Characterizing his and his wife's habit of neighborliness as "cupcakes for the wounded," Hollis Spurgeon Summers, Jr., reveals his charming, self-effacing humor. Born in Eminence, Kentucky, to Hollis Spurgeon and Hazel Holmes Summers, Hollis Summers spent his youth living in Baptist parsonages in Louisville, Campbellsville, and Madisonville. As the older brother in a family where grandfather, father, and uncle were all preachers, Summers was expected to accept the ministry as his vocation. The tradition was, in fact, so virtually absolute that his grandmother insisted he kneel before his grandfather's casket and promise he would accept his inheritance by becoming a minister. Twenty years old at the time, Summers refused to make the promise.

Summers did, however, follow the example of his father's family by graduating from Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky. He received an A.B. in English in 1937. During college and afterward as a high-school teacher in...