Elmer’s work ethic

Carl Keith Greene

One of my good friends is retiring from his position of 35 years. Laurel County Attorney Elmer Cunnagin has chosen to not run again for the post he’s held all those years.

Now that doesn’t mean he’s just rolling up his bedroll and heading home. He’ll stick around in the law firm that he began sharing with his brother Willis and now also shares with his son, Michael. Elmer’s wife is Jean and his other son, Steve, is an electrical engineer and computer scientist at Lexmark.

Elmer comes from a family of lawyers. His father, was a lawyer and his older brother, Carl, who died in June, was also a lawyer.

Another brother, Phillip, has been a realtor and has lived in Florida for the past 40 years.

I sat for a while a couple of weeks ago talking with Elmer. He recalled as one of his earliest memories the night in 1949 when the Jackson County Courthouse burned.

He and his family lived in downtown McKee within sight of the courthouse.

“I was 6 years old and standing on the back of the couch. It was scary, with big flames going up,” he recalled. The event had a lasting impression on him, he said. The courthouse was rebuilt by 1951.

It’s ironic that he has spent much of his working life in a courthouse.

“My dad taught me to work. He taught me that if you are going to live in this life, you need to work. I started selling Grit papers when I was 8 years old in McKee,” he recalled with a twinkle in his eye.

Then it was watermelons. “He would buy watermelons and things and I had a little cooler alongside (Highway) 421 selling slices of watermelon. He’d pick me up, take me home and bring me back.”

Elmer said his father did those things to encourage the boys to work.

He and his brother Carl worked in a grocery store together stocking and delivering groceries until they went to high school at Berea.

“I’ve worked at something all my life.”

He recalled another time in the summer when he and Carl decided to work as contract painters.

Their first job that summer was to paint a church about 12 miles outside Richmond. They bid the job at about $350 with the church paying for the paint.

“We had a ‘51 Ford to drive back and forth and we rented our ladders, bought our brushes and things. We got up on the only ladder we had. One of us painted low and the other high,” he explained. The view from the ladder, looking down the side of the building was nothing but “little, bitty weather board. It was hot and hot and hot that summer. There were wasps everywhere. It took us most of the summer to paint that building.”

He said of the congregation, “Those people were really nice. They felt sorry for us and they’d come out there and bring us food.”

That job taught them that they didn’t need to contract painting anymore, he said.

Elmer has had a high work ethic all his life. He even spent two years as a cook at the Jerry’s Restaurant in Richmond while in college.

He attended high school at the Berea College Foundation school. The foundation school was oriented much like college. Students worked on campus two hours a day and those who were not residents of the town lived in a dormitory.

After his 1961 graduation from Berea he went to Eastern Kentucky State Teachers College and was graduated in 1965 the year before it became Eastern Kentucky University.

He attended the University of Kentucky College of Law and graduated in 1967.

Between his graduation and taking the bar exam, his father, also named Elmer Cunnagin, who was Jackson County Attorney, died. Elmer’s older brother by two years, Carl, who died in June, finished out their father’s term and served in the office a total of 23 years.

Upon passing the bar he took up a practice in McKee and Manchester with Plez Mobley, a schoolmate of his father.

By 1969 Elmer decided to come to London to practice. He gave two reasons, “My father always wanted to come to London to practice,” and there just wasn’t enough business in McKee.

By 1974 he had been elected County Attorney, having defeated Fredora Lay, who had served only a single term.

“Fredora was a character,” he recalled. “She really got mad at me, over the election. And before long, I guess as she was getting sick, she apologized and said she shouldn’t have gotten mad. She said, ‘I enjoyed it, but I’m glad I got out of that office.’ She added, ‘But I still don’t like getting beat.”

Elmer said the highlights of his career to this point have been the people with, and for whom he has worked. He noted the county officials and law enforcement persons as being “for the most part good people.”

Carl Keith Greene is a riter for the Times-Tribune. He can be reached at cgreene@thetimestribune.com