Appalachian Figures
A Harlan boy who never really left
Green Wix Unthank started life in a coal camp town, jumped into some of the hardest fighting of World War II as a young paratrooper, then came home to spend more than sixty years inside Kentucky courtrooms. By the time he died in 2013, people in Harlan County simply called him “Judge Unthank,” a title that blended local respect with federal power in one mountain name.
His story runs from Tway and Loyall to North Africa and Italy, then back to the crowded dockets of the Eastern District of Kentucky. It is a reminder that the federal bench is not only stocked with Ivy League résumés from big cities, but sometimes with kids who learned their lessons in Harlan County schoolrooms.
From Tway and Loyall to the wider world
Green Wix Unthank was born June 14, 1923, in Tway, an unincorporated coal town in Harlan County. His parents, Green W. Unthank and Estelle Howard Unthank, both taught in the Harlan County public schools, together logging nearly seven decades in the classroom.
The family later moved into the Loyall area, and Wix graduated from Loyall High School with the class of 1940. Within months he enlisted in the United States Army, trading the Clover Fork for basic training just as the world hurtled into war.
Jumping into World War II
Unthank volunteered for one of the most dangerous new specialties in the Army: parachute infantry. He was assigned to what became the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, a unit that would later be recognized as the first American paratroopers to make a combat jump, seizing an airfield near Oran, Algeria, in November 1942.
Senator Mitch McConnell’s tribute in the Congressional Record, based on wartime recollections from Unthank’s comrades, describes the battalion training by jumping from planes flying only 250 to 300 feet over the drop zone. Once over enemy territory, pilots refused to descend that low, forcing the men to jump from about 2,000 feet, a far more dangerous height for early parachute gear. Unthank and his squad jumped anyway and carried on with the mission.
During his five years in uniform he served behind enemy lines, was wounded by a German grenade in 1943, and received both the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart before his honorable discharge in 1945.
Back to school and back to Harlan
Like many Appalachian veterans, Unthank came home determined to use the GI Bill. He completed undergraduate work at the University of Kentucky, then earned his law degree from the University of Miami School of Law in 1950.
Instead of staying in Florida or seeking a big city firm, he returned to Harlan County to practice law. In a region where college graduates often left for good, that decision mattered. It meant that the same man who had jumped into North Africa and Italy would spend the rest of his life working on the troubles of eastern Kentucky clients.
“You will never be Unthankful with Unthank”
Unthank’s first major public office came in 1951, when he won election as judge of the Harlan County Court. He would hold that position until 1958, handling county business through some of Harlan’s most turbulent postwar years.
On the stump he used a campaign slogan that people still remember: “You will never be Unthankful with Unthank.” McConnell’s Senate tribute notes that he never lost an election, which says something in a county known for hard fought contests.
During the 1950s he was prominent enough in Democratic politics to serve as a delegate to the 1952 Democratic National Convention, linking Harlan County courthouse politics to the national party machine.
Prosecutor for the 26th Judicial District
After returning to private practice, Unthank shifted into federal service as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky from 1966 to 1969. In that role he prosecuted federal crimes in a region that was beginning to see more serious drug, firearms, and white collar cases.
He then moved back into state court as Commonwealth’s Attorney for the 26th Judicial District, serving roughly from 1970 to 1980.
Newspaper coverage from the Floyd County Times in the early 1980s, looking back at cases he had tried, shows Unthank as a familiar figure in eastern Kentucky criminal courtrooms. One 1981 story on a Floyd County fraud case notes that United States District Judge G. Wix Unthank set high bail for defendants tied to questionable oil and gas promotion schemes, reflecting the courts’ growing concern over energy speculation in the region.
Another article, titled “Father and Son Get Pen Terms,” reports on a five year sentence he imposed in a federal case, illustrating his reputation for imposing meaningful penalties in serious criminal matters.
A Harlan judge on the federal bench
On December 19, 1979, President Jimmy Carter nominated Unthank to a brand new Article III seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The Senate confirmed him on June 18, 1980, and he received his commission the same day.
The seat itself was unusual. It was created by federal statute to relieve a heavy caseload, and later, when President Ronald Reagan certified Unthank as disabled in 1987 and allowed an additional judge to be appointed, Congress specified that no successor would ever be named to his original seat. In effect, the position was tied to him personally, and then abolished.
Unthank took senior status on June 14, 1988, but his colleagues and the Congressional Record both emphasize that he kept an extraordinary workload for a senior judge, continuing to hear social security appeals, bankruptcy matters, and civil cases well into his eighties.
Published opinions and orders on sites like CourtListener and Justia show his name on hundreds of cases with eastern Kentucky addresses: miners fighting over black lung benefits, disabled workers appealing denied claims, and rural residents struggling with federal bureaucracy. In Moore v. Social Security Administration, for example, he wrote a memorandum opinion affirming the agency’s decision yet walking carefully through the medical evidence, a style typical of his social security rulings.
By the time Senator McConnell rose to salute him in 2012, Unthank had logged more than six decades in the law. McConnell called him “a brave veteran, a wise jurist, and a confirmed patriot,” and praised the sense of family he fostered among the judges and staff of the Eastern District.
Faith, family, and the final journey home
Unthank’s roots never left Harlan County. He married Marilyn Ward Unthank, and together they made their home in Harlan rather than in Lexington, Covington, or another larger city on his circuit.
The obituary issued by Anderson Laws and Jones Funeral Home describes him as “a longtime and faithful member of the First Presbyterian Church of Harlan,” where he worshiped and eventually lay in state. His funeral service was held there on June 27, 2013, with burial at the Wix Howard Cemetery in Loyall, a hillside graveyard linked to his mother’s Howard family and famous in Harlan history for its Civil War partisan namesake.
He died in Harlan on June 25, 2013, at age 90. Obituaries in the Harlan Daily Enterprise and state papers such as the Lexington Herald Leader and Courier Journal all stressed the same themes: decorated World War II veteran, county judge, prosecutor, federal judge, and mountain Presbyterian who never forgot where he came from.
Honors in the mountains
Unthank’s legacy did not end at his funeral. Harlan County Public Schools previously profiled him as a distinguished alumnus, highlighting his rise from Loyall High School to the federal bench and his example for local students who might imagine a similar path. Although that page has since disappeared from the district website, its contents are preserved in later summaries of his life.
On August 14, 2017, the Commonwealth dedicated a span over the Clover Fork River in his honor, naming it the Green Wix Unthank Memorial Bridge. The crossing lies in the same valley network where he grew up, connecting the routines of modern traffic to the memory of a man who once left these hills by troop ship and airplane before returning to serve them from the bench.
For political historians, he also appears in the Political Graveyard index of officeholders as a Democrat from Harlan who served in the Army, attended the 1952 Democratic National Convention, and sat on the Eastern District court for more than thirty years, all while remaining an active member of First Presbyterian Church.
Why Judge Unthank’s story matters for Appalachia
Green Wix Unthank’s life tells several overlapping Appalachian stories. It is the story of schoolteachers’ son from a coal camp who used public education and the GI Bill to reach the federal judiciary without ever shedding his Harlan County identity. It is the story of a World War II paratrooper from a small mountain town who came home, ran for local office, and earned enough trust that his neighbors never “turned him out” at the polls.
It is also the story of how national institutions depend on people from places like Tway and Loyall. As a federal judge, Unthank spent decades translating complicated federal law for some of the poorest counties in the United States, hearing cases about black lung, disability, and criminal conspiracies that were often rooted in the same structural problems coalfield communities still face.
In his Senate tribute, McConnell said Unthank embodied the phrase carved on the Supreme Court building: “Equal justice under law.” For eastern Kentucky, that motto took on flesh in a man who could look out from the bench and recognize the surnames, hollows, and hardships in front of him.
For Appalachian historians, Judge Green Wix Unthank stands as a reminder that the legal history of the region is not only written in famous Supreme Court cases or national labor struggles, but also in the long, steady work of one mountain jurist who carried Harlan County with him into every courtroom he entered.
Sources and further reading
Anderson Laws and Jones Funeral Home, “Honorable Judge G. Unthank” obituary, June 25 2013. Anderson-Laws & Jones Funeral Home
Mitch McConnell, “Tribute to Judge G. Wix Unthank,” Congressional Record, April 18 2012. Congress.gov
Harlan Daily Enterprise, “Judge decorated WWII veteran dies” and “Unthank. Obituaries – June 26, 2013,” referenced in Military Wiki and Wikipedia entries. Military Wiki+1
Floyd County Times articles mentioning U.S. District Judge G. Wix Unthank, including “Oil, Gas Search May Skip Floyd” (Jan. 7 1981), “Father and Son Get Pen Terms” (Nov. 11 1981), and later coverage of federal education and black lung litigation. FCLib+2FCLib+2
Selected federal cases signed by Judge G. Wix Unthank, such as Moore v. Social Security Administration (E.D. Ky. 2009) and related Social Security appeals. Justia Law+2CourtListener+2
“Green Wix Unthank,” Wikipedia entry (biographical overview, appointment dates, and bridge dedication). Wikipedia+1
“Green Wix Unthank,” Military Wiki (summary of career and citations to Harlan County Public Schools and Harlan Daily Enterprise). Military Wiki
Federal Judicial Center, “U.S. District Courts for the Districts of Kentucky: Judges” and related biographical directory entries. Federal Judicial Center+1
“Green Wix Unthank,” John G. Heyburn II Initiative digital collections entry, University of Louisville Law Library. Heyburn Collections
“Unthank, Green Wix,” Political Graveyard index of politicians and judges. Political Graveyard
Unit histories of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion and 509th Infantry Regiment, including Army History and Army.mil overviews of World War II operations. Wikipedia+2army.mil+2