Series: A Tale of Two Tragedies
This is the second installment of Davidson Local’s series, Voices Beyond the Stones. Caleb Sink invites you to tag along for a journey through the Lexington City Cemetery, uncovering the stories of those who rest there.
It is a simple, unassuming stone, smaller, perhaps, than many of those around it. One that I could have easily never noticed during my walk. Yet the story it holds bears an immense, lingering sadness. It is the story of two tragedies, six years apart, claiming the life of a son and, later, his father.
Kinney is the name engraved upon the modest stone. It’s a family name not tied to wealth and privilege, but rather hard work and humble beginnings.
James William Kinney, known affectionately as “Jink,” was born in 1885. Just days after his twentieth birthday, he married Lula Mae Everhart, also 20, in the Healing Springs community. Before long, the couple settled in a home on Greensboro Street in Lexington, not far from the somber city cemetery.
One year after their marriage, Jink and Lula welcomed their only child, a baby boy they named Paul William Kinney, born Aug. 9, 1906.
Paul would go on to be described as a “quiet and well behaved man,” by a Dispatch article. He found work as a foreman at the Piedmont Mirror Company on East Third Avenue, where he was a “most excellent workman.” Paul built a life for himself, marrying a young woman named Bessie Little from Catawba County, and the couple welcomed a son into the world. That baby boy was just a toddler the day in 1928 that took Paul’s life.
Saturday, July 28, 1928, was likely a blistering summer day, the kind of day that makes folks want to take a boat out on the lake. Paul and his friends decided to do just that on that night, traveling to Willomore Lake, ten miles or so from his parents’ home. By 10 p.m., Paul had drowned. About two hours later, his body was recovered from the lake.
Stories differ on what occurred on the lake that night. The outcome, however, is certain: the boat capsized, causing a young bride to lose her husband, and a young boy to lose his father.
It was almost six years later to the day that an eerily similar tragedy hit the Kinney family once again.
Jink Kinney was spending the afternoon at High Rock Lake on Sunday, July 22, 1934. He and his niece and two friends were enjoying a picnic before the two young ladies in the party ventured into the water. Before long, the ladies were in distress and Jink, along with Zeb Floyd, dove into the water.
Sadly, though the ladies found their footing, neither Jink nor Zeb did. Both men drowned in the waters of High Rock.
The waters of Davidson County claimed the lives of a father and son and forever changed their family. But, as I stood staring at their gravestones on a cool spring day, Paul and Jink came back into memory more than nine decades after their deaths.
