BRADY FLANIGAN
Editor
How groundbreaking can a groundbreaking be if there’s enough of them occurring across America that out there somewhere—perhaps buried in the mountains of coal country—a custom shovel business exists, specifically for making polished silver shovels with the handler’s name laser-printed on the shaft?
Evidently just enough to satisfy market demand. Well, some of those shovels have made their way to the office corners of Bedford County officials. Because on Friday, Aug. 1, the Shelbyville-Bedford Chamber of Commerce set course toward constructing a new 911 emergency communications facility on 719 Industrial Parkway, just across the street from the Shelbyville Animal Control Center and Public Works Department.
“Today, we not only break ground on a building—we break ground on a stronger, safer future.”
That future, they said, comes with a larger building, cutting-edge tools, and the kind of tech other counties might envy.
“We’re about to build a world-class, state-of-the-art 911 center right here where we’re standing.”
There were nods to the past. To former board members. To the days of landlines, and the funding model that nearly collapsed with them. There was a joke about shovel holders looking like shotgun racks, and a nod to the dispatchers who couldn’t make it to the ceremony—“We don’t close. Sure hope we don’t ever close.”
Dispatchers gathered off to the side under a stand of trees. “They are the real guests of honor,” said Clerk and Master Curt Cobb.
In the middle of the ceremony, a batch of small, circular objects were passed out—challenge coins, struck for the occasion. Not just decorative, but symbolic.
“They’re not just coins. They carry meaning…They show who you are, your mission, your identity. They commemorate what cannot be forgotten.”
Etched across the top in Latin: Primis Scire, Primis Agere. First to Know, First to Act.
“These are not superheroes,” someone said. “They’re human. Ordinary men and women with ordinary emotions who perform extraordinary duty.”
There were references to the quiet brutality of the job—collapsed lungs, gunshots, suicides unfolding over the phone. Children crying. Strangers gasping for air. The dispatchers take it all in. Process it. Relay it out. Then quietly carry the weight home.
“They do this while hearing things most of us would never forget if we only heard them once… and they do it daily.”
The crowd applauded as dispatchers were named one by one. “You might not climb a ladder. You might not carry a badge. You might not carry a stretcher. But you carry us.”
Some weren’t present—either sleeping off a night shift or “holding the fort down.” Their names were still read nonetheless.
County finance and IT staff were also recognized, credited for securing a 3.9% bond interest rate—“I don’t think anybody in the state’s had that in a long time”—and for being the ones who show up after hours when things break.
And then there was the man who kept the whole operation running, Phillip Noel—who’d helped navigate bombings and legislation and regulatory overhaul. Who married, as one speaker put it, “way up.”
His biggest accomplishment? “He married Betsy Noel.”
