Aug. 24, 2012 —     A Morehead woman grieving the tragic loss of her first-born child says before he died, the two of them received a blessing.

    “Quite frequently he held his emotions in,” said Lois Tackitt. “It was important for us; for him to be able to tell me he loved me and his nana and his girlfriend and for me to be able to tell him that we loved him.”

    Josh Ferguson, 30, of 250 Conn Rd., Morehead, died Tuesday afternoon in a logging accident.  

    The accident happened about noon, Rowan County Coroner John Northcutt says, in a remote wooded area off of Lower Licking Road (KY 1722).

    “There were two men with him,” Northcutt says. “One man was with him when the incident occurred and the other man was a few feet away. It was witnessed by him.”

    A tree fell on Ferguson.

    “In my opinion, the injury that he sustained– if this had happened at the hospital he still would not have survived,” Northcutt says. “This was a traumatic injury.”

    Ferguson asked the witness to call his mother, Lois Tackitt, so he could speak with her. The witness called Tackitt from his own cellphone, not Ferguson’s.

    “Normally I don’t answer the phone at work unless I know who it is,” Tackitt says. “I think the Lord just spoke to me and said, ‘This is a call you need to take.’”

    Tackitt has been speaking to newspaper and television reporters about her final conversation with her son, which she admits has been difficult.

    “The media have been kind and respectful and honored him in a way that I didn’t ask for,” she says. “I commented but I didn’t ask for it. Here it is two days out and people are still calling and keeping his memory alive in a good way. There’s not a lot of good news out there.”

    Ferguson was a captain of the Elliottville Volunteer Fire Department. His first love was logging.  

    After working part-time temporary jobs for Rowan County and Packs’ Inc., he got a job with Morehead State University as a police dispatcher.

    “He was good at it,” his mother said. “He worked there for five years. It was a really tiny room and he said, ‘Mom, I can’t do this. I feel like a caged animal.’”

    He also told her he was disappointed to not be able to respond as often to emergency calls.

    Two or three years ago, she says, he decided to go back to logging.

    “We all told him it was dangerous,” Tackitt recalled. “I would say, ‘It’s a good, honest living but it’s so dangerous,’ and he’d always say the same thing: ‘Yeah, Mom, I know but I love it.’ It’s hard because you want your child to be happy.”

    Northcutt ruled Ferguson’s death accidental. He pronounced him dead at the scene at 12:56 p.m.

    Tackitt says she could not handle dealing with her son’s death if not for her personal faith.

    “I think you just get strength when you need it,” she says. “It’s hard now and it’s going to be hard for a while.”

    Not only did she get to have a good final conversation with her son, so did her husband of 28 years, Bill Tackitt, a few days earlier.

    “Josh was his stepson but Josh was three when we got married,” she says. “He was like his own. This past Saturday Josh went to get a part for a four-wheeler and Bill decided to go with him. Bill will always cherish that time they got to talk and share stories and catch up. Bill is just as hurt as the rest of us.”

    Ferguson was planning to marry his fiancée, 26-year-old Tiphanie Bowling, in a month.  

    “They were the happiest couple you ever would have met,” she says. “Tiphanie had brought a side out of him that maybe never would have gotten out.”

    She says Bowling’s two children, Oliver and Lauren, adored her son who was to become their stepfather.

    “It was amazing to see them together. Oliver would see him on a tractor and try to climb the fence because he wanted to get on that tractor with him,” she says.    

    She did not start to realize how much people appreciated her son until after his death.

    “Sadly, he would leave holiday dinners with his family and the people he loved to help a stranger,” she says. “It’s gratifying to me to know that he was appreciated.”

    Ferguson’s family has received an outpouring of love and support, Tackitt says, from phone calls to Facebook messages to food.

    Ferguson lived just down the road from his mother, stepdad and grandmother. There is a path from Tackitt’s home to her son’s, where the two would either walk or ride a four-wheeler to visit each other.

    “I’m going to miss those walks,” she says.

    Ferguson’s death is under investigation by Northcutt and Trooper Keith Howard. No foul play is suspected.

    Nicole Sturgill can be reached at nsturgill@themoreheadnews.com or by telephone at 784-4116.