Appalachian Figures
If you grew up in Jenkins, you probably heard the name Burpo in two different settings. Older railroad hands remembered engineer H. L. Burpo at the throttle of the first passenger train into town. Younger fans might remember another Burpo: a tall left handed pitcher who clawed his way from the coalfields to a brief stint with the Cincinnati Reds.
George Harvie Burpo was born in Jenkins in 1922 and died in Tucson, Arizona, in 2015. Along the way he lived several lives at once. He was a Jenkins schoolboy in pads and band uniform, a teenage professional pitcher, a Navy serviceman during the Second World War, a short term major leaguer, and finally a long serving salesman, Rotarian, and church elder in the Southwest.
This is his story, told as much as possible from the records he and his hometown left behind.
Growing up in a railroad and coal town
According to his funeral home obituary, George H. Burpo was born on 19 June 1922 in Jenkins, Kentucky. He attended grade school in Pikeville, then returned to Jenkins for high school, where he juggled football with a spot in the school band. The obituary specifically notes him as both a football player and band member, which already fits what the local history says about Jenkins High School as a “good band town” that took music and athletics very seriously.
The town itself was still young during his childhood. The coal camp and its railroad connections dated only to the 1910s. Local history credits locomotive engineer H. L. Burpo of Jenkins with bringing in the very first passenger train on 1 October 1912, then pulling out the last passenger run in October 1949 and taking the first train through the tunnel above town into Pound, Virginia. Whether George was closely related to that older railroad Burpo is not yet documented, but the surname was already tied to Jenkins history before George ever picked up a ball.
By the late 1930s, Jenkins High School was fielding competitive athletic teams, and the community had organized the Cavaliers baseball club and local leagues for teenagers and young adults. The town’s 1973 history records a triumphant 1947 season, capped by a Lonesome Pine League title. When the Cavaliers finished that season under the new night lights, they had help from a hometown professional. As the book puts it, “George Burpo, who belonged to the Cincinnati Reds, finished the season with the Cavaliers.”
That one line anchors George in the local sports culture that shaped him. He was not just a name on a baseball card. He was a Jenkins boy who came back to pitch under the lights for his neighbors after he had tasted the big leagues.
A teenager signs with the Reds
Burpo began his professional baseball career while he was still in high school. His obituary recalls that he signed his first contract with the Cincinnati Reds organization in 1939 and was sent that year to Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Gary Bedingfield’s carefully researched Baseball in Wartime profile fills in the details. At seventeen, the “big left hander” from Jenkins joined the Muskogee Reds of the Western Association, where he threw hard, walked too many hitters, and finished 1–4. Over the next two seasons he moved to the Tucson Cowboys of the Arizona–Texas League. In 1940 he struck out eighteen batters in one game against Albuquerque and still took the loss. In 1941 he came back with a no hitter at High Corbett Field, the first ever at that ballpark, an achievement also highlighted in his obituary.
His Tucson manager, Pat Patterson, understood what kind of raw material he had. Baseball in Wartime records Patterson’s verdict that Burpo might not reach the majors quickly but “could not miss” if the minor leagues had time to polish his control. The problem was simple. The ball came in very fast. It did not always come in where the catcher wanted it.
By 1942 the Reds brought Burpo into major league spring training, then assigned him to the Birmingham Barons of the Southern Association. There, he managed a respectable 7–7 record but also set a league record by walking twelve batters in a single game.
The pattern that followed will be familiar to anyone who has watched a hard throwing Appalachian pitcher fight his own arm. When he was right, he was almost unhittable. When his control deserted him, the walk totals piled up in the box score.
Navy service and wartime baseball
In 1943, with the United States fully committed to the Second World War, Burpo entered the Navy. Baseball in Wartime and his Wikipedia biography agree that he served three years and was stationed at the Naval Air Technical Training Center (NATTC) in Norman, Oklahoma. He pitched regularly in the Oklahoma State Service League, one of many military baseball circuits that flourished during the war.
Those wartime box scores read like tall tales. In one game, according to Baseball in Wartime, Burpo struck out nineteen of twenty one batters who faced him. In another he worked three innings and fanned all nine hitters. In a December 8, 1945 interview with the Tucson Daily Citizen, he admitted that long layoffs between appearances hurt his control and that he did better when given the chance to pitch consistently, a reminder that even a power arm needs repetition and rhythm.
The Library of Congress Veterans History Project has since cataloged a “George H. Burpo Collection,” created in 2019, that preserves his story as a World War II veteran. Together with the Navy league clippings, that collection is one of the strongest primary sources for his wartime experience, even though access requires a visit or request to the Library of Congress rather than a simple click.
Burpo received an honorable discharge in December 1945, just as his obituary notes. He would later be honored with a World War II medallion and take part in Honor Flight activities that brought veterans together to visit war memorials, memories recorded in the online guestbook attached to his obituary.
Two games in the big leagues
With the war over, the Reds brought Burpo back into their plans. Baseball Reference and Baseball Almanac agree on the basic numbers. He made his major league debut on 9 June 1946 for the Cincinnati Reds and his final appearance on 3 July 1946, both in relief.
Across those two games he pitched two and one third innings, allowed four earned runs, walked five, and struck out one. His official earned run average settled at 15.43 with no wins or losses credited.
In the record books, that line looks like a footnote. A handful of batters faced, one strikeout, a rough ERA, and that is all. Yet for a left handed kid who had grown up in a coal camp town near the Virginia line, simply stepping onto a major league mound was the fulfillment of what his Tucson manager had predicted early on. He did get there.
After those brief appearances, the Reds returned him to the high minors. In 1946 he joined the Syracuse Chiefs of the International League. The next year he pitched for the Columbia Reds in the South Atlantic League, where he went 9–13 with a 5.17 ERA.
Baseball in Wartime describes one Columbia teammate’s memory of how the managers tried to harness his wildness. They made him take full pitchers’ workouts and then extra “pepper” games on the days he was scheduled to start so that he would pitch while tired. According to that teammate, it was only when fatigue set in that Burpo could reliably keep the ball in the strike zone.
By 1948 he reported to spring training with the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League, then was released to Tulsa and later purchased by Denver. He retired from professional baseball before that season ended.
Back to Jenkins and the Cavaliers
While league records track Burpo’s professional stops, Jenkins kept its own scorecard. The town history’s brief note that he “finished the season with the Cavaliers” in 1947 captures the moment when a former big leaguer returned to the local diamond.
That 1947 Cavaliers team won the championship of the Lonesome Pine League, wrapping up what the same chapter calls one of the most successful seasons in Jenkins baseball history. They played under a new twenty five thousand dollar lighting system and drew strong community support. George Burpo’s name appears there alongside Sam Hancock, Bug Huffman, Ivan Brush, and other local players who made up the roster.
For Appalachian communities, this sort of homecoming matters. The major league record shows only two games. The town memory holds the image of a Jenkins boy coming back from the war and the professional circuit to help his hometown club clinch a title.
A second career in business and civic life
After arm trouble and injuries ended his playing days, Burpo reinvented himself. The Dignity Memorial obituary offers a detailed outline of his working and civic life, and it stands as a near primary narrative because it was prepared by family and close associates at the time of his death.
He first spent five years with J. C. Penney, then joined Moore Business Forms, described in the obituary as the world’s largest manufacturer of business forms. Over the next thirty two years he worked in sales, supervision, and management roles in Tucson, Phoenix, and Albuquerque, eventually serving as District Manager and retiring in 1985.
Alongside that career ran a long line of church and civic commitments. In Scottsdale he and his wife Nancy served as junior high advisers at Valley Presbyterian Church, where he also served as an elder. Later, while living in Albuquerque, he was active at Immanuel Presbyterian Church and spent three years as an elder there as well. After returning to Tucson he and Nancy joined Desert Skies United Methodist Church in 1998.
Burpo was also deeply involved in Rotary. His obituary notes that he belonged to clubs in Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Tucson, and that he served as president of the Catalina Rotary Club in Tucson during the 1982–83 year. The Catalina club’s own veterans project lists George H. Burpo among its honored World War II members, confirming his dual identity as both Rotarian and veteran.
In Tucson he became an enthusiastic supporter of University of Arizona athletics, especially baseball, football, and basketball, and held membership in the Wildcat Club for many years.
By the time of his death on 20 December 2015 in Tucson, he had lived far longer as a businessman, elder, and community volunteer than he ever did as a professional pitcher. He was buried at East Lawn Palms Cemetery in Tucson, the same cemetery noted by Baseball Almanac and Baseball Reference as his final resting place.
Memory, family, and the Burpo name
The online guestbook attached to George Burpo’s Legacy.com memorial gives a small glimpse of how friends and fans remembered him. Honor Flight volunteers recalled sharing lunches with him and treasured the baseball card he gave them. Another writer remembered going to a basketball game together and called him a gentleman. A Canadian fan wrote about corresponding with Burpo decades earlier to ask about his years in baseball and receiving a thoughtful reply and photo in return.
Meanwhile, the older story of H. L. Burpo, the railroad engineer, keeps the surname visible in Jenkins history. The 1973 Jenkins Jaycees history and the Jenkins alumni site both repeat the same vignette. H. L. Burpo brought the construction train in from Cincinnati in January 1912, pulled the first passenger train into Jenkins that October, took the first train through the new tunnel toward Pound, Virginia, and in October 1949 pulled out the last passenger train, the “Old 1046.”
Newspaper retrospectives from The Mountain Eagle and scanned clippings in the Virginia Chronicle add that he was a forty year veteran of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and that reporters singled him out when the line through Pine Mountain and Pound Gap opened in 1948.
Taken together, these sources show that the Burpo name in Jenkins stands at two crossroads. One is the rail junction that made the coal camp possible. The other is a pitcher’s mound that carried one Jenkins boy all the way to the Cincinnati Reds and back.
Genealogical databases and family trees suggest ways the railroad Burpos and George Harvie Burpo may connect, but those links rest on user submissions and transcribed census entries rather than full vital records. They are best treated as leads for future research rather than proof.
Why George Burpo matters to Appalachian history
In statistical terms, George Burpo is exactly the sort of player baseball history tends to forget. Two big league games, no decisions, an ERA that looks ugly on paper, and a long minor league record that rarely makes it into glossy histories.
From an Appalachian perspective, his story looks very different.
He grew up at the point where coal and rail met in Letcher County. He walked through the Jenkins schools, played on its teams, and marched in its band. He signed his first professional contract while still a Jenkins student, pitched in small western towns during the last prewar years, then put on a Navy uniform when the country called. After the war he reached the majors, even if only briefly, then came home to reinforce a local championship run and later built a second life in business and civic work that stretched across Arizona and New Mexico.
Primary sources like his obituary, the Jenkins Jaycees history, the Veterans History Project catalog entry, and contemporaneous sports coverage give us a surprisingly rich picture of that journey. Secondary sources such as Baseball in Wartime and Baseball Reference help us check the box scores and track his movement across the baseball map. The result is a life that connects Jenkins, Norman, Tucson, and Albuquerque in one line.
For a site devoted to Appalachian history, George Harvie Burpo reminds us that the region’s stories do not stop at the county line. They follow young men onto troop trains and minor league buses, into churches and Rotary halls in distant cities, and finally back into the memories of the hometown that sent them out in the first place.
Sources and further reading
“George H Burpo” obituary, East Lawn Palms Mortuary and Cemetery (Dignity Memorial). Detailed life sketch written at the time of his death, including birth and schooling in Jenkins, his professional baseball stops, Navy service, business career with Moore Business Forms, church work, and Rotary and University of Arizona affiliations. Dignity Memorial
Legacy.com online obituary and guestbook. Reprints the newspaper obituary text and preserves personal memories from friends, fans, and Honor Flight participants who knew Burpo in later life. Legacy
The History of Jenkins, Kentucky (Jenkins Area Jaycees, 1973), “History of Athletics in Jenkins.” Community history that notes “George Burpo, who belonged to the Cincinnati Reds,” finishing the 1947 season with the Jenkins Cavaliers and places that team in the broader story of local sports.
The History of Jenkins, Kentucky, “Odds and Ends.” Same volume, different chapter, that records H. L. Burpo bringing in the construction train, pulling the first and last passenger trains at Jenkins, and taking the first train through the tunnel toward Pound, Virginia. Penelope
Jenkins History page, Jenkins Independent Schools alumni site (ClassCreator). An online summary of local history that repeats the H. L. Burpo railroad story and helps confirm how that narrative survives in community memory. Class Creator
Baltimore and Ohio Employees Magazine (1912) photograph, “BANKERS SPECIAL (1914) about to leave Jenkins, Ky.” Period image reproduced on Wikimedia Commons, with caption identifying Engineer H. L. Burpo in the cab, a visual primary source for the railroad Burpo in his working environment. Wikimedia Commons
Mountain Eagle “The Way We Were” columns and Virginia Chronicle clippings. Mid twentieth century and retrospective articles describing H. L. Burpo’s role in running the first train through the tunnel above Jenkins and noting his long C&O service. The Mountain Eagle+2The Mountain Eagle+2
Library of Congress, Veterans History Project, “George H. Burpo Collection.” Catalog entry indicating that an oral history interview and related materials on Burpo’s Navy service were recorded and deposited with the VHP, referenced in his Wikipedia biography. Wikipedia
Baseball in Wartime, “George Burpo.” Narrative biography by Gary Bedingfield detailing Burpo’s signing by the Reds at seventeen, his wild but powerful pitching with Muskogee and the Tucson Cowboys, his Navy service and service league exploits, his brief major league stint, and his postwar minor league career. Baseball in Wartime
Baseball Reference, major and minor league pages. Statistical record of Burpo’s 1946 season with the Cincinnati Reds and his minor league stops with Muskogee, Tucson, Birmingham, Syracuse, Columbia, Tulsa, and Denver, as well as basic biographical data and burial location.
Baseball Almanac, player page for George Harvie Burpo. Confirms his full name, birth and death dates and places, and burial at East Lawn Palms Cemetery in Tucson, and links to additional statistical resources.
Wikipedia, “George Burpo.” Concise overview of his birth in Jenkins, Navy service at NATTC Norman, brief major league career, death in Tucson, and the existence of the Veterans History Project collection. Wikipedia
Baseball Reference Bullpen, “George Burpo.” Fan maintained but source based encyclopedia entry that summarizes his career as a fast, wild Kentucky left hander who began pro ball at age seventeen and spent most of his time in the minors.
Catalina Rotary Club, Veterans Project page. Lists George H. Burpo among the club’s World War II veterans and further confirms his long Rotary involvement in Tucson.
Regional history article, “All Aboard! The Jenkins, Kentucky Railroad Pulls Into History” (KY/TN Living). Modern feature on Jenkins and its railroad that highlights H. L. Burpo’s role in bringing the construction train and operating the line, tying the Burpo name to the town’s railroad heritage. kytnliving.com
Genealogical databases and memorial sites (FamilySearch trees, Find A Grave entries). User generated but often document based resources that trace various Burpo families across Kentucky and neighboring states, useful for exploring possible connections between the Jenkins railroad Burpos and George Harvie Burpo, though not yet sufficient for firm conclusions. Appalachianhistorian.org