... it’s the better part of valor just to cut your losses and move on.

No matter what Haskins actually did or said, he is right that there is no way to recover his reputation. It is lost, fairly or unfairly, and that is the end of that. No amount of testimony, facts or vindication, should it ever surface, will change that. It never does. Guilty once, guilty forever—maybe not in truth, but in perception, and perception simply matters more to everyone except the person on the short end.

But after we blow the foam off the beer, the only person who has to live the rest of his life is him. He can do it with regrets and recriminations, or put the past where it belongs.

Glad to see he is happy.

Welcomed him back with no questions asked.

I always knew he would retire back in his hometown. He has respect from so many people he grew up with in this community as does his family. I did not come to Campbellsville until 1978 but before I ever moved here, my deceased husband had many stories about Clem and family and all were about the good black families in this community who he had contact with over the years who worked his family’s farm. My husband thought of those families as friends all his life.