Milestone: Celebrating 60 years of marriage with the love of my life

I have been fully blessed to reach a milestone in my life. This Saturday, June 1, my wife Judy and I will celebrate our 60th Wedding Anniversary.

Don Estep is publisher of the News Journal.

Having her to say “yes” to my proposal 60 years ago was among the best things that have happened in my life.

My how the years have flown by so fast. It seems like it was so recent that I saw a beautiful young girl for the first time and instantly I wanted to learn who she was.

I was working at radio station WCTT and seated in the control room overlooking a studio. In came a group of students from Corbin High School to the studio, for what reason I do not know. But my eye caught one girl in particular.

My nephew, David Witt, was with the group and as soon as I could reach him I inquired as to who she was. He told me it was Judy Holman, the daughter of Pauline and S.T. “Bitsy” Holman.

Everybody in town knew Bitsy because of his football playing days. He was a Hall of Fame star running back on the 1939 Corbin State Championship football team. Also, he was one of Corbin’s assistant coaches and he was the manager of Dawahares clothing store in downtown Corbin.

Here I was, a college graduate trying to build up the courage to ask a high school senior for a date. It was Bitsy that made me nervous because he had that tough man ex-football player look that I didn’t want to deal with. But really he was gentle and everybody loved Bitsy.

With the encouragement of my nephew, who was also a senior in high school and one who I ran around with, I built up the courage and Judy and I started dating.

As soon as she graduated we got married.

The Rev. Elmore Ryle of the First Christian Church performed the ceremony. One of my best friends, Phil Gregory, was my best man and his wife, and my first cousin, JoAnne, was the attendant for Judy.

We are the parents of three daughters with four grandchildren.

Our first daughter, Angela Thompson, lives in Lexington with grandson Blake. Ashley Estep, the next one, lives in Connecticut and Amber Estep lives in Corbin with her three children, Adelyn, Polly and Atticus Adams.

For our big occasion we had planned a trip to celebrate, but in early March I suffered a bad fall while attending the 13th Region basketball tournament and our plans had to be cancelled. I’m still seeing a doctor about the effects of the fall .

While raising three children, Judy went on to get her degree in Nursing, graduating Magna Cum Laude from Lincoln Memorial University and becoming a registered nurse.

Two of our daughters graduated from UK and one from EKU.

Like her mother, Angela, we call her Angie, also became a registered nurse.

Other than moving away from Corbin for two years to help Amber and her three children, we have lived in Corbin for 58 years.

I had chances to leave, but I am thankful that I made the right decision to stay here and for the last 37 years have been the publisher of this newspaper. But I am most thankful that Judy said “YES!”