Family remembers Hopkins Co. teen on 1st official ‘Live Like Logan’ Day

HOPKINS CO., Ky. (WFIE) - Thursday marked “Live Like Logan Day” in Hopkins County Kentucky.

For the family of Logan McKnight of Dawson Springs, it marks a date every bit as important as the approaching anniversary of the deadly December 10 tornado.

Over the last 11 months, the sad, snarling of chainsaws has given way to hammer blows of hope.

It’s the difference between tearing down and building back.

Last Dec. 10, as the killer tornado bore down on Dawson Springs, the McKnight family took cover in the basement.

Wife and mother, Ashley McKnight, remembers diving under their pool table.

“Every house around us was destroyed,” Ashley recalled. “The house across the street was totally down, the house beside us was totally down. We were the only house that had four walls and a roof.”

Six of the 19 people killed in Hopkins Co., died in the immediate vicinity of the McKnight’s house.

While the McKnight home was up-right, it was un-livable. The family would have to move out. They had every reason to stay out and start over somewhere else.

But they had one reason to rebuild which ultimately proved impossible to resist, the loving memories of 18-year-old Logan McKnight were still very fresh in this place.

“Logan, he had his accident on November 23 and passed away on the 24,” Ashley said.

16 days before the tornado, Logan died as a passenger traveling with two friends to watch a watch a basketball game in a nearby town.

“It was an accident. I mean they where going through this really sharp turn, signage isn’t the greatest right through there,” Ashley said. “They weren’t familiar with it and he just missed the stop sign, went through the intersection and a car was coming.”

This boy was “the man” at Dawson Springs High School. A star athlete in multiple sports and the class president, Logan addressed his classmates at commencement, paying tribute to his super hero family, especially his mother.

At his graduation Logan said:

“There is one person in this world that is as close to a super hero as there ever will be and that’s my mom. I love you. Thank you for pushing me. Thank you for caring. Whenever I needed a shoulder to put my head on you were always there. I love you for that.”

“If he only knew,” Ashley said. “He was my superman. That kid, he had a heart of gold.”

Logan’s random acts of kindness for his friends and family were legendary in Dawson Springs.

One week before the accident, Logan came home from Western Kentucky University and took his younger sister Kara McKnight to a school dance. The memory is preserved on a blanket in what was Logan’s room, but is now hers.

“It’s very special to know that I have his necklace,” Kara said. “I have his hat. I have everything about him. I have his room.”

16 days after Logan died, the tornado threatened to inflict a double catastrophe on the McKnight family.

While they survived the initial impact, Ashley’s husband, Jason, and their oldest son, Jett, both of them police officers, rushed into the darkness to rescue their neighbors.

“You just lost somebody and you are watching two other people you love dearly and they are running right into it,” Ashley said.

You might say they were ‘Living like Logan.’ Or Logan lived like them. Being there for others is the family business.

That’s the reason the school created the “Live Like Logan” wrist band.

“And the ‘Live Like Logan,’ it just kind of started, and every now and then people would say, ‘I’m having a “Live Like Logan” moment’ or ‘I’m doing a good deed for somebody.’”

And it’s why Governor Andy Beshear declared November 24 “Live Like Logan Day.”

The McKnight’s next ‘Live Like Logan’ project is to make the intersection where Logan had the accident safer, so other families won’t have to experience what they have been through.

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