As this is my first attempt at writing a blog post, I think I should introduce myself. My name is Don Rigsby. I am a musician with decades of experience and lots of stories to tell. My plans for my part of this blog are to espouse the good things happening at Torchlight Studio and also share stories from my life on the road and my childhood growing up in Eastern Kentucky.
I have been blessed to live in the shelter of these green hills most of my life, but to travel abroad for my employment and be exposed to many different cultures. But my heart has always been and remains in Elliott County, Kentucky. There are many places with more to offer as far as shopping, dining, entertainment, employment, and the things that lots of folks believe makes for happiness, but they don’t offer the tranquility and peace I find there.
I was born in Ashland, KY, in 1968. My Mother and Dad were hard-working, Christian people who gave everything they had to the family. My brother is nine years my senior. My dad was born and raised in Martha, KY, near Coal Creek. Lowell Rigsby was the eldest son of Ivory and Flora Ferguson Rigsby. He grew up hunting and fishing and working on the farm during the Depression. He enlisted in the United States Air Force and was stationed in Wichita Falls, TX, at Shepherd Field. He served as the personal driver for General Edward White. During this time, while on leave, he met my mother, Etta Mae Peters Rigsby. She was attending college at Morehead Teachers College (now Morehead State University). She had seen my dad ride past her house on a horse when she was a girl and never forgot it. She worked as a telephone operator in Morehead while attending college and used the opportunity to talk to dad as much as she could. They were in love, and she didn’t want to wait on him any longer, so they married, and she moved to Texas, where my brother Ron was born.
After the service, they moved back east and settled in Indiana. My brother attended school there for the first several years. Dad worked the steel mills in East Chicago, and they all lived in Cedar Lake, Indiana. But the call of the mountains was ever-present in Dad’s heart, and he longed to return to Kentucky, so they moved back. That’s when I came along!
I’ll finish the rest of my story later …
