Early Life
Whitley was born to Faye (editor of The Elliott County News) and Elmer Whitley (an electrician) in Ashland, Kentucky, but grew up 46 miles away in Sandy Hook, and attended Sandy Hook High School. He had two brothers, Randy and Dwight, and a sister, Mary. The Whitley family has lived in the Elliot County area since the 1840s.
As a teenager in Sandy Hook, Whitley and his friends would pass the time drinking bootleg bourbon and racing their cars down mountain roads at dangerous speeds. Whitley was once in a car whose driver attempted to round a curve at 120 mph. The car wrecked, killing his friend and almost breaking Whitley's neck. In another incident, he drove his car off a 120 foot cliff into a frozen river, escaping with only a broken collar bone.
Read more about this topic: Keith Whitley
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life ... can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)