A Killer's Prayer

          Raymond and Charity Barton were married in Lexington, Kentucky on June 7, 1922.  He was a coal miner and she was the daughter of a sharecropper.  Since she was pregnant they decided to get married.

     They had a boy.  His name was Harry Barton.  He was a good child.  Even when he was small he would rub his father’s back and feet when he came home from the mines.  He was also a very bright child.  In school he hardly ever missed being on the honor roll.  He insisted that if he could only win a scholarship to a school he would become a lawyer.

     In 1936, they were playing a basketball team from Ohio.  Harry scored twenty-six points in that game.  It was his last year in grade school.  That summer a man from Ohio came and talked to Harry about playing high school basketball.  The man from Ohio knew the coach from our high school and he told coach Evans that Harry was good enough to play college ball.  He told him that by the time he was through high school there would be scouts around trying to get him to join their college.

     Harry put in long, hard hours of practice, kept up his schoolwork, and worked in the summer to pay his way.  When he was seventeen and a senior, he was averaging sixteen points per game. 

     A scout from Catlettsburg had him apply and he was given a four year fully paid scholarship to play ball.  Harry decided to join the service instead.

     Harley Barton was born June 4, 1924.  He was a beautiful baby.  As he and Harry grew up they were as different as night and day.  Harry tried to get Harley to play sports, fish, and do things together as brothers should do, but Harley was always cross with his brother and did things on his own.