Our goal is to preserve access to the cemetery where Korean War Marine veteran Bearl Jones is buried. The road leading to the cemetery has deteriorated, making it difficult for my family to reach the gravesite and honor our loved one. This project is about more than preserving a road—it is about keeping a promise made by a family to never forget a son, brother, husband, father, and United States Marine who served his country during the Korean War.
The funds raised will be used for brush and tree removal, excavator or dozer work to reopen the roadway, gravel and road repair materials, culvert replacement and drainage improvements, cemetery maintenance equipment, and an emergency reserve for unexpected repairs. Any support received beyond our goal will be used for continued maintenance of the cemetery and road access so future generations of our family can continue visiting and honoring those buried there.
Your support—whether through donating, sharing this fundraiser, or spreading the word—will help preserve access for my family and honor the memory of Bearl Jones. Thank you for helping us keep this tradition alive and for supporting our effort to remember and honor our history.
A Promise Kept: The Story of Bearl Jones
In the hills of Eastern Kentucky, where the land rolls steady and quiet and the past lingers in every hollow, there was once a small community called Lucky outside the county seat of West Liberty, Morgan County, KY. It wasn’t much by most standards—just a one-room schoolhouse, a handful of homes, and families who worked the land or went underground into the coal mines. But to those who lived there, it was everything.
Bearl Jones came from a coal mining town in Eastern Kentucky. He moved to Lucky when he met and married.
He was the second born of eleven children, the first son in a hardworking family rooted in coal mining and farming. Like so many young men of his time, he grew up understanding responsibility early. Strength, loyalty, and love for family were things he was taught—they were
simply the way life was lived.
But Bearl wanted to serve something bigger than himself.
He left those Kentucky hills behind and became a United States Marine, answering the call to serve his country during the Korean War. Far from home, in a land most people back in Eastern Kentucky had never even heard of, he fought with courage and honor. He survived war. He endured what many could not. And then he came home.
Back in Kentucky, Bearl married his sweetheart, Loyce. Together they began building a life rooted in love and hope. Not long after, they welcomed a daughter, Phyllis—a new beginning, a promise of the future.
But life can be both beautiful and heartbreakingly short. In 1955, at just 25 years old, Bearl Jones passed away from bleeding ulcers. His daughter was only one year old. A man who had survived war was taken too soon by illness, leaving behind a young wife, a baby girl, and a family forever changed.
He had one request—to be buried on top of a hill near Lucky.
There was no road leading there at the time. So the people who loved him carried him. Step by step, up that hillside, they bore his casket to the place he chose to rest. It was not easy, but love rarely is. They laid him to rest overlooking the land that shaped him.
Over time, others were buried there too—five members of his wife’s family joining him on that quiet hill. But as the years passed, Lucky faded away. The homes disappeared. The schoolhouse is gone. Nature slowly reclaimed the land. All that remains is the cemetery. Loyce, until her passing, and now Phyllis always have it mowed, but that is getting harder and harder to do.
For 55 years until her death at the age of 99 years old, Bearl’s mother, Nellie Jones, made the journey to visit her son’s grave. Through seasons, through aging, through life’s hardships—she never forgot. She kept her promise until her passing in 2010.
And now, that promise lives on.
His daughter, his siblings, their children, and now future generations of the Jones family continue to honor him. They return to that hill as best they can, remembering the man in the Marine dress blues whose photograph once hung proudly on their mom and mamaw's wall—handsome, brave, and gone too soon.
But time is making that promise harder to keep. The road that once led near the cemetery is disappearing. Brush and trees are taking over. What was once a place of gathering is becoming harder to reach. The fear is not just inconvenience—it is loss. The fear that this sacred place, like the town of Lucky itself, could vanish.
And that is something the family cannot accept.
Bearl Jones fought for his country. He gave his strength, his time, and his youth in service. All his family asks now is the ability to continue honoring him—to reach the place where he rests, to stand on that hill, and to remember.
So the family has begun a cemetery fund, doing what they can to restore access. The remaining four siblings, now in their later years, are still trying. The next generations are stepping in beside them.
Because this is more than a road.
It is a promise.
A promise that Bearl Jones will never be forgotten.
A promise carried up a hill long ago—and still being carried today.