Former county, city attorney Challen McCoy dies
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette
Friday, Jan. 14, 2011 — Former Nelson County Attorney Challen McCoy, 78, of Bardstown died Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. McCoy served 22 years as county attorney. He also served stints as city attorney for Bardstown and New Haven.
McCoy was a native of Pikeville, and a direct descendant of the McCoy clan involved in the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud.
McCoy and his wife, Fran Newcomb McCoy moved to Bardstown about 1961, he told The Bardstonian in a 2008 interview.
A full obituary will be posted when available. See the related story from The Bardstownian Magazine reprinted below.
Photo: Challen McCoy, right, and his son Paul, left, talk with Sen. Wendell Ford at the 2008 Jefferson-Jackson Dinner at the Old Kentucky Home Country Club. Photo by Jim Brooks.
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Community profile: Challen McCoy
By JIM BROOKS
The Bardstonian Magazine
Summing up his career as an attorney in a small town, Challen McCoy pauses and says, “I guess I’ve done OK for an old country lawyer.”
McCoy and his wife, Fran Newcomb McCoy settled in Bardstown not long after they were married. “We’ve been married 47 years, and we’ve been in Bardstown for 46 years,” he said.
“Moving to Bardstown was the best thing that ever happened to us,” he said “It was a wonderful place to raise a family, and its been a great place for our kids.”
Studying law wasn’t his first choice of vocations; he initially studied engineering at the University of Louisville. A friend interested him in studying law in Tennessee, and he decided to change career paths. Looking back, McCoy said it was a good decision. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of my job and practicing law.”
Many people aren’t aware that McCoy is a descendant of the McCoy clan involved in the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud. “My grandfather was the last living McCoy involved in the feud,” he said.
McCoy jokes that returning to his hometown of Pikeville would have been a difficult place for him to practice law. “I didn’t go back to Pikeville because I’m kin to so many people,” he said. “I would have to practice law for free for all my relatives.”
McCoy’s four decades of practice include 22 years as county attorney, as well as stints serving as city attorney for the cities of Bardstown and New Haven.
“After John Talbott was elected county attorney he told me that he needed an assistant in that office,” McCoy said. At the time, McCoy was also serving as attorney for the City of Bardstown. “I cleared it with Mayor Gus Wilson and took the job.”
When Talbott later passed away while in office, McCoy was elected to fill the vacancy.
As county attorney, McCoy said his goal was to help people find solutions to problems.
“I like working with people,” he said. “As county attorney, I believe I helped a lot of people, served the community as best I could and kept my profession honorable.
“I guess you could say I was a friendly lawyer.”
Law partner Keith Sparks said when he first met McCoy, he was impressed by his ability to relate to people.
“When I first met Challen, we hit it off because we were both from Eastern Kentucky,” he said. He’s from Pike County and I’m from Letcher County.
“Challen has the ability to make a personal connection with everyone he meets,” Spark said. “It was amazing to me when I first moved down here how many people would stop him on the street. Everyone knows Challen.”
When Sparks joined McCoy’s practice, he didn’t have much experience in criminal law. “He was a great mentor to work for, and we’ve had a wonderful working relationship.”
Above all else, working with McCoy helped Sparks learn about working with people in sometimes difficult situations. “He had a great ability to defuse contentious situations by relating to both parties,” he said. “And that’s a lot of what we do as lawyers.”
In McCoy’s capacity as attorney for local governments, he’s seen first-hand how the community has grown.
He had a hand in helping the city move to the new City Hall on the former St. Joe Prep campus. He did the legal work that created the private corporation that operates Spalding Hall; he worked with the city when it purchased the land that today is the county-owned landfill; and he recommended to the county that it buy the old state garage property on the west side of Bardstown.
“There were lots of changes going on during that time for both the city and county,” he said. “They both grew up from what it was to now they are operated like a business.”
One of the biggest changes in his career was the adoption of the unified court system that was implemented in the 1970s. The new law required all judges to be attorneys. Prior to this point, local judges often had little training in the law.
“Back then, the county judge did it all,” McCoy said of the state’s former justice system. The change was a boon to lawyers, but it was also met the need to separate the legal system from the business of county government, he said.
“Bardstown is a much bigger place now than when I started, but its still a good place to live,” he said. “We’re 35 miles from the big city and we keep our small town attitudes.”
Looking back on his life and career, McCoy said he’s been satisfied how it has turned out so far.
“I tried to always do what was right, and the people I worked with did too,” he said. “In the end, I think it all paid off. “I did things my way, and I guess it was a good way.”
“My father-in-law once told me, ‘If you have to hide it, don’t do it,’ ” McCoy said. “That’s been a great philosophy to live by.”
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