Walter James Pruitt

Walter Pruitt spent thirty-seven years as a locomotive engineer for CSX out of the Corbin, Kentucky yard, a job he took at twenty-two and never seriously considered leaving. He knew every grade and curve of the Cumberland gap run by feel, and his colleagues say he could tell something was wrong with a locomotive before the instruments could. He retired in 2010 and immediately became the most useful person in his county. His workshop behind the house on Dairy Creek Road was a kind of informal community service center. Lawn mowers, water heaters, screen doors, a neighbor's broken wheelchair ramp -- if it needed fixing, Walter showed up with his truck and his tools and usually a pot of his wife Nancy's chili. He never charged anyone and deflected every offer of payment with the same line: 'I'd just drink it anyway.' He had a library card he used constantly and a television he never turned on. He read history mostly -- the Civil War, railroad history, the New Deal -- and had opinions about all of it that he shared whether or not anyone asked. His youngest grandchild, Tessa, says he smelled like machine oil and peppermints and that she could hear him whistling from two rooms away. Walter passed on the last day of November, the same week the first snow hit Corbin. Nancy says the workshop is exactly as he left it. She's not ready to change anything yet.