Actor James Best, best known for playing the giggling and inept Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard, shook hands with Travis Goff, 6, of Jackson, on Sept. 19, 1981, during Perry County’s Black Gold Festival in Hazard. Travis was on the shoulders of his cousin James Darren Williams, 16, also of Jackson. Best and three other characters from the TV show — Sorrell Booke as Boss Hogg, Catherine Back as Daisy Duke and Rick Hurst as Cletus — were grand marshals in a parade and helped dedicate Hazard’s new $1 million city hall. Organizers estimated the crowd to be 30,000 to 40,000 people. While in Hazard, Best met up with a brother he had not seen in 50 years. Best was born in the Western Kentucky coal-mining community of Powderly, near Central City in Muhlenberg County. One of nine children, he was adopted from an Indiana orphanage at age 4 after his mother died. Through the years, he had lost contact with many of his siblings. Best died April 6, 2015 from complications of pneumonia. He was 88.  Photo by David Perry | Staff