LIPPERT, LEON
The Lionel Flying Field lasted barely one year. In its short history, it provided entertainment for community celebrations, through stunt shows and aerial parades. More importantly, the airfield was an attraction that lured new residents to Edgewood. An advertising campaign encouraged people to visit the new Edgewood subdivision development when they attended events at the Lionel Flying Field. During the 1940s, Stephenson worked for the federal government at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Fairborn, Ohio. Later Stephenson, who was also an artist, owned and operated several printing companies in Covington for 30 years. He died in 1968. His airfield at one time, along with the Crescent Air Park in Crescent Springs and Boyer Field in Ross, marked the beginnings of general aviation in Northern Kentucky before the opening of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Boone Co. “Contract of Leasehold,” Kenton Co. Court house Records, Covington, Ky. “Crowd Thrilled: Stunt Fliers Do Their Stuff as New Field Opens,” KP, May 5, 1930, 2. “Lionel Stephenson, Artist-Aviator,” KE, February 10, 1968, 20. “Seeks Honors at Air Show,” KP, August 30, 1931, 1.
Steven D. Jaeger
LIONS CLUBS. As members of Lions Clubs International, Northern Kentucky’s Lions chapters share in the mission “to serve their communities, meet humanitarian needs, encourage peace and promote international understanding.” In 1917 Melvin Jones, a Chicago businessman, convened a group of business clubs interested in supporting unselfish causes. Before this time, many such clubs were primarily interested in the betterment of their own members. The Lions were subsequently organized, and chapters opened quickly nationwide and throughout the world. In 1925 Helen Keller addressed the international convention of the Lions in Cedar Point, Ohio, asking them to adopt work on behalf of the blind and visually impaired. They accepted the challenge and have become known for their philanthropy in this area, as well as their programs for the disabled, the deaf and hearing-impaired, youth, and the environment. They also sponsor diabetes education and provide international disaster relief. Lions membership numbers 1.3 million men and women in 45,000 clubs, which are located in 202 nations. The oldest Lions Club in Northern Kentucky is the Maysville one, established in 1929. By the 1940s additional chapters had been organized in Brooksville, Butler, Corinth, Covington, Dayton, Erlanger, Fort Thomas, Newport, Owenton, and Warsaw. From the earliest days, Lions Clubs’ benevolence in behalf of eyesight has ranged from sponsoring visual-screening programs for schoolchildren, to buying glasses and paying for cataract surgery for persons unable to do so, to purchasing and training seeing-eye dogs. The Lions Clubs also funded sightsaving classes for the visually impaired at Covington’s 10th District School, a program started in
February 1955. Fundraising activities have been varied. The Northern Kentucky clubs sponsored an annual Mile-of-Dimes campaign, often with the slogan “Give That Others Might See.” This campaign featured “tag days” in downtown areas, where volunteers manning booths accepted donations and gave tags in return. In schools, the clubs distributed cardboard holders with slots for the placement of dimes so that young children could become involved. The Covington Lions Club, and later Ludlow’s chapter, sponsored an annual Turtle Derby, and the Erlanger Lions Club began an annual carnival in 1946. In 1954 the Erlanger Lions purchased property on Commonwealth Ave. in Erlanger as the site for their carnival, and they held it there through 1961. In 1958 members of the Erlanger club were instrumental in establishing the Triple “E” Swim Club, the first community swim club in Northern Kentucky. Erlanger Lions Park, on 27 acres on Sunset Ave. in Florence, is the current home of the Lions Club. Northern Kentucky chapters of Lions Clubs International now operate in the following places, established in the years indicated: Alexandria (1965), Bellevue (1957), Brooksville (1940), Butler (1945), Carrollton (1987), Corinth (1948), Covington– Kenton Co. (1940), Erlanger (1945), Falmouth (1966), Florence (1952), Fort Thomas (1940), Hebron (1956), Independence (1981), Lewisburg–Mill Creek (1966), Mayslick (1959), Maysville (1929), Orangeburg (1988), Owenton (1945), Sardis (1986), Taylor Mill (1961), Warsaw (1946), and Washington (1960). Clubs existed earlier in Bellevue, Dayton, Fort Mitchell, Ludlow, and Newport. “Covington Lions Club to Receive Its Charter,” KP, November 15, 1940, 1. Lions Clubs International. www.lionsclubs.org/EN/ index.shtml (accessed September 5, 2008). “Lions Clubs of Northern Kentucky Launch Annual Mile-of-Dimes Campaign,” KP, December 5, 1945, 1. Local history vertical fi les, Kenton Co. Public Library, Covington, Ky. Reis, Jim. “Festive Challenges: Lions Overcome Ups and Downs to Continue Their Money-Making Carnival,” KP, July 16, 1984, 8K. “Sight-Saving Work Outlined for Lions,” KP, March 5, 1955, 1.
Paul A. Tenkotte
LIPPERT, LEON (b. March 15, 1863, Sailauf, Germany; d. June 27, 1947, Newport, Ky.). Born Leonard Lippert, this portrait painter was the youngest son of Johann and Anna Maria Bergmann Leonard Lippert. He left his life as a poor shepherd boy in Germany and sailed for the United States in 1880 to pursue a career in fine art. He settled in the Cincinnati area in 1885 and later, for a short time, resided with relatives at John’s Hill (modern Wilder) in Campbell Co. He was living in Sedamsville, Ohio, when he met his future wife, Wilhelmina Miller. At that time Lippert worked as a cooper by day and studied evenings at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He moved to Newport, married in 1890, and resided in Newport the rest of his life. Possessing a natural talent for drawing faces, Leon Lippert opened his first Cincinnati portrait
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studio in 1889 and maintained a downtown studio at various addresses for the next 58 years, painting mostly in oils or pastels. His brush styles ranged from academic realism to strong American impressionism. He deviated briefly from his career in 1897–1900, when he partnered with entrepreneur Charles G. Cox to form the Reliable Art Company in Cincinnati at 621 Main St. Success in producing crayon portraits, sold from six wagons and produced with the aid of a staff of 40, brought prosperity to the Lipperts and their children, Elsie, Raymond, and Ralph. Lippert attended the Life Classes of Frank Duveneck faithfully for nearly 20 years and was active in the Cincinnati Art Club as a director (1905), vice president (1922), and ultimately an honorary life member (1938). Periodically, he supplemented his income through commercial art for use in advertising, most of which depicted females attired in 1920s-era finery or American Indian costumes. Numerous pupils apprenticed in his art studio. Lippert’s first important painting commission (1904–1908), for the Loyal Legion, was to create portraits of Union Army officers who had Ohio connections. The most famous of these is a portrait of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, now hanging with others in the series at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn. Lippert painted portraits of many notable persons on both sides of the Ohio River and from 1915 to 1930 painted members of the prominent Wagner and Thedieck families in Sidney, Ohio. Independently, he painted from photographic sources U.S. presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and all the Ohio-born presidents. Commissions to portray religious subjects and clerics for the Diocese of Covington (see Roman Catholics) were undertaken during the 1930s, culminating in an assignment to paint the entire line of Covington bishops, a task Lippert completed during the last four years of his life. In his final decade of work as a painter, he produced mostly landscapes and flower paintings in addition to some portraits and religious works. Lippert regularly received mural commissions from churches and commercial establishments. Extant examples of such works in Northern Kentucky include two 9-by-5-foot canvases (1915) that were removed from the Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Newport on the closing of that church. The murals were restored and reinstalled at Holy Spirit Parish in St. Stephen Church on Washington St. in Newport. In addition, there are three large sanctuary murals at St. Joseph Catholic Church, Camp Springs, Ky. (1917), and 36 Gospel narrative scenes in Sacred Heart Catholic Church (now Divine Mercy Parish), Bellevue (1924). The St. Stephen Church was Lippert’s own parish, where he was married and where his funeral was conducted. There in the church he attended hang colorful Stations of the Cross that he painted on copper for the dedication of the parish’s new church in 1938. Earlier Stations of the Cross at Corpus Christi Church and at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, John’s Hill, Ky., credited to Lippert, have been lost, as have been murals in the Cincinnati churches