Appalachian Figures
On an April morning in 2011, the cafeteria at Whitley County High School felt like any other school day in the mountains. Students clustered at tables, the smell of biscuits and gravy hung in the air, and teachers moved through the noise in that half vigilant, half routine way that comes with long years in a classroom.
When a fight broke out between two teenagers, one of those teachers stepped in. Representative Dewayne Everett Bunch, who taught math and science and had just begun his first term in the Kentucky House, moved toward the scuffling students to pull them apart. In the chaos a stray punch struck him. He fell and hit his head on the hard cafeteria floor. Deputies later said the surface was like slate.
The injury would leave him in critical condition, send him first to the University of Kentucky Medical Center and then to a specialized rehabilitation hospital in Atlanta, and eventually cost him both his legislative career and his life.
In the years since, Kentucky law has carried his name in a reform known as the Dewayne Bunch Act. Special elections in the commonwealth now unfold under rules written with his story in mind.
For Whitley and Laurel countians, though, his life is not only a legal citation. It is the story of a mountain boy who became a soldier, a long time teacher, and a short time lawmaker whose final act of public service took place not in a marble dome but on a tile floor in a school cafeteria.
Old Corbin Pike and a Whitley County Childhood
The biographical record for Dewayne Everett Bunch begins, in the most grounded way possible, with local documents. He was born on February 22, 1962 in Whitley County, Kentucky, the son of Charles Everett Bunch and Gloria Eunice Rains Bunch.
By the time of his death he lived on Old Corbin Pike outside Williamsburg, a stretch of road that runs along the Cumberland foothills and ties the town to nearby Corbin. Obituaries in the Times Tribune and the Croley Funeral Home notice printed in the Congressional Record place him there and anchor him firmly in the everyday geography of southeastern Kentucky.
Family filled those notices. His father, Charles, remained in Williamsburg. His mother, Gloria, had preceded him in death. He left behind his wife, Regina Petrey Bunch, three daughters, two grandchildren, a sister, two brothers, and in laws rooted in the same county. The obituary closes, as so many mountain obituaries do, by widening the circle to “a host of other relatives and friends to mourn his passing.”
Church life rounded out that local identity. Both the Croley and Times Tribune obituaries list him as a member of Highland Park Baptist Church in Williamsburg, a congregation that would later host his funeral and stand at the center of his memorial service.
Soldier in the Kentucky National Guard
Before he ever ran for office, Bunch lived a second life in uniform. Obituaries and state records agree on two key facts. He was a veteran of the United States Army, and he retired from the Kentucky National Guard after roughly twenty four years of service.
The General Assembly’s own directory for the 2011 session sketches the outline of that military career. Under his name the entry lists “Natl Guard” and then two awards with deep meaning in that world. Bronze Star. Combat Infantryman Badge.
Those are not ceremonial honors. The Bronze Star is a decoration for heroic or meritorious service in a combat zone. The Combat Infantryman Badge marks a soldier who has come under fire with an infantry unit during active ground combat. The directory, paired with news summaries that mention his service in Iraq, places Bunch among the many Appalachian guardsmen who cycled from classrooms and factories to overseas deployments in the early twenty first century.
His obituary notes that he received full military graveside honors from the Kentucky National Guard at Highland Park Cemetery. At that service he was also awarded the Kentucky Distinguished Service Medal, a final recognition from the state for his work on behalf of his community and the commonwealth.
A Teacher at Whitley County High School
The same documents that record his military career also insist that his daily life unfolded in front of a whiteboard. Bunch taught mathematics and science at Whitley County High School for more than seventeen years. The Croley obituary, Congressional Record tribute, and television coverage from July 2012 all repeat that figure.
The General Assembly directory lists his occupation simply as “Teacher, Whitley Co Bd of Ed,” and notes a Baptist church affiliation and degrees from Cumberland College and Union College, including a Rank I certification that marks deep investment in his profession.
That pairing of classroom and National Guard service is familiar in Appalachian counties. The same man who worked with teenagers over algebra and chemistry homework might spend one weekend each month drilling with soldiers from across the region, then ship out when the federal government called.
In Bunch’s case, students and colleagues understood him first as a teacher. When he was hurt in 2011, early news stories referred to him as a Whitley County High School instructor even before they mentioned his status as a state representative.
Running for the House from the Eighty Second
In 2010, Bunch stepped into a third role: mountain politician. That year he ran as a Republican for the Kentucky House of Representatives from the Eighty Second District, which covered Whitley County and part of Laurel County. He defeated longtime incumbent Charlie Siler and took office on January 1, 2011.
Legislative directories identify him as a freshman member with committee assignments that reflected both his background and his party’s priorities. They also hint at the circles he moved in away from Frankfort, noting membership in the National Rifle Association, Disabled American Veterans, and a local Masonic body.
For statewide education groups he appeared as one name on a long list of legislators. The Kentucky Retired Teachers Association December 2011 newsletter, for example, lists “Dwayne Bunch (R)” among House members known for their interest in school issues. Even that small typo in his first name offers a reminder of how quickly a rural teacher turned representative could slide from a specific life into a line on a statewide chart.
His time in office would be brief. The events that cut it short, though, would echo through Kentucky law.
The Cafeteria Fight
On April 12, 2011, as students filtered into the Whitley County High School cafeteria for breakfast, a fight broke out between a fifteen year old and a sixteen year old. Local reporting and later summaries describe Bunch moving in to separate the students. One of the teenagers threw a punch that struck him. He fell and hit his head on the cafeteria floor, which the sheriff later described as being as hard as slate.
Emergency responders found him unconscious and bleeding from the ears. He was rushed first to a local hospital, then airlifted to the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington. News outlets across the state reported that he was in extremely critical condition.
After more than two weeks in Lexington, Bunch was transferred to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, a specialized hospital for brain and spinal cord injuries. By early summer his family told reporters that he was beginning to communicate again and had regained some abilities, though updates in fall 2011 still described him as a long term patient at the facility.
The students involved in the altercation were charged with assault. Later coverage would note that prosecutors considered whether to change those charges after Bunch’s death, although public sources do not document any final upgrade.
Resignation and a Family’s Second Campaign
While Bunch remained in rehabilitation, his House seat could not simply sit empty. In October 2011 he resigned from the legislature in order to focus on his recovery. Kentucky’s governor, Steve Beshear, called a special election to fill the remainder of his term.
From the beginning, local coverage treated his resignation and the campaign to replace him as part of the same story. His wife, Regina Petrey Bunch, a special education teacher at Whitley County Middle School, stepped forward as the Republican nominee for the Eighty Second District. Democratic leaders in the district signaled that they might not even field a candidate against her.
In December 2011, voters elected Regina Bunch to the seat her husband had held for less than a year. She would go on to represent the district until 2023. Interviewed on the first anniversary of the injury, Regina told a reporter that she looked for chances to champion causes he believed in and that she believed he was proud of her work.
In that sense, the couple embodied a familiar Appalachian pattern in public life. Spouses and siblings step into offices when death, disability, or scandal removes one member of a political family. In the Bunches’ case the transition happened not in a courthouse clique but in a cluster of classrooms linked by the same county school system.
Death and Public Mourning
On July 11, 2012, more than a year after the cafeteria injury, Dewayne Bunch died at Oak Tree Hospital in Corbin. He was fifty years old. News outlets from Louisville to Lexington carried the story, almost always reminding readers that he had been hurt while trying to break up a fight at Whitley County High School.
WDRB in Louisville and other stations emphasized that his wife had already been elected to finish his term. Their coverage framed his death as the end of a long vigil, not the beginning of a new political question.
In Frankfort and Washington, officials responded with formal gestures. Governor Beshear ordered flags lowered to half staff. House Republican leaders released statements praising his commitment to public service and the way he sought office in order to serve the people of the Corbin and Williamsburg area more fully.
Senator Mitch McConnell read a tribute into the Congressional Record that wove his military service, teaching career, and brief time in the House into a single narrative of service. McConnell noted the hundreds of people who came to the funeral at Highland Park Cemetery, the National Guard’s graveside honors, and the posthumous award of the Kentucky Distinguished Service Medal.
The obituary from Croley Funeral Home, printed in full in that same Congressional Record entry, concluded with a local twist. In lieu of flowers, the family asked that memorials be made to the Dewayne Bunch Scholarship Fund at Forcht Bank in Williamsburg and Corbin. Citizens of the Eighty Second District, it said, would serve as honorary pallbearers.
The Dewayne Bunch Act
When Kentuckians now hear his name in a statewide context, they often encounter it in a very different place: the election statutes.
In 2012 the General Assembly passed House Bill 293, an act dealing with the timing and costs of special elections to fill vacant legislative seats. The law allowed for cost saving measures when only one candidate filed in a special election and clarified how special elections should be scheduled and conducted.
During debate, legislators added a provision instructing that the amendments in 2012 Kentucky Acts chapter 8 be cited as the Dewayne Bunch Act. Legislative Research Commission notes attached to several election statutes now preserve that language and explain that the law is named in honor of a former state legislator who was seriously injured while breaking up a fight at the school where he taught.
The act did not change the fact that his wife had already been elected under the old rules. Instead it turned his story into a symbolic reference point in arguments about how much counties should spend on low contested special elections and how quickly vacancies in the General Assembly ought to be filled. In 2015 one legislator even pointed back to the Dewayne Bunch Act while praising Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes for her role in its passage.
That mixture of intimate tragedy and procedural reform feels very Kentucky. A law that most voters encounter only as a line in the statutes wears the name of a math teacher from a mountain county who died trying to protect his students.
Memory in the Classroom and on the Hill
For Whitley Countians, memory of Bunch survives first in personal stories. Former students remember a teacher who brought a soldier’s discipline into the room and who stayed rooted in the same rural roads they drove each day. Colleagues remember the shock of hearing that one of their own had been gravely injured while handling the sort of cafeteria scuffle that erupts in every high school.
Local coverage on the first anniversary of the injury recorded plans for Whitley County schools to pause during the day in his honor. That same report quoted Regina Bunch reflecting on how she tried to advance his priorities in the House while he continued rehabilitation.
At the state level, memories of Bunch appear in institutional forms. His name surfaces whenever lawyers and election officials discuss statutes that govern special elections. Legislative directories preserve a brief sketch of his service. The Congressional Record entry places him alongside national events in a bound volume on a shelf in Washington.
For historians of Appalachia, that layered memory raises questions about how we tell the story of contemporary mountain figures. Bunch was not a long serving power broker in Frankfort. He did not leave behind a thick trail of sponsored bills or decades of floor speeches. Yet state and federal documents now carry his name in ways that will outlast many louder careers.
What the Archives Still Hold
Almost all of the material available online about Bunch comes from obituaries, legislative directories, news reports, and election law summaries. For a deeper understanding of his life and context, future researchers will need to move into local and state archives.
School board minutes from 2011 and 2012 in Whitley County may preserve official responses to the injury, internal discussions about safety, and resolutions honoring his service. Yearbooks from his teaching years can put a face to the generations of students who passed through his classes.
Court and coroner records may hold more detailed accounts of the incident itself, the medical findings, and any legal proceedings related to the student charges. Property tax rolls and deed books could trace how the Bunch and Rains families rooted themselves along Old Corbin Pike and the surrounding countryside.
Church records at Highland Park Baptist may include membership rolls, deacon lists, or funeral programs that show how his congregation framed his life. The Kentucky State Archives and the Legislative Research Commission’s files likely contain official biographies, legislative photographs, and campaign disclosures that would round out our understanding of his brief political career.
Together, those materials would help move his story from the legal shorthand of the Dewayne Bunch Act back into the lived world of a Whitley County teacher who stood at the intersection of classroom, Guard armory, and statehouse.
Why Dewayne Bunch’s Story Matters
In some ways, Dewayne Everett Bunch’s life reads like a composite of Appalachian public service in the late twentieth and early twenty first century. He came from a rural county where family, church, and school tied people together. He worked his way through local colleges into a teaching career, spent decades in the National Guard, deployed overseas, and eventually stepped into a citizen legislature that still draws heavily from teachers, farmers, and small town professionals.
His death also pulls our attention to the spaces where national debates collapse into concrete risks. Discussions of school safety, youth violence, and public servants who feel responsible for their students often take place in reports and hearings far from the cafeteria floor. At Whitley County High School in April 2011 those issues arrived in a matter of seconds when a teacher and lawmaker put himself between two fighting teenagers.
The statutes that today carry his name deal with special elections and cost saving measures, not classroom discipline or traumatic brain injuries. Even so, they offer a small reminder that the commonwealth’s legal codes are written in the context of real lives in specific places.
For readers in Appalachia, Bunch’s story is a reminder that the people who shape our region’s laws may be sitting two rows over in a gymnasium or standing at the front of a science classroom. Their work in Frankfort can end as suddenly as a misjudged step between two students.
Telling his story alongside older tales of miners, musicians, and Civil War soldiers helps widen the frame of Appalachian history. It encourages us to see the contemporary mountain South not only as a site of long running struggles but as a place where everyday public servants continue to teach, deploy, legislate, and sometimes give their lives in the course of very ordinary duties.
Sources & Further Reading
Croley Funeral Home, “Official Obituary of Dewayne Everett Bunch,” July 12, 2012; reprinted in full in the Congressional Record, “Remembering Representative Dewayne Bunch,” United States Senate, July 30, 2012. Congress.gov+2Congress.gov+2
General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Kentucky General Assembly Directory 2011, entry for Representative Bunch, House District Eighty Two. Kentucky Legislature
“Dewayne Bunch (Kentucky politician),” and “Regina Bunch,” biographical entries summarizing legislative service, injury, and succession in the Eighty Second District. Wikipedia+2Wikipedia+2
“Injured former lawmaker Dewayne Bunch dies,” The State Journal; “Kentucky Representative DeWayne Bunch dies,” WDRB; “Former State Lawmaker, Teacher DeWayne Bunch Dies,” WTVQ; and related television and wire coverage of his injury, recovery, and death. WLKY+5State-Journal+5WDRB+5
House Bill 293, 2012 Regular Session; 2012 Kentucky Acts chapter 8; Legislative Research Commission informational bulletin IB238 and Interim Record reports on elections and voting; and Legislative Research Commission notes to Kentucky Revised Statutes sections 118.730, 118.740, and 118.770, all documenting the measure known as the Dewayne Bunch Act. Legislative Research Commission+7Legislative Research Commission+7Kentucky Legislature+7
Kentucky Retired Teachers Association, News newsletter, December 2011, listing “Dwayne Bunch (R)” among House members engaged with education issues. KRTA