Sometimes, when you look back on your life, you can pinpoint the exact day when it changed forever.
For me, that will be 61 years ago next Tuesday.
That day I walked into Shirley Porter Williamson’s journalism class at Ballard Memorial High School.
I’m not sure why I was there.
But Christine Travis, my sophomore English teacher, said I could write and that I should study journalism in the fall.
So that’s what I did.
I had no idea what the future would bring.
I had no plans to go to college after that or anything like that.
But that day I fell in love with journalism.
And I still love it.
When I was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2021, I called Ms. Williamson—I could never call her Shirley—and thanked her.
I even met my wife during her journalism course.
And many of those kids are still my friends.
Our high school in rural western Kentucky had no football team or band.
But there was a student magazine.
Because Mrs. Williamson cared about her.
If she hadn’t done that, I don’t know what I would be doing today or where I would be.
But if we did this, we wouldn’t be here.
I earned a master’s degree in communications from Murray State University, wrote news stories about my hometown for the Army at Fort Hood, Texas, worked for a number of weeklies in Tennessee and have been here for 52 years.
And I enjoyed it to the fullest – well, in the army, not so much.
Mrs. Williamson lived her life by her own rules.
She smoked, drank, loved casinos and had a salty tongue.
I’m sure she received a lot of criticism from her superiors.
But we didn’t know that, and she was always there for us.
And we loved her for it.
Mrs. Williamson left Ballard County.
She served as director of public relations and student human resources for Paducah Public Schools and later as assistant to the president of Paducah Community College.
She worked as an organizational analyst for the Governor’s Office, where she was responsible for program management, and as director of media relations and legislative analyst for the Office of the Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives when Don Blandford was there.
Ms. Williamson was the first female deputy commissioner in the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Communication Services.
The last time I saw her was a few years ago in Las Vegas.
Our son lives there and we went to visit him.
Mrs. Williamson was at the MGM Grand gambling house.
She invited us to have dinner with her at the casino.
She put so much money into it every year that she got free food and meals.
In case you can’t guess where this is going, Mrs. Williamson passed away last week, four months shy of her 95th birthday.
She told her daughters she didn’t want a funeral.
She said that if they did that, she would come back and torment them.
That was Mrs. Williamson all the time.
Even the kids who didn’t go into journalism say she made them feel confident and proud of themselves.
If there is a teacher who has had a great impact on your life, thank him or her while you can.
I am grateful that I did.
Keith Lawrence; klawrence@messenger-inquirer.com
