Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Dave Nakdimen of Lee, Virginia
Before Dave Nakdimen became one of Kentucky’s most familiar political reporters, his story began in the coal country of far southwest Virginia.
His obituary in the Courier-Journal identifies him as born in the coal town of St. Charles, Virginia, the son of Abe Nakdimen and Lucy Steelman Nakdimen. Some online summaries give Rocky Station in Lee County instead. Until a Virginia birth record, Lee County birth register, or original vital record settles the matter, the safest wording is that Nakdimen was born in the Lee County coal country of southwest Virginia, with St. Charles named in the strongest obituary source.
That caution matters because small Appalachian communities often left records that later writers blur together. Coal camps, rail stops, voting precincts, post offices, and family residences could overlap in ways that do not always match a single modern place name. For Nakdimen, the broader fact remains clear. He came from the mountain borderland of Virginia and Kentucky, and his public life would be spent explaining politics, government, disasters, courts, elections, and civic life to viewers across the Commonwealth.
Schooling In Kentucky
Nakdimen spent most of his life in Kentucky. After his early years in the coalfields, he graduated from London High School in Laurel County. From there he went to the University of Kentucky, where he studied journalism and graduated in 1955.
The University of Kentucky later remembered him as a graduate of its journalism department and a Virginia native. His route into reporting followed a path familiar to many young newspapermen of his generation. He moved from school to print journalism, then from newspapers into radio and television at a time when television news was still learning what it could become.
His first professional work came at the Lexington Leader, where he worked as a sportswriter after additional study in political science. That beginning is important. Before he became known for statehouse coverage and election night analysis, he learned the discipline of daily reporting. A sportswriter had to know names, dates, records, scores, and deadlines. A political reporter needed the same habits, only the playing field became city hall, the county courthouse, the General Assembly, and the campaign trail.
The Move To WAVE
On July 4, 1961, Nakdimen joined WAVE Radio and Television in Louisville. He was twenty eight years old. WAVE later remembered that he began as a City Hall reporter, first on radio, then moved naturally into television as the medium grew.
Television news in the early 1960s was not yet the polished, constant presence it would later become. Local reporters had to improvise. They carried equipment, chased sources, wrote quickly, and learned how to turn complicated public issues into clear reports for people watching at home. Nakdimen entered WAVE at exactly that moment. Louisville was changing, Kentucky politics was changing, and television was becoming one of the places where citizens learned what their government was doing.
Inside the newsroom he was known simply as “Nak.” To viewers, he became Dave Nakdimen, a steady presence who seemed to understand the machinery of public life. He covered city and county government, the Kentucky legislature, gubernatorial campaigns, state elections, national elections, and seven national political conventions.
Covering Government And Politics
Nakdimen’s reputation came from knowing how government worked. He did not only report who won or lost. He explained what decisions meant, who held power, and why a vote, trial, collapse, storm, or public dispute mattered.
The Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame credited him with covering city and county government, the legislature, gubernatorial races, state elections, and national elections across thirty six years. WAVE’s own remembrance described him as one of the top political reporters in Kentucky.
That long career placed him in front of many of the major stories that shaped Louisville and Kentucky in the second half of the twentieth century. He reported on the 1964 flood, the 1968 Louisville riots, the 1974 tornado, school desegregation and court ordered busing in 1975, the 1978 blizzard, the 1989 Standard Gravure shootings, and the 1997 flood. He also broke the story of the collapse of Prudential and American Building and Loan Associations in the early 1970s.
The range of those stories shows why Nakdimen was more than a political reporter in the narrow sense. In Kentucky, politics touched everything. Disasters required public response. Courts shaped public rights. Housing battles became civil rights battles. School policy became a test of law and community order. Financial collapses affected ordinary families. Nakdimen’s beat was not only elections. It was the civic life of Kentucky.
Civil Rights, Housing, And Schools
Some of Nakdimen’s most historically important work came during years when Louisville confronted civil rights questions in housing and education.
His obituary notes that he interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Wayne, Muhammad Ali, and many other public figures during his career. The Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame also credits him with a Gabriel Award from the Catholic Broadcasters Association for an open housing documentary.
The open housing movement in Louisville was one of the defining local civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Demonstrators challenged racial discrimination in housing, and the issue drew national attention. In that setting, local television was not merely entertainment. It was a civic stage. Reporters framed what viewers saw, what they understood, and how they remembered the conflict.
Nakdimen’s work also entered the history of school desegregation. In 1975, before Louisville’s busing program began, WAVE sent him to Boston to report on why Boston’s school desegregation crisis had turned violent and why Louisville did not have to follow the same path. Historian Matthew Delmont later cited Nakdimen’s Boston reporting in scholarship on television news and the national memory of busing.
That episode is telling. WAVE did not send an anchor with a famous face but a reporter who knew government, local emotion, and public consequences. Nakdimen’s job was to help Louisville viewers understand a difficult moment before it arrived at their own school doors.
Debate, Commentary, And Public Affairs
Nakdimen was also part of Kentucky’s public affairs tradition. In 1975 he served as a panelist in the debate between Julian Carroll and Bob Gable, remembered as the first such gubernatorial debate telecast statewide in Kentucky.
Later, the KET program Comment on Kentucky looked back on that debate with Nakdimen present. In the 2007 broadcast, Al Smith drew him into the memory of that first statewide debate, and Nakdimen recalled Bob Gable bringing out a small “truth bell” during the exchange. It was a small television moment, but it captured something about the era. Kentucky politics was serious, personal, theatrical, and often unpredictable.
Broadcasting trade records also show Nakdimen’s role expanding beyond daily reporting. In 1979 Broadcasting magazine listed him as political editor at WAVE-TV in Louisville and noted that he had been named producer and host of a weekly public affairs program. That kind of work placed him not only in the role of reporter, but also moderator, interviewer, and guide through public questions.
After retirement, WAVE viewers still saw him on election nights and in commentaries. He ended those commentaries with a plain signature line that many remembered: “That’s my opinion. I’m Dave Nakdimen.”
Honors And A Long Goodbye
Nakdimen retired as a full time reporter in July 1997 after thirty six years at WAVE. By then he had become part of Kentucky’s broadcast memory.
His honors included multiple Society of Professional Journalists commentary awards, Associated Press awards, two Gavel Awards from the Louisville Bar Association, a regional Emmy, and the Gabriel Award for his open housing documentary. He was elected to the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1998.
Senator Mitch McConnell publicly praised Nakdimen after his death, calling him one of the best local television journalists he had known and remembering his coverage of politics, housing, and civil rights. That praise came from a public official who had spent much of his own career being covered by journalists like Nakdimen. It speaks to the kind of respect a reporter earns when even powerful people recognize his fairness and skill.
Nakdimen died on May 8, 2020, at age eighty six. He was survived by his wife Wanda, his daughter Suzanne, his granddaughter Angela, his sister Judith, and extended family.
Why Dave Nakdimen Matters
Dave Nakdimen’s story belongs on an Appalachian history site because it shows how far a life from the coal country could travel without fully leaving the region behind.
He was born in the mountain world of southwest Virginia, educated in Kentucky, and became one of the public voices through which Kentuckians understood their own state. He did not become famous by leaving Appalachia for a national network. He became important by staying close to regional public life and mastering it.
His work connected courthouse records, storm damage, legislative maneuvering, school desegregation, civil rights protests, election returns, financial collapse, and public debate. For thirty six years at WAVE, he helped viewers make sense of the institutions that shaped their lives.
In that way, Nakdimen represents a kind of Appalachian success that is easy to overlook. Not every mountain figure becomes known through music, war, literature, or politics itself. Some become important because they explain the world around them with patience and steadiness.
Dave Nakdimen was one of those figures. From the coal towns of southwest Virginia to the television studios of Louisville, he carried the habits of a careful reporter into the living rooms of Kentucky. His legacy is not only the stories he covered. It is the trust he built while covering them.
Sources & Further Reading
Gazaway, Charles. “Retired WAVE 3 News Reporter Dave Nakdimen Dies.” WAVE 3 News, May 8, 2020. https://www.wave3.com/2020/05/08/retired-wave-news-reporter-dave-nakdimen-dies/
“David A. Nakdimen.” Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://ci.uky.edu/jam/about/kentucky-journalism-hall-fame/kentucky-journalism-hall-fame-inductees-1990-1999
“David Nakdimen Obituary.” Legacy.com, Courier-Journal, May 2020. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/louisville/name/david-nakdimen-obituary?id=2196278
“Dave Nakdimen Obituary.” Highlands Funeral Home, May 2020. https://www.highlandsfuneralhome.com/memorials/Nakdimen-Dave/4209065/
McConnell, Mitch. “Tribute to Dave Nakdimen.” Congressional Record, July 31, 1997. https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record
“Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame Inductees, 1990–1999.” University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media. Accessed June 11, 2026. https://ci.uky.edu/jam/about/kentucky-journalism-hall-fame/kentucky-journalism-hall-fame-inductees-1990-1999
“Comment on Kentucky: November 16, 2007.” KET and PBS, November 16, 2007. https://www.pbs.org/video/november-16-2007-v4ngre/
Delmont, Matthew F. “Television News and the Making of the Boston Busing Crisis.” Journal of Urban History 44, no. 3, 2018. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0096144216688279
Delmont, Matthew F. Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520284258/why-busing-failed
“Dave Nakdimen, Political Editor, WAVE-TV Louisville, Ky., Named Producer and Host of Weekly Public Affairs Program.” Broadcasting, October 1, 1979. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1979/BC-1979-10-01.pdf
“The Kentucky Kernel.” University of Kentucky student newspaper archives. Search for Dave Nakdimen and Nakdimen bylines, 1950s issues. https://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/xt7nvx05xj3x
Powell Valley News. Pennington Gap, Virginia. Archived issues useful for Lee County Nakdimen family and local context. https://archive.org/search?query=%22Powell+Valley+News%22+%22Nakdimen%22
United States Census Bureau. 1940 United States Federal Census, Lee County, Virginia, household of Abe and Lucy Nakdimen. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940
United States Census Bureau. 1950 United States Federal Census, search for Abe, Lucy, and David Nakdimen. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1950
Virginia Department of Health, Division of Vital Records. Birth record or Lee County birth register entry for David A. or David Abie Nakdimen, recommended to verify exact birthplace. https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/vital-records/
Library of Virginia. Virginia vital records, local history, and Lee County research collections. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/
FamilySearch. Virginia birth, census, and family records for David A. Nakdimen and the Abe Nakdimen household. https://www.familysearch.org/
Find a Grave. Nakdimen family cemetery and memorial records, useful only as supporting clues unless verified by official records. https://www.findagrave.com/
Author Note: This article treats Dave Nakdimen’s birthplace carefully because available public sources differ between St. Charles and Rocky Station in Lee County, Virginia. A Lee County birth record or Virginia vital record would be the best final source for confirming the exact place name.