My husband Ked and I married in 1965. I had completed two years of college so we decided I would complete my teaching degree in elementary school education and he would enroll as a parttime student at Pikeville College. Ked was employed by Beth-Elkhorn in Jenkins so we sought an apartment in Virgie. Someone told us that Dr. Boston had apartments in Virgie so we went to see him. He said he didn't have any vacancies so we started to leave. He called for us to come back and told us he had a one bedroom apartment upstairs of his home with its own entrance that his son had lived in at one time and he offered it to us fully furnished for the sum of 35.00 a month...utilities included! He said he liked to see young people improving themselves. He built a carport for my car to "protect my car from the weather". His practice was in a building on the property so we talked with him often. We lived there for a little more than a year before we moved to Lexington where I enrolled at UK and Ked at Eastern where he could get his degree in Industrial Electricity. I will always remember his kindness to a young couple trying to get started in their married life by providing a place for us to live.

I heard nothing but good things about Doc Boston growing up. What admiration the people of Virgie have for him and his wife’s hard work and kindness even to this day.

I lived in Virgie in the 70s just around the curve from where they lived. My mom said he pulled her teeth and spoke very kindly of him. I graduated from Virgie High School in 1979. Virgie holds some of the best memories for me.

@pikevillehistorymoments7860

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the comment. We have heard so many people say kind words about Dr. Boston and his family.

My mom was born in Virgie and grew up there in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and told me a story about going to a dentist who was a black gentleman. When she told me about it I remember being astounded that an African American man would be a dentist in the 1940s.

@ronniebryant5364

3 жыл бұрын

Where are you now? Any kin folk still there.

@pikevillehistorymoments7860

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the comment. The Bostons certainly must have been special people to persevere despite all of the obstacles they faced.

This is a beautiful story and makes me pray for the day all Americans can sit down and talk and get along. We are all one race. The Human Race.

@EarthSurferUSA

3 жыл бұрын

That would be great. We hear it all the time in our society today, "We must unite!". But they never say what it is that we have to unite around. What could almost every American, (and actually just about any citizen on Earth), possibly "unite" around? Those same people chanting "Unity" in our politics, are the same people who have grouped us up, and spread evil rumors about "everybody in that group", (Trump supporters, "Tea Baggers", "Bitter Clingers" "Irredeemable deplorables", for examples from one side of the party system), so what are we suppose to unite around when we have been pitted to fight each other. They will not tell you. But I know what we can unite around. "Our founding philosophies of individual liberty protected by law, (which is color and sex blind if followed), and free people creating the free enterprise system. Why can we unite around "individual liberty". Because we are all individuals, with our own brain,----and not one of us thinks exactly like any group leader.

@lindagreen1105

3 жыл бұрын

@@EarthSurferUSA kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZqetrK-rXZnXqLg.html Unite behind this governor and what he is doing that it will spread across this country.

This is a good story, actually a great free market story. This man did not sacrifice his life for welfare, and he did do this for his own self interest. He became a professional in our medical industry, opened a hospital in a place that needed one, charged a fee, (even if it was a chicken or eggs), provided opportunity for everybody who worked for him, (Maybe some did some great things later in their own right. That is what opportunity offers in a free society.), and he made good money to have places in 3 different states,------fair and square. Now this is a good American story, (if you look at it through the American lens), that has not been twisted too much. A good man? Yes indeed. :)

Is the hospital building still standing?

@pikevillehistorymoments7860

3 жыл бұрын

Unfortunately it isn't. We have been told that it was destroyed by fire several years after Dr. Boston sold it. We believe it was located on the site where there is currently a medical clinic or doctor's office, but we hope to confirm that with land records when we have the opportunity.

@EarthSurferUSA

3 жыл бұрын

@@pikevillehistorymoments7860 I would rather see a memorial to the original hospital and the couple who built it on that property. With a modern hospital there, and especially our "modern health care system", it is like burning down a statue of a great American, (and it may have been), to have lost this historical landmark. Doug in Michigan