. Kentucky’s still one of the best places going on the planet, because we have gumption and backbone in spades. And Gatewood exemplified that.

Jeffrey Scott Holland is a native Kentuckian, painter, writer, actor, musician, paralegal – and interested in all things. He joins a growing stable of talented, interesting regular columnists for KyForward.com, bringing his gift of a well-turned phrase, quirkiness and humor to entertain and enlighten — and sometimes provoke — our readers. He can always be reached at any time, by anyone on the planet, at jshpaint@gmail.com.