March 2024 | Kentucky Monthly Magazine

with Kentucky Explorer

The GLASS National Art Museum

HONORS THE GENIUS OF STEPHEN ROLFE POWELL

Louisville’s Frazier History Museum Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary

The Belle of Louisville

The Distinctive Geologic Formations of Carter Caves

A Conversation With Ben Chandler

14

20 Kentucky’s Welcome Mat

The Frazier History Museum celebrates its 20th anniversary

33

38 Happy Days

Ben Chandler remembers his grandfather Happy Chandler’s eventful term as baseball commissioner— including Happy’s role in breaking the color barrier

42 River City Treasure

The iconic Belle of Louisville has been through several incarnations during its 110 years on the water and continues to offer cruises

kentucky kwiz

Test your knowledge of our beloved Commonwealth. To find out how you fared, see the bottom of Vested Interest.

1. Ashland’s Gail Wynters began singing at 3 with the Shivel Family Singers, becoming a darling of the New York City and Nashville jazz scenes. With whom did Wynters team up for her last album, Boogie to Heaven?

A. Robbie Robertson

B. Paul McCartney

C. Dr. John

2. Born in 1886, this Lexingtonian was the first woman to graduate from the University of Cincinnati Law School and the first woman to pass the Kentucky bar. At President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s request, she later served as the first woman to represent the United States at an international conference. Who was she?

A. Nisba Breckinridge

B. Laura Clay

C. Victoria Woodhull

3. Frankfort’s Julia Britton (later Hooks, 1852-1942) was reportedly the first African American to teach white students in Kentucky. At which institution, founded in 1855, did she teach music?

A. Transylvania University

B. Berea College

C. Asbury University (formerly Asbury College)

4. Julia Britton’s sister, Mary, was the first woman to practice medicine in Lexington. She was also a civil rights activist who once highlighted the treatment of ticket-paying Black attendees at an international event. What was that event?

A. The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago

B. The 1897 Imperial Victorian Exhibition in London

C. The 1890 Agricultural and Forestry Exposition in Vienna

5. Cora Wilson Stewart, from Rowan County, and this Laura with a wellknown Kentucky surname were the first women to be nominated for the U.S. presidency at a major American political party’s convention (the 1920 Democratic National Convention). What was Laura’s last name?

A. Todd

B. Breckinridge

C. Clay

6. Delia Webster, an abolitionist whose Trimble County home was burned for being part of the Underground Railroad, faced two years at the Kentucky State Penitentiary for this “crime” but served only five weeks due to what reason?

A. The warden, though staunchly pro-slavery, became enamored with her and asked the governor to pardon her.

B. Slavery was outlawed, and the case was thrown out as moot.

C. The warden was an abolitionist who petitioned the governor for a pardon on moral grounds.

7. Delia Webster helped Lexingtonian Lewis Hayden escape slavery, and he and his wife, Harriet, went on to establish a boarding house for escapees. Hayden was inspired to escape when which famous soldier passed through Kentucky and tipped his hat at him?

A. Daniel Boone

B. Richard Butler

C. Marquis de Lafayette

8. John Hunt Morgan’s grandson, Garrett, was a prolific inventor whose brilliant innovations included an early version of this.

A. The automatic washing machine

B. The traffic signal

C. Windshield wipers

This month’s Kwiz is provided by Lexington’s Leif Erickson, a trumpet-playing associate professor at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, itinerant philologist and purveyor of educational opportunity.

Celebrating the best of our Commonwealth

© 2024, Vested Interest Publications

Volume Twenty-Seven, Issue 2, March 2024

Stephen M. Vest

Publisher + Editor-in-Chief

Editorial

Patricia Ranft Associate Editor

Rebecca Redding Creative Director

Deborah Kohl Kremer Assistant Editor

Ted Sloan Contributing Editor

Cait A. Smith Copy Editor

Senior Kentributors

Jackie Hollenkamp Bentley, Jack Brammer, Bill Ellis, Steve Flairty, Gary Garth, Jessie Hendrix-Inman, Mick Jeffries, Kim Kobersmith, Brigitte Prather, Walt Reichert, Tracey Teo, Janine Washle and Gary P. West

Business and Circulation

Barbara Kay Vest Business Manager

Advertising

Lindsey Collins Senior Account Executive and Coordinator

Kelley Burchell Account Executive

Teresa Revlett Account Executive

For advertising information, call 888.329.0053 or 502.227.0053

KENTUCKY MONTHLY (ISSN 1542-0507) is published 10 times per year (monthly with combined December/ January and June/July issues) for $25 per year by Vested Interest Publications, Inc., 100 Consumer Lane, Frankfort, KY 40601. Periodicals Postage Paid at Frankfort, KY and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to KENTUCKY MONTHLY, P.O. Box 559, Frankfort, KY 40602-0559. Vested Interest Publications: Stephen M. Vest, president; Patricia Ranft, vice president; Barbara Kay Vest, secretary/treasurer. Board of directors: James W. Adams Jr., Dr. Gene Burch, Gregory N. Carnes, Barbara and Pete Chiericozzi, Kellee Dicks, Maj. Jack E. Dixon, Bruce and Peggy Dungan, Mary and Michael Embry, Judy M. Harris, Greg and Carrie Hawkins, Jan and John Higginbotham, Frank Martin, Bill Noel, Michelle Jenson McDonnell, Walter B. Norris, Kasia Pater, Dr. Mary Jo Ratliff, Barry A. Royalty, Randy and Rebecca Sandell, Kendall Carr Shelton and Ted M. Sloan.

Kentucky Monthly invites queries but accepts no responsibility for unsolicited material; submissions will not be returned.

kentuckymonthly.com

Readers Write

Love of Learning

Bill Ellis’ October column (page 88) drove me to pull out some volumes of the 1949 edition of The Book of Knowledge: The Children’s Encyclopedia that Leads to Love of Learning. My parents bought the books for me when I was 5 years old.

Even if I couldn’t read all the words, I certainly was intrigued by a great number of illustrations (some were even in color!).

I believe that because each volume was arranged in the same order of topics, it fueled my love for learning.

Each volume contained a short treatise on a particular topic. If I was curious about more, the next succeeding volume was waiting for me. These volumes were my first research sources for school reports. The first poem that I ever memorized because I liked it came from these books—“Trees” by Joyce Kilmer

The love of learning continues. I am game for

any course, library event, study group or program about a topic that piques my interest.

The volumes survived three younger siblings, but I have always thought of them as “my” books.

Thank your for a lovely stroll down memory lane.

Jewel Vanderhoef, Lexington

Article Appreciation

I really enjoyed your “bullying” story (December/January issue, page 64) as well as the historical information on Isaac Shelby (page 38).

Tom Lutz, Prospect Admirable Architectural Writer

Thanks for reviewing Gideon Shryock: His Life and Architecture, 1802-1880 and listing Winfrey Blackburn’s other books (December/ January issue, page 56)!

They are all fabulous, even for someone like me who

had little interest in them until my husband brought them home from Paul Sawyier Public Library. I went over and over them, especially the one on the Old Capitol. I’d find something new every time.

I suppose the magazine was already in the publication process or that you may not have known that he passed away several months ago.

Debbie Kimbrough, Frankfort

Editor’s Note: At press time for the December/January issue, Kentucky Monthly was not aware of Winfrey Blackburn’s passing on Sept. 16, 2023. Our condolences to his family and friends.

Praise for the Lincoln Piece

I very much enjoyed Bill Ellis’ article on Abraham Lincoln (December/January issue, page 58).

Bill Oliver, Professor Emeritus, NKU

We Love to Hear from You! Kentucky Monthly welcomes letters from all readers. Email us your comments at editor@kentuckymonthly.com, send a letter through our website at kentuckymonthly.com, or message us on Facebook. Letters may be edited for clarification and brevity.

UNITING KENTUCKIANS EVERYWHERE.

The Kentucky Gift Guide

travel

MAG ON THE MOVE

South Africa

Even when you’re far away, you can take the spirit of your Kentucky home with you. And when you do, we want to see it!

Barbara (left) and Pete Chiericozzi (right), formerly of Mercer County, circumnavigated Africa on a 73-day cruise aboard the Holland America ship Zuiderdam They are pictured with the chaplain priest for the voyage, Fr. Dennis Knight, whom they had met when he was a priest with the Diocese of Lexington.

Suzy Rogers of Waddy traveled to Cannon Beach, Oregon, where she stayed at the Ocean Lodge with her cousin, Cheryl, and three sisters—Robin, Kathi and Cyndi. Also pictured is Suzy with the car that the hotel uses to transport guests.

The Flynn family—Jim, Linda, Ross and Keshia—traveled from Florence, Kentucky, to Florence, Italy. They all agreed that both Florences are beautiful and unique in their own way! The family is pictured at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

Andy and Laura Stephenson of Winchester visited Honolulu, Hawaii, and hiked to the top of Diamond Head on the south end of Waikiki.

meet us in... prestonsburg

Kentucky Monthly continues our 25th Anniversary festivities in Prestonsburg for the Appalachian Arts & Entertainment Awards.

The Appalachian Arts and Entertainment Awards seeks to celebrate art in all its forms and recognize the artists from or living in our communities all along the Appalachian Mountains who are making the world a more beautiful place to live in through art. Kentucky Monthly invites you to join them at the Appy Awards on March 16.

Fourth in a series

Growing Up Kentucky Monthly

Ijoked about titling this, “My parents are lucky I was never kidnapped.”

I spent most of my childhood weekends at events, fairs, festivals, expos, etc.—from wearing a blueberry costume for the Kentucky Book Fair to wandering around whatever city’s street fair we had a booth at that weekend. Kentucky Monthly magazine is only a few years older than me, so I grew up with it. At some point, instead of having my older siblings babysit me, my parents started taking me to events with them.

When my parents attended fancy receptions or dinners, I dressed up and schmoozed old people or the chefs. As the only person under 40, I was a star. I made BFFLs with a woman who ended up being my sixth-grade teacher (which totally didn’t make me the favorite student or anything), and I tried some excellent food. I hold the Vest sibling record for meeting the most pageant queens—from Tara Conner, Miss USA 2006, to Ann-Blair Thornton, Miss Kentucky 2011.

My favorite thing I’ve gone to with my dad was the Chocolate Crawl in La Grange. I spent the day going to each stop and exploring the town, checking back in at my dad’s booth between stops on the map. Another time that stuck with me was when my dad was a judge for the Harrodsburg Beef Festival with Miss Kentucky 2010 Djuan Keila Trent, and he let me try the food and “judge” with him.

My favorite Kentucky Monthly experience with my mom was a Party City event in Hilton Head, South Carolina. They invited writers from different publications, and their kids came. It was a weekend of themed parties: Halloween, sports, an outside fair-type one and several others. My mom and I spent the whole trip kid-friendly partying, and we stayed in a nice hotel and saw all the sights.

Growing up around the company, I have had a unique experience, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Most of my core memories are doing things through or for the company. As a kid, I’d go to work with my mom. On snow days, I’d pretend to ice-skate around the parking lot. In the summer, I’d go on adventures outside the office building or play hide-and-seek with the office staff when I wasn’t rolling their hair with tissue.

Mountain Arts Center

50 Hal Rogers Drive Prestonsburg, KY 41653 macarts.com

At one point, I made silly little newsletters for the staff with funny jokes or drawings, pretending I was making my own newspaper. I probably wanted to be a graphic designer because of the magazine. When I was in fifth grade, my dad put one of my drawings—about the fort we built together—in his column. In the eighth grade, I wrote my dad’s column—and I thought that was the coolest thing.

I loved growing up with the magazine. Having parents who were their own bosses let me be around them more and experience extraordinary things I wouldn’t have gotten to otherwise. My mom and dad have worked extremely hard to make the magazine what it is, and I’m proud to be one of the Vest Kids.

SYDNEY VEST

Kaitlynne Postel, Miss Kentucky 2007, and Syd strike a pose during a Lexington event.

PURCHASE TICKETS

BY ANGELA CORRELL

At home in Kentuscany

Driving through Tuscany reminds me of a Kentucky treed and winding road that might take me over and around knobs with names like Burnt Cabin or Catholic Knob. I often wonder if these Tuscan hills have local names like the ones I know at home.

Like Kentuckians, Tuscans are rooted to the land, and have a long history of living off the land and foraging from the forest. Faith, family, food, and farm are the themes in both places, and Tuscan hospitality is a sister to our own deep-rooted need to make others welcome.

While our early forts were snugged into valleys close to rivers and creeks, these small Tuscan villages are built high on hills, houses connected roof to roof, with medieval stone walls providing protection from attackers and giving a safe place for commerce and justice. This medieval connection seems ancient to us, yet it is only the beginning of a far-reaching history in Tuscany, going back to the Etruscans.

It is this long and storied history that brings so many tourists each year to appreciate and experience the Italian art, architecture, culture, food, wine, olive oil, and the generosity and craftsmanship of the people in such a picturesque setting. Italy was where we spent our honeymoon, the start of our own relationship with this bootshaped peninsula.

A few years ago, I needed a Tuscan village as a setting for my second novel, but the need went far deeper than that. It was a desire for rest, for a change of direction, for healing. I found all that and more in a tiny medieval village. We returned year after year until we finally decided to take a grand leap of faith and plant roots in foreign soil.

It was a nobleman’s horse stable,

with its terracotta horse medallions and marble memorials on the wall, that called to us in a way unique to our Kentucky roots. With many house and building restorations under our belt in Kentucky’s second oldest city, we didn’t want to tackle a restoration in a foreign country. However, some things choose us.

We took our rural small-town roots into this adventure. Our ancestors carved their way into the Kentucky wilderness before it was even a state. Neither of us have ever lived outside of a 50-mile radius from the place of our birth. Yet the desire to see a new place is strong, even if it is to say that what I know is good. This long held desire to travel beyond now find us straddling both places, claiming citizenship in a place we can only describe as Kentuscany.

While time in our village produced a second and then the final book in my fiction trilogy, the restoration adventure became the subject of a new book. Restored in Tuscany: Facing Loss, Finding Beauty, and Living Forward in Hope is about a home and heart restoration. It is a story of love, loss and the transformation that can emerge from embracing life’s unforeseen challenges. It’s a reminder that it’s never too late to make a change. A reminder that while we face the reality of grief, pain and struggle in this life, there is always room for hope and beauty. And it’s a neverending process, a journey that will take you to surprising places.

Angela Correll is the author of Restored in Tuscany, along with Grounded, Guarded and Granted, a trilogy of novels that have been adapted to the stage for sold-out audiences at the Pioneer Playhouse. She and her husband, Jess, are co-founders of Kentucky Soaps & Such, The Stanford Inn, The Bluebird, Mama DeVechio’s Pizzeria and Esther’s Wellhouse, all located in the historic downtown of Stanford, Kentucky where a little Italy has been infused into this small town.

music

by Laura Younkin

Gone West

Musicians in Kentucky frequently go to Nashville to make a name for themselves. Some go to New York City or Chicago. Kentuckian Aaron Davis took a different path. He headed to Wyoming and has crafted a music career for himself there.

Davis was born in Bowling Green, went to middle school in Lexington, and attended high school at Western Hills in Frankfort before graduating from Western Kentucky University. How did a Kentucky boy become “an essential force in the Americana roots music scene in Wyoming,” according to Jackson Hole Community Radio, KHOL?

Davis said that, after graduating from WKU, “I headed west. And I’ve been here ever since.” Davis lives in Hoback, Wyoming, which he explained is the southern end of Jackson. “I had a writing internship at Cascade Policy Institute, a think tank in Portland, Oregon, for four months,” he said. “I stopped in Jackson Hole on my way to Oregon for five days and decided to return to JH for the summer. Twenty-two summers later, I still love this place despite its propensity to attract billionaires/millionaires, which makes it harder for artists and the general workforce to live here.”

While more than halfway across the country, Davis still holds his family and Kentucky roots dear. He sees many similarities between the two states. Kentucky has a more deeply rooted music history, he said, but “the cultures are similar in some ways. It’s rural here—very rural. But it’s very much a proud state … They take care of their own.

“I like small towns, so this is a good fit for me. Getting outside has always been important to me. Same as in Kentucky, there’s usually access to the outdoors.”

His music is eclectic, with pronounced folk and Americana influences, and Davis can name several Kentucky musicians who have influenced his style. He has much respect for Merle Travis, Bill Monroe, Dwight Yoakam, Loretta Lynn, John Prine and songwriter Harlan Howard

Digging even deeper into Kentucky’s roots music, Davis, who plays primarily banjo, said his playing style was influenced by Roscoe Holcomb. “I love how Roscoe Holcomb took regional songs out of the hills and hollers and universalized them,” he said. Of modern Kentucky

musicians, he likes Jim James, Darrell Scott, Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson and his friend Nate Jones, who records as N8 Jones. Davis and Jones have been friends since college, and Davis played guitars and banjo on Jones’ recent EP Modus Ponens.

Davis mixed the EP at his studio in Hoback. “N8 is a musical soulmate and brother. We rendezvous about twice a year for regional shows or just to chase fish on Elkhorn Creek [in Franklin County] and write songs,” he said.

Another Kentucky musician, Bonnie Prince Billy (aka Will Oldham), also has Davis’ attention. “There’s a recurring mythology about being a starving artist or a star,” Davis said. He believes the spectrum is more nuanced. “There’s humble space in between.” He offered Oldham as an example.

It’s the space where Davis himself lives. He was part of the now-defunct band Screen Door Porch that toured nationally. Now, he typically performs solo or with his band Aaron Davis and the Mystery Machine. He opened a studio and offers his space and his services to regional artists.

Davis’ wife, Seader Rose, also is a singer, and they occasionally perform together. Davis works as a session musician, does overdub work, writes music freelance and has a small booking agency. He said he’s met so many good musicians over the course of his career, he’s happy to help them find gigs, usually private events.

Davis began his professional music career in 2004 and said it has evolved. He hasn’t had a producer himself for years, but he can offer support to other musicians who take a similar approach.

His 11-year-old Standard Poodle, Scout, works alongside him in the studio. She used to tour with him, but she appreciates being his co-producer. “She’s a nice icebreaker,” Davis said, when someone is new to the studio.

His retired parents live in Bowling Green, and he has siblings in Kentucky, so Davis returns to Kentucky twice a year—usually in the spring and fall. He catches up with family and tries to fit in a couple shows for his Kentucky fans.

Readers can find his tour dates at aarondavismusic. com, and his music is available at several spots.

“AaronDavisMusic.com is the best spot, which also points to all of the usual spots—Bandcamp (aarondavisongs. bandcamp.com) being my favorite for hi-res audio, physical product, and being an artist-forward platform, but of course Apple Music, Spotify and all of the other spots,” he said. “I’m also on all social media and YouTube @AaronDaviSongs. There’s also this link tree that points to everything I mentioned: lnk.bio/aarondavisongs.”

Davis appreciates his Kentucky roots and where Wyoming has brought him. “I’ve now lived in Wyoming as long as I lived in Kentucky and have an affinity for the beauty and grit of each state,” he said.

“In

Fresh Feast

PHOTOS BY HANNAH BROWN

Easter arrives early this year and with it, the usual holiday dinner-table suspects of ham, carrots and asparagus. These recipes, provided by Brigitte Prather of Meal Time Monday on Lexington’s WDKY-TV Fox56, put an interesting spin on the Easter ham, featuring it in a refreshing Cobb salad. Carrots flash their star power in a much-beloved carrot cake with cream cheese icing, and asparagus gets a fun twist by topping a tart.

Smoked Salmon English Muffins round out the light and savory offerings.

Smoked Salmon English Muffins

4 English muffins, split and toasted

4 ounces cream cheese

½ English cucumber, thinly sliced

2 Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced

8 ounces smoked salmon

Pickled red onion, recipe follows Capers and fresh dill, optional, for serving

Freshly ground black pepper, optional, for serving

1. This is pretty much an assembly-only recipe! To assemble, spread the toasted English muffins with cream cheese. Top with a layer of cucumber and tomato, then follow with the smoked salmon.

2. Top with pickled red onion and, if desired, capers and fresh dill. Freshly ground black pepper is a lovely finish.

Pickled Red Onion

1 small or ½ large red onion, sliced

½ cup water

½ cup vinegar (white, apple cider or red wine)

¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1. To pickle the red onion, combine all the ingredients in a Mason jar and stir to dissolve the sugar and salt. Allow to sit and pickle for about an hour before serving.

2. Keep the leftovers in the refrigerator to enjoy on salads, sandwiches, tacos and nachos.

Sky High Carrot Cake

1½ pounds carrots, peeled

2¼ cups sugar

1 cup applesauce

1¼ cups vegetable oil

6 eggs

3 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 tablespoon baking powder

1½ teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

Cream Cheese Icing

2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, left at room temperature for a couple hours

1 stick butter (put this out of the refrigerator with the cream cheese)

3 cups powdered sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 pinch salt

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Grate carrots on the fine holes of a box grater and set aside. I’ve used a food processor or the large holes before, but for the best texture, hand grating on the tiny holes works the best.

3. In the bowl of a mixer, blend the sugar, applesauce and oil. Add eggs and beat to combine.

4. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add the dry ingredients to the mixer and stir to combine. Add the grated carrots and stir to incorporate.

5. Using baking spray, lightly grease three 8- or 9-inch cake pans, line them with parchment circles, then spray the parchment. Divide the batter evenly among the three pans and bake for 35-45 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of each cake comes out clean.

6. Remove cakes from oven and let sit 5 minutes. Flip cakes out onto a cooling rack, remove the parchment, and cool completely.

7. To make icing, beat the cream cheese and butter together to combine. Add powdered sugar, vanilla and salt, and whip it with the paddle attachment on high to incorporate air to make it fluffy and light. Add additional powdered sugar if you want the frosting to be sweeter—I usually don’t measure mine but just spoon it in until it looks and tastes the way I want.

8. To ice the cake, place one cake rightside up on a cake circle, cake stand or plate. Dollop with a mound of icing and spread with an offset spatula to get it as level as possible. Add another cake layer and repeat. I like to flip the last layer upside down to give the top of the cake the best chance at being flat. Use the remainder of the icing to fill in the sides and ice the top. It should cover the cake completely without leaving any leftover icing.

Ham Cobb Salads

1 head iceberg lettuce, cut into 1-inch pieces

1½ cups diced cooked ham

2 ripe avocados, diced

6 hard-boiled eggs, diced or cut into small wedges

2 cups cherry or grape tomatoes, halved

1 bunch radishes, thinly sliced

1 cup crumbled or cubed cheese (blue, cheddar, etc.)

1. Arrange lettuce on a large serving platter. Top with the ham, avocado, eggs, tomatoes, radishes and cheese, arranging everything in rows.

2. Serve with Red Wine Vinaigrette, below.

Red Wine Vinaigrette

2 tablespoons minced onion, shallot or scallion whites

½ cup red wine vinegar

½ cup olive oil

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons sugar

Salt and pepper

Whisk first five ingredients together in a bowl and season with salt and pepper.

Asparagus Tart

1 tablespoon butter

2 onions, thinly sliced

Flour, for rolling

1 sheet store-bought frozen puff pastry, thawed

1 cup grated cheese, such as gruyere or a very sharp white cheddar

1 bunch asparagus, ends snapped (about 18-20 spears)

Olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Melt butter in a skillet over medium-low heat and caramelize the onions until they are nicely browned and jammy. This should take about 20-25 minutes. I keep a cup of water by the stove and, as the sugars brown and stick to the bottom of the pan, I add a couple tablespoons of water to help deglaze the pan and incorporate the sugar back into the onions. Season with salt and set aside.

3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the puff pastry into an even rectangle that measures approximately 10 by 14 inches. Score a ½-inch border around the edges with a sharp paring knife. Using a fork, prick the puff pastry within the border. Bake for 10 minutes until puffed and golden brown. Remove from oven and lightly press down the center of the puff pastry.

4. Spread the caramelized onions in a very thin layer and top with the cheese. Trim asparagus to fit within the frame of the puff pastry, crosswise. Toss asparagus with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

5. Arrange asparagus in a single layer over the cheese, alternating the tips and ends. Bake for 15 minutes or until the asparagus is crisp, tender and bright green. Pencil-thin spears may be done in 10 minutes, while medium-thick asparagus will take 15 minutes or more.

6. Remove from oven and, when ready to serve, cut into squares with a sharp knife.

Dance of Light and Color

The GLASS National Art Museum stunningly commemorates the brilliance of glass artist Stephen Rolfe Powell

BY KIM KOBERSMITH

IF YOU GO:

GLASS National Museum

401 West Main Street

Danville

859.236.4054

glassmuseumky.org

Open Tuesday-Saturday from 10:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Admission is free.

The welcoming installation in Danville’s new GLASS National Art Museum is composed of two works from Stephen Rolfe Powell’s Screamers series. They are large, vibrant, intricate and asymmetrical, each with a long, thin, curved tube of glass emerging from the side to stretch toward the sky. The necks of the vessels are positioned to appear intertwined but are not.

The two are in relationship, but the temper of that bond can morph with the interpretation of the viewer. Is it a marriage of forms? Are the necks curved like graceful swans or sly serpents? Do the pieces embody volatility or intimacy? Are they screaming at each other in anger or in love?

Beyond reflections on mood, Powell’s works in the museum’s main exhibit encourage contemplations on symmetry, balance, transparency and sensuality. The artist’s styles and series, including early works, exhibit a breadth that visually slaked the thirst of this viewer starved for color and light in the dour Kentucky winter.

An internationally known artist, Powell was part of the Danville community for most of his adult life. Thanks to an anonymous donor, the GLASS Museum has the largest collection of his works in the world. The Art Center of the Bluegrass acquired 84 pieces last year with the goal of keeping the collection together and sharing it with the public in this new museum. Powell was a champion of the arts in the region, and this main gallery is permanently dedicated to exhibiting his work.

“We are really honored to have so many of Powell’s pieces and to join other small cities that are national glass centers, like Corning, New York, and Tacoma, Washington,” said Liz Haffner, director of development and communications for the GLASS Museum. “The opportunity to acquire this art collection was a no-brainer, and we feel privileged to carry on Powell’s legacy in the place where he had such have an impact.”

Also on display are several pieces from Powell’s first major series—the Teasers. They look like elaborate vases and were inspired by nature, with references to figs and butterflies. Many of his later exhibit pieces are more fanciful. The appropriately named Whacko series is reminiscent of four-legged animals, if dogs and deer were possessed of an odd number of curlicued legs, a rainbow of fur colors, and transparent, headless bodies.

For those wishing to purchase a piece of glass art, a special sales gallery in the museum features 21 of Powell’s works. Smaller handmade pieces, some created by his former students, are available in the museum shop, Fern Curated Gifts.

Many of Powell’s artworks are intentionally provocative. Consider these names: Copious Solar Lips, Whipping Salacious Stare, Honey Nippled Gaze. Some of his early preseries pieces are even less subtle. The group of “Cheeks,” including yellow, red and peacock versions, are composed of two curvaceous, cleaved halves.

Powell was, in a word, playful.

AN ARTIST AND A TEACHER

It was that sense of play that drew Powell to hot glass. Always an artist, he first worked in ceramics, but he discovered glass in 1981 during summer craft camps at Haystack Mountain School in Maine and Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. It quickly became his obsession, the emerging medium refracting his original artistic path.

Powell grew up in the burgeoning

age of glass art. The studio movement began in 1962, and the Glass Art Society formed in 1971. In the 1990s, Powell’s Teasers series garnered international acclaim, riding the wave of surging interest in glass art. He went on to study and teach the medium in Ukraine, Japan and Venice, the birthplace of hot glass. His creations can be found throughout Kentucky—from Louisville’s Speed Museum to the Maker’s Mark Distillery—and around the world, including at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Auckland Museum in New Zealand.

Powell was drawn to the physicality and collaborative nature of hot glass. One online video at powellglass.com shows his studio mid-production, as he and his assistants heat the glass in a white-hot furnace, roll it on a table to form it, and sculpt it with a wooden paddle.

The rapid finishing process of one

of his Screamers looks like a dance. One assistant stands on scaffolding, holding the glass piece down where the others can reach it. In between large pendulum swings, Powell and two more helpers torch the piece, snip it, buff it, join it, hold it and, finally, detach it to complete it. There is little conversation but a synchronous, creative flow.

Beyond his body of work, Powell left a legacy of glassblowing artists formed during the more than 35 years he taught at Centre College. He established the program in 1985. A gifted educator, he twice received Kentucky’s Teacher of the Year award and, in 2010, was honored with the Artist Award by the Governor’s Award in the Arts.

“GLASS is a perfect way to honor and extend Stephen Rolfe Powell’s legacy,” said Susie Silbert, the former curator of Contemporary Glass at The Corning Museum of Glass—the

PHOTOS

world’s preeminent glass museum.

“Powell is a beloved figure, known as much for his richly colored sculpture as for his inspirational teaching. Through his work at Centre College and the atmosphere of possibility he cultivated there, he made Danville, Kentucky, a beating heart of contemporary glass known across the nation for quality, integrity and the excellence of its graduates.”

THE GLASS MUSEUM VISION

Establishing Powell’s collection at the Art Center of the Bluegrass was inspired and envisioned by his widow, Shelley Powell. In 2022, three years after his death, the center curated a retrospective of his work. The exhibit was a healing experience for Shelley, and she began collaborating with the museum about creating a permanent home for the collection.

The new GLASS Museum builds on the Art Center’s 20-year history as an artistic cornerstone in the region. With this addition, leaders

are aspiring to create a national destination for glass art. Partners such as the City of Danville, South Arts, the Kentucky Arts Council, individual donors and local businesses help to make it a reality. The completed first phase of the Art See expansion plan included the installation of the GLASS National in the center’s original building and the renovation of a neighboring building that now houses a kids educational area, the Murrini Café, and a pay-per-piece art studio space open to all with pottery, wood and paper projects.

“We serve five surrounding counties, and there are kids who have never entered a museum before visiting,” Haffner said. “We hope to be an example for rural Kentucky that you don’t have to travel to a big city to see strong, provocative artwork.”

Aside from exhibit space, the center prioritizes patrons learning about the process and the opportunity to create themselves. The next phase of Art See will

support construction of an on-site glass studio to house demonstrations and classes for the public.

DARK AND LIGHT

A second, smaller glass gallery is tucked upstairs on the right side of the museum building. In the future, it will feature the works of other prominent glass artists. But the current exhibit is of Powell’s Echo series, and viewing it felt otherworldly.

The room was dark, with blackcovered windows and no ambient interior lights. Instead, spotlights were focused on round, flat platters of mosaic glass. They illuminated the beautiful, complex patterns. The echoes and the reverberations of light through the pieces created new, sometimes surprising, compositions on the tables beneath.

“A piece of glass art has a whole different form, in marriage with the light,” Haffner said. Q

The Frazier History Museum

Monday-Saturday 10AM–5PM

Sunday 11AM–4 PM

Kentucky’s Welcome Mat

The Frazier History Museum celebrates its 20th anniversary with yearlong events and exhibits

BY DEBORAH KOHL KREMER

It is not every day you can get a glimpse of Geronimo’s bow and arrow, a uniform worn during the Civil War, a 500-bottle collection of Kentucky bourbon, and a horseshoe worn by Secretariat—all in the same location. At the Frazier History Museum in Louisville, you can.

The museum’s vast collection of relics that delve into Kentucky’s past includes a disco ball made in Louisville, and a dress and tiara from Kentuckian Heather French Henry, Miss America 2000. At least one item goes way back—back to prehistoric times—a mastodon tusk that hails from the Big Bone Lick area in Boone County.

The Frazier, as it is referred to by many, is celebrating its 20th year in 2024 and is spending the next 12 months honoring founder Owsley Brown Frazier, reminiscing about its

past, and looking toward the future.

“Mr. Frazier was such a generous man. He left $400 million to healthcare and education and so many other things,” said Andy Treinen, president and CEO of the museum. “Part of our 20th anniversary is to celebrate his legacy and what he left behind for the people of Kentucky.”

But one can’t look at where the museum is without taking a look at how it came to be.

• • •

The Frazier opened its doors on May 22, 2004, with a splashy event that included a red carpet in front of the newly renovated building at 829 West Main in downtown Louisville. The collection had been years in the making.

Incredibly, it all started with a tornado.

The natural disaster that came to be known as the Super Outbreak

took place April 3-4, 1974, with 148 confirmed tornadoes in 13 states. Kentucky was one of those states, and Louisville saw its share of damage. A tornado destroyed businessman Frazier’s home, and among the lost possessions was a cherished Kentucky Long Rifle that had been made for his great-great-grandfather in the 1820s. The family heirloom had been passed down through the generations but was never recovered after the storm.

Frazier was the owner of Bittners, a Louisville interior design company, and a board member of BrownForman, a company his grandfather founded in 1870. Frazier was well known for his philanthropy throughout Louisville. He had an interest in weaponry, but with this personal loss, he began acquiring antique pieces that eventually led to an exhibit at the Kentucky History Center in Frankfort. Attracting 10,000 people in just two months, the exhibit prompted Frazier to realize that

Photos courtesy of the Frazier History Museum

current exhibits

The many exhibitions that can be experienced at the Frazier take visitors on a journey to the past and celebrate the present, with intriguing weaponry, historical information on the Commonwealth’s beloved bourbon, and items that show what makes Kentucky cool.

others were interested in weaponry, too, so he began to consider opening a museum.

“He had many pieces of his own, but in order to round out the collection, he partnered with the Royal Armouries Museum in London,” said Simon Meiners, communications and research specialist at the museum. “They loaned us 1,000 pieces of armor.”

Originally called the Frazier Historical Arms Museum when it opened, just two years later, the museum was rebranded as the Frazier International History Museum. Meiners said they realized the armory focus was too niche, and the museum could not generate sustainable attendance.

A few years after, the word “international” was dropped from the title as more localized exhibits were creating quite a draw. Around that time, the focus began shifting to Kentucky.

Frazier passed away in 2012, but the museum’s board of directors remained

committed to fulfilling his dream, and people who knew him are consulted to make sure the trajectory of the museum would meet his approval.

“I spent a lot of time thinking of that because I’m very humbled to sit in his office,” Treinen said. “His friends tell me he would absolutely love this.”

• • •

The Frazier added the tagline “Where the World Meets Kentucky” in 2018 and has never looked back.

Around the same time, the museum became the official starting point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, and it houses the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Welcome Center.

“This partnership with the Kentucky Distillers Association gave us an opportunity to mean something to a whole lot of people who might not have stumbled upon us otherwise,” Treinen said. “It was a transformational thing, and it has been very positive for us.”

With Kentucky as the focus, the family-friendly museum hosts exhibits such as “The Commonwealth: Divided We Fall,” which introduces visitors to those who lived here from pioneer days through the early 1900s, and “Cool Kentucky,” a collection of pieces that tell the story of our state. This exhibit also includes “KentuckyShow!”—a high-definition multimedia experience that might just make a Kentuckian’s eyes tear up with pride. “The Spirit of Kentucky,” an in-depth look at all facets of bourbon, includes a stunning display of hundreds of backlit bottles lining the walls of the gallery.

Treinen said that, as the museum pursued Kentucky artifacts, it borrowed items at first, but now, the permanent collection includes 7,000 objects that are Kentucky-based. A huge influx came in 2023 from another museum that is just down the street from the Frazier.

“Kentucky Science Center, which started out as a Kentucky history museum, had items in their collection

dating back to the mid-1800s,” Treinen said. “Their leadership wanted to keep the items in Kentucky, but they did not want them, so they gifted us many incredible things that allow us to tell stories.”

One example of how this collaboration paid off was in the Frazier exhibit “Spirited Design: Old Forester’s Mid-Century Decanters,” which includes Raymond Loewy decanter designs from the 1950s and ’60s. The collection from the Kentucky Science Center had wardrobe items from the same era. So the team at the Frazier added these clothing items to the display to show what people were wearing at that time.

“We are about the preservation of history, but we are also about the presentation of history,” Treinen said. “And telling stories with it, which is what we love to do.” •

The Frazier will proudly show off 20 years of accomplishments with

events and celebrations throughout the year, most playing off the anniversary year.

All year, individual memberships are $20, and free admission is available to anyone who is 20 years old.

Meiners explained that, also all year, the museum’s e-newsletter, Frazier Weekly, will feature 20-item lists of interesting items. He is working on “Musical Kentucky: A Song From Each County.” The collection will share 10 songs each month, culminating in a Spotify playlist that will include all 120 counties and be completed in December.

The Frazier’s newest exhibit, “120: Cool KY Counties,” featuring artifacts, treasures and stories from each county in the Bluegrass State, will be unveiled in March.

The swankiest event is scheduled for Friday, April 12, when the Frazier hosts “A Night at the Museum: Celebrating 20 Years of the Frazier.’ According to Haley Harlow Rankin, senior manager of fundraising, the evening will include food, drinks,

Where the World Meets Kentucky & the official starting point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail ®

music and dancing, plus experiences and engagement opportunities throughout the galleries.

“Attire is black tie or creative formal,” she said. “We like to have fun at the Frazier, too.”

This year is the inaugural gala, but it will become an annual event.

“We look forward to celebrating with Frazier friends but also introducing ourselves to the wider community,” Harlow Rankin said.

One way to do that is to become mobile. Treinen said plans are in the

works to acquire a van or RV in which stories and pieces of exhibits can go on the road to Kentucky fairs and festivals. The museum will continue to tell visitors about Kentucky and its counties, but it also will go out into the counties to tell people about Kentucky and the Frazier.

Next summer, the museum will open an exhibit titled “Flashback: Kentucky Media Through the Years.” Treinen explained that this idea came about from a popular exhibit the museum hosted in 2017, “100 Great

The Frazier History Museum uses community art, such as this outdoor diplay that encouraged visitors and passersby to paint. This mural educated those who engaged about Louisville’s Black history.

Courier-Journal Photographs.”

“People looked at those events in the photographs, and they remembered how it impacted them,” Treinen said. “They loved it because it is their history.”

As the Frazier uses the next year to reminisce on its past, tip its hat to its founder, and embrace the future, Treinen hopes that the takeaway is easy to see.

“There is no better place to go in the state to learn all there is to learn about Kentucky,” he said. Q

WELCOME TO PRINCETON!

A Hidden Gem in Western KY

Get away to Princeton in the heart of Western Kentucky, just a 15-minute drive from Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. Tour our historic downtown that boasts distinctive architectural details, charming boutiques and Newsom’s world-famous aged KY Country Ham. Enjoy unique local flavors from Pagliai’s brick oven pizza to Black Patch Grille’s Irish flare or farm-to-table dining at Adam’s Breezy Hill Farm. Be whisked back into Victorian grandeur at Adsmore Museum. Steeped in agricultural history, we are home to the UK Grain and Forage Center of Excellence. Whether you’re looking for adventure, relaxation or just a quiet escape, Princeton has it all.

tourprincetonky.com

FIND YOUR NEXT GEAR

Race into Adventure in Bowling Green

Home of the Corvette, Bowling Green is your stop for unrivaled family experiences. Check out the newest exhibits at the National Corvette Museum before shifting into gear at the NCM Motorsports Park. Kids can even race on the high-performance karting experience onsite. Explore the depths of Lost River Cave on an underground boat ride, where you’ll hear stories of Native Americans, Civil War troops and the notorious Jesse James. Then, go for some wholesome family fun at Chaney’s Dairy Barn, featured on Guy Fieri’s All-American Road Trip. Visit Bowling Green! visitbgky.com

BLUEGRASS STATE MUSTS Find Your Fun in Georgetown, KY

The birthplace of bourbon? Absolutely! A small town bursting with charm in the midst of Kentucky Horse Country? You’ve come to the right place, and the only place where you can meet the oldest living Kentucky Derby Winner, Silver Charm, at Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Farm; meet one of the South’s sassiest and brassiest belles at Ward Hall, one of the finest Greek Revival-style mansions in the United States; and share Kentucky’s love of horses at the Kentucky Horse Park, 1,200-plus-acre world-famous equine attraction. Top it all off by exploring the shops and galleries of Georgetown’s historic downtown. georgetownky.com

A Shangri-La in the East

At Carter Caves, you can explore breathtaking natural wonders both below and above ground

TEXT AND PHOTOS

BY SEAN PATRICK HILL

The Cumberland Plateau, part of the Appalachian range, stretches from Alabama to northeastern Kentucky, nearly all the way to the Ohio River. Carter County, which lies in the watershed of the Big Sandy River, is set near the edge of the plateau’s escarpment, and its landscape is typical of the region’s geology: sandstone whittled into sheer cliffs and mottled with lichen; boulders the size of houses tumbled among the trees and along the creeks; and underlying beds of limestone lying exposed to the weather.

On that plateau, northeast of Olive Hill and 4 miles beyond Interstate 64, I once left the country highway where it crossed Tygarts Creek and followed the smaller Cave Branch into a ravine that, in winter, left the cliffs of both sandstone and limestone draped with ice. The resulting icicles were far taller than me. Snow lay at the foot of the yellow poplars, the eastern hemlocks and the redbuds that, in only a few months’ time, would flower throughout the woods like flames.

Cave Branch carves a ravine through this forest. Once in this creek, in the late autumn, I saw a mountain madtom, Noturus Eleutherus, a member of the catfish family rarely seen though native to this drainage.

Along this ravine are caves—some shallow, carved out by streams flowing out of them from the subterranean depths; some far deeper, home in the winter to thousands of

hibernating bats. On the ridges, out of sight, are sandstone arches. I have returned to this place again and again.

When one thinks of caves in Kentucky, Mammoth Cave instantly comes to mind. Mammoth is, after all, the longest known cave system in the world and a national park. When some of the caverns are big enough to drive a bus into, it makes sense that it is a tourist’s haven.

But Mammoth’s are not the only caves in Kentucky. When the geology of the state is founded mostly on limestone, resulting in karst formations—rock hollowed out by underground water into snaking caverns that can travel for miles—you can expect that caves will be abundant. At the edge of the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky, where the capstone is largely sandstone, the Commonwealth’s one state park dedicated to caves is largely hidden away among a few ravines that include several caves and other significant geologic formations.

The area that is now Carter Caves State Resort Park has, at one time or another, been frequented by visitors well into the past as the land traded hands between private landowners and investors. J.F. Lewis originally founded the Cascade Caves Company, a logging outfit that built cabins for visitors and used a gasoline-powered generator to light the caves. Drinking water was collected from the Saltpetre Cave and pumped to the ticket office that still stands today as the park’s gift shop. Lewis died in 1937,

and, eventually, a local judge, R.C. Littleton, began a conversation with two Rotary Clubs—one from Grayson and the other from Olive Hill—that led to buying the land from Lewis’ company for $40,000.

During his term as governor in the 1920s, William Jason Fields—who was known as “Honest Bill from Olive Hill”— had championed the idea of donating lands for a park. Between the Rotary Clubs and the Lewis family, nearly 1,000 acres were donated to the Commonwealth. From 1948-1955, the state invested $600,000 for improvements. Smokey Lake was built for fishing and boating. The park is now around 2,000 acres and features more than 20 caverns, with four of them open for guided tours.

• • •

Bat Cave is named, unsurprisingly, because it is home to not only bats but protected ones. An estimated 40,000 bats hibernate in the cave in the winter, which means the cave is open only in the summer. Great Saltpetre Cave is so named because saltpeter works once existed near the entrance, and saltpeter helped produce gunpowder during the War of 1812. The X-Cave consists of two intersecting caves—hence, the “X”—and contains impressive dripstone formations: stalagmites, stalactites and draperies. Cascade Cave, which was made part of the park in 1959, is home to a 30-foot-high waterfall. Each of these caves requires

purchasing a tour to enter, and they vary from easy to difficult to navigate. Visitors can view two undeveloped caves on their own, Laurel Cave and Horn Hollow Cave, though they require permits to explore.

Though its caves make the state park a kind of Little Mammoth, its natural arches make it a smaller version of the nearby Red River Gorge. The park contains several significant arches, with some being easy to visit and some requiring excursions into the woods. The Natural Bridge, a short walk from the visitors center, is one of the most massive in the park. The Cave Branch flows entirely through it, an indication of how many arches in the mountains were formed. A sky hole opens in its towering ceiling, high enough to feel like a cathedral. “Bridge” is not a misnomer; the road into the park crosses the creek atop the arch.

To see the other arches requires hiking, which is one of this state park’s most welcome features. The park contains some 30 miles of trails in all. If the drive into the park isn’t enough to illustrate the Appalachian ecology and geology, following as it does the Cave Branch through the forest and past caves, the hike along the Three Bridges Trail will. The fact that the trail parallels the road and skirts along the row of cabins on the ridge is largely inconsequential; the park is, as long as I have visited it, enduringly quiet. The nearly 4-mile trail passes a soaring climbing wall of sandstone (where rock climbing requires a permit) and its namesake three arches: Raven Bridge, Smoky Bridge and

Other trails are more extensive and backcountry flavored. Many of them are in the outer reaches of the park, such as the nearly 9-mile Kiser Hollow Trail, which loops past two old homestead sites and ambles through the adjacent Tygarts State Forest. The 2.5-mile Cave Branch and the 3.6-mile Ridge Top Trail are even farther out, though all of these backcountry trails are to be either avoided entirely during hunting season or, if one is careful, explored while wearing blaze orange.

In the base of the valley just south of the Lewis Caveland Lodge is Smoky Valley Lake, a manmade lake created by damming Smoky Creek. Fishing is popular there (with largemouth bass, bluegill and catfish), and there is a boat launch. On the far side of the lake are two rustic campsites, accessible only to backpackers, which require permits to camp overnight and a reservation fee: Eagles Nest and Johnson Homeplace, both along the Carter Caves Cross Country Trail, which stretches more than 8 miles through the outer reaches of the park.

The comfortable and accommodating Lewis Caveland Lodge, constructed of fieldstone in 1962, consists of 28 rooms and a restaurant, Tierney’s Cavern, that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Guests also may opt for one of 12 cottages with kitchens and fireplaces. The campground hosts 90 sites for car camping plus 31 tent sites and eight equestrian camping sites. The Welcome Center, which dates back to 1925, features the gift shop and sells cave tour tickets. Picnic areas are scattered throughout the park, and visitors can take advantage of a pool, a laundry house, horse stables and a basketball court near the lake.

It is nice just to sit in the lobby by the fireplace, on whose stones are hung a portrait of Fields, the only Kentucky governor to come from Carter County. The park is, at least partly, his legacy.

I once spent a night with my daughter in the lodge. It was early in the morning of Nov. 8, 2022, when we stepped out on the balcony to see the fully eclipsed moon above the trees. The silence is most in my memory; that, and knowing that in the distance, just over the rise, was Shangri-La Arch, where she and I had explored the previous afternoon. Shangri-La is, to my mind, a fitting name for that country. Q

Fern Bridge. A fourth, Shangri-La, is near the park’s lodge, and another, Cascade Bridge, sits at the head of a box canyon in nearby Cascade Caverns Nature Preserve, also a part of the park.

As a state park, Carter Caves offers amenities beyond its natural wonders.

Happy Days

Ben Chandler remembers his grandfather’s eventful term as baseball commissioner— including his role in breaking the color barrier

BY TAD MYRE

Ben Chandler is the CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, a former United States congressman and two-term Kentucky attorney general. Most importantly for purposes of this article, he is the grandson of A.B. “Happy” Chandler, commissioner of baseball from 1946-1951, and an avid baseball fan. Happy Chandler is credited with giving the green light to the thenBrooklyn Dodgers to sign Jackie Robinson, who was promoted to the major-league club in 1947, shattering the color barrier that had blocked Black stars from playing in the majors for more than 60 years.

Tad: Ben, your grandfather is associated with so many things in Kentucky, but we want to focus on his stint as baseball commissioner. A lot of people don’t realize this, but he was only the second one of those, following the long reign of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Ben: That’s right. Before Landis, the owners ran baseball, but then the 1919 Black Sox Scandal changed that. In order to restore the public’s faith in the game, the owners decided to bring in a commissioner with unimpeachable integrity and picked Landis, a crusty old federal judge, and gave him, at his insistence, extraordinary powers. He exercised those to the fullest and ruled with an iron fist. Crusty? Just look at pictures of him.

My grandfather liked to tell this story about Landis. Once, his wife was walking across a sheet of ice, and Landis called out, “Be careful, honey, or you’ll break your g…d… neck.” While Landis was in charge, none of his austere barriers would be broken, and certainly not the color barrier.

Tad: So, Landis had a long reign and died in office. How did the owners pick Happy?

Ben: It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy. They went through several ballots where he wasn’t even among the top three, but nobody else could get the requisite two-thirds vote. Finally, Happy percolated to the top and won the day despite the feelings of some who thought he was a Kentucky windbag and too often burst into singing “My Old Kentucky Home.” One of the reasons he was favored was because he was a politician, and the owners needed someone to fight off a contingent of federal legislators who thought major league baseball should be shut down during World War II. The owners figured, who best to fight the politicians than one of their own.

Tad: Chandler’s only role model for the job was Landis, who served for almost 25 years. What do you think the owners were looking for in the new commissioner?

Ben: They weren’t looking for another Landis, that’s for sure. They

were looking for someone they could control, and they found out pretty quickly that they had sorely misread their man.

Tad: Jackie Robinson could not play major league baseball without the commissioner’s approval. Did Happy have owner support when he gave that approval?

Ben: Certainly not at first. The owners took a secret straw poll, and 15 out of 16 voted against integration (Branch Rickey [co-owner, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers] was the one yea vote). At some point, Rickey came to Versailles and visited my grandfather to make sure he had the commissioner’s support. He was assured that he did. That helped turn the tide, and the record shows Happy lived up to his word. After the infamous race-baiting episode in Philadelphia led by manager Ben Chapman, Happy threatened him and Phillies’ players with suspensions. When the St. Louis Cardinals threatened to boycott a game against the Dodgers, he also threatened them with similar punishment. Even before that, when Robinson visited Louisville as a Montreal Royal [a Dodgers minorleague farm team at the time] to play a game against the Colonels, my grandfather warned the Kentucky team against any sort of racial shenanigans. That’s all in the history books, but he had another way of enforcing good conduct. Happy’s driver was [John] “Frenchy” DeMoisey, former All-American basketball player who played [at the University of Kentucky] for Adolph Rupp (who credited DeMoisey as the first to develop the one-hand overhead pivot shot). Get out of line and Frenchy might pay you a visit like the one he paid to Ben Chapman. I don’t know how persuasive Frenchy’s verbal skills were, but his 6-foot, 4-inch, 350-pound frame did all the talking that was required.1

Tad: Happy didn’t get much credit in the movie 42 [a 2013 biopic starring the late Chadwick Boseman as Robinson]. Why do you think that is?

Ben: Hollywood. No doubt the

Above, baseball great Jackie Robinson; opposite page, Happy Chandler (center) with his family— including a young Ben Chandler at far right—at his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

On Tuesday, March 26, Louisville’s Frazier History Museum will host an evening with Ben Chandler to discuss Happy Chandler’s tumultuous tenure as baseball commissioner, with Rachel Platt of the Museum as moderator and Dr. Wayne Tuckson and Tad Myre posing questions. The event will be sponsored by the Louisville Bats, and Bats president Greg Galiette will discuss the upcoming season. Kentucky poet Dorian Harrison will recite poems from his new book of poetry, Pretend the Ball Is Named Jim Crow, and will autograph copies of his book.

Doors will open at 5:30 p.m., and the event will go from 6-7:30 p.m. For more information, visit fraziermuseum.org

Louisville attorney Tad Myre spoke with Ben about his grandfather.

Courtesy of Erin Chandler

scriptwriters felt that having another “good guy” would detract from the sainted Harrison Ford character. The 42 movie has Branch Rickey uttering a line similar to this: “I figured that someday I’d have to meet my maker, and he’d ask me why I didn’t let that Robinson play. I was afraid that if I told him it was because he was Black, that wouldn’t have been sufficient.” That was my grandfather’s line, uttered during his Baseball Hall of Fame induction speech in 1982. The movie also had my grandfather getting a manicure. Are you kidding me? Happy Chandler getting a manicure? Never! Hollywood.

Tad: Anything else about his role in breaking the color line, Ben?

Ben: My grandfather was a politician first, and he knew someday he’d again run for elective office in Kentucky. That’s why he didn’t trumpet his role in the “experiment.” But those who were there and who benefited from his support knew the truth. I heard it from their own lips. Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe each told me how grateful they were for my grandfather’s contribution. So did Rachel Robinson [Jackie Robinson’s widow]. In fact, to pay homage to him, she made a point of traveling all the way to Versailles to celebrate the new Jackie Robinson postage stamp. And I heard it directly from her.2

Tad: OK, if Happy had played a bigger role in the movie, what actor would you pick to play him?

Ben: I can’t think of any one actor. Maybe some combination of Tommy Lee Jones, Charles Durning, Spencer Tracy and Yosemite Sam.

Tad: Ben, Happy Chandler was known as the “players’ commissioner,” and there isn’t even a close second. Why was that?

Ben: My grandfather saw some of the game’s greatest players out barnstorming to make ends meet after their careers were over. All-timers like Grover Cleveland Alexander and Dazzy Vance. He thought that was a shame and an embarrassment to baseball and decided to do something he had a little experience in—setting up and funding a retirement plan.3 Starting in 1947, he began negotiating World Series radio rights and allocating the proceeds into a players’ pension fund. That grew over the years and helped a lot of players and their families. You’ll recall when I was on your Zoom interview of [former AllStar pitcher] Jim Kaat right after he was elected to the Hall of Fame [in 2021], Kaat expressed his appreciation to my grandfather for setting that up.

Tad: Happy was commissioner starting in 1946 and ending in 1951. Did his term end by his own choosing?

Ben: Yes and no. His contract was set to expire in 1952, and he started early on trying to get an extension. To forestall his politicking, the owners passed a rule that a vote to extend a commissioner’s term could not occur more than 18 months before the term expired. When the vote finally did come, it was 9 for and 7 against, but the owners had changed the requirement from a simple majority to a three-fourths vote after Landis died, so Happy didn’t get the required supermajority. Knowing there would be no extension, my grandfather negotiated an end date of July 31, 1951, and then returned home to practice law.

He was tremendously popular with the fans and with the players, but they had no vote. And despite record attendance figures during his tenure, in the end, it was the owners who voted him out. In the words of Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, he was “the players’ commissioner, the fans’ commissioner, the press and radio commissioner—everybody’s commissioner but the men who pay him.”

Tad: He surely was the most colorful commissioner and easily had the best lines.

Ben: No doubt about it, and some of that freedom he had was negotiated up front. He got the same level of independence as his predecessor. Never again would that happen. And in terms of good lines, his last was a zinger: When told that Ford Frick had been chosen as his successor, he responded, “Well, they have a vacancy, and they decided to keep it.”

Tad: How did Happy’s love of baseball influence you?

Ben: Greatly. I was there when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, I was sitting next to him when Pete Rose barreled Ray Fosse over in the 1970 AllStar Game, and I accompanied him to many a major league game, free of charge on account of his lifetime pass. I can’t tell you how many major leaguers I’ve met. I played, too. And I was pretty good until I ran into something called the curveball.

My grandfather was a little better and played college ball at Transylvania and semi-professional ball, including with future Hall of Famer Earle Combs [of Owsley County], who called Happy “good field, no hit.” As a pitcher, he was 7-1 for a team in Grafton, North Dakota. Later, they named the ballpark there after him.

He also learned another lesson in Grafton. When he slept, he used to hang his pants over a chair with his wallet in

Happy Chandler

Ben Chandler

the pocket. One night, someone snuck in and lifted his wallet. For the rest of his life, he’d fold his pants up, wallet included, and put them in a drawer before going to sleep. And if anybody’s reading this in Grafton, give me a call if that wallet turns up. You can keep the greenbacks. I’m sure there weren’t many. Q

Endnotes:

1 Although Chandler was a native of a segregated state and was subject to the ingrained prejudices of his region and period, he was quoted in the Pittsburgh Courier, the influential Black newspaper, as saying, “If it’s discrimination you are afraid of, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Moreover, in 1946 he told reporter Wendell Smith, “I think every boy in America who wants to play professional baseball should have the chance, regardless of race, creed or color. I have always said—and I repeat it now—that Negro players are welcome in baseball.” Chandler, who watched numerous games at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, knew Blacks could be great athletes. Imbued with a sense of fairness on the athletic field, Chandler, in a meeting between the two men in 1946, agreed to support Branch Rickey’s experiment. During the major league meetings in Los Angeles in December 1946, Chandler praised Robinson in the Pittsburgh Courier when he said that the former Negro League star was “perhaps the best all-around athlete this country has ever produced.” SABR article written by Bill Marshall “Baseball’s Most Colorful Commissioner: Happy Chandler,” Society for American Baseball Research (sabr.org)

2 In a 1956 letter to Chandler, Robinson said, “I will never forget your part in the so-called Rickey experiment.” At least one other former player also appreciated Chandler’s contribution to baseball’s integration. Don Newcombe, who joined Robinson on the Dodgers in 1949, later said, “Some of the things he did for Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and [me] when he was commissioner of baseball—those are the kinds of things we never forget.” Newcombe added that Chandler cared for Black players in baseball “when it wasn’t fashionable.” SABR bio written by Terry Bohn . “Happy Chandler,” Society for American Baseball Research (sabr.org )

3 As Governor of Kentucky, Chandler had set up the Kentucky state worker retirement plan, the teachers retirement plan and the state police retirement plan.

If you are interested in the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), visit sabr.org or contact Chris Betsch at cbbetsch@gmail.com or Tad Myre at tmyre@wyattfirm. com (Louisville Pee Wee Reese chapter), or Lucinda Baker at lucinda.baker@kctcs.edu (Lexington Sweet Lou Johnson chapter).

About the Author

Tad Myre is the immediate past “commissioner” of the Pee Wee Reese Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research, a St. Louis Cardinals fan, and an attorney with Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP.

River City Treasure

The Belle of Louisville has been through several incarnations during its 110 years on the water

BY JACKIE HOLLENKAMP BENTLEY

Boat roll on forever (Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Fulton) (We’ll get your steamboat rolling)

River roll forever (Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Fulton) (We’ll get your steamboat rolling)

— “Steamboat,” The Beach Boys

When “Mr. Fulton,” aka Robert Fulton, launched the first commercially successful steamboat, the North River, in 1807, he initiated an era of transportation that fueled the United States economy for more than a century and inspired a trove of musical and literary works of art.

Today, only a handful of paddlewheel steamboats are still in operation. One in particular—the Belle of Louisville—can be found moored at the city’s Ohio River shores.

THE BEGINNING

On Oct. 18, 1914, a new steamboat with a steel hull was christened the Idlewild on the Allegheny River. Once shipbuilders James Rees and Sons Company finished construction three months later, the steamboat launched its maiden voyage from Pittsburgh on its way to its first home port in Memphis.

Over the next four decades, the vessel ferried passengers, made excursion cruises, transported freight, towed oil barges and served as a USO nightspot during World War II.

The Idlewild spent some time in Louisville in the early 1930s serving as a ferry between the Rose Island and Fontaine Ferry amusement parks.

According to a 2010 American Society of Mechanical Engineers publication, J. Herod Gorsage of Peoria, Illinois, purchased the vessel in 1947 and renamed it the Avalon in

To purchase tickets and to see a complete listing of the Belle of Louisville’s 2024 cruise schedule, visit BelleofLouisville.org.

PHOTOS BY TABITHA BOOTH

1948 to grant the deathbed wish of Capt. Ben Winters, who served as the Idlewild’s captain for a brief time.

For the next 14 years, the Avalon traveled among Omaha; New Orleans; Joliet, Illinois; Charleston, West Virginia; Stillwater, Minnesota; and Knoxville, Tennessee.

“She’s been to pretty much every single river system on the eastern side of the country,” said Eric Franz, the Belle of Louisville Riverboats program manager and historian. “She became the most widely traveled steamboat of her kind in the world.”

Hard times befell the steamboat in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Its owners at the time, Steamer Avalon Inc., ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1962, and the steamboat sold at auction to Jefferson County at the direction of County Judge Marlow Cook for $34,000 (that’s $244,677.27 in today’s money), who renamed it the Belle of Louisville

“Some people thought that a government should not own a steamboat,” Cook wrote in a 2014 letter to commemorate the Belle’s 100th anniversary. “[My wife] Nancy’s father told me that his friends at the Pendennis Club told him I ‘would never be re-elected to anything.’ Hundreds of people called my office saying I was crazy to waste tax money that way.

“My golf pal Pee Wee Reese, former great Dodgers shortstop, advised me to get a big pigs feet jar from a bar and fill it with pennies. Then I was to place it on my desk and tell every complainer to take out seven cents, the cost to every taxpayer of the county.”

A REBIRTH

Cook obtained government funding and local volunteers donated elbow grease for painting, cleaning and other

tasks to get the Belle back in operation.

By 1963, she was ready to test the waters once again and face fellow steamboat the Delta Queen in the first-ever Great Steamboat Race, now a beloved Kentucky Derby Festival event that draws crowds to the river to this day.

“The day before the first big race, Nancy and I were on the Belle,” Cook wrote. “She was forward, and I was aft. The stern wheel began slowly turning, over went the lines, and we moved. I ran to join Nancy. We looked at each other with tears in our eyes and yelled, ‘It works!’ ”

But speed wasn’t the paddle wheeler’s strong suit, and the Belle lost to the Delta Queen that year. New boilers were installed in 1968, and the bow was extended 10 feet to give the Belle some added get-up-and-go.

“Her boilers were awful,” Franz said. “She could barely get going on her steam. It got to the point where the Delta Queen was saying, ‘If you guys don’t do something about your boilers, we’re not going to keep doing this because this is not a race.’ We were that slow.”

But the Belle’s engine was just fine. Installed when she was built in 1914, the engine had been brought in from another vessel. The name of that ship is unknown, but the Belle still has the original engine brass plates, and they provide a clue. The shipyard stamp spells Pittsburgh without the “h,” dating the engines somewhere between 1890 and 1911, when the Pennsylvania city used that particular spelling, as seen in the famous 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card.

The Belle’s preservation has garnered several historical designations. It was recognized as the nation’s oldest and most authentic river steamboat and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. In 1989, the Belle was named a National Historic Landmark. The

American Society of Mechanical Engineers has named the Belle a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.

Daniel Lewis, the Belle’s chief engineer, said it can be humbling working on and around such a historic vessel.

“It’s like an archaeology project sometimes, when you come across something, uncover layers of paint to find something underneath that you never expected to be there,” he said. “Of course, there’s some modernization we have to do … But we’re even nervous about drilling through the dance floor when we have to make a hole for something.”

It’s that dance floor that has left an indelible mark in the memories of countless passengers throughout the decades. High school senior cruises, wedding receptions, leisure cruises, field trips and many other special events have taken place on the Belle, and there’s no sign of slowing down.

WHAT’S AHEAD

This year’s season for the Belle features traditional afternoon and evening leisure cruises, group events, private bookings and field trips.

One of the newer additions to the steamboat’s schedule is Our River City Cruise. Conducted in partnership with local community organizations, this excursion will treat passengers to a narrated cruise detailing different aspects of Louisville and its strong ties to the Ohio River.

“The idea recently has been to go back to the original intent when [Cook] first purchased the boat, which is to make a cultural and arts and heritage center,” Franz said. “We’ve been bringing on a lot more local live music … connecting with local organizations and tying into the community as much as possible.”

Heather Gotlib, the Belle’s communications and content manager, said ticket prices for various cruises can vary, but most start at $24.99 and increase depending on the type of excursion and meal additions.

“There’s a variety of options because our community’s access to the river is really, really important to what we do,” she said. Q

Kentucky Wineries

Just a little over 10 years ago, this local vineyard was small with just two kinds of grapes to its name. Now, with over four generations of family help, Boucherie Winery has grown to be one of the largest vineyards in Kentucky with eight different grape varieties and a stunning outdoor wedding venue!

Boucherie Vineyards & Winery 6523 Keyway Drive, Spottsville, KY 42458 boucheriewinery.com • 270.826.6192

Baker-Bird

Chatham Road Augusta, KY 41002 bakerbirdwinerydistillery.com 859.620.4965

Chenault Vineyards

2284 Barnes Mill Road Richmond, KY 40475

chenaultvineyards.com 859.328.7773

Pike Street Wine House

132 East Pike Street

Cynthiana, KY 41031

pikestreetwinehouse.com 859.569.3204

Purple Toad Winery

purpletoadwinery.com

4275 Old US Hwy. 45 S Paducah, KY 42003 270.554.0010

Springhill Plantation

Bed & Breakfast & Winery springhillwinery.com

3205 Springfield Road Bloomfield, KY 40008

502.252.9463

The 1901

All About Kentucky

Volume 39, Number 2 – March 2024

Not much has changed ...

Situated on the banks of the Ohio River in Boone County, the Rabbit Hash General Store has been in business continuously since 1831. It has weathered several floods and a devastating fire in 2016 but always gets put back together. In this photo from the 1920s, the store was around 90 years old.

Happy Saint Patrick’s [Dugan] Day, Paducah! -- page 52

Kentucky Is … -- page 54

The Letcher County Community of Chip – page 57 “I

Kentucky Derby was the 27th running of the Kentucky Derby. The race took place on

Kentucky Explorer

a magazine published for Kentuckians everywhere

Charles Hayes Jr. • Founder Stephen M. Vest • Publisher

Deborah Kohl Kremer • Editor

Rebecca Redding • Typographist

One-Year Subscription to Kentucky Monthly: $25

Vintage Ads from Kentucky Newspapers

Right, an ad that appeared in the Kentucky Irish American, Nov. 22, 1913; below, an ad from the Breathitt County News, March 20, 1908.

CORRECTION

In the “Campus Days at UK’s Holmes Hall” article (February issue, page 53), Yvonne Nicholls (Worthington) and Patricia Mullins (Shifflett) are the names of the two young women in the story. The names in parentheses are their married names, not their hometowns.

Yvonne is from Muhlenberg County, western Kentucky, and Patricia was born in Wise County, Virginia, and moved to Lexington for her senior year of high school.

In memory of Donna Jean Hayes, 1948-2019

FOUNDED 1986, VOLUME 39, NO. 2

Looking for Back Issues of Kentucky Explorer?

We have a select number of back issues of Kentucky Explorer from 1986-2000. Back issues are $5, plus shipping.

If you are in search of a certain issue or are interested in adding an issue to your collection, please contact Deb at

deb@kentuckymonthly. com to see if it’s available.

Kentucky Explorer welcomes letters to the editor. Please send them to deb@kentuckymonthly.com or mail items to Kentucky Monthly, Attn: Deb Kremer, P.O. Box 559, Frankfort, KY 40602-0559.

Carlisle County was founded in 1886 and named for John G. Carlisle, a politician from Kenton County.

Archive: Most Eggggg-cellent Little Devils!

By Jackie Young, MLS, Ed.D Library Director, Sullivan University

It might be an understatement to say that eggs are one of the most powerful symbols in all of human history. With the exception of that questionable phase in the late 1980s and early ’90s, when the doctors told us eggs were evil, humans have consumed large quantities of the perfect little nutritional package we know as an egg.

Many cultures, ancient and modern, have revered them—from Africa to Australia, Russia to Asia, and even in our own times, eggs symbolize one of the most powerful aspects of our existence: fertility and rebirth.

So, this month we are celebrating eggs—and not just any old eggs but my favorite—deviled eggs. I especially like them made from beet-pickled eggs.

The term “deviled’ refers to any food that is hot or

highly spiced. You might also see them referred to as stuffed or dressed eggs, and that is because some felt that the word “deviled” might be inappropriate. We can trace these delicious little nuggets back to ancient Rome, at least. But they didn’t become super popular until the late 19th century. The Courier-Journal seemed to get very interested in them in the 1980s. Elain Corn, editor from 1981-1986, ran a story featuring “Stuffed Eggs” on Sept. 26, 1982, and that is where these recipes first appeared.

I hope you enjoy these little devils. If you would like to know more about the history of deviled eggs, Max Miller has an egg-celent story on YouTube (Tasting History with Max Miller, https://youtu.be/QQCMYDw-L3E). Also, Gastropod did a wonderful story about eggs. You can find it at the following address or wherever you get your podcasts: https://gastropod.com/?s=egg

There are many ways to enjoy deviled eggs, including simply blending the yolk with mayonnaise and topping with paprika.

“I Remember”

A Funeral to Be Proud Of

By Roger Keith, Clearwater, Florida

One early summer day in the 1950s, our old farm cat brought in two newborn kittens from the fields of our hillside farm in Menifee County. She was a brightly colored calico, and the kittens were black and gray tabbies. Where she found them was a mystery, made a nest in the hayloft of the barn and encouraged them to nurse. Apparently abandoned by their natural mother, the newborns were cared for by our cat as best she could. Unfortunately, both kittens were dead by the next morning.

Although small animal deaths were quite common on the farm, the death of these tiny kittens was a great burden on the hearts of my two sisters, Shirley, and Helen, our closest neighbor and first cousin. Helen lived just down the hill.

Coming down the hill from Merdie Mann’s store was Darrell, Helen’s older brother and also our cousin. Noticing the activity on the hillside, he soon joined us and, after a short discussion, offered to preach the funeral.

Certainly, our old cat had done all that she could, but now it was up to the girls to provide the kittens with a proper Christian burial. There were numerous necessary preparations to be made for the funeral. Helen volunteered to provide a coffin. Betty and Shirley retrieved the tiny bodies and took care of the pre-burial preparations. Shirley picked flowers, while Betty went to the toolshed for a mattock. As usual, I was too young to participate, so I mostly watched. Officially, my job was to stay out of the way and to be quiet—not easy for a curious 4-year-old. Later, I had a much more important role to play—that of a designated mourner.

By early afternoon, Helen had returned. She brought a Blue Diamond kitchen matchbox, which she had carefully lined with soft blue cloth. It even contained a small pillow and matching coverlet. She had done an admirable job and was heartily congratulated by all.

With great reverence, the girls placed the kittens in the box, side-by-side facing one another. To the casual observer, the two kittens might have simply been asleep.

After the initial preparations were completed, the funeral got underway. With downcast eyes and heavy hearts, the four of us accompanied the tiny coffin in a solemn procession to the selected place of interment. The spot chosen for the burial was just off the path that led downhill, between Helen’s house and ours. On normal days, it was a small hayfield, but on this day, it was consecrated ground. There, under an azure sky, Betty dug the grave with just a few swings of the mattock as we all stood silently by.

Up at the house, our mother was hanging out the wash. Sheets, overalls, socks, shirts and dresses all were flapping in the gentle breeze. As was her habit, she sang as she worked. So, there on a beautiful summer day, in the middle of a hayfield, the dear departed were laid to rest.

On the wind were the strains of “On Top of Mount Zion” unwittingly provided by our mother. Darrell, having attended a funeral or two in his day, preached a memorable funeral sermon. With all of the solemnity befitting the occasion, he committed the two souls of the kittens into God’s capable hands—“From dust were you made …”

Helen cried loudly and was nearly inconsolable. Betty, being the oldest, held back her tears and tried, as best she could, to comfort the two younger girls. I was too little to understand much about what was taking place, so I mostly stood by and watched the others. There was little doubt that I learned some valuable lesson in all of this. Probably, it was something that I would need to draw upon someday when I was older.

Soon, the mourners departed. Helen and Darrell headed off down the path to their house. Betty, Shirley and I slowly climbed the hill to our home, dragging the heavy maddock. Later that day, we made a small cross from sticks and twine and placed it on the fresh grave. Shirley gathered a mixed bouquet of dandelions and hollyhocks.

Although our efforts were simple, they were heartfelt. We were content in knowing that we had done all that could have been done.

In a month or so, the hayfield had grown to the point of harvest, and the hay was cut and placed in the barn loft. Over the winter, the field lay fallow and was covered time and time again by thick blankets of snow. In the spring, our father plowed the field in preparation for a crop of corn. With that, all traces of the small grave were lost forever. We were left with only the memory of the two tiny kittens, whom we buried on a wind-swept hillside on a beautiful day one summer.

Have a story to share? Send memories for Kentucky Explorer’s “I Remember” section to Deborah Kohl Kremer at deb@kentuckymonthly. com or mail to Kentucky Monthly, Attn: Deb Kremer, P.O. Box 559, Frankfort, KY 40602.

From the book Lest We Forget: Spring on the Farm

Lest We Forget was written in 1974 by Lynnie Davis White of Steubenville in Wayne County. She assembled memories and typed (or had them typed) and copied them to create a 70-page book that she dedicated to her grandchildren. The book does not give the year of her birth, but it appears she was born around the turn of the 20th century. The youngest of 13 children, White wanted to share with her family what it was like growing up without electricity, running water, a telephone or heat. Here is an excerpt from her collection.

Back in the early 1900s, spring was an important time in our community. There were so many things to be done at the same time, such as gardening, corn planting and house cleaning.

Gardening was a springtime job and an important one. If we didn’t raise a garden, we didn’t eat too well. The first thing we did was clean off the garden. We had been putting wood ashes on it all winter. Then, we covered it with manure—horse manure if possible—and plowed it under. The garden was raked and dragged until it was soft and mellow. We then layed rows about 2 to 3 feet wide.

Potatoes were the first things we planted, as early as possible—the first of March, if the weather was right. Next were lettuce and radishes. Our onions had been put out the fall before and were ready to eat by March. Mother always planted beans on Good Friday, rain or shine, cold or hot. I don’t know whether this was a good idea or not, but we always had beans. Mother was a great believer in the signs and the moon. Even her children laughed at her, but she just went right on looking up her signs. I can picture her now with The Ladies Birthday Almanac to see if the signs were

Memories from Newberg

By Charles Jackson, Murray

These old eyes have seen a lot in eight decades of living in Western Kentucky. My earliest memories center around the small community of Newberg in eastern Calloway County, along the Tennessee River.

I remember hearing the steamboats move up and down the river. At night, you could see the giant light swinging back and forth as the pilots guided the steamboat through the channel.

The 1937 flood devastated the Newberg area. Our house was on a small hill, and Mother and I were carried by boat to higher ground to live with relatives until the water went down. The men of the neighborhood brought their animals and stayed with Dad for the duration of the flood.

Going for the Extra Point?

By J.R. Harris, Louisville

In the 1940s and early ’50s, I lived in Greenup County. The city of Greenup was the county seat. Dad and Mom had to drive 15 to 20 miles for vehicle and tag registration, birth certificates, deeds, etc., before there were interstates or three-lane highways.

On the way down and back, I saw a red

right for her to plant something.

She liked to plant cabbage when the signs were in the head and beans when the signs were in the arms. She planted potatoes, beets and turnips when the moon was going down, and beans and corn when the moon was coming up. I bet my mother was not the only woman in Wayne County watching the signs.

Sweet potatoes were the last thing we planted. Around the first of April, the sweet potato bed was made. We had a box in the corner of the garden that we filled with horse and cow manure. This manure was about 3 feet deep and pressed down solid. The sweet potatoes were placed on top and covered. This bed had to be watched really closely or it could get too hot and cook the potatoes. I can see my mother pushing a stick into the bed and pulling it out to test to see if it was too hot.

Corn was planted as early in April as possible. We didn’t have corn planters. I remember planting corn by laying the field off both ways about two feet between rows, and then we dropped the corn in the cross. Often, a woman dropped corn, and a good corn dropper could keep up with a man laying it off crossway. Then came someone along with a hoe to cover the corn. They always dropped two kernels to the cross—never more than three. I never dropped corn, but I remember one time, they had me dropping beans in the best places in the field—in the bottoms and swags, where the soil was rich. We used to raise a lot of cornfield beans. I got tired of dropping beans, so I put them all in a hill and covered them well. I will just pass over what happened to me when they came up.

On the way to Sugar Creek Baptist Church one Sunday morning, we could see wisps of smoke rising above the canopy of the woods where neighbors were cooking batches of moonshine. This was to be sold in Chicago or Detroit. The proceeds were used to feed the large families trying to survive the end of the Great Depression.

My family farmed in the Tennessee River Valley until 1943. We were forced to move when the Tennessee Valley Authority cleared the land and flooded the river to establish the dams that formed Kentucky Lake. Our family settled just a few miles from Murray on 43 acres of productive land that remain in the family today.

I grew up driving mules, so when tractors started coming into the neighborhood, I was excited. I have enjoyed old tractor collecting for more than 60 years. I am now 88 years old.

wingover airplane, similar to Charles A. Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, dragging a hook to snatch a mailbag hanging between a football goalpost. Another person, not the pilot, then hand pulled the mailsack into the bottom of the plane.

Before picking up the loaded mailbag, they dropped an empty mailbag to be used the next time. That was how the postal service used the air to move mail more quickly.

Happy Saint Patrick’s [Dugan] Day, Paducah!

By Matt Jaeger, Paducah

William Clark named Paducah for a western tribe of Native Americans whom the French called “Padouca.” That is the current prevailing explanation for how Paducah got its name. Yet, there are many passionate history buffs who still cling to the idea of Chief Paduke as our city’s namesake. And who knows? Perhaps there are kernels of truth in that story, too. It was once believed that Paducah was named for a Chickasaw woman who was kidnapped and sacrificed by the Pawnee.

Paducah’s moniker has a murky past. And to further muddle the situation, here’s yet one more tale of how Paducah got its name. It is the story of an Irishman named Pat Dugan, and if you say the name out loud to yourself, chances are you can guess where this story is going.

A 1907 article in the Paducah Evening Sun reported the legend of Dugan as such: “Ask any old-time Ohio River steamboat man or any old dweller of the river section of the city, and you will be told that away back yonder [sic] when boats first began plowing the pellucid waters of La Belle River, they used wood for fuel almost exclusively. There was a woodyard for boats at or near the site of the present city of Paducah, and it was kept by an Irishman named Patrick Dugan. Of course, everybody called him Pat Dugan, and that soon became Padugan—and there you have the genesis of the name. All the old-time rivermen know all about this, and some of them probably could tell you of acquaintance with descendants of the original Pat Dugan.”

ridiculed the “Pat Dugan Theory,” it seems just as many supported it. One story printed on Jan. 29, 1889, in the Rock Island Argus said, “The original name should be retained, and Paducah is a very natural corruption of the ancient and honorable name, Patrick Dugan.”

Other articles state the exact date and location of Dugan’s woodyard, saying that it was established on Owen’s Island in 1906 and was called “Pat Dugan’s Landing,” which ultimately was shortened to Paducah.

Some were so serious about Pat Dugan’s legacy that they made their displeasure known at the 1909 installation of the Chief Paduke statue. The statue contains an inscription which reads, “Chief Paduke for whom Gen. Clark named Paducah.” Yet some said of the statue that it was erected to a “founder who never existed.”

The local Rotarians published this fence-straddling poem by Kenneth Bradley in their newsletter in 1916:

Tho Pat Dugan’s ashes lie Forgotten and alone;

And Chief Paducah stands sublime On everlasting stone; I turn from both historic names;

To this fact lift my hat:

Your city lives and always will, She needs no chief nor Pat!

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Pat Dugan … Padugan … Paducah … Could anyone really believe that our town was based on a pun, on slurred speech, and named after a woodyard? Yes, many did think it was silly. This quote from the Nashville Union and American in 1870 declared it so: “The man who discovered that Paducah is a corruption of Pat Dugan, the name of its first settler, has just ascertained that Dictator is short for Richard Potato.”

But while many

Articles referencing Dugan as the inspiration for Paducah’s name span at least 50 years and several different states. Around the 1920s and ’30s, the legend of Dugan seemed to fade out, giving full reign to Chief Paduke for the next several decades.

In hindsight, the legend of Pat Dugan seems like nonsense. Who could and would ever believe such a thing? It’s just a fun little anecdote from our goofy ancestors. And we in the Local and Family History Department would be inclined to agree with the sentiment—except for one thing.

The oldest city directory in our possession dates back to 1859 and contains a curious listing. On page 41, in between the names Dudley and Duke, rests the name Dugan—more specifically a Patrick Dugan, a laborer by trade, who lived on Oak Street between Ohio and Tennessee Streets.

So, there you go!! A glimmer of hope for the legend of Pat Dugan, the pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow.

Article reprinted with permission from McCracken County Public Library.

Paducah, circa 1890-1919; Library of Congress Photo.

Statue of Chief Paduke located in the median of Jefferson Street near the intersection of 19th Street in Paducah.

Photo courtesy of McCracken County Public Library.

Is There Really No Place Like Home?

By H.D. Olverholt, Adolphus

Imagination is still the only clue for an event that unfolded in October 1949 in west Allen County. It produced much excitement in the Walkers Chapel area as pieces of a puzzle were assembled.

Beriah McGuffey Borders (1891-1963) entered a tworoom log cabin just off of the Franklin-Scottsville Road one October morning to acquire some tobacco from the prior year. The cabin had not been used since tobacco stripping season in 1948, and the door was secured with a chain and padlock. A missing windowpane was observed a few weeks before but was unbroken on the ground below, causing no concern. Upon leaving, Borders noticed that in the corner where a stack of corn fodder lay were the remains of a decomposed body. Thus, the mystery began, and county authorities were notified to piece together the case of identification.

Newspaper accounts relate the decomposed remains were in the left room of the cabin, clad only in a slip. A dress was under the feet of the skeleton with two bottles of water beside the body. Shoes were near the body, and a belt was hanging from a nail behind a door. A purse nearby contained the clues to start some type of identification of the body and create a schedule of events before the discovery.

The purse contained a set of false teeth, hose, a comb, lipstick and an identification stub from a bus ticket issued at Nashville, Tennessee, to Franklin, Kentucky, on May 20, 1949. A ring and a bracelet were on the body, and a fraternity pin was on the dress—more clues for the state police, Allen County sheriff and deputies to examine.

Franklin is 15 miles west of the cabin. The Franklin Hotel had records of a woman from Cincinnati who stayed the night of May 20. There were reports of her talking happily of her expected visit to her old home place, which was nearby.

Henry Tarplay (1899-1973) and Lewis Caldwell (1874-1958), two local men who were touched with pity by the elderly woman’s plight, realized she had no money and paid for her lodging. She had mentioned several prominent local people of the past as acquaintances and seemed knowledgeable of the area.

highway and asking for directions to Walkers Chapel Cemetery, indicating her parents and grandparents were buried there. Mrs. Curtis (Velma) Gaines (1903-1996), who resided in the area at the time, reported giving water to a stranger who had stopped by her home in late May and that the shoes found near the decomposed body were the same shoes worn by the woman.

As the investigation progressed, the authorities identified the body as Virginia Hollan Barton Clift. According to her aunt, Mattie Edna Wilson Terrell (18711956), Virginia, and her twin sister Georgia had lived in the cabin for a time in their younger years. Mrs. Arthur (Alberta) Miller of Dayton, the only daughter of Virginia, was notified of the discovery. Mrs. Miller was able to identify the ring, bracelet, false teeth and purse to the jury as her mother’s possessions and stated she had last seen her mother in April or May in Cincinnati, where Virginia lived alone. Virginia had told her daughter that she was going to visit New Orleans for a few weeks.

Research of Virginia’s family is about as vague as the circumstances of her last few weeks of life and why she had returned to her homeplace. Virginia was born about June 1889, according to census records, to Virgil and Allen County native Dr. Addie S. Wilson Hollan. Her mother graduated from the Southern School of Osteopathy in Franklin on Jan. 29, 1903, and moved to Horse Cave for her practice. Dr. Hollan died Feb. 6, 1920, in Williamsburg and was buried in Highland Cemetery, Whitley County. Dr. Hollan’s will records Virginia and granddaughter Alberta Barton, but no record of twin sister Georgia has been found, and she is not mentioned in the will.

Even today, we do not comprehend the reason Virginia traveled to her childhood area, and if she was aware of that time being the last days of her life. No monument was erected at Walkers Chapel Cemetery marking the final resting place among her family. The only memories left are community elders relating the discovery event and observing the log cabin where she died

Testifying before the coroner’s jury, Clifton Wilson, who resided in the west section of Allen County, had observed a woman who fit the description walking along the Franklin Road about three months prior. He recalled her stopping at a store on the

The question remains if Virginia knew the end was at hand and returned to Allen County because “There Is No Place Like Home.”

Above, Walkers Chapel Cemetery; right, a 1940s view of the Franklin Hotel on Main Street of the city. The hotel opened in 1927 and closed in 1958.

Our Beautiful

Bluegrass

State Kentucky Is …

By Phil Gladden, Paris

Afriend from out of state asked what Kentucky is like. I told him to sit, and I offered him an Ale-8-One and some Grippo’s Bar-B-Q Potato Chips. This is what I told him.

Kentucky is secret ingredients in family recipes passed down for generations, cooked in cast-iron skillets. It’s stringers filled with bluegills caught by kids with muddy feet using cane poles and a can of nightcrawlers.

It’s dressed eggs, rather than deviled eggs, at potluck dinners because Sister Bonnie doesn’t allow the devil into her house, her mind or even in the names of foods. It’s Sister Martha’s incredible banana nut bread and deer stew from the six-point buck Brother Johnson harvested from the forest he practically lives in. To know Brother Johnson is to have a true friend, someone to be counted upon, and a freezer full of meat.

It’s lush green cornfields and hay in huge white plasticcovered rolls that look like giant marshmallows. It’s cardinals, blue jays, and meadowlarks flying over fields of wildflowers hand-painted by God.

It’s young folks who gas up, pack up and then search for adventure in other states, and then have happy homecomings with family and friends when they return. There truly is no place like home.

Kentucky is yard sales with meager offerings because someone in the family always gets offered the good stuff for free. After all, people are more important than profits, and, around here, family is everything.

Kentucky is sweaty horses crossing finish lines and men covering their faces as they curse and throw losing tickets on the ground. It’s women wearing second glance-worthy, one-of-a-kind hats while sipping mint juleps as they smile and soothe their husbands with encouraging words. “Maybe next time.”

Kentucky is Wildcats that are known for being strong and swift. They will overcome all foes that are unfortunate enough to cross their path. One of them is over 7 feet tall and can dunk without bending his knees.

Kentucky is casual acquaintances who turn into family that you shudder to imagine life without. People you love so much you wish you could carry them in the bib pocket of your overalls, then take them out for long talks when the rest of the world rains down on you.

Who Had One of These?

This is the Disneyville Station, a popular toy made by Marx in the 1950s. It came with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and a wind-up hand car that went around the track.

A version of this toy and many others are on display at the Nostalgia Station Toy and Train Museum in Versailles, nostalgiastationmuseum.com.

Kentucky is fields of tobacco packed into black barns and rock walls that have been around since before barbed wire. It’s glass curio cabinets filled with bourbon in limitededition bottles for those who respect the history in all of it.

Kentuckians care deeply about the people with whom they share this blue and green marble. It’s where my heart is; where my soul has been set free; and where my ashes will be scattered.

My friend ate my last Grippo’s chip, licked his fingers, then finished his Ale-8. Afterward, he smiled and said, “You’re a fortunate man. You have cast off the evil and found the good in life in a grand place on this earth.”

I nodded as he stood to leave and told him the only place I’ll ever see anywhere near as beautiful as Kentucky will be heaven. He nodded, then turned and traveled down the dirt road where the sun sank below the horizon, and I heard him whistling My Old Kentucky Home as he disappeared into the distance. Stephen Foster most definitely got it right.

Geneaology: The Surname Baumbach

By Jeanne Greiser, Alexandria njgreiser@yahoo.com

As children, we thought the name Baumbach was unusual, and anyone with our name was sure to be a cousin. Our uncles and aunt—Dad’s brothers and sister— lived in Newport and Fort Thomas. Other than those relatives, our extended Baumbach family was but a few.

When we were children, Dad talked about his family— just snippets about family life. Once, his brothers climbed a tree when their mother was trying to discipline them. Another story was about the time our Uncle Eddie rode a horse to church to check on his brother, our dad, because Dad had driven our uncle’s car for the first time. Dad said when he and his brothers were young, they wore knickers to school and painted their legs with shoe polish to camouflage the holes in their stockings. He talked about his aunts and uncles who lived together in a farmhouse in Fort Thomas. Dad said he spent a lot of time there visiting and played piano with his Aunt Elsie. He knew his grandparents, George and Elizabeth Ling Baumbach, and he told us about relatives who lived in Louisville. There was a cousin, Earl Clifford Baumbach, who worked as a volunteer police officer and was shot and killed while helping the police catch a bank robber.

I heard these stories before developing a passion for genealogy. Now, the tales are part of our family history project. Verifying and confirming the information seems important to enhance our Kentucky Baumbach family tree. My goal is to link one Baumbach family to the other—to find a connecting relative between Johannes “John” George Baumbach of Newport and Leonardt Baumbach of Louisville or to discover they are not related. There are lots of “perhaps” facts but no solid data to link the two.

The Baumbachs in Newport

born in Saxony in 1819. The couple had six children. Andreas “Andrew” was born in 1849, and Frederick was born in 1852, both in Saxony. The other four children were born in Louisville—Henry, 1854; Maria, 1857; Adam, 1859; and Wilhelm, 1861. The family immigrated to the U.S. sometime between 1852 and 1854.

Leonardt was a volunteer in the Union Army, 34th Kentucky Infantry and employed as a laborer. He died on April 15, 1870, of consumption/tuberculosis. Leonardt’s gravesite is in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville. After Leonardt’s death, Christina moved to Newport. She died on Dec. 21, 1893, of conditions related to old age. Her gravesite is in Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.

Summary

Both Baumbach families are from Saxony, Germany, and are of similar ages. Both immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Kentucky. There are records indicating some of the Louisville Baumbachs made their way to Newport and surrounding cities within Campbell County to reside and work. The city directories list their professions as house painter, stonemason, stove moulder, white washer and stone polisher.

Johannes “John” George Baumbach was my great-great-grandfather. He was born in 1819 in Saxony, Germany. John married Johanna Ottilia Merz or Murtz Ottilia was born in 1820 in Saxony. John and Ottilia immigrated to the United States in 1864 on a ship named Anna with their sons, George, our great-grandfather (born in 1851), and Charles “Karl” (born in 1861). Their daughter Anna Christine was born during their voyage on July 29, 1864. A fourth child, Casper, was born in 1866 in Newport. Two of their children grew to adulthood, and two died young. John worked as a house white washer. He died on Feb. 16, 1896, in Newport, of “old age.” Ottilia died on April 10, 1897. Their gravesites are in Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate.

The Baumbachs in Louisville

Leonardt Baumbach was born in 1819 in Saxony, Germany. Leonardt married Christina Saenger, who was

John and Leonardt could be first, second or third cousins. But I have not found their parents or other relatives who would connect them. I plan to keep researching. One fun fact about the families is that they intermarried when John’s daughter Anna, my great-great aunt, married Leonardt’s son Andrew. The bride had the surname Baumbach before and after she married. Their children are my first cousins twice removed. If Leonardt is a relative of John’s, this branch of our tree will grow by yet another Baumbach line. Andrew and Anna are buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisvlle.

The sources of this information are: Leonardt Baumbach’s Pension Records, Federal Census records, birth and death records from the Grace Methodist Church, Newport; St. John’s German Church, Newport; and Broadway Baptist Church, Louisville. Find a Grave records, various newspapers in Newport and Louisville, City Directories and more than 40 years of genealogy research also contributed to the information. To the best of my knowledge, this account is true and accurate.

KENTUCKY TRAVEL DECALS

By William Cameron Stone, Louisville

Growing up in Burbank, California, I had a special summer treat when my family took a road trip to visit my mother’s family in Frankfort.

Between 1953-1959, we made that trip every summer to visit my grandfather, A.E. Funk, who was Kentucky’s attorney general from 1948-1952, and my grandmother, Myrtle Childers Funk, both of whom originally were from Bullitt County.

On the road trips, we made frequent stops at gas stations, diners for lunch, and always an early stop for the night at a motel. At every stop, there was a small gift shop with a rack of souvenir travel decals for sale for 10-15 cents. I especially was attracted to the Kentucky decals depicting the various vacation destinations within our state.

Fortunately, my parents, Robert Clark Stone and Loretta Funk Stone, did not want me to affix them to the windshield, so they survived over the years as a pleasant reminder of those fun trips. I think my mother might have thought the two pinup decals were a little too racy to be on the family car!

Over the years they were stored away nicely only to be discovered and viewed with a new appreciation of Kentucky.

Our family moved permanently to Frankfort in 1959, so I was able to visit most of the sites pictured in the decals.

Maps and newspapers tell the story: The Community Known as ‘Chip’

By Jeremy Paul Wright, Hemphill

In the early 1900s, an amazing transformation began as the coal industry moved into the rural parts of Southeastern Kentucky. One town experienced major growth—that was the town of Chip. It was a small area that was both a storage place for nearby logging operations and a combination of some large farms.

Nobody alive today seems to remember Chip. There is little proof of Chip’s existence. Thankfully, we have maps, newspaper articles and post office records that give us a glimpse into what Chip was like. The property where Chip stood was purchased by Letcher County businessmen and then developed into lots that were auctioned off as the new town of Neon. One example of which we have evidence was when James H. Frazier of Whitesburg purchased the 31-acre farm of Robert Younts in October 1910.

Frazier was one of at least four men who formed the Letcher County Coal and Improvement Company. James P. Lewis, Martin Lewis and George Hogg also were active local developers. These were essentially the men who built the town of Neon. Nobody is certain why the name of an element was chosen for this new town. A legend emerged in the 1940s that the town was named because of instructions shouted to boarding passengers to put their “knee on” the train first. Recently, research by a local historian has shed light on the discovery that the town was named Neon, as reported in a newspaper article, before the building of the railroad had been completed through the town in November 1912.

New theories about how the town was named have emerged, including looking at the meaning of the word in Greek, which is “new,” and the possibility that it was named after someone, like most of the other towns in

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WANTED — Paying cash for large diamonds; collections of vintage wrist and pocket watches; gold and silver coins; sterling flatware and serving pieces; gold and silver jewelry; collections of arts and crafts and pottery; antique advertising signs; antique walking canes; pocket knives; collections of antique guns and swords; military collections; early hand-crafted crocks and jugs; musical instruments; call Clarence, buyer for more than 35 years; (606) 531-0467. (F-D)

Above, the first load of coal to leave Fleming by train, Aug. 10, 1913; right, the Lexington & Eastern Railroad Station in Fleming, pictured in early 1914, was about a half-mile from Neon. Photos courtesy of the author.

the area. Despite the somewhat mysterious beginning, the town of Neon grew into a thriving business area that many older citizens today describe as a miniature New York City.

The nearby coal camp community of Fleming existed alongside the town of Neon and was home to thousands of coal-mining families over the years. The name of this community is no mystery: It was named in honor of George Fleming, who was the president of the Elkhorn Coal Corporation. In 1977, the town of Fleming merged with Neon to officially become the city of Fleming-Neon.

Jeremy Paul Wright is the author of The History of Fleming-Neon, which is available through Amazon.com.

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“If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” Dolly Parton

by Bill Ellis

Don’t Have Time to Read a Book? How about reading more book reviews?

Now that I’m the ripe old age of 84, some of y’all (yes, I still use that colloquialism and still call our largest city “Louavul”) might wonder: What is the old guy reading, or is he able to read at all? One exercise that can keep your reading up to date is to read book reviews.

There is still some of the old professor left in me. You don’t teach for more than 37 years, go through the academic stages to full professorship, and write more than 30 articles and six books without sticking to some old academic habits.

I still enjoy articles and books that cover subjects close to my research topics of olden times, including Kentucky history, Southern history, religious history—particularly of the Southern Baptist variety—and academic history. I try to read for relaxation most of the time.

Perhaps you read some of the same books and magazines I do. As a member of the Kentucky Historical Society, The Filson Club Historical Society, the Southern Historical Society, and one or two other groups, I receive magazines/newsletters from these organizations with reviews of books in each issue.

For example, the November 2023 issue of The Journal of Southern History included an excellent review of native Kentuckian Keith Harper’s Southern Baptists Re-observed: Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Politics. To those of y’all who fly a lot, LSU Press has just published Speed, Safety, and Comfort: The Origins of Delta Airlines.

Kentucky Monthly publishes excellent short reviews of books with a close Kentucky connection. As many as six reviews an issue grace these pages. The December/ January issue, for example, included reviews of books ranging from Gideon Shryock: His Life and Architecture, 18021880 to a book about the Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball team.

Today’s Kentucky newspapers still publish a few book reviews but not like in the old days when the Sunday Louisville Courier-Journal and Lexington Herald-Leader held sway under editors such as Art Jester, and the Sunday Herald sweetened the writing with a small check, recalled former Managing Editor Tom Eblen. For a young professor, it was a sign of acceptance in “Kentucky Studies” to see your name on one of the book reviews. Occasionally, a review might be challenged in a later

issue, adding to the excitement.

I also take other magazines. The Week, a slightly left-leaning publication, includes a review section of books I probably never would read. I doubt I would ever read a biography of Milton Friedman, but it was interesting to learn that he was only 5 feet tall but “a giant among economists of the 20th century.” And where else would I find and read a short review of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year? Crows are one of my favorite birds to watch.

The New York Review of Books sometimes sits for two or three weeks unread, until I get up the courage to check out the more intellectual side of writing and reviews. Don’t go to thinking that old Bill is an intellectual—far from it—but there is something intriguing from that style of writing, editing and thinking.

The Review also includes book advertisements. If I had a dog, I would buy Who’s a Good Dog? And How to Be a Better Human by Jessica Pierce and published by The University of Chicago Press. In previous issues, I’ve read reviews of books by German authors about the rise of Nazism, its decline and its eventual fall (or whether it fell at all, according to the writers). Current articles about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine appear regularly, as do ones about the current Israeli and Hamas conflict.

“The Collaborator in Chief” by Geoffrey Wheatcroft is a review three full pages long of France on Trial: The Case of Marshall Pétain by Julian Jackson. It is a great look into what makes a person into a traitor without believing it himself.

Check out reviews of The Coal Miner Who Became Governor (Paul Patton, of course). And another book that caused some stir, The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, was reviewed in several sources. Chinn (1796-1833) was the enslaved wife Scott County’s Richard Mentor Johnson

If you don’t have time to read a book, read a review. Tonight, I think I’ll settle down and read a review of The Fasces: A History of Ancient Rome’s Most Dangerous Political Symbol

On March 30, if I should live so long, I will be celebrating my 25th anniversary of having open-heart surgery with five bypasses.

Readers may contact Bill Ellis at editor@kentuckymonthly.com

gardening

by Walt Reichert

Starting Over Again

Sometime this year, depending on construction schedules (which may mean not in my lifetime), my wife and I plan to move to another property. As to its gardening potential, the new place is literally a blank slate. There’s almost nothing there now except grass and one lone red oak tree that is almost on the property line.

So, it is with a mixture of dread and enthusiasm that I prepare to garden there. Dread because I’m at the age where starting anything new is scary. Enthusiasm because what gardener doesn’t want the chance to start all over again?

WHAT’S LEFT BEHIND

We live on 17 acres now, and the place to which we are moving to has 15, so not much change. But that is about the only similarity. Here, I have a huge vegetable garden. I have apple, peach, plum and pear trees that are 20 years old or more and have been bearing fruit for years. I have blackberries, raspberries and gooseberries. I have a prairie garden, a perennial garden and dozens of plants given to me by gardening friends and family.

What will be hardest to leave are the trees. The new place, as I said, has one oak tree. The previous owner had planted a few ‘Ruby Falls’ redbuds (nice), but they are immature, and it will be years before they cast any shade.

Contrast that to the place I’m living now. I have almost

50 species of trees on this property, including two elusive American elms, mature walnut trees, red oaks, hackberry, black cherry, white pine, cedars, corkscrew willow, tulip poplar and more. Many of the trees I planted shortly after we moved, including a Kentucky coffee tree and a scarlet oak that is now more than 20 feet tall. It has mature shrubs, most of which I planted, including viburnum, lilac, butterfly bush, vitex and Virginia sweetspire.

Being a birdwatcher, I’m going to miss all the feathered creatures that feed and nest in the trees and shrubs here. I’ve seen a few birds at the new place—those that like open grasslands, such as meadowlarks and doves—but not many species hang out there. That’s going to change!

PLANS FOR THE NEW

The land at the new place is gently rolling and elevated above most of the surrounding land. I will have plenty of sunshine and open land with which to work. The soil is clay but reasonably fertile and well drained. Because it is open, the site is breezy, so diseases should be minimal.

The previous owner thankfully put in many water spigots, so I’ll site the vegetable patch close to a spigot for irrigation and not far from the house.

The previous owner put in a few plants along the house’s foundation and in other beds. Most of the plants have expired, so I’ll move some of the perennials at my present house to fill in those gaps. I have several peonies and other perennials given to me by friends, and they will go with me.

The south side of the house at the new place will be a perfect spot to put in a rose garden. It’s a lot of work, but my dad had one for years, and in the last few years of his life, I took care of it. I want to plant some roses he grew, including ‘Tiffany,’ ‘Garden Party,’ ‘Love’ and ‘Tropicana.’

I want at least two shrub borders that will serve as privacy screens and bird/pollinator magnets. They will include viburnum, sumac, vitex, sweetspire and spicebush. And I’ll throw in a few hydrangeas for summer color.

Pat Greer, a local native plant enthusiast, has at least a dozen native plant gardens on her 5 acres. The clouds of butterflies, bees and other pollinators that visit her place are astonishing, and I hope to copy one or two of her “pocket gardens” at my new place with goldenrod, little bluestem prairie grass, ironweed, rattlesnake master, amsonia, river oats, baptisia and other natives.

I’ve always wanted to plant a heritage apple orchard. I want dwarf varieties of ‘Grimes Golden,’ ‘Winesap,’ ‘Arkansas Black’ and one or two more. I’ll need at least two peach trees, maybe a pear and plum. I’ll move some of my blackberries and raspberries to the new place. Keeping my expiration date in mind, I’ll try not to overdo it.

Speaking of, I hope to leave the place sometime in the (distant, I hope) future with lots of species of growing trees. I have burr oak seedlings started and walnuts in soil that I hope will sprout. We have a Kentucky coffee tree that’s too big to move, so I’ve put some of its seeds in dirt hoping to take some of its babies.

It’s going to be fun. Scary but fun!

by Gary Garth

Chronic Wasting Disease

On a cold Thursday night in January, about 100 people filed into the Grace Church of La Center in Ballard County to hear officials from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources talk about something none of them wanted to hear—Chronic Wasting Disease or CWD.

Those attending seemed most interested in learning how the state game agency planned to protect Kentucky’s deer and elk herd from CWD, which recently had been confirmed in a 2½-year-old male deer in Ballard County, and what those efforts might mean for them as hunters and landowners. It was the first confirmed case of CWD in the state, but it likely won’t be the last.

This is bad news, but it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. CWD was first discovered in mule deer in a Northern Colorado research facility in 1967 and since has spread to 30 states and four Canadian provinces. Since 2002, Kentucky wildlife officials regularly have tested for the disease in every county. The agency also has strict guidelines in place guarding how deer and elk taken outside Kentucky must be processed and handled before it can be brought home. There is no live animal test for CWD. It requires examining a portion of the brain stem.

The disease has been found in neighboring states, including Missouri and Tennessee.

• • •

Chronic Wasting Disease is, according to the state game agency website, a “neurologic disease that affects deer, elk and other species in the deer family.” It is untreatable and always fatal. It is not known to affect humans. No one is happy that CWD has been discovered in Kentucky. Everyone is concerned about how to keep it controlled. Elimination of the disease is a lofty but unrealistic goal.

The seriousness of the matter was reflected in the wildlife luminaries who gathered in La Center to address the crowd and answer questions. The gathering included the state director of wildlife, the coordinator of the agency’s deer program, the 1st District commissioner, the state wildlife veterinarian, and Gabe Jenkins, a deputy commissioner for the agency and the former director of the state’s deer and elk program. Jenkins has been thinking about and guarding against CWD for years.

Now, it’s here. What does he intend to do about it?

“What we want not to do is make a knee-jerk reaction,” Jenkins said. “We want to take a hunters-first approach at this. And we have to think long term. [Controlling CWD] is not a sprint. It’s a marathon.”

If this sounds like an almost perfect no-answer answer, that’s because it is. Game officials are, wisely, gathering as much data, including public input, as they can in formulating a plan.

The crowd at Grace Church was attentive and well behaved, but not bashful when asking questions.

They left with few, if any, specific answers, particularly about a plan of action. That’s because wildlife officials didn’t have one. But they will, Jenkins said, noting that the agency’s specialists will have a full list of CWDrelated recommendations, including those for the 2024-2025 deer season, for the nine-member commission to consider at its next quarterly meeting, which was slated for March 1 at the KDFWR headquarters in Frankfort. The commission’s regular quarterly meetings are open to the public and live streamed at the agency’s YouTube channel.

Jenkins declined to discuss specifics on the upcoming recommendations but did say that hunters can expect the current five-county CWD surveillance zone (Calloway, Fulton, Graves, Hickman and Marshall counties) to be expanded.

He also said that an eradication tactic, where officials attempt to remove all deer from a CWD-targeted area, is not being considered. Eradication has been tried in a few areas with mixed results.

Deer and elk are two of the most popular wildlife species in the state, enjoyed and valued by hunters and non-hunters. Kentucky is home to more than 1 million deer. Hunters and landowners play a vital role in managing the herd, as hunting is the only viable method of managing whitetail numbers.

Jenkins knows not everyone will be happy with any specific CWD management plan, but he encourages patience and cooperation. CWD is serious, but the situation is far from dire.

“We must think long term,” he stressed. “Everyone has a vested interest in the deer population in this state. We don’t want hunters and landowners to freak out. We want people to continue to hunt. What I would say is, don’t panic. Work with us.”

It’s good advice.

• • •

To report a deer that appears sickly or acting oddly, call the Fish and Wildlife Department headquarters at 1.800.858.1549.

For more information, go to fw.ky.gov and click on Chronic Wasting Disease.

Readers may contact Gary Garth at editor@kentuckymonthly.com

List Worthy

My youngest child, Sydney, is featured on page 6 of this issue and talks about what it was like Growing Up Kentucky Monthly.

She refused to include my favorite tale because she said it’s untrue.

As I remember it, one morning, as Syd was apt to do, she hid under Account Executive Marilee’s desk before Marilee arrived at work. Syd remained silent for, I said, an hour after Marilee’s arrival. The rest of us knew Syd was there, and no one said a thing. Between phone calls, when the room fell silent, Syd covertly reached over and pinched Marilee’s pinky toe.

“The screams could be heard in Lawrenceburg,” I said.

“That’s ridiculous,” Sydney said. “It never happened.”

“Yes, it did. I remember the screams.”

Associate Editor Patty Ranft backed me up. “Yes, there were screams. Oh, boy, were there screams.”

STEPHEN M. VEST Publisher + Editor-in-Chief

“Still, you’re exaggerating,” Sydney said.

“How?” I asked.

“It wasn’t quite an hour.”

•

•

•

Speaking of Sydney, she’s recently flown the coop and taken up residence in Indianapolis, leaving no one—at least in the house—to challenge my hyperbolic tendencies or what Syd calls ridiculousness.

Yep, Kay and I are empty nesters, ending a 34-year span of having at least one child under our roof.

No one warned me that, when your last child leaves the nest, it triggers a process that leads to you leaving soon thereafter.

Maybe it began before Sydney’s move, but I was unaware. There is a list. A list of faux pas committed by the paterfamilias of the Frankfort Vests, which may be later used as evidence of my impending incompetence.

I first became aware of the list during an October trip to Chicago to attend a publisher’s roundtable and visit with my eldest daughter, Katy, who had recently moved

to a new apartment in “The Loop.”

I dropped off the materfamilias and my middle daughter, Molly, at the door to Katy’s apartment skyscraper and then circled the block to a garage Katy suggested. When I found it closed, I continued looking until I was waved into a 12-floor parking structure reached through a green garage door between two office buildings.

After meeting the three of them for brunch at a popular egg eatery, we returned to Katy’s apartment. When it was time for me to leave for my meeting, I could not find the correct green door (apparently, many doors on her block are green), and when my car search reached 45 minutes, I overheard Katy telling Molly to “add this to the list.”

When I inquired about the nature of such a list, I was met with silence and diverted stares.

“It’s nothing for you to be concerned about, Pop,” said Molly, who was worried over my driving skills during a fall trip to Maryland, “but we’ve all noticed you’re starting to drive like an old man.”

“Why? Because I don’t drive 90 miles an hour and race through yellow lights?”

“No, because you disregard stop signs and stop at green lights.”

Other highlighted items on the list include when I wore my burgundy EKU pullover inside-out in public, when I lost and later found my computer in the Fort Lauderdale Airport, and, most recently, at a casual dinner party, where it was discovered I was wearing a black Puma shoe on one foot and a black New Balance on the other.

• • •

Please join us this month as we travel to Prestonsburg to continue the celebration of Kentucky Monthly’s 25th anniversary. We will visit Loretta Lynn’s birthplace, Jenny Wiley State Resort Park, and the APPYs at the Mountain Arts Center. For more details, turn to page 6 (next to Syd’s story).

• • •

“Hey,” said Kay upon proofreading this column. “Molly wasn’t in Chicago. That was Sydney.”

“You’re right … add it to the list.”

Kwiz Answers: 1. C. Wynters’ strong vocals were a potent complement to Dr. John’s New Orleans-style blues; 2. A. Her full first name was Sophonisba; 3. B. Britton went on to become involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the women’s suffrage movement; 4. A. The fair introduced zippers, Pabst Blue Ribbon,an early dishwasher, Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum, diet soda, Cracker Jacks, the Ferris Wheel, brownies, fluorescent lightbulbs, an early fax machine and moving pictures! Mary Britton wanted to see if the Kentucky building at the fair would reject her, which it did, enabling her to draw attention in the press, which she had intended; 5. C. Laura Clay was one of Cassius Marcellus Clay’s three daughters; 6. A. To receive the pardon, she had to aver that she was not an abolitionist, which she did—and then returned promptly to her abolitionist efforts! The warden carried a grudge about it and swore to get her back for “tricking” him; 7. C. Hayden said this made him see he was just as much a gentleman as anyone; 8. B. He was inspired to invent it after he witnessed a horrific car accident.

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