06/02/2024
When I was introduced to the community of Dawson Springs, Kentucky, my first experience was the small businesses of downtown, groceries, and physicians. Later, I meet wonderful instructors at the Dawson Springs Independent School System.
As I grew in this community, I learned my last name changed my potential success in the social hierarchy. Fortunately, a few instructors and professionals guided me to “how I could get out of this town’s growing privilege rule.”
Their words of wisdom:
“Your name is the most valuable thing you own. Be careful where you place it and whom you give it to moving forward.”,
“Use your talents for good, not evil.”,
Leave the world better than you found it.” I still hold these words and people ingrained in my being.
I left and graduated Murray State University, worked for Walt Disney World, SeaWorld Orlando, served a decade on the Florida Authors and Publishers Association, Inc. board in many positions to President, illustrated 60+ K-8 children’s books, won over 100 awards for my contributions, served as Readers Favorite International Illustration Awards Judge, and owned and started renovations to a hometown 1898 Day Bros historic building over 100 years old. I impacted the economy nationally to driving the Dawson Springs Post Office nuts with the hundreds of thousands of books they processed over a decade.
I fulfilled my mentors’ ambition for my success.
Today. TODAY, I realized with all my successes, certain townspeople who are genetically derivative by name to the great people who built this community with hard work, character, and money, seem to still be deserving of their forefathers’ and mothers’ respect.
I may not have been born with a proud name by Dawson Springs’s predecessors, but my forefathers and mothers contributed equally hard in the growth of the town. They laid brick, plumbed houses, grew crops, harvest hogs to pure grain whisky, and even worked a lifetime in the factories.
In the place I call my hometown, I’ve been degraded multiple times even too recently. I repaired a table in the Dawson Springs Community Center before spoke to our community with empty promises like, “We are here to help restore…” As I knelt down and repaired the damaged table none of them would repair, I heard: “Just like an Adams! Your daddy could repair anything. You’re just like him.”
My father was widely known for helping anyone in need without monetary compensation. He was a hell raiser in his your too. I’m like he was. I’m an Adams, but this person’s comment was about being better than me still because their last name deserves respect by existing.
I’m also not like an Adams in some ways. When a business tries to get insurance money from tornado damage and I post about this to make the Frankfort, Kentucky aware something isn’t right. Representatives didn’t question my post’s accuracy. Because I’m an Adams who illustrated a Kentucky Association of Counties - KACo coloring book that has been distributed to EVERY 4th grade student in the state for nearly a decade. I’ve also met county officials in at least two cities in every county promoting the book as a professional public speaker.
People may not give me the respect I earned here, but others who know me know I speak the truth. No one will use their parents’ respect to force me into their blurred truth. Strange thing about respect, it’s humbling when people beg me to reword a post because government officials are “blowing up their phone.”
When any city official or name wielding person wants to look like they know me, “an influential person,” they yell across a restaurant to get attention. Or invade my personal space to roll up my flannel shirt sleeves for a video to appear they are bringing “big business” to Dawson Springs. They are just yelling for documented attention they never experienced at my level of influence.
Names in this town don’t matter anymore. Just like all these fundraisers for the Community Center, organized religious groups, to flailing city food banks. If you can’t afford to keep the power on, stock your shelves, or cover your costs, that’s bad business. You’re not treating your organization professionally. The community shouldn’t support these failing efforts.
As a small business owner, former President of a successful non-profit, employee of the month at an international theme park, award-winning author/illustrator/publisher, oh and someone who happens to have the last name Adams, stop coddling these groups I say.
Dawson Springs’ small businesses should no longer be the crutch keeping a city ran Dawson Springs Area Chamber, city ran building open, a food pantry stocked, or any religious or government organization in business. IF small businesses donate, do it because you are kind, care for the people of the community, and are successful and share your wealth. Not because the self entitled privilege have guilted you into supporting their failures. I believe we the people started this country with rules of universal respect for ALL. Oh two Adams’s signed some sort of declaration.
If people of this community want a Dawson Springs City Park , stop waiting on the city who has been ran too long on hand outs, grants, federal funding, and titles. If you’re a professional contractor with a city permit, install the play ground equipment for the kids. If you need exercise, pick up debris on the softball fields. If you’re a volunteer baseball coach, umpire, or team parent, chalk the fields, build a mound, or run a concession tent until we can raise the roof on the concession stands. Do it because it’s a park for our kids, fitness for us of all ages, and our social strength as a community. It doesn’t belong to whomever is in office waiting for a handout.
If Hopkins County, Kentucky won’t repair HWY 109 to Pennyrile Forest State Resort Park after the resort is still housing Hopkins County tornado victims, shameful. Christian County, Kentucky deserves the state park.
If another water drain is clogged at the city street level, Dawson Springs Water Municipalities shouldn’t get our tax dollars for standing around not preventing losses of water or personal property.
If another disabled person who is confined to a wheelchair has to drive down , Arcadia Avenue, past the because they can’t get to the only grocery store in town because their are no sidewalks to safely access. Don’t pay your property taxes until you finally, after decades, get that sidewalk. You deserve help. I too may be in your situation. I hope I’m deserving of the same sidewalk.
If another sidewalk is impassable because grass has grown over it or water floods it for students, maybe the should take a vacation until the city makes necessary repairs. It’s not the Board of
Time has come to take back our businesses, public spaces, streets, sidewalks, social strengths, and our voice. You guys are
