Looking back at Cecil Wilson, 15 years later

This week I’ve had a few people on my mind that I have greatly looked up to over the years. Some I have worked closely with, others I have just known, and some are dear friends.

A very well-known Knox Countian came to mind this morning — Cecil H. Wilson. Many of you likely haven’t heard that name in a long time, and many of you have no clue who I am talking about. Until 2006, Cecil was the publisher of The Mountain Advocate, a title I have now but a very different role. In fact, what I do really isn’t ‘publisher’ as much as it is a little of everything. Publishers typically manage from a 30,000-foot view, making sure advertising and editorial are doing their parts to get a quality paper together. They think big-picture projects and finances. My role is all of that. I am editor, advertising, money, and composition, on top of other things.

Cecil was a publisher from a different era of newspapers.

When I came to work at Advocate Publishing Company, a name many have either forgotten about or have never heard of, in 2003 — yes, 20 years ago — I was glad to have finally met the man whose fiery columns I read so much of over the years.

By the time I came to work for Advocate Publishing Company, Cecil was edging toward retirement, only coming in a few hours a week, usually to scold public officials or to tell our editor what he thought of the paper that week. Man, I’d love to have that job now.

My first real interaction with Cecil came about a month after I started. That year was a gubernatorial election, and Dr. Ernie Fletcher won the race. He was the first Republican governor in 32 years in Kentucky, and Cecil was, as much as he could manage, dancing in the area outside where my office door is now. A staunch Republican, Cecil through up a finger pointing at me and said, excitedly, that we finally had a Republican governor, “the first in your lifetime!” I laughed. All I could think of at the time was “How does he know my age?” People always assumed I was older than I am, especially when I was younger.

Cecil was a character. I remember coming down the inside steps from the newspaper office – a steep set by our employee entrance, not the spiral steps that people are accustomed to seeing in our store — and I could hear Cecil all the way at the back door, and that was through a firewall, a closed door and a hallway. He was giving someone down the road about the police department. I wasn’t sure who he was yelling at until I saw Mayor Pat Hauser walk out of the office. Who knows what that conversation was about, really. Pat might remember, but Cecil was just a boisterous person. Pat wasn’t the last person I listened to Cecil give his thoughts to. Afterall, his column was called “For What It’s Worth,” and Cecil made sure to give you what he thought his opinion was worth – a gold mine.

Another memory of Cecil was one day when I had walked across the street to Subway to pick up lunch. As I was coming back out of Subway, about to cross the street back to the office, I heard Cecil laughing and talking with someone as clear as day. He always parked where I park currently, by our employee entrance. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere nearby that I could see. Just as I was going to see if he was on the other side of Subway, I caught a glimpse of his black Mercury Grand Marquis. He was at the bank drive-thru several hundred feet away. I couldn’t yell loud enough for anyone to hear me at that distance, but there sat Cecil in the bank drive-through cutting up with one of the tellers.

I didn’t work directly with Cecil. I worked for his son, Bob, who ran the company for decades with his father. Anytime I would see Cecil, he called me a name that not many people get away with… Charlie. I can still hear him say that name. Nobody in my family calls me that, either, except my wife and her family. The rest of the world calls me by my legal name, not a nickname. Cecil got away with it. If I had tried to correct him, well, if you knew Cecil, that wouldn’t have mattered.

On September 17, 2008, we got word that Cecil had passed away. He had spent his remaining months at Christian Care in Corbin. Up until the end, he still wrote his column and sent it back to us to put in the newspaper. The week after he passed, Bob wrote a column in his dad’s place.

September 17 was a Wednesday. We were already buttoning up the paper to send off to press, but we pulled something off the front page at the last minute and I made a graphic announcing Cecil’s passing.

Fifteen years ago this week, Knox County lost one of its biggest voices and biggest cheerleaders, and I am thankful to have known Cecil, and I am glad to count Bob and Jan as my friends still. I am better for knowing these folks.