Liberty | Casey County

“Life’s worth the while,” says 95-year-old Lee Elliott, a World War I Navy veteran and retired Liberty mail carrier who still finds joy in his 45 years in town, and in Florence Pittman, the woman he’s been “seein'” for 15 years.

When he’s not driving for the family trucking line his father started 40 years ago, Roger Leigh sings gospel music with his group The Believers, hoping to “sow some seeds” through song.

“This is the greatest place on earth,” says Charles Lee, who built Casey County’s largest apple orchard from nothing and has moved just 300 yards from his birthplace in a lifetime spent in Liberty.

Brothers Albert and Carl Fredrich have shared the same house on Groove Ridge their whole lives, yet keep separate schedules, separate meals, and separate pews at church.

Special education teacher Hilda Costello brings her handicapped students from Liberty Middle School into her own apartment each day to teach them the basic living skills they’ll need for the real world.

Winless all season, the Casey County High School football team still drew a bonfire, a parade, and a stadium full of cheering fans for their homecoming game against Mercer County.

Blind since age 20, Shelley “Bear” Johnson has walked the mile between his trailer and Pleasant Grove Separate Baptist Church every Sunday for 25 years, guided by faith and a radio he calls a necessity.

At Dutchman’s Market, Mennonite proprietors Paul and Ruth Martin serve modern customers the old-fashioned way, slipping between English and a German dialect as they go.

Known as “Big Daddy,” EMT Lyle King pulls 36-hour shifts for the Liberty ambulance service, waiting out the quiet stretches before “all hell breaks loose” with back-to-back emergency runs.

Every morning, 83-year-old veteran Russell Hudson raises the American flag outside the Liberty courthouse, a ritual rooted in a lifelong devotion to God and country: “I’d rather be dead than to live under a dictator.”

For 22 years, Imogene Austin has spent ten-hour days running every job at her small downtown market, where regulars know her by name and treat her like their own grandmother.

For six weeks each fall, 61-year-old Jacob Oberholtzer and his family work through the night making sorghum molasses, a ritual that provides a substantial part of their yearly income.

Former high school sweethearts Darren Bias and Missy Bolt, once prom king and homecoming queen, are still together at Somerset Community College, betting on a future that looks a lot like their past.

After quitting his job to become a full-time wood craftsman, Bill Sallee spends 14-hour days in his workshop, building more than 100 different projects to sell at craft fairs across Kentucky.

A glimpse into everyday life in Liberty, Kentucky, from children at play to the people who keep the town running.

Jim and Sandy Tucker have raised 34 children with mental and physical disabilities since 1979, building a family where, “they are all my children, whether adopted or not.”

At 24, Joey Weddle has scaled down his flock of purebred sheep, with hands-on work, corralling, vaccinating, and caring for them.

Down a gravel road on Reynolds Creek, Jesse Shoopman runs a 2,400-hog operation, shipping a truckload to market every week from birth to a 240-pound finish.

Twelve-year-old Mennonite Paul Hoover rises at 5:45 a.m. to milk cows and returns to more chores after, balancing adult responsibility with bike rides or a game of tag.

Portraits of the people of Liberty, Kentucky, faces that capture the character of a small town, one glimpse at a time.

Twenty-six photojournalists spent grueling 18-hour days learning to shoot with purpose under the guidance of some of the field’s finest professionals.