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Jim Potts displays one of
many model ships he has constructed over the years.
McKenzie's Jim Potts presents an intriguing figure.
Dressed in timeless tweed with a hat positioned rakishly
across his brow, he exhibits a combined air of academia
and southern gentility with a touch of Twain thrown in
for good measure. The gleam in his eyes belies the
slowness of step acquired in 76 years of living, and
invites the listener to settle in for stories of days
long past; stories he heard as a boy from grandparents
who witnessed the Civil War and its aftermath.
It was their influence that instilled in him a love for
history that he has shared with an untold number of
students in some 50 years of teaching - almost 40 of
those at Bethel College.
"My maternal grandfather was a walking history book,"
says Professor Potts of the gentleman born in 1866. Four
of Potts' grandfathers fought for the Confederacy, and,
during his early years, his paternal great grandmother
was still living and was "clear as a bell" regarding the
events of Grant's occupation of the South in 1862.
Professor Potts recalls she would speak of the northern
populace as "those people" with "such venom in her
voice, she may as well have been swearing."
He speaks of how land once revered by his forefathers -
who weathered the losses of the Depression of 1870,
rallied and secured more land - was sold by children
more enamored by the land's monetary than intrinsic
value, a phenomenon of the slow demise of the South's
agrarian past reminiscent of Pearl Buck's "The Good
Earth".
"That generation would do anything to get some land of
their own," Potts declares, echoing the lament of many
first generation townspeople who realize too late what
the land meant to their forefathers.
Other stories whet the appetite for fun, tales Jim once
attributed to his grandfather's vivid imagination. "His
family moved to Texas to homestead a piece of land," Jim
tells, "He didn't have any land when he came back but he
had tall-tales of going over in a covered wagon and life
on the prairie."
Jim discovered for himself in later years the truth of
his grandfather's "tall tales" of the prairie, where, he
said, winds blow so steady and strong that one could
throw his hat up against the wall where it would stay
until he retrieved it after the noon meal.
"It gets on your nerves 'til you get used to it," Jim
says in validation of his grandfather's claims. "But
that all served to put me on track to being a student of
history."
As far as teaching is concerned, that "bug", unbeknownst
to its subject, was planted in Jim when he was but a
youngster. Each row in the one-room schoolhouse he
attended was a different grade. By the time Jim reached
the outer row, not only was he familiar with the sixth
grade subject matter, he was its sole pupil, his only
other classmate having moved to town after the fifth
grade. So it was that Jim became the younger students'
"proctor", helping his teacher ensure their progress.
Jim would soon learn life in the late 'thirties and
'forties was no picnic when the Great Depression forced
his family to leave the home he loved in Dayton,
Kentucky - near the border of Ohio - where he had been
born on October 3, 1927. He eventually became the eldest
of three sons born to James L. Sr. and Georgia Imogene
Jackson, though his brothers were seven and twelve years
younger than he.
When the family moved to their ancestral home in
Paducah, Jim began a life of hard work that seemed
unending.
"We picked strawberries in May, raspberries in June, and
blackberries in July," Jim fairly growls in distasteful
memory. When he wasn't at school or picking berries,
there were other chores to be done. Jim helped in the
garden, learned to milk cows and took care of the
chickens, feeding them and collecting their eggs. He
also assisted in household chores and helped keep the
home supplied with coal and wood for heating during
winter months.
His mother was a housewife, his father a barber. "He
didn't make a great deal of money; if I wanted any money
had to earn it," says Jim, who earned $100 during berry
season.
In the fall of 1940 Jim began delivering the
Courier-Journal after school, a job he continued until
February 1942 when he began working, at the age of 14,
at the Litgle Castle, a "hamburger joint", after school
from 3:00 until 10:00 at night, six days a week and
every other weekend on Sundays.
"We had the best hamburgers in town and sold a mountain
of French fries," recalls Jim, practically smacking his
lips at the memory. "They were fresh, never frozen, and
they were really good."
He earned a dollar a day washing dishes and "hopping
curb" until his 16th birthday in 1943. He was still a
student in high school when he started working for the
old Nashville, Chattanooga and St Louis Railroad, first
as a "flunkie" then as a yard clerk checking boxcars.
"We never got any closer than Hickman, Kentucky to St.
Louis," says Jim as though betrayed. Bruceton was where
the railway joined the main line with a "spur track"
from Bruceton to Paducah.
World War II was raging as the youngster studied during
the day then toiled from 4:00 until midnight. "It was a
very busy time for railroads hauling troops and cargo in
general," he says, conjuring images of busy docks and
dusty train yards.
In 1945, he joined the Navy after graduating high
school. "I tried the life of a sailor but never went
sailing," he says, almost morosely, concerning his time
in service near the war's end until the beginning of the
Cold War in 1948. Starting out in San Francisco as a
yeoman, he was a petty officer second class by time he
left his assignment in the Great Lakes Naval Station in
October, 1948 and was also a new husband, having married
Frances Bandy, a girl he had met while a student at
Paducah Tilghman High School.
Military service offered an about-face for Jim, who,
like two million other G.I.s, took advantage of the New
Deal era G.I. Bill to attend college. Six million other
veterans pursued job training and vocational school with
the federal educational funds.
It was an unheard of accomplishment for Jim, who relates
that in his childhood era, "your address determined who
you were, it was strictly socio-economic."
Classes were geared to maintain the status quo, with
early decisions cementing one's lifestyle in the
occupations of his or her ancestry. "If you didn't take
algebra in the ninth grade, you couldn't take any more
math," Jim explains, adding there were no advisors to
guide the way.
He tested the waters at Paducah Junior College where he
majored in social studies. "I didn't like anything
connected with mathematics," says Jim, who had skipped
out on early mathematical training, having no hope or
intention to attend college.
He surprised himself with two As and two Bs his first
semester, after which, he declares, "the college bug bit
me." He earned his associates of arts degree at the
junior college in 1950, then moved on to the University
of Kentucky where he majored in history and social
studies.
When the opportunity arose to compete for a scholarship
at Peabody College in Nashville (now a part of
Vanderbilt) he grabbed the chance and landed one of 20
scholarships made available by the Carnegie Foundation
to help liberal arts graduates become accredited high
school teachers.
He thus obtained his master's degree in 1953 and took a
job in Grayville, Illinois, teaching social studies to
grades 7-12. His wife had also studied to become a
teacher and obtained a position at the same school.
Surrounded by oil fields, Jim says Grayville was "a
dirty town but a nice enough place." He taught there two
years during which he made the "magnificent salary" of
$3,000 per year, $100 of which reflected his
accomplishment in attaining his masters degree.
A relationship honed with a former, favored professor
bore fruit when he was offered a teaching fellowship at
Peabody. He returned to his alma mater where he obtained
his doctorate degree while teaching at Belmont
University in Nashville.
In the fall of 1957 he gained employment at Eastern
Kentucky State College teaching history, and, upon the
death of a colleague, sociology as well. His marriage
had produced two daughters during the 1950's, Frances
Anne and Rebecca Sue, and his employment at the college
progressed well.
"There I stayed for four years as assistant professor of
history at dear old Eastern Kentucky State," he relates,
the school's memory made even sweeter, perhaps, in
contrast with his next appointment.
"I moved on (to the University of Virginia) in the fall
of 1961; it was a bad move," Jim says with some
bitterness. "I used to despise that place, it's a snob
school, I never liked snobs."
Despite his distaste for the institution, he says, he
was bound by a three-year contract.
His marriage followed suite in the unhappy arrangement
and he was soon divorced while awaiting the end of his
term.
"I taught one section of American History and social
studies and supervised student teachers in social
studies," he says in prelude to introducing a student he
seems to have found as distasteful as the university.
"I didn't like her as a student, she was kind of
snobbish," he sulks. "I wound up having to give her an
A. I regretted that, but she was the only one in class
that studied. I gave her an A and said good riddance but
she came back to haunt me."
Carolyn Norris left his tutelage and had taken a job
teaching in her home county of Fairfax, near Washington
D.C., but, Jim says, "She found teaching wasn't the bed
of roses she'd thought it would be,"
When Carolyn returned to the University of Virginia to
work on her masters degree, she asked Professor Potts to
be her advisor. "One thing led to another," Jim says,
softening, "I was her advisor my third and last year
there." 
Jim and Carolyn Potts
The two were married in 1964, the same year they moved
to McKenzie upon Jim's acceptance of a position at
Bethel College.
He had decided he needed to move closer to home with his
parents growing older, and hoped to teach at a smaller,
private school. Of three offers, Bethel seemed best and
was less than two hours from Paducah.
The couple's son Jimmy was born during their first year
in what would become their new "home town".
"I never meant to stay, I thought I would move on after
two years," Jim says softly. "For some reason I didn't,
and the years have flown by."
The years have been filled, for Jim, with teaching. He
recalls Bethel's progressive past includes a traditional
business degree offered entirely off-campus in Milan and
Huntingdon during the 1970's, long before the advent of
the Success Program, for which he taught American
History and Economics.
Carolyn taught classes at Bethel for several years and
had a hand in the Head Start Program. She also organized
high school programs and worked with the Northwest
Tennessee Office on Aging. She later sold Avon and
Tupperware, pursuits at which Jim says she did quite
well.
"Then MS (Multiple Sclerosis) caught up with her; she's
had it more than 30 years," he shares, recalling that
while she was still teaching at Bethel she had
complained of numbness in her left arm and leg which
signaled the beginning of her "creeping paralysis."
Her illness has not detracted her from a bevy of civic
and community responsibilities, however, among which are
memberships in the Carroll County Democratic Women's
Club, Business and Professional Women's Club, AARP,
Carroll Arts, and Inglenook Book Club. "She stays busy,"
her husband says as an understatement.
As for Jim, his long-term hobby has been building model
ships. He attributes his interest to his Navy days but
dates the hobby back to the late 1960's when his son
brought home an aircraft carrier model and Jim put it
together.
"I've been building them ever since," says Jim, who has
four replicas in progress and shelves full of completed
models. He finds their construction more difficult these
days, when the kits are no longer made in America and
the instructions provided are only loosely and briefly
translated.
Another productive hobby began when Jim discovered his
love for refinishing antiques, some of which seemed
practically worthless before being restored by his
skillful hands.
Many of his discoveries were made at auctions. "John
May, another old Bethel Professor, and I used to haunt
auctions," he reminisces.
"That was before Madge and I started tagging alone,"
smiles Carolyn, who says her husband "turned loose a
monster" in her discovery of auctions. She enjoys
collecting glassware and stuffed animals.
And Jim continues to teach, declaring he will carry on
as long as he can. So continues the intriguing, now slow
moving man, who captures the interest of those who
notice the trappings of the intellectual gentleman and
who are fortunate to catch that gleam in his eyes as he
shares stories of both his and America's past with a new
generation of scholars. |
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