Guest Columns

By Ronnie McCane

Over the last few decades, Kentucky has gained a well-earned reputation for its groundbreaking work in science and technology.

We will forever be home to the world’s first self-contained artificial heart and the nation’s first hand transplant, for example, and two of our researchers were behind the world’s first 100 percent effective cancer vaccine.

They may only number in the tens of thousands out of a state of more than 4.3 million people, but it isn’t hard to imagine how much more difficult life would be without our first responders.

While their work is mainly a function of local government, the state plays a role as well in helping law enforcement, firefighters and other emergency workers do their job.

Ed Preston died Oct. 5. He lived across the street from us. He had been at the Hospice House and his wife, Lillian, asked my husband to watch over their house while she stayed with him.

They were married 64 years. Ed turned 94 on Sept. 30.

The evening of Oct. 5 — it was a Wednesday — I saw our other neighbor drive off with Lillian. When they returned a few hours later I knew something had happened.

My husband and I went across the street, and as Lillian got out of the car she said, “Ed died.”