In Fess Whitaker’s book he tells the curious story about not being able to speak until he was 9, and how a small town doctor figured out the problem and cured him, keeping him out of a state institution.
“I never spoke a word until I was nine years old. I only clucked and motioned for what I wanted. Lots of people thought I was an idiot because I could not talk. I may have looked like one, for I was a little old country boy that never cut my hair in those days only about twice a year, and I wore a big checked cotton shirt and old jeans pants made by my mother and old yarn socks, and 70-cent stogie shoes with brass toes. This was my winter suit and my summer suit was only a big yellow factory shirt and no hat or shoes.
At the age of ten I was taken by my mother and uncle, Gid Hogg, to Whitesburg, Ky., the county seat of Letcher County, a distance of about eighteen miles. We rode an old mare named "Kate," without any saddle, and when I was taken off I could not walk I was so stiff, and that made everybody think I was an idiot sure enough. So when Judge H. C. Lilley opened court on Monday, February 12, they taken me before the judge. The judge ordered old Black Shade Combs, then the sheriff, to summons twelve jurors and two doctors. One doctor thought I had been born an idiot, and Dr. S. S. Swaingo, of Jackson, held out that I was all right of mind, and so the case was put off until 10 a. m. Tuesday. Then Dr. Swaingo got old Dr. McCray and gave me a thorough examination. The doctors found by examining my neck, where the small tits in one's neck are, that the tit in my neck had grown together. After the doctors cut the tit loose in my neck I began to talk and to have a good joke. The doctors took me to a one-horse barber shop and had my hair cut and fixed me up and presented me on Tuesday morning to Judge Lilley, and he was surprised beyond reason that I was Fess. So that was Fess's first miracle. Later on they have all been worked out to the present.
When my mother took me back home everybody was surprised and people came miles and miles to see the boy that was so much talked about and to see the boy that had been made to speak after ten years of worthless tongue.”
Fess Whitaker 1880-1927. A veteran, politician, and an author. An interesting fellow, killed at age 47 in a car accident near Whitesburg, Kentucky while County Jailer of Letcher County.
(Check out another post in this group that talks about and shows Fess’s homeplace.)
Photo and info: History of Corporal Fess Whitaker, 1919. (Book is sold at Amazon).
Not sure how many have checked out the View above Seven Brothers Lakes in the Big Horn Mountains.
