A Real Benefit

I will have to go back and look, but I think I started this blog in late 2007.  One of the benefits of it has been getting random e-mails from people who found something of interest on my blog.  Sometimes it's somebody who thinks we could be related - and they might be living in Texas, Oregon, Ohio etc..  Other times it's people interested in my hometown.  For example, a person drove through Headland and ate at Edd's back in the '60s.  My post about Edd's brought back memories, and so they desired to share theirs.  And in the case below, a person was researching Uncle Watty (Watt Espy, the death penalty historian), and they wanted to learn even more about him.

From: Kung Li 
To: majorespy@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 8, 2012 10:12 AM
Subject: your uncle Watt Espy

Hello there Major Allen Espy,

My name is Kung Li and I am an admirer of your uncle Watt Espy’s life work.  

By way of background on me, from 1999-2010, I was an attorney and then the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, a public interest law firm that represents prisoners and people on death row.  I knew about the Espy File, but did not think about it much at all.  After I stepped down from SCHR, I was able to spend more time writing.  My current piece started out as a short reflection about the scene at the prison on the night of Troy Davis’s execution, but when I went looking for some stats specific to Georgia, I came across the Espy File (of course) and was stunned -  what an incredible collection!

So incredible, in fact, that my essay has taken a detour into being more about the Espy File than about Troy Davis, and I am headed up to Albany the week after next to do a little digging around the files themselves.

I am wondering if you have any advice or thoughts about what I should pay attention to at the archives? I have some items I am particularly interested in – the executions meted out after slave revolts, for example – but am otherwise wide open.  I know this is a vague question, but it seems from your blog documenting your family’s history that a bit of whatever it is that gave your uncle the curiosity + stamina to compile the Espy file got passed on to you…and so I suspect you have some thoughts about your uncle’s work.   

With great respect,

Kung Li

(Lisa Kung)