Allen Trimble remembered as a great story teller

Allen C. Trimble loved telling stories. It was something that he was good at doing.

“He was a great story teller. You could always count on a couple of stories. His memory on those was spot on. He could tell you details. I will miss listening to the stories not about just things that happened in the courtroom, but things that just happened in life in general,” Whitley Circuit Judge Paul Winchester noted about his late friend.

“You always enjoyed being with him because he could tell great stories. He was always just a jovial person, who was just fun to be around. He will be missed,” added another friend, Whitley Circuit Court Clerk Gary Barton.

Funeral services have been set for Thursday for the long-time former Commonwealth’s Attorney and current Domestic Relations Commissioner, who passed away Saturday at Baptist Health Corbin.

Visitation will be from 4 p.m. to the funeral hour at 7 p.m. at the Croley Funeral Home Chapel in Williamsburg with Rev. Jerome McCullah and the Hon. Howard O. Mann officiating.

Trimble will be laid to rest in the Highland Memorial Gardens in Paintsville.

Trimble, 71, left office Dec. 31, 2018, after serving 31 years as the county’s head prosecutor, and was formally appointed as domestic relations commissioner for Whitley and McCreary counties in early January.

Barton noted that when he was first elected Whitley Circuit Court Clerk the same year Trimble was first elected as commonwealth’s attorney so they were often out campaigning at the same events.

“We ran for election 32 years ago together. We were out at all the pie suppers together, and out campaigning together in the same areas. I got to know him real well then,” Barton said.

“Allen and Circuit Judge Jerry Winchester were sort of mentors to me in helping get me started as clerk. I worked with him for 31 years. I always enjoyed working with him. He was always very prepared. He was great to work with my deputies and myself getting us everything we needed. He was always there when I had a question with something, and he was a good friend.”

Paul Winchester noted that when he was with the county attorney’s office, he worked closely with Trimble, who served as a mentor to him as a young prosecutor.

“He will be missed in a lot of ways,” Winchester added.

Trimble, who originally moved to Corbin in 1975 right after graduating from law school at the University of Kentucky, served as Commonwealth’s Attorney for the 34th Judicial Circuit starting in January 1988.

He served four six-year terms in the position and one seven-year term before opting not to seek re-election in 2018 due to health issues.

During a 2017 interview, Trimble noted that as weird as it sounded, the thing he would miss most about the commonwealth’s attorney job after he left office was the responsibility.

“For 30 years I’ve had the responsibility of waking up every morning knowing that somebody expects me to do something. That small bit of satisfaction you get every time when you see somebody go to jail for a crime they have committed, you feel like you have done something for the community as a whole. I am going to miss that,” he said during the 2017 interview.

Trimble noted that some of the defendants have good personalities and other than their inability to defeat or resist drugs, they otherwise are good people.

“By being able just to prosecute what people do and not who they are has allowed me to last this long,” Trimble said. “When we go into the courtroom, we are prosecuting the crime, not the person.”

During a reception in his honor this past November, Trimble said he first settled in the area after being hired to practice law alongside Forcht Group of Kentucky founder Terry Forcht, who he was fortunate to have worked with for nine years.

“He was a fine lawyer, very dependable. Practicing law was his first love and he put everything he had into it. He was very well respected in the local and statewide legal community. I fondly remember him not only as a law partner, but also as a good friend. During our partnership, we took in several other lawyers that went on to show prominence in the Whitley County area,” Forcht noted.

After leaving his practice with Forcht, Trimble began a law practice with Mann, with whom he was partnered for 18 years, before moving his office to Williamsburg and becoming a full-time prosecutor.

Trimble, who previously served as President of the Commonwealth Attorney’s Association, has twice been named as Kentucky’s Prosecutor of the Year — in 2008 and again in 2017.

Though most of his career was defined by his time as a prosecutor, Trimble said previously that he was proud of his accomplishments in private practice too — most notably his efforts to expand the boundaries of the Corbin Independent School System to include the Tattersall Trails Estates subdivision.

A former president and coach of the Corbin Little League, he considered one of his greatest achievements outside of the practice of law to be President of the Corbin Little League during their 1992 State Championship season.

For complete obituary details, see page A-11 of this week’s edition of the News Journal.