February 2024 | Kentucky Monthly Magazine

P E N N E D L IT E R ARY C O NT E ST W I N N E R S

The Literary Issue

FEBRUARY 2024

with Kentucky Explorer

2024

Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame Inductees Centre College’s Kessler Scholars Program

Food and family history are at the core of the latest book by

Crystal Wilkinson

The Powell Quintuplets What Books Reveal About the People Who Own Them

Make your dreams a reality at Northern Kentucky University!

Come explore our welcoming, inclusive campus and experience our vibrant, thriving region with global opportunities.

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O N T H E C OV E R Writer Crystal Wilkinson releases a new book; photo by Rebecca Redding

in this issue

12

F EB R UA RY D E PA R T M E N T S 2 Kentucky Kwiz 3 Readers Write 4 Mag on the Move 6 25th Anniversary 8 Cooking 49 Kentucky Explorer 60 Past Tense/ Present Tense 61 Field Notes 62 Calendar 64 Vested Interest

12 A ‘Culinary Memoir’ Crystal Wilkinson’s latest book, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, explores the relationship between food and family 15 Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame Seven of the Commonwealth’s most talented and accomplished writers join the distinguished group

8

36 You Are What You Read Donated books reveal the inner lives of readers 38 Fab Five Kentucky’s first surviving quintuplets are choosing careers

27 Penned: The 16th Annual Writer’s Showcase The best of reader-submitted fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and opening of a novel

45 Family of Firsts The Kessler Scholars Program at Centre College provides financial and moral support for firstgeneration college students

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 1

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

1. In the opening scene of the 2003 film School of Rock, who is wearing a “Lucky in Kentucky” T-shirt?

A. Jack Black as Ned Schneebly B. Miranda Cosgrove as Summer Hathaway C. Jack Black as Dewey Finn 2. True or False: The movie inspired a chain of 300 music schools worldwide, including locations in Kentucky.

3. While Jack Black stars in School of Rock, Black Jack is a community in which Kentucky county?

A. Jessamine B. Estill C. Simpson 4. John Miller Cooper, a biomechanics professor and kinesiologist (the study of human movement) from Hopkinsville, is oddly enough known as the innovator of what?

A. The Slinky from Hasbro B. The basketball jump shot C. The breaststroke 5. True or False: In 1994, when Owensboro-born actor Tom Ewell died at 85 in Los Angeles, he was survived by his mother.

6. When legendary basketball coach John Wooden—who began his coaching career at Dayton, Ky.—coached the UCLA Bruins to 88 consecutive wins, it erased the record of which other Kentuckian?

A. “Dandy Dan” Dansburg of the Bethel College Threshers

2 KE NT U C K Y M O NT H LY F EBR U A R Y 2 0 2 4

B. Phil D. Woolpert of the University of San Francisco Dons C. Adolph Rupp of the University of Kentucky Wildcats 7. Bardstown-born journalist Marie Mattingly Meloney was one of the first women accredited to a seat in the United States Senate press gallery. For the New York Herald Tribune, she interviewed Benito Mussolini four times and turned down an interview with whom?

A. Dwight D. Eisenhower B. Adolf Hitler C. Franklin D. Roosevelt 8. Covington’s Odd Fellows Hall hosted a reception honoring victorious Union Gen. Ulysses Grant after the Civil War and the laying in state of assassinated Gov. William Goebel in 1900. What was it home to during the 1950s?

A. A bowling alley B. A goetta factory C. A skating rink

Celebrating the best of our Commonwealth

© 2024, Vested Interest Publications Volume Twenty-Seven, Issue 1, February 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

9. Emma Guy Cromwell of Simpson County was the first Kentucky woman to do what?

A. Hold a statewide office B. Walk through the Cumberland Gap alone C. Get a star on the Country Music Walk of Fame

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,

10. Who sponsored the bill to make Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday an official state holiday?

A. Georgia Davis Powers B. Mae Street Kidd C. Suzy Post

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

Counties mentioned in this issue...

Readers Write Bravo for Encyclopedias I read Bill Ellis’ good article on encyclopedias (October issue, page 88).

Thank you for pointing out the many that have been published and their unique contributions to Kentucky scholarship.

It seems impossible that it has been more than 30 years since we four editors (of The Kentucky Encyclopedia) sat and signed, and signed, and signed at the Old State Capitol. When that book was published, it was one of the few state encyclopedias. The only one I could look to for guidance was The Handbook of Texas. Now, many states have followed our lead. For that, the credit goes to Ray Betts and Tom Clark for bringing the idea to fruition.

John Kleber, Louisville •••

I, too, received a set of encyclopedias when I was 12 (for Christmas). I cried.

Also, I received a portable typewriter when I had

never typed and a piece of luggage when I had never traveled.

I was glad to have the encyclopedias through the years, but I thought, if this is what college is like, then I don’t want to go. I did go to college in my 40s and had some excellent classes and professors whom I wouldn’t have had at 18.

I loved art history, and etymology opened a whole new world for me. I am forever grateful. I love my American Heritage Dictionary. I have come a long way (still hate typing), and I truly wish I had had Dr. Ellis as a professor along the way.

Martha K. Colston, Prospect •••

I was pleased to read the letter printed in the October 2023 edition (page 3) from my longtime great friend, Jock Conley of Carlisle, whereby he points out that Daniel and Rebecca Boone’s “last home in Kentucky was here in Nicholas County.”

Frontiersman Simon Kenton, a friend of the

Boones, helped Daniel and Rebecca build their cabin around 1795, where they lived until late 1799, when Nicholas officially became a county, as the Boones left for their new home in Missouri. Another historic site “a stone’s throw” across the highway from the Boones’ cabin stands Forest Retreat, built by Thomas “Stonehammer” Metcalfe, Kentucky’s 10th governor (1828-32), so named by renowned statesman Henry Clay upon visiting, “Thomas, you have a veritable Forest Retreat here!”

In addition to George Washington’s death in 1799, another historic event occurred, as 19-year-old Henry Dampier migrated from the Camden area of South Carolina to settle in the Blue Licks/Licking River area, where he met and married Martha Davidson to become the progenitors of the Kentucky Dampiers.

Don J. Dampier, Georgetown author and Carlisle Native

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.

The Kentucky Gift Guide Kentucky Monthly’s annual gift guide highlights some of the finest handcrafted gifts and treats our Commonwealth has to offer.

Drink Local This handy guide to sipping in the Bluegrass State spotlights local breweries, wineries and, of course, distilleries. Discover unique ways to drink in Kentucky, creative cocktail recipes and more.

Follow us @kymonthly Find more at kentuckymonthly.com.

Use your phone to scan this QR code and visit our website.

UNITING KENTUCKIANS EVERYWHERE. k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 3

travel 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!

MAG

ON THE

MOVE Along the Rhine

Scotland

Bob and Martina Durrett of Crestview Hills and Linda and Ron Durrett of Edgewood took a Viking River Cruise on the Rhine River from Amsterdam to Basel, Switzerland. Along the way, they visited centuries-old windmills, castles, towns and cathedrals.

John and Kathy Stansberry from Corbin are pictured while on a two-week tour of Ireland and Scotland on the Swilcan Bridge at the 18th hole of the Old Course, St. Andrews Links, St. Andrews, Scotland—the Home of Golf. The Swilcan Bridge is more than 700 years old and originally was used by shepherds to move their flocks across the Swilcan Burn.

4 KE NT U C K Y M O NT HLY FEBRUARY 2024

MOREHEAD, KENTUCKY Located in the heart of eastern Kentucky, Morehead State University ranks among the best public universities in the South. We’re recognized for our outstanding academic programs including business, education, nursing, and space systems engineering.

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k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 5

c e l e b r at i n g

2 5

Growing Up Kentucky Monthly Third in a series

G

rowing up Kentucky Monthly, I have many memories of unique experiences.

As a young child, I remember loving the large display window and spending much time at the office while my mom and dad worked. To the pedestrians of St. Clair Street in downtown Frankfort, I hope you never minded me and my Polly Pockets in the window.

In 2009, I attended the “corn dog festival” (actually the Glendale Crossing Festival) with my dad, where we set up a booth and worked to sell Kentucky Monthly continues our 25th Anniversary festivities in Paducah. magazine subscriptions and my dad’s book, That Kind of Journalist. The kettle Looking for Southern hospitality? The 1857 Hotel is the first boutique hotel in corn stand nearby took all of our downtown Paducah, offering 10 unique rooms, a guest house, and a bar and business, and it would have had mine, event center. Kentucky Monthly invites you join us for a reception at the hotel too, if I’d had my own pocket money. on February 23. This event will be free and open to the public. Check our I have found it amazing to have an website, Facebook page and upcoming emails about more Paducah details audience in our lives. If you have been coming soon! here since the beginning, you’ve read about my childhood dentist experience, silly things I said as a child, and my first relationship/crush on a boy— freight house shout-out to the parent of a classmate 330 South 3rd Street, Paducah • freighthousefood.com who read this magazine, connected the dots, and spilled the beans.

Paducah Beer Werks You, the readers, helped me raise 301 North 4th Street, Paducah • paducahbeerwerks.com hundreds of dollars and collect donations for my student teaching The National Quilt Museum opportunity in Belize in 2018. THANK FIND MORE IDEAS AT 215 Jefferson Street, Paducah • quiltmuseum.org YOU! You also witnessed my wedding, paducah.travel where my dad did a fantastic job saying Yeiser Art Center a blessing for my and Mitchell’s 200 Broadway, Paducah • theyeiser.org marriage. Not a dry eye in the church— my mom, especially.

The most incredible place I have We’re celebrating all year! Stay tuned for more 25th Anniversary news, including visited because of the magazine hasn’t meetups and suggestions for activities in all our host cities. We will feature happened yet. It probably will be them in every issue of the magazine and online at www.kentuckymonthly.com.

Alaska with the May cruise. I am looking forward to finally being able to S AV E T H E D A T E . . . M E E T U S I N P R E S T O N S B U R G I N M A R C H ! attend a Kentucky Monthly trip! I’m glad to be an adult and have my own pocket money.

I have the best parents ever, and I want to thank you all for supporting them these 25 years. With the magazine, my dad can enjoy his passion for writing. I am genuinely thankful to you, the readers.

meet us in...

pa d u ca h More to explore...

6 KE NT U C K Y M O NT H LY F EBR UARY 2 0 2 4

M O L LY ( V E S T ) L E M K E R

At the heart of America’s inland waterways, you’ll find a sophisticated rivertown that inspires. Paducah, Kentucky, is a confluence of cultural heritage and creativity where art is a way of life.

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Immerse yourself in technique and creativity or connect with the global quilting community during AQS QuiltWeek – Paducah: April 24-27, 2024 Plan your experience at Paducah.travel

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cooking

Cooking

Culinary traditions are integral in tying families and friends together. Joyful celebrations of holidays, weddings and births or somber gatherings, such as funerals, have food at their core. Writer Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky’s poet laureate from 2021-2023, examines this theme in her new book Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks, which was released in January.

Wilkinson shares a selection of recipes from her family collection that you can prepare for your loved ones.

Reprinted with permission from Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks by Crystal Wilkinson copyright ©2024.

Photographs by Kelly Marshall copyright ©2024. Published by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

and Connections Grandmother’s Blackberry Cobbler SERVES 6 For the fruit: 1 cup sugar 1 cup water 4 tablespoons (½ stick) salted butter 16-18 ounces fresh blackberries (3 generous cups), preferably wild if you can find them

For the crust: 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling 1 teaspoon table salt 2/

3

cup cold vegetable shortening

½ cup ice water, or as needed 1 tablespoon sugar, for sprinkling

For the fruit: Combine sugar, 1 cup water, butter and blackberries in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook 6-8 minutes, stirring only after berries begin to soften, butter has melted, and liquid in the pan turns deep purple. Do not overcook. Remove from heat and let cool while you make the crust.

For the crust: 1. Combine flour and salt in a chilled glass, ceramic or metal mixing bowl.

Use a pastry cutter or two forks to work in the shortening, blending until mixture is the consistency of coarse meal. Again, do not overwork it.

2. Add half the ice water, stirring to

form a dough that begins to gather, then continue to add a little more ice water at a time—just enough for dough to hold together. You may not use all the water.

3. Lightly flour a rolling pin and the work surface. Turn out the dough and roll it out evenly to a size much larger than the cobbler/casserole pan. Lay the dough in the pan with a generous amount of overhang on all sides (1-2 inches or so). Use the tines of a fork to dock bottom of dough in several places.

4. When ready to assemble cobbler, place a rack in the middle position of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees.

Uncle Sherman and Aunt Lo, who can both come close to re-creating this dessert— my grandmother’s prized blackberry cobbler—say the secret to perfection is in the crust. The sugar sprinkled on top gives this one a lovely look.

An 8-cup casserole or 8-inch Pyrex baking dish works well here. This deep-dish, wraparound rolled crust method is something like an oldfashioned pandowdy that was popular in the 1800s, where you dowsed the crust into the fruit mixture and baked it in a skillet. I was an adult before I perfected this cobbler; getting the correct ratio of fruit, juice and crust in each bite is important. This cobbler screams July in Kentucky to me, even if it’s the dead of winter and you are anywhere in the world.

5. Spoon the cooled, softened fruit and some of its liquid into the doughlined pan. The berries should not be “swimming.” Discard or reserve the remaining liquid to cook down for an accompanying syrup (see note).

6. Pull overhanging dough up toward the center on all sides to cover most of fruit. Sprinkle top with sugar. Bake on the middle rack for 40-45 minutes, until crust is lightly browned and any exposed fruit is bubbling. Spoon into bowls and serve warm or at room temperature.

Note: While the cobbler is baking, you may cook down the extra berry liquid to create a syrupy sauce to serve with the cobbler or with ice cream, or use it to flavor drinks. Pour leftover cooking juices in a saucepan and simmer over medium heat until thick enough to coat a spoon, 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool.

For more on Crystal Wilkinson and Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, see story beginning on page 12.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 9

cooking

Pine Lick Mutton Leg and Gravy

Corn Pudding SERVES 8 TO 10 4 tablespoons (½ stick) salted butter 2 (15-ounce) cans wholekernel corn, or approximately 2 pounds fresh corn kernels

SERVES 8 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

One 5- to 7-pound bone-in mutton leg or shoulder, patted dry with paper towels (you may substitute bone-in lamb)

½ cup whole milk

1 lemon, cut in half

½ cup heavy whipping cream

Table salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 (14.75-ounce) cans cream-style corn

¼ cup sugar 3 tablespoons cornstarch Table salt and freshly ground black pepper 1. Put the butter in a 3- to 4-quart casserole dish (a 9×13-inch Pyrex pan also works well), place it on the middle rack in the oven, and preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. While butter is melting (watch closely so it doesn’t burn), in a large mixing bowl combine the whole-kernel and cream-style corn, beaten eggs, milk, heavy cream, sugar and cornstarch, stirring until well incorporated. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Remove casserole dish from oven and carefully swirl around the melted butter until the dish is evenly coated.

Pour in the corn mixture and bake on middle rack for 1 hour, or until golden brown on top and softly set.

Serve warm.

10 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2024

2 large onions, cut into chunks 2 carrots, trimmed, scrubbed well, and cut into chunks 4 celery ribs, coarsely chopped 8 cups (2 quarts) chicken broth, homemade or store-bought (64 ounces; I like Pacific Organic brand), heated 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1. Place a rack in the middle position and preheat oven to 250 degrees.

2. Grease the inside of a large roasting pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Place meat in the pan. Squeeze the juice of the lemon halves evenly over it, then drizzle the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil over and rub in.

Season generously with salt and pepper.

3. Set roasting pan on stovetop across two burners, as needed. Sear the meat on high heat, turning it so all

sides are deeply browned. (You may need to turn on a vent fan or open a window due to the smoking pan.)

Remove pan from heat and transfer meat to a cutting board.

4. Spread onions, carrots and celery evenly in roasting pan, then return the mutton to the pan on top of the vegetables, fat side up. Place the roasting pan on the middle rack of the oven, then pour in the broth. Gently slide in the rack and slow-roast the mutton, uncovered, for about 4 hours or until the meat comes away easily from the bone.

During the oven time, check the liquid level and add water as needed, and spoon liquid over meat.

5. During the last hour of oven time, transfer the roasting pan briefly to the stovetop. Whisk the flour into the pan drippings and cook over medium heat to thicken and make gravy.

Return pan to the oven and cook until the meat comes away easily from the bone.

6. Taste the gravy and add salt and/or pepper as needed. Transfer the meat and vegetables to a platter. Pour gravy into a bowl and serve hot.

Tip: Halal butcher shops may carry mutton, but be sure it is sheep. Some halal customers who cook Indian food refer to goat meat as mutton.

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y r a n i l u C ‘ a ’ r i o m e M Crystal Wilkinson’s latest book, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, explores the relationship between food and family

BY KIM KOBERSMITH

T

he first Thanksgiving after her grandmother passed, Crystal Wilkinson carefully placed a hanger holding one of the grandmother’s dresses in the kitchen to keep her company while she prepared the family feast. She felt her grandmother’s presence, along with generations of her ancestors, lending their wisdom and cheering her on as she prepared recipes that had been handed down to her.

The sense of history encapsulated in food became the core of Wilkinson’s new book, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks, released in January. Wilkinson, Kentucky’s poet laureate from 2021-2023, has published two novels, a poetry collection, short stories and essays. Winner of an NAACP Image Award for outstanding poetry and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence, Wilkinson has solidified her place among the region’s great writers.

Praisesong is neither a cookbook nor a family history.

12 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

Wilkinson terms the collection of 40 family recipes and eight lyrical essays a “culinary memoir.” In retrospect, she realized all of her previous stories have featured food as a central aspect because of the integral relationship between food and the Black rural culture that she writes about. “I can’t write a character in the mountains without involving food in some way. It is natural for me,” she said. “Food is culture. Food is as important as any other marker of a people.”

Through Praisesong, Wilkinson hopes to propel the history and culture of Affrilachians into the national discourse. Her family history in the region began five generations ago with her fourth-great-grandmother Aggy of Color, who moved west from Virginia in the early 1800s as the Commonwealth of Kentucky was still forming.

“Mainstream America is still under the notion that Appalachians are white,” Wilkinson said. “I want to begin to dismantle the invisibility of Black people in the

P H OTO S B Y R E B E C CA R E D D I N G

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 13

“It is from Kentucky and has Kentucky all over it,” For a selection of recipes from Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, see page 8.

region. My family has lived here for over 200 years. Black Appalachian life, the rural Black experience, is what I’m haunted by as a writer.”

• • •

Although Wilkinson celebrates the warmth and goodness found in her family kitchens, she doesn’t shy away from the way her ancestors’ domestic realities were complicated by race and gender. She recalls her Granny Christine, who was married at 14 and spent much of the rest of her life cooking. Christine saw cooking as her duty, and while she would grow weary, she also saw feeding people as a way to show love.

“Even during slavery, taking something seemingly oppressive and reclaiming it is what we Black women do best,” Wilkinson said. “Kitchens are where we get advice about relationships, hear news, and have our hair braided. They are a source of power.”

Wilkinson includes a chapter entitled “The King of Sorghum” about her grandfather. While her grandmother reigned over the kitchen, her grandfather had an important role in the family’s food production. He butchered chickens, grew and pressed sorghum, and harvested vegetables. “It was a dance between the two of them to put food on the table and keep the family fed,” Wilkinson said.

• • •

While parts of the historical essays are written from memory, learning about five generations of ancestors required significant research. Wilkinson worked with a 14 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

genealogist, read familial histories written by relative and University of Kentucky sociology professor Doris Wilkinson, and pored over county and state archival records. “I was fortunate that a rich, rich history of my family was already present in oral lore and written in books,” Crystal said.

To reconstruct the life of her first Kentucky ancestor, Aggy of Color, Wilkinson relied on general research, intuition and historical fiction because of the lack of records for enslaved people. In contrast, tales of Aggy’s daughter, Patsy Riffe, abound in all histories of Casey County. Riffe, a well-known businessperson, was born a free Black woman in 1818. She went on to purchase her husband from slavery, and together they acquired a vast amount of property, including the still-named Patsy Riffe Ridge, where the couple built and operated a popular hunting lodge.

During the research process, Wilkinson particularly appreciated being able to physically see and touch historical documents about her family. Reading from large-format, velvet-covered plat books from the 1800s containing records written in faded ink, she discovered deeds that were passed to her ancestors and enslaved people who were willed to relatives.

• • •

The recipes in Praisesong include many down-home favorites that readers might recognize from their own family kitchens: jam cake, chicken and fluffy dumplings, Benedictine spread.

“It is from Kentucky and has Kentucky all over it,” Wilkinson said. Q

2024

Kentucky Writers

Hall of

Fame.

George C. Wolfe is most famous as a three-time Tony Award-winning director of plays and movies, including his new film Rustin, a biographical drama about the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. But the Frankfort native has always been a writer at heart. He is the author of such plays and musicals as Spunk, The Colored Museum, Jelly’s Last Jam and Shuffle Along and was the lyricist for Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk, for which he won a Tony as director.

Fenton Johnson is a wideranging author: memoirs, fiction, essays and nonfiction books that explore global themes such as love, family,

faith and community. More often than not, those themes are viewed through the lens of his upbringing in the Nelson County community of New Haven. His 1994 novel Scissors, Paper, Rock was the first major work of fiction about the impact of the AIDS crisis on rural America.

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall grew up in Florida and lived a nomadic life until she moved to Kentucky, where her family had deep roots. Her novels, stories and poetry are inseparable from the landscape of rural Harrison County, where she has found inspiration for nearly five decades. Her novel Come and Go, Molly Snow is a classic Kentucky story.

These three living writers will be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame on March 25 in a ceremony at the historic Kentucky Theatre in Lexington.

Joining them will be three deceased writers: Paul Brett Johnson, a landscape painter who wrote and illustrated children’s books; Mary Lee Settle, a National Book Awardwinning novelist; and Billy C. Clark, whose memoirs and stories told of river life around his native Eastern Kentucky, where the Big Sandy meets the Ohio.

Learn more about these Kentucky literary icons in this special section, written by Tom Eblen, a former Lexington HeraldLeader columnist and managing editor who is now the literary arts liaison at the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning.

L E A R N M O R E AT CA R N E G I E C E N T E R L E X . O R G k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 15

GEORGE C. WOLFE

G

eorge C. Wolfe, one of the most celebrated playwrights and directors in theater and film, is more famous as a director than a writer.

The Frankfort native has directed 17 Broadways plays and musicals, for which he has won three Tony Awards and received eight more nominations. Those included two of the most acclaimed dramas of the past three decades: Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Topdog/ Underdog, the 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner by fellow Kentuckian Suzan-Lori Parks from Fort Knox.

Wolfe also has directed six movies, including two recent films for Netflix: Rustin, a biographical drama about civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a 2020 adaptation of the August Wilson play that explored racism and exploitation.

But writing has always been central to Wolfe’s storytelling art and craft. He earned four more Tony nominations for his writing and won a 1992 Drama Desk writing award for his hit Broadway musical Jelly’s Last Jam, about the great jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton.

“I love language; I love how characters use language,” Wolfe said in an interview. “Everything I do is storytelling to me. Directing is storytelling. Writing is storytelling.

And so, I love how people use language to reveal themselves. I also love how people use language to conceal who they really are. I love playing with all of those dynamics.”

George Costello Wolfe was born Sept. 23, 1954, to Costello Wolfe, a state government clerk, and Anna Lindsey Wolfe, an educator. He attended Kentucky State University’s all-Black Rosenwald Laboratory School, where his mother taught and was later principal. “Frankfort being segregated for the first eight years of my life, I was very protected and treated in a safe and special way by the Black community,” he said.

Wolfe was 12 when he accompanied his mother to New York City, where she attended a seminar. He saw his first three Broadway plays—Hello Dolly, West Side Story and Hamlet—and became obsessed with theater. He graduated from Frankfort High School, where he acted in and directed plays, wrote for the school newspaper and literary journal, and was the marching band’s first Black drum major.

Wolfe said his love of language came from his childhood in Frankfort.

16 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2024

“Just the way people talked and the things that they said and how they said them was very interesting,” he said. “It was a small town, so the details mattered.

Language was always something to empower you, a weapon you could use, a weapon that could be used against you. I knew words mattered, how you used words mattered, from a very, very early age. A lot of those rhythms are about my childhood and are still playing in my head.”

For Wolfe, writing is a way to search for deeper meaning. “You are digging at the truth that is underneath the truth that is underneath the truth,” he said. “And the process of that I find exhilarating and exhausting and overwhelming and thrilling at the exact same time.”

After a year at Kentucky State University, Wolfe headed to Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he studied acting and directing. During his junior year, he wrote a play that was produced for a student festival. But it took a while to acknowledge himself as a writer.

“I would say for the longest time, ‘Oh, I’m just writing things to give myself something to direct,’” he said. “So, I kept on avoiding saying I was a writer. And at one point. I just said, ‘Shut up, George. Call yourself a writer. Claim it; own it; and go on the journey.’ ” Wolfe earned an MFA from New York University in 1983, studying both dramatic writing and musical theater.

Two grad-school projects were produced off-Broadway.

“I was working on this musical that I knew was going to be a hit, and then I was working on this project that was just something I was doing for me,” he said. “The musical [Paradise] got violently trashed, and the thing that I was working on just for myself turned into this play called The Colored Museum that launched my career. So, it was very valuable to learn very early on that you do what you do because you must, not because you’re thinking about how it’s going to be received.”

Wolfe won an Obie Award for his 1990 play Spunk, an adaptation of three stories by Zora Neale Hurston, then hit it big the next year with Jelly’s Last Jam. His first Tony Award came for directing Kushner’s Pulitzer Prizewinning Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, a lengthy examination of homosexuality in 1980s America. He directed the second part of Angels, called Perestroika, the next year. He co-wrote and directed the Broadway musical The Wild Party (2000).

Wolfe was artistic director of the New York

Chris Buck photo

Shakespeare Festival and The Public Theater from 1993-2004. In 1996, he created the musical Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk, a big financial success that won him a second Tony Award.

While Wolfe continued directing plays, including Topdog/Underdog (2002) and the Broadway revival of The Iceman Cometh (2018), he launched a filmdirecting career in 2004 with the successful HBO film Lackawanna Blues. He directed two more movies—Nights in Rodanthe (2008) and You’re Not You (2014)—before writing and directing the acclaimed HBO production The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017). He has appeared as an actor in several films, including The Devil Wears Prada (2006).

His latest movie, Rustin, released on Netflix in November 2023, was produced

by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions. Obama had appointed Wolfe to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 2009, and the president posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

“There were certain aspects of the story that were very important to him,” such as Rustin’s skills as an organizer, Wolfe said of Obama. “He gave me notes, and the ones that made sense to me I abided.”

Wolfe was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2013.

He also serves as creative director for the Center for Civil & Human Rights in Atlanta.

With Rustin finished, Wolfe thinks his next project will be a play. “I like working on something that is completely different from the thing I’ve just done,” he said.

Wolfe tries to write daily, drawing on ideas he learned as a director collaborating with such writers as Kushner and Arthur Miller and producing the work of such writers as Shakespeare and Wilson.

What of Wolfe’s own writing is he most proud?

“Probably the writing I haven’t done yet,” he said.

“Probably in two or three years, I’ll write a novel.”

Wolfe’s writing often leans into the kind of humor and satire that first got him noticed with The Colored Museum.

“I think that there is a satirist who lives inside of me naturally,” he said. “So, I love the power of humor. I often tell actors, ‘You’ve got to invite me to the party if you want me to stick around for the pain.’

“A sense of buoyancy is crucial so that an audience is laughing and relaxed and feeling a part of the event, so

that when a dart gets thrown—a political dart or an emotional dart—they are as vulnerable to it as the characters are.”

One key to success, Wolfe said, is pushing past rejection. “I remember when the bad reviews for Paradise came out being devastated, but at the same time I had to quickly say, ‘Now, get back to work,’ ” he said.

“Committing to writing, committing to the work is saying yes to yourself. There’s a [Stephen] Sondheim line in Sunday in the Park with George, which is, ‘Stop worrying if your vision is new. Let others make that decision—they usually do.’ ” His best advice to writers? Write daily, as if exercising a muscle.

“You have to invest in the rigor of the job at hand,” Wolfe said. “And stand still and be quiet and cut out any unnecessary noise so that you can hear yourself think, so that you can hear your characters talk, so that you can listen to rhythms that have been imbedded in you since the day you were born.”

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 17

F E N TO N J O H N S O N

F

enton Johnson was in sixth grade when he decided he must leave Kentucky when he grew up. He hated the racism he saw around him in New Haven (Nelson County). A few years later, when he realized he was gay, the community’s homophobia confirmed his decision.

At 17, Johnson headed for Stanford University with a scholarship from the bourbon distillery where his father, Patrick, worked. He couldn’t wait to put the Kentucky knobs in his rear-view mirror, but he did look back. He has been looking back ever since, in award-winning novels, memoirs, nonfiction books and essays.

Johnson writes about big themes such as love, family, faith, community, responsibility and human dignity. More often than not, his ideas are explored in the context of his family and upbringing in Nelson County or some fictionalized version of them.

“I had been handed a feast in terms of what to write about, starting with my own background,” he said in an interview. “Borders are intrinsically interesting places.

You’re in Nelson County, and it’s very Catholic, and you cross the Rolling Fork River (into LaRue County), and—in an instant—you’re in the Bible Belt. Those two worlds rubbing up against each other was what living there was about. I understood organically that was a rich vein in which to work.”

John Fenton Johnson was born Oct. 25, 1953, the youngest of nine children in a family whose ancestors had been in the area since the late 1700s. His parents “loved life and were deeply and cheerfully sensual people,” he said. “My mother loved nothing more than to sing and dance, and my father loved to watch her sing and dance. Each of them loved creating beauty—each was an artist, in the wonderful way that so many people are.”

Johnson grew up Roman Catholic near the Abbey of Gethsemani. His parents formed close friendships with some of the monks, who would slip away from the monastery to have dinner with the family. After much bourbon, they might end the evening by dancing on the kitchen table. He was named for two of those monks.

18 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

Johnson’s mother, Nancy, was born on the Protestant side of the river but became a devout Catholic. A wellread woman who started New Haven’s public library, she was interested in theology. “My mother loved nothing more than to get the monks around the table and have these discussions,” he said. “When the Jehovah’s Witnesses would come by, she would invite them into the house and argue with them.”

His mother occasionally drove the abbey’s most famous monk, Kentucky Hall of Fame writer Thomas Merton, to Elizabethtown in the family’s beat-up Country Squire station wagon when he needed to catch a train. “They would have these theological discussions,” Johnson said.

“I was just the kid in the back seat, but that was part of my growing up.”

Some version of Johnson’s family and hometown show up in his books: the novels Crossing the River (1991), Scissors, Paper, Rock (1994) and The Man Who Loved Birds (2016); his memoir Geography of the Heart (1996); his collected essays Everywhere Home (2017); and two nonfiction books, Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey (2003) and At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life (2020).

“The boundaries between fiction and nonfiction are entirely artificial. It’s all fiction,” Johnson said. “I love Nelson County; I’m happy to be from there. People from Kentucky have always been very kind and supportive of me.”

Johnson has been a voracious reader since fourth grade, when a nun let him check out Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield from the school library. Growing up in the storytelling culture of rural Kentucky, it was an easy transition from reader to writer. “My mother says that I was always scribbling,” he said.

He had a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and later earned an MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. But his first job out of college was in Washington, working for U.S. Rep. Ron Mazzoli of Louisville. Washington was then a closeted place for a young gay man, and he soon headed back to California. “In 1977, there was only one city in the

Tom Eblen photo

world where an openly gay person could have a professional career,” Johnson said, “and that was San Francisco.”

The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and early ’90s was traumatic for Johnson, turning him into an activist with a pen. As a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, he penned a 1991 essay about the death of his lover Larry Rose that he said helped change the newspaper’s aversion to covering AIDS and gay life. Johnson later explored that relationship and notions of family—those we are born into and those we choose—in a poignant memoir, Geography of the Heart.

Johnson said he doesn’t consider himself a gay writer.

“I’m a novelist who happens to be gay,” he said. “I’ve written about a wide range of subjects, but I always include gay characters or a gay angle. I write about them as human beings in the larger social milieu.”

Scissors, Paper, Rock was another landmark—the first major novel about the AIDS crisis in a rural context. It is the story of a young man with AIDS who comes home to Kentucky from San Francisco to help his dying father, then must face his own death in that era before effective antiviral drugs. The novel is an eloquent meditation on love, family and loss. Kentucky Humanities has chosen Scissors, Paper, Rock as its 2024 Kentucky Reads book.

“Like Fenton himself, his writing is always simultaneously elegant and down-home,” said novelist Silas House, Kentucky’s current poet laureate. “All Kentucky writers, particularly LGBTQ ones, owe Fenton a great debt for paving the way for all of us.”

Johnson has taught creative writing at many colleges and universities, including the low-residency MFA program at Spalding University in Louisville. He spent most of his career teaching at the University of Arizona.

After retiring from there, he left Tucson for upstate New York. He is now working on a book about the Civil War, its causes and the mythology surrounding its legacy. Not surprisingly, his own family history is part of the story.

Johnson said he tries to give readers deeper insight into America’s clash of religious and cultural differences, as well as what it means to be human.

“I want to enable the reader to find where they reside in the reaches of the heart … and find their way to something I call ‘Truth with a capital T,’ ” he said. “The definition of truth is something that is universal across the human condition. We can read literature and listen to music from radically different cultures, and we can find ourselves in those. It’s a process, not a destination. It’s a process we call life.”

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 19

M A R Y A N N TAY LO R - H A L L

M

ary Ann Taylor-Hall studied creative writing at universities in Florida and New York City. But it wasn’t until she settled into a “tar-paper shack” on a rural Kentucky ridge that she says she really became a writer.

In the 47 years since that move, Taylor-Hall has produced two novels, a book of short stories and three volumes of poetry, plus work published in prestigious literary journals such as The Paris Review, The Sewanee Review and The Kenyon Review. Her work has been reprinted in the books The Best American Short Stories and Home and Beyond: An Anthology of Kentucky Short Stories, edited by Morris Grubbs.

Bobbie Ann Mason, a novelist and short-story writer who was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2016, describes Taylor-Hall as “a lyrical cosmonaut, an explorer into the mystery of time, space and consciousness. We are jolted by her perceptions, surprised by what she has noticed.”

“Mary Ann Taylor-Hall is a poet’s poet—original, subtle, a master of image and language,” said Richard Taylor (no relation), a former Kentucky poet laureate who was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2023. “I count her Come and Go, Molly Snow as one of the best 10 novels written by a Kentuckian.”

The protagonist of that 1995 novel is Carrie Marie Mullins, a talented Bluegrass fiddler and single mother who suffers a nervous breakdown after her young daughter dies in an accident. The novel is the story of a young woman trying to regain her sanity and find her place in a male-dominated world.

“I don’t believe that novel would have been written had I not been living in this country,” Taylor-Hall said in an interview. “The flow of the language and of the plot seemed to generate themselves out of these places. I had lived a very migratory life before I came here. But I can’t imagine living anywhere else now.”

Mary Ann Taylor was born Oct. 17, 1937, in Chicago, where her father, Edmund Taylor, who was from Lexington, met and married her mother, Mildred. When she was 9, the family moved to Winter Haven, Florida. She 20 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

discovered her love of nature by canoeing and hiking in and around Central Florida’s lakes.

“My father read to us a lot,” she said. But she never thought she could become a writer until she read the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay and the short stories of Katherine Ann Porter.

“I think that the first time I understood I could be and wanted to be a writer was reading Katherine Ann Porter,” she said. “She had such confidence in herself as a writer. I didn’t know her, but her stories always seemed to be totally unapologetic female stories. She seemed like she was just talking to us, and I liked that.”

After two years at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, Taylor-Hall transferred to the University of Florida, where she studied under Andrew Lytle, a poet and fiction writer who had been among the Southern Agrarians at Vanderbilt University in the 1920s. After earning a master’s degree in English at Columbia University, Taylor-Hall taught at Auburn University, Miami of Ohio and the University of Puerto Rico before coming to the University of Kentucky in 1977 and finding the place where she wanted to settle.

A high school friend, whose husband had several hundred acres of family farmland along the Harrison-Scott county line, offered to let her live in what she described as a “tar-paper shack,” which she later bought and turned into a beautiful home. She loved the house and the woods and fields that surrounded it. Seeing birds, deer, the occasional fox and the changing seasons on walks with her dog has informed much of her poetry and fiction.

She married James Baker Hall—a writer, photographer and fellow UK creative writing teacher—in 1982. He moved in with her, adding a sunlit upstairs studio to her house. Hall, Kentucky’s poet laureate in 2001-2002, died in 2009. He was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2014.

“We never wrote together, but we tried to help each other out of any maze we had gotten ourselves into,” she said. “Jim was a very valuable critic and mentor in a way for me. What I learned from Jim was that you sat down and did it. He told me over and over again, ‘Put writing first.’ And he was right.”

Tom Eblen photo

Taylor-Hall’s second novel, At the Breakers (2009), is set in the Northeast. She also has published a book of short stories, How She Knows What She Knows About Yo-Yos (2000) and three volumes of poetry: Dividing Ridge (2008), Joy Dogs (2013) and Out of Nowhere: New and Selected Poems (2017).

She had always loved wordplay but focused on writing fiction until she joined a poetry group with six other Kentucky women poets, including the late Jane Gentry Vance, a Kentucky poet laureate (2007-2008) and a Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame inductee in 2019.

“Mary Ann is a formidable novelist, so her poetry was a big surprise to me,” Mason said. “Her poems embody not just her multifaceted vision but her personality, her devotion to domesticity as well as to the larger world, her doubting but embracing mind, her love for her friends, her animals, her home.”

Taylor-Hall writes in her husband’s former studio each morning as sunlight begins forming patterns around the walls. She sits in a comfortable rocking chair, her dog Bonnie at her feet and a pen in hand. “I write more happily if I’ve just got a pad in my lap,” she said. “I think there’s a real connection between the imagination and your hand.”

The people and landscape of Kentucky remain her inspiration. “It seems to me that almost everybody in Kentucky has a background that is worth fiction: how they got here, why they stayed, what happened on the way,” she said. “I think that’s one reason Kentucky is so rich in writers. It’s both the people who live here, and it’s the landscape. You drive down the roads, and you see history.

People want to write about their own history or their parents’ history, or they know a story they’ve been told. It’s a storytelling place.” k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 21

PAU L B R E T T J O H N S O N

22 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

was “a virtuoso debut.”

Johnson later wrote two companion books of similarly outrageous tales: The Pig Who Ran a Red Light (1999) and The Goose Who Went Off in a Huff (2001). Other popular books included Farmer’s Market (1997), Old Dry Frye (1999), Fearless Jack (2001) and On Top of Spaghetti (2006), an adaptation of the old elementary school playground song.

Those and many other books were filled with colorful, whimsical illustrations. His characters, both animals and human, were smart, funny and often magical. He said he tried to create stories accessible to a child’s experience without “dumbing them down.”

Johnson told Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Kevin Nance that he enjoyed creating children’s books because it gave him “the freedom to be totally and outlandishly imaginative.”

He described his writing process in a 2003 interview with Reneé Critcher, published in Appalachian Journal: “As I’m writing, the pictures that I see in my head very often inform the words that get put down on paper. The words and the mind-pictures sort of play off each other, back and forth. However, I rarely start drawing or painting until I’ve got the story nailed. I always write the story before I start any actual artwork.”

The Lexington Children’s Theatre created two productions based on Johnson’s books: Old Dry Frye and Cows Don’t Fly and Other Known Facts. He was a popular speaker at elementary schools across Kentucky.

Johnson’s books earned the California Young Reader Medal, the North Carolina Junior Book Award and honors from Smithsonian magazine and the Kentucky Association of School Librarians.

Johnson died June 1, 2011, after a brief illness.

“Paul knew what he was here for, and he did it with great energy, generosity, and joy,” Lyon said at his memorial service. “When he fell in love with picture books, he threw himself into the process, as a writer as well as an illustrator. In the interplay between words and pictures, he revealed his playfulness and wit which, along with his ability to access his inner 5-year-old, helped him create … books that countless kids love and laugh through.”

Family photo

A

s a University of Kentucky student studying art and special education, Paul Brett Johnson enrolled in a class about writing for children.

But it would take another two decades, during which he became a commercially successful artist, before he would launch his second career as an acclaimed author and illustrator of children’s books.

Johnson wrote and illustrated more than 20 books of his own, and he illustrated many more by other noted authors, including Kentucky Hall of Fame writers James Still and George Ella Lyon.

Lyon said she always thought of Johnson as “an Appalachian/cosmopolitan, an artist and storyteller, with a laugh in his voice, always in conversation with the beauty and absurdity of the world.”

Johnson was born May 19, 1947, to Paul and Harriet Johnson in the small Knott County community of Mousie.

His mother was a school librarian, and he loved looking at the many picture books in his home. He also enjoyed spending time with a grandfather who liked to tell tall tales.

When Johnson was a teenager and showed a talent for drawing and painting, his parents took him to Alice Lloyd College for art lessons. His first moneymaking endeavor was painting campaign signs for a Knott County clerk.

Johnson moved to Lexington in 1965. After graduating from UK, he worked briefly as a school art teacher before his paintings and limited-edition prints started becoming big sellers. He painted mostly landscapes and nostalgic Appalachian scenes based on early 20th century photos in the Alice Lloyd archives. A series of paintings about the region’s coal-mining history was especially popular.

Johnson tried for nearly a decade to break into the children’s book market but had little success until the 1993 release of The Cow Who Wouldn’t Come Down. It was the story of Gertrude, a cow who flies, even though her owner, Miss Rosemary, tells her she can’t. It made “best books” lists of the American Booksellers Association, the New York Public Library and School Library Journal, which raved that it

B I L LY C . C L A R K MARY LEE SETTLE

M

ary Lee Settle, who spent much of her childhood in Pineville, wrote 23 books, including 15 novels. Her novel Blood Tie won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1978. Two years later, she founded the annual PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Settle became widely known for the five historical novels that formed her Beulah Quintet: O Beulah Land (1956), Know Nothing (1960), Prisons (1973), The Scapegoat (1980) and The Killing Ground (1982). The novels span four centuries—from Cromwell’s England to 1980s West Virginia— and took her more than a quartercentury to research and write.

Settle was born in Charleston, West Virginia, on July 29, 1918, to Joseph Edward and Rachel Tompkins Settle.

An engineer in the Appalachian coal industry, Joseph moved the family to Florida for a time in hopes of cashing in on the 1920s land boom.

Settle went to Sweet Briar College in Virginia for two years before moving to New York to pursue a career as a model and actress. She moved to England after marrying Englishman Rodney Weathersbee in 1939. Early in World War II, she volunteered for Britain’s Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and wrote a 1966 memoir, All the Brave Promises, about the experience.

She and Weathersbee had a son, Christopher; they divorced in 1946. She married Douglas Newton that year, and they divorced a decade later. She was married to William Tazewell from 1978 until his death in 1998.

Settle’s first book, The Love Eaters (1954), was published in Britain to critical praise, but she struggled professionally afterward. She moved back to New York and worked in magazines before publishing O Beulah Land (1956).

She wrote for Esquire magazine from Vietnam in 1967 and ’68. A lifelong liberal Democrat, Settle swore that if Richard Nixon was elected president, she would leave the United States. She returned to England in 1969 and then moved to Turkey, where she lived until 1974. Her novel Blood Tie was about British and American expatriates there.

After returning to this country, Settle taught at Bard College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, and the University of Virginia. She was admired for her meticulous research and realistic dialogue.

Settle never stopped writing. She wrote and published two books in her 80s: Spanish Recognitions, about her travels across Spain, and I, Roger Williams, a novel based on the life of the founder of Rhode Island.

She died at age 87 on Sept. 27, 2005, in Charlottesville, Virginia, while working on an imagined biography of Thomas Jefferson.

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B

illy C. Clark wrote memoirs, fiction and poetry about his life and river culture along the KentuckyWest Virginia border, where the Big Sandy flows into the Ohio at Catlettsburg. His mother was determined that he would be born on the Kentucky side of those rivers.

Bertha Clark was in Kenova, West Virginia, on Dec. 19, 1928, shopping for second-hand clothes for her six—soon to be seven—children. When her labor pains began, she gathered her purchases, boarded the streetcar, and urged the driver to get her back across the U.S. 60 bridge to Catlettsburg as fast as he could, according to an essay

by Clark’s friend, James M. Gifford, CEO and senior editor of the Jesse Stuart Foundation.

In 1992, the modern replacement for that bridge was named for Billy Curtis Clark, who also is memorialized in a mural on Catlettsburg’s floodwall.

Clark was born into a poor family: His father was a shoemaker and fiddler; his mother took in laundry. He left home at 11 and lived the next five years on the third floor of a city government building in Catlettsburg while working his way through school. “I cleaned the men’s and women’s jails, wound the town clock, and served as a volunteer firefighter,” he recalled. He also fished the rivers with a trotline and trapped mink and muskrat to sell their fur.

After a three-year hitch in the Army, Clark went to the University of Kentucky on the GI Bill in 1952. Three years later, he ran out of money and left without a degree. He went to work writing. In the space of four years, Clark sold five books to New York publishers: Song of the River (1957), The Trail of the Hunter’s Horn (1957), Riverboy (1958), Mooneyed Hound (1959) and A Long Row to Hoe: The Life of a Kentucky Riverboy (1960). Time magazine named his autobiographical A Long Row to Hoe one of the best books of 1960, declaring his work was “as authentically American as Huckleberry Finn.”

Clark was working for Ashland Oil in 1956 when he married Ruth Bocook of Catlettsburg. At the wedding, they were attended by his second cousin, Hall of Fame writer Jesse Stuart, and his wife, Naomi Deane.

Clark returned to UK in 1963 to finish his degree, serving as a writer in residence and publishing three more books: Goodbye Kate (1964), The Champion of Sourwood Mountain (1966) and Sourwood Tales (1968). He graduated in 1967 and spent the next 18 years as a teacher and writer in residence at UK’s Somerset Community College.

The Clarks moved to Farmville, Virginia, in 1985. He taught at Longwood University and later Hampton-Sydney College. Many of his early books were out of print by 1991, so the Jesse Stuart Foundation republished many of them.

After a three-decade hiatus of new work, seven more Clark books were published: To Leave My Heart at Catlettsburg (1999), By Way of the Forked Stick (2000), Creeping from Winter (2002), Miss America Kissed Caleb: Stories (2003), To Find a Birdsong (2007), To Catch an Autumn (2007) and A Heap of Hills (2011).

Clark died March 15, 2009, at the age of 80 at his Farmville home.

M

ike Mullins didn’t start the Appalachian Writers Workshop; Kentucky Hall of Fame writer Albert Stewart did that.

Mullins didn’t teach at the workshop; Hall of Fame writers Harriette Simpson Arnow, James Still, Gurney Norman, Jim Wayne Miller and many others did that.

But from October 1977, when he became director of the Hindman Settlement School, until his death in 2012, Mullins was the heart and soul of the Appalachian Writers Workshop.

During 34 years of his guidance, planning and nurturing, the workshop became a magical weeklong experience each summer where generations of Kentucky writers flourished. That is why Mullins is the second recipient of the Kentucky Literary Impact Award.

“He is the reason [the workshop] rose to such prominence as a center for writing and fellowship,” said Silas House, who was a Laurel County letter carrier when he first came to the workshop as a shy student. Now an acclaimed novelist and Kentucky’s poet laureate, House has been a frequent workshop instructor.

“Mike was insistent that it be a workshop where students and faculty members not only mixed and ate together but also washed dishes together, creating a unique experience in the literary world, which can often be pretentious and exclusive,” House said. “Mike read voraciously, and each year, he carefully handpicked the best faculty for what has now become a workshop that is considered one of the best in the country.”

Michael Lee Mullins, a coal miner’s son, was born June 22, 1948, and grew up in the Floyd County community of Hi Hat. He graduated from Berea College, where he developed a passion for Appalachian history and literature while studying under Loyal Jones, a 2022 Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame inductee. He earned a master’s degree in American history from the University of Cincinnati.

Mullins joined Alice Lloyd College in 1972 and became director of one of the nation’s first Appalachian studies programs. At age 29, he talked his way into becoming director of the Hindman Settlement School at a pivotal moment in its history.

The school dates to 1902, when Knott County residents asked May Stone of Louisville and Katherine Pettit of Lexington, who had studied settlement house models in

Courtesy of Hindman Settlement School

MIKE MULLINS

New York and Chicago, to create a school for mountain children. Nearly eight decades later, as improving public schools made Hindman’s boarding school model obsolete, Mullins helped create new programs to carry out the school’s mission: “To provide education and service opportunities for people of the mountains, while keeping them mindful of their heritage.”

Literary arts had always been important at Hindman.

Two Hall of Fame writers, Lucy Furman (1869-1958) and James Still (1906-2001), were longtime staff members there, while another, Albert Stewart (1914-2001), grew up there under Furman’s care. Mullins saw the workshop as a way to build on that legacy and create a national reputation for the school.

When Mike and Frieda Mullins and their three children lived on campus, their house was next door to Still’s. Mullins and Still became close friends, and Mullins helped promote a revival of Still’s work.

“He [Mullins] often worked quietly behind the scenes in writers’ careers to help push them forward, to make connections for them, and—best of all—to encourage more people to read their work,” House said. “He was a tireless advocate for writers of the region, and the impact of his work cannot be overestimated.”

Mullins could read people even better than books, said Leatha Kendrick, who since 1987 has been both a student and teacher at the workshop. She co-edited the 2002 book Crossing Troublesome: 25 years of the Appalachian Writers Workshop with Kentucky Hall of Fame writer George Ella Lyon.

“Mike knew how to create the conditions in which we could discover each other as equals and learn from each other,” Kendrick said. “It was Mike’s leadership that forged us into a family.” k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 25

PENNED writers’ showcase

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FICTION

A Perfect Pinecone K AT I E H U G H BA N K S , LO U I S V I L L E

The morning sunlight dances between shadows on the path ahead of me, a happy yellow glistening on the brown earth trail. I am surrounded by ancient trees that tower high, up to the clouds, it seems. These pine sentinels guard the trail, soldiers of the forest, companions along the path. With hundreds of trees to my left and to my right, how could I be lonely on this solitary hike?

Peacefulness covers the land like a down comforter, so silent that I can hear my breath, my footsteps in the fall leaves, and nothing else until the drum of a woodpecker interrupts with a rattat-tat-tat-tat. Then two blue jays begin a shouting match, and the forest seems to come alive with noise. A wren chatters off in the distance; its cheerfulness lightens my step. The chitter of a family of chickadees echoes not far off, and the call of a wood thrush adorns the air. Something familiar is here.

As I tread on, the smell of the forest envelops me. A vaguely sweet fragrance of decaying leaves on the ground mixes with the scent of pine. It is October, but the smell is Christmas, a thought that strikes me as bittersweet, and I feel a pang of sadness. A little shiver runs down my arms, but I shake it off like a cobweb and amble forward.

Through the shade, I continue my path, kicking my boots through fallen leaves until I realize a bootlace has come undone. Stopping to bend on the soft forest floor, I kneel beside the most gigantic pine tree I have ever seen. What a strange photo this would make, I muse. Grown woman by herself, bowing below a skyscraper tree, hair escaping from under a bandana. “Wild Woman Praying to Conifer” could be the title.

Beside my boot, a single brown pinecone catches my eye. Funny how there’s only one under such a huge tree. I study it amid the pine needles.

Simple. Unbroken. I’ve seen hundreds—probably thousands—of pinecones, but this one draws me to it. Round and perfectly curved, well preserved; it must be newly fallen. I reach for it, feel its prickly edges, and hold it to my nose. The perfume intoxicates me, and in one whiff, takes me far away, to when I was 6 the last Christmas before my father died.

A somber mood falls over me as I stand holding that pinecone, and I remember Dad. He had wanted the holiday to be special, knowing it likely would be his last. Despite his weakness from the cancer and the monster medicines he took, he insisted that we go to the woods just outside of

28 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

Maysville. A family friend owned the land and always invited us to pick a good tree. Dad wore a flannel shirt that swallowed his shriveled body; Mom wore an anguished expression on her tired face. My brother, older and wiser than I, carried an air of independence as we walked in the chill from the car to the forest’s edge that day. Johnny got to hold the saw—he was 11. I didn’t have anything to carry and fussed about it. I whined unreasonably, “I’m not a baby.”

My eyes were red with tears; my fists were tiny balls of unexplained anger. Dad, trying to appease my tantrum and preserve the sanctity of the day, bent down and picked up a round pinecone and turned to me. “Here, Missy, carry this for me. It’s perfect. Let’s put it on the mantel for decoration.”

I swelled with importance at the gesture and held it like Eucharist as my mother and brother took turns sawing the trunk of our chosen tree.

A pinecone—that pinecone—was a bridge between my dying father and me that day. Maybe it was his way of telling me I mattered. When we got home, tree in tow, we were all worn thin, but Dad was fully exhausted. Johnny and Mom struggled to carry in the evergreen that had been secured to the roof of the car. Dad could only hobble in, apologizing needlessly for not helping.

But before he lay down to rest, he crossed the living room with heroic effort and ceremoniously placed the pinecone on the mantel over the empty fireplace. He smiled at me and whispered, “Missy, that’s a perfect pinecone. You did a fine job of getting it home safely.”

Less than two months later, Dad was gone.

Everything would change. In years, there would be a stepfather, a new home, more than a dozen holidays with an artificial tree.

The pinecone was tossed out along with the dry, brittle fir that January, only a memory now.

But here, in this forest splashed with sunlight and shade, I have it in my hand again, and I know my father is with me. The pinecone that was a connection, a link between my father and me, is a bridge still.

“Thank you,” I whisper to the wind as I look up at the tree’s trunk and branches. My words sweep away with the breeze. “I miss you, Dad.” I breathe a sigh, then head up the trail toward my car, toward my life outside the woods.

Gently, firmly, I carry that perfect pinecone. It is coming home with me.

FICTION

Bathtub Mary PA M E L A P E R L M A N , M I D W AY

I might as well tell you about it.

I mean, I could lie. I could tell you some big old lie about the whole big dramatic change, and you’d never know. How would you? How would anybody? They wouldn’t.

Because there were only two of us there at that moment when it happened, and one of us says she didn’t see a thing, so that leaves me to either tell you about it or not. So, I might as well. You don’t have to believe me, but it happened.

So, here’s the truth. It was that Bathtub Mary that Mr. Roller’s got in his side yard. Almost behind all the hydrangea bushes but still sticking out enough that everybody walking down the sidewalk can see the old scuzzy white bathtub stuck in the weeds of Mr. Roller’s garden with that statue of Mary in her blue hood standing there like she was in church and not in the middle of an old man’s side yard inside his old iron bathtub.

Anyway, Ellen said to go up to it and get down on your knees. Say Hail Mary full of grace and then ask Mary to do it for you. I asked Ellen was that all. I didn’t have to cross myself on the head or shoulders or something? We didn’t pray like that in the Methodist church, and I only knew it was Mary in the bathtub at all because of something Momma said last summer about the Catholic Holy Rollers and their Mary, Mother of baby Jesus, sitting out in the yard. So that’s who the lady in the old Mr. Roller’s bathtub is. It’s Mary. Anyway, if I was gonna do it at all, I wanted to do it right.

Ellen said that’s all. She waved one long arm at Mary and pointed her index finger back at me. Go forth and ask Mary; tell her what you want. I laughed but really, Ellen looked a little bit strange with her finger pointed at the old bathtub and her eyes almost bugging out.

You can imagine I was scared as fire that Mr. Roller or his raggedy old wife who looked like Almira Gulch from The Wizard of Oz but without the bicycle might come outside and holler at me for crunching through the hydrangeas. But if Mary could do it for me—I mean, you’d have done it too. Don’t say you wouldn’t.

So, I hunkered over and kinda snaked through the yard, keeping one eye on Mary—I mean, it’s wasn’t like she was gonna move, but Ellen said she was holy and could work miracles and all, so you never know—and the other eye on the kitchen window. It was about two in the afternoon and Mr. Roller was well-known to be a big fan of Our Miss Brooks that was on about that time every day, so I figured he wouldn’t be outside, but you know, just in case.

Anyway, Mary stood there in her little white church of a bathtub, looking all calm and royal really, her blue scarf and dress fading to nearly white near where her

feet were planted in the mush of last fall’s leaves that Mr. Roller hadn’t raked up even though there Mary stood in that mess. I brushed some of the ground clean, then knelt down there like Ellen said, and I heard Ellen giggling away over on the sidewalk, but anyway, I said it. I said Hail Mary full of grace and then I sorta whisper yelled at Ellen do I have to say anything else, and she said no just ask her.

So, I did. I said Mary, you are a woman, or were a woman I guess, and that’s what I want to be. I’m tired of being so little and flat chested so that Matthew Snyder won’t shut up making fun of me and calling me Pancake. I guess you know about teasing and what terrible things boys can do ’cause of, well, Jesus, and all that trouble. I’m sorry about that. I guess I should’ve said that first. So anyway, Mary, if you could help me, it’d be much appreciated, and that’s all I guess.

This is when it happened, and it did happen.

Believe me or not ’cause I know it did even if Ellen says she didn’t see anything. But the birds got real quiet, and the squirrels stopped running and chittering, and it seemed like even the sun didn’t move in the sky, and all around Mary, things just changed.

The bathtub was gone and there stood Mary, a real person wearing a blue robe standing on a float of the bluest prettiest water you ever saw—like pictures of that blue ocean in Greece where the little white houses fall off the hillside down straight to the sea—Mary was standing on it, and she looked like the kindest and wisest person who ever lived. She didn’t say anything, but she looked at me, she looked right into both of my eyeballs like she could see right through there and into the cauliflower buds of my brain, and I felt her just looking at me, and I felt it. I felt it changing, and you can’t tell me any different.

The sweetest smell like something sweet and ashy floated on this breeze that started up and blew across my cheekbones, and there was a soft little rattle of bells, way high and friendly sounding. And then Mary smiled at me, and I felt warm and good and whole and as healthy as I’ve ever felt in my whole 13 years, and I wanted to stay there forever.

Then Mary was gone all of a sudden, along with the breeze and the bells and the blue water, and all that was left was just a concrete statue inside an old iron tub. And Mr. Roller came banging out his screen door hollering what did I think I was doing, and Ellen ran off and left me, and I told Mr. Roller some story about thinking I saw my brother’s football in the weeds, and he said well is it there, and I said no and sorry and I’ll go on now.

But the next day, and I mean the next day, it happened, and Matthew Snyder cannot call me Pancake anymore. And that’s all there is to tell.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 29

FRANCES MARTIN STRICKLER FRANKLIN

Two weeks—join the Confederate forces or be hanged as a traitor. Two weeks. Not much time, but it was all he was going to get. He shivered, chilled by more than the cold cutting through his woolen breeches. The red mare snorted. Andrew Fondren shifted carefully in his saddle. He watched as puffs of white steam blew out her nostrils and hung in the air. Her curved ears pointed forward and flicked lightly, seeking sounds of danger, he thought— maybe real, maybe imagined. She placed one foot forward to test the frozen ground. There was a clink of metal on rock as her hoof lost its grip, and she began to slide backward. Her eyes rimmed white when her hind leg broke through the icy crust. She stood trembling; flanks turning dark with sweat.

30 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

OPENING OF NOVEL

East Tennessee, Winter 1862

The Inheritance of Thieves PA M E L A P E R L M A N M I D W AY

My grandmother stole things. Inside her one-car garage, peeling yellow paint flecked across a trove of objects stacked in forgotten piles: leathercovered bank ledgers; a black-handled umbrella in a posh tan check; a plastic palm tree sitting amongst gray pebbles in a brass-banded, wooden pot. Gran signed checks with a Cross pen that had belonged to her bank customer, kept my mother’s photo in a sterling silver picture frame left at the church, and squirrelled a stack of silver dollars in her unmentionables drawer. She said they were found.

Not stolen but located. Repurposed.

Hers for the getting.

NONFICTION

Worth the Wait MARIE MITCHELL, RICHMOND

Woo-hoo! I did it. I did it. I really, really did it. At age 69, I got my first (and most likely only) tattoo.

I’d toyed with the idea for years but couldn’t find the right design—something meaningful enough to display on my body for the rest of my life. I’d contemplated different animals, shapes and significant words. But nothing spoke to me. Not even a whisper.

Our youngest daughter, Ingrid, has had no such reservations. She got her first tattoo (the word “warrior”) on her 16th birthday and now at age 20 proudly displays a dozen tattoos, including five butterflies that signify her two parents and three siblings. A touching tribute to her family. Joining Ingrid on many of these “inking” sessions renewed my interest in getting my own tattoo. But the painful part of the process gave me pause. The part where tiny needles penetrate your skin for agonizing minutes.

So, I continued to mull over the idea for a while. A long while.

I convinced myself I’d forge ahead if I narrowed down my options.

Since my husband and I are intrigued with paranormal activity, either a UFO or Bigfoot tattoo seemed suitable.

We’re crazy cat people, so a finicky feline was a possibility.

I love nature. Something scenic could work.

Perhaps an hourglass-shaped dulcimer like the one I play.

But I didn’t “love” any of those ideas enough to move forward.

Which steered me toward a “love” theme. And what says love better than hearts? Four of them. One for each of my children. Generic, but still sentimental.

Ingrid, my tattoo expert, had a better idea: Have each child draw his or her own personalized heart. That sealed the deal. And for once I was truly excited. Ingrid drew hers first in just a few seconds. It was plain, petite and perfect.

Our oldest son Mitchell’s first attempt was too large and elaborate.

His second try produced a much smaller, distinctive design with the lines crossing at the bottom of the heart. I reminded the other two of their assignment several times. No response, although they were probably busy sketching their unique images.

I eventually gave them a two-week deadline. Marlowe came through with an original design by placing two downward lines inside the heart curves.

That left Ruby. I sent pictures of the other three hearts to motivate her. At the last minute, she shared hers—one with pointy ears, which is how she drew hearts as a child.

Whew! Now that I’d collected my hearts, it was time for Phase 2.

Experienced Ingrid picked the local tattoo parlor and artist, who was pleasant and professional. The tattoo artist duplicated the pattern on her iPad, stacking the hearts in birth order, then made a few revisions before transferring the pattern onto my forearm (where there are fewer nerve endings).

Her drill was thankfully quiet. And surprisingly, the pain was barely noticeable at first, just some tolerable pin pricks, which quickly grew more intense.

Ingrid, my tattoo coach, told me to relax and breathe. I did. And I’m proud of myself for not flinching, screaming, crying or making a scene. Besides, it was over in a matter of minutes. Seeing my tattoo for the first time was heartwarming—and that same warm, fuzzy feeling has lasted over the millions of times I’ve admired it. It’s the perfect reminder of how special my kids are to me.

I’m glad I waited, even if it took years to figure out. At least I got it right the first (and probably last) time.

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One Small Hour in Autumn S T E P H E N H O LT RACELAND (GREENUP COUNTY)

In time these waters headed westward, Down off overcut overmined mountains Then through deep gorges and steep knobs Into a limestone land of largesse Where winds bear woodsmoke like incense; A land of a billion years changing.

I come to search out the shape of insight In a modest creek that swims slowly Under an October skylight. I crush Underfoot wild mint, savor the scent.

Minnows flee to safety, crayfish crawl Under slate rock. From a mulberry bush Along the fencerow a hermit thrush sings Gold in praise of beauty and maroon fruit.

Here children used to play; perhaps no more.

From branches of a blue ash in the blue Distance, a flock of crows crow Over coffee after breakfast, full-throated In mocking my strange inability to fly.

In the pasture five Black Angus focus And bow to the blessing of dark loam.

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O, no more must I shun the inherent Debt of stewardship to this ground.

I look in the mirror of water, consider My full reflection; and I begin to think God, gazing into a similar stream, Determined a final plan for man’s image.

Clumps of fallen leaves float past, modeling Wounded ducks drinking into death: For the living it’s always death and decay

A L I K E LYS TO RY K Y. C O M

But the stones stay; and this creek flows Away from and toward, ever away from And toward all things transit and eternal.

113 East Main Street Midway, KY 40347

32 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

POETRY

bright yellow M I C H E L E L E N O I R , A LVA T O N ( W A R R E N C O U N T Y )

somewhere, a landscape lies— of lime-green fields of soybeans, of oak trees that line roads, of nearby hills and mountains beyond, of hint of sun. but i see none of it, fog having its way over earth today, making me work for a view, til i realize that fog takes my imagination on a ride—creates softer mountains to climb, to know off my porch deer nibble on soybeans at arm’s length, and hope lands on my shoulders, its belly full of bright yellow.

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Reincarnation K E V I N D. L E M A S T E R SOUTH SHORE (GREENUP COUNTY)

you remind me of the way the wind touches a face so dark that light has no choice but to pinhole through like cracks in the floorboards of an old farmhouse and yet all that night has nowhere to go so it stays in your eyes, your high cheek bones, the lips i’ve kissed a thousand times but never put the words together to say i knew you when you were someone else

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long before we touched and let go k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 33

POETRY

Heart Food

Appearance

R I TA S . S PA L D I N G M U R R AY

C A R O LY N R U T H C O F F E Y ANNVILLE (JACKSON COUNTY)

This is the kitchen where Aunt Della gave me dreams and placed a yellow baby chick in my hands while it rained hard outside and we always caught the sky’s water in the old rain barrel with a tiny black kitten stranded below its staves.

My being searched For her Without my noticing the search Like The way a trumpet vine Inches its way on a wooden fence Trying to find a place To hang onto;

This is the kitchen where we gathered around the thrashing table for Christmas meals, desserts and fireplace stories from wrinkled lips that held wooden pipes tightly packed with black Kentucky tobacco that fed our family and started wars while it filled the elders’ lungs.

This is the kitchen where we smelled yeast bread baking that warmed our growing child hearts and grateful spirits with spiced jam cakes and ingredients from the land, black walnuts, wheat flour, molasses, butter from the cow, the taste fresh with sugary caramel icing.

This is the kitchen where high back chairs were caned and woven into the texture of our always connected and winding lives and where even on holidays sweet Uncle Bob never spoke a word because the sounds of the great war followed him home so we sat below him on the floor quietly listening to his hurt.

Preparing for Hibernation L U C Y J AY E S L E X I N G TO N

I read that bears chew their paws in hibernation, the slow turn of their jaws keeps them warm from their gnawing.

I heard on the radio that women birth babies as shields, one after another, becoming wells of milk and blood to avoid obligations.

In sand and water, I disguise, seek axolotls behind slimy seaweed.

Winter brings it all down, down, down.

I dissolve into gratitude.

I circulate it through my body like a prayer.

For my house is warm, my child is growing longer by the day, my neighbor brings me Tupperware of soup.

I am far from forgotten.

34 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

A memory flashed As brilliant as the trumpet vine’s lily blossom Fresh orange— Perhaps sending me a message: “See, she is not all gone.”

To Make Light of the Dark TOM C. HUNLEY BOWLING GREEN

For now, I can live face down, pants unbuttoned, ass exposed, nurses and doctors scurrying about, discussing the song on the radio, how it reminds them of a tv show now off the air, and I guess I can even live through “Rate your pain on a scale of 1-10” and “What’s your date of birth?”

As the needle plunges into my spine, I can live knowing my wings are vestigial and no one believes I can hear them flap when I lie like this on a table or when I lie like this: I feel fine.

And I can live knowing I’ll leave this world I’ve stumbled through, often lost in something or someone.

I’ll leave like sherbet melting.

I’ll leave like a match fizzling out.

But I can’t bear the thought that the words I’ve found to make light of the dark won’t leave a mark more lasting than a dent on a dead man’s pillow.

AARP Kentucky News

LEADERSHIP SPOTLIGHT AARP Kentucky Names New Leadership

Adkins AARP Kentucky State Office has named new leadership with Gary W. Adkins as Volunteer State President and Troy J. Broussard as State Director. The state office, based in Louisville, serves 425,000 AARP members across the Bluegrass State.

Gary W. Adkins (Madison County) will serve as the next Volunteer State President.

The President provides vision and leadership to AARP Kentucky activities and chairs the state Executive Council. In partnership with the State Director and Executive Council members, the State President develops the framework for state strategic planning and the coordination of AARP statewide activities.

During his dynamic volunteer tenure at AARP Kentucky, he has consistently demonstrated leadership excellence and strategic vision.

Before volunteering with AARP, Adkins enjoyed a successful professional career serving as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney for approximately 20 years, prosecuting over 150 felony trials. He served as an Adjunct Faculty member at Morehead State University’s paralegal studies program. Adkins honed his leadership skills a decorated U.S. Army veteran of 12 years retiring with the rank of Major.

“We are thrilled to have Gary share his leadership and experience supporting AARP Kentucky and its volunteer teams. He has a proven commitment to continuing our mission to Kentucky’s AARP members and all Kentuckians 50-plus,” said outgoing AARP Kentucky Volunteer State President Charlotte Whittaker.

Broussard Troy J. Broussard (Louisville) is leading the AARP Kentucky State Office as its new State Director.

Over an impressive seven-year tenure at AARP, he has consistently demonstrated leadership excellence and strategic vision. In his most recent role as Senior Advisor in the Office of Community Engagement, he played a pivotal role in leading AARP National Veterans & Military Families Initiative.

Broussard leads the state office’s advocacy and outreach effort with a team of volunteers and staff representing more than 425,000 AARP members across the Commonwealth. Broussard is based in the Louisville AARP Kentucky State Office.

Broussard began his career with AARP serving as the Louisiana State Office Associate State Director-Advocacy & Outreach. He has extensive experience recruiting, training, and collaborating with AARP volunteers. Before joining AARP, Broussard enjoyed a successful career in the telecommunications industry, with AT&T and Cox Communications, where he honed skills in team leadership, management, customer care, advocacy, and priority execution.

Broussard is a proud U.S. Army Desert Storm Veteran. He received his BA degree in Political Science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and an MBA from Southeastern Louisiana University.

To learn more and connect, visit aarp.org/ky, Facebook.com/aarpkentucky or Instagram.com/ aarpkentucky on social media.

You Are What You Read Donated books reveal the inner lives of readers

B Y E V E LY N E . FA L L O N E

Y

ou don’t know me, but I know all your secrets.

I know what interests you and what bores you. I know what makes you angry and what makes you laugh.

I know what you’re looking forward to and what you’d like to forget. I know what you dreamed of being when you grew up and if you landed close. I know what areas of yourself you think need improvement and what worries and illnesses are vexing you. I know your hobbies, whether or not you like animals, and where you lean politically. I even know what you find romantic.

As the person who oversees the used-book donations at the local library, I’m invited into your life and the lives of dozens of other people I 36 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

will never meet. The books arrive packed inside things like bankers boxes, Trader Joe’s bags and old milk crates. For me and the dozen or so volunteers who price and sort the books in the library’s basement, each anonymous parcel is a treasure chest waiting to be opened. In an age in which I can no longer tell the difference between a real photograph and a fake one, there is something beautiful about holding something in my hand that connects me to another person in a way that is authentic and tangible and powerful.

Occasionally, I am asked if it gets lonely in my subterranean world, but the opposite is true. While hunched over these tomes, I often feel closer to my fellow human than I do upstairs, where I might actually run into one of them. In the basement, there is no irrelevant small talk, no superficial pleasantries, only truths. And the truths look a lot like my own: A wellworn paperback edition of The Devil in

the White City—I loved that one too! A bookmark lodged on page 344 of War and Peace—I didn’t make it much past that either. Tomato sauce blotches on the cover of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking—hmmm … when’s lunch?

Almost every book that crosses my desk has a story separate from the one inside it. A water-stained board book brings to mind a happy toddler splashing in the tub. A mass-market romance with paragraphs highlighted in pink marker reminds me of the books my girlfriends and I passed back and forth under the desks in study hall. A copy of The Golden Bowl with thoughtful handwritten notes in the margins gives away the shy comparative literature major who owned it. Whenever I see someone on the news expressing shock over the actions of someone they thought they knew, I think: Ignore what they told you. Ignore their happy photos on Facebook. Look on their bookshelf instead. There, they will be laid bare.

Most of the time I’m presented only with a small snapshot of a person’s life. A donation will come in, and it’s obvious from the ACT and SAT prep books, the guides to American universities, and the assortment of AP English books that this person has packed up for college and is shedding deadweight. This is true for all of life’s major transitions, including one later in the timeline, when a single crate of retirement investing books and assisted-living brochures announces someone has decided to sell the homestead and downsize.

Sometimes, several boxes will arrive all at once, and when the contents are spread out on the tables, a person’s entire life reveals itself like a bird unfolding its wings in front of me: An early edition of Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. A 1960s wedding planner. The Better Homes and Gardens Decorating Book. Baby and child-care books. Martha Stewart’s Pies & Tarts. Crochet patterns. Disney World with Your Grandchildren. Living with Arthritis. Rick Steves’ Italy. I watch as the shaky cursive on the inside of the children’s books evens out over the years and then doubles back again.

And even before cleaning out the predictable ticket stubs, get-well cards and appointment-reminder slips, I know these volumes belonged to a book lover and a sentimental one at that. And I’ve been consorting with bibliophiles long enough to know that any adult sentimental enough to have kept their favorite books from childhood would never part with them—ever—so now I know something I wish I didn’t: This person has died. At moments like this, I often find myself reaching for the back of my chair and sinking into it to take in the beauty and the sadness and the fullness of someone else’s life and to consider my own. Most of us will never reflect on our circumstances or document our lives in the same way an autobiographer might, but we all leave behind a story, nonetheless.

Like all jobs, I sometimes take mine home with me. But it’s not paperwork or deadlines or quotas running through my mind. It’s all the invisible people I’ve spent my days

with—these ghosts—who ride home with me and torment me while I’m pulling weeds or doing dishes at the sink. The latest apparition is the newly cohabitating couple, “Doug and Lorie,” whose repurposed moving boxes arrived with fun labels like: “Doug’s Jams” and “Stuff for the Bedroom, Hubba Hubba!” Despite this, I find myself worrying about them. Judging from Doug’s discards of Noam Chomsky, Malcolm Gladwell and Simon Schama, he’s an independent thinker, someone who’s concerned with the serious political and social issues of our time. Lorie’s boxes, on the other hand, spilled over with Nora Ephron, Candace Bushnell and a puzzling three copies of The Nanny Diaries. What will they talk about at dinner, I wonder? Are they going to make it?

I wish I was the only one strangely affected by these books’ previous owners, but I’m not. Up in the library’s little used bookstore, where hundreds of donated books line the walls, I started out using only the perfect, unblemished editions for the displays until I discovered that the books that had been written in and the worn ones with crumbling spines and clues to their previous whereabouts were selling faster than I could put them on the shelves. I’m touched by this. It affirms the notion that we all have a need to connect with other people, and perhaps books, with their timeless stories and easy portability, are the perfect vessels for bringing strangers and even generations together.

There really is something special and sacred about a book, isn’t there?

Our branch is located in an area of the state where new neighborhoods butt up against cornfields and rolling pastures. Occasionally, I will look up to see someone in a plaid flannel shirt with mud on their boots striding toward me with a box in their hands and a sad look on their face. This farmer, who I know in his lifetime has probably slaughtered hundreds of animals, is bringing me his books because he couldn’t stomach the thought of putting them in the trash.

“These were my dad’s,” he might say. “Can you do somethin’ with ’em?”

At times like this, I feel eerily similar to a mortician or a hospice nurse. The books I’m being handed are often in terrible shape, tragically stored in a wet basement or a mildewy attic, but the person letting them go needs me to do what they don’t know how to do or cannot bring themselves to do—extend the life of the book or carry it gently toward the finish line. I not only understand this, but I think of the books I will leave behind someday— the Nancy Drew collection with peanut butter and jelly sandwich crumbs inside, the first flower ever given to me by a boy pressed inside Prufrock and Other Observations, the baby album with a lock of hair from my daughter—and I hope whoever finds them will handle them with the respect and dignity they deserve.

There was an aunt in our family who, after a long illness in the hospital, pulled me close one night and whispered for me to bring her a book from the house. I returned with it, thinking she might want me to read it to her, but she didn’t. This story and its sequels had comforted her many times over the years, and now its simple presence in the room was soothing her again. Like all of us, I realized, she just wanted to have her best friends with her when she died.

And this is the power of the written word, is it not? Movies and music are wonderful, but when you’re in solitude with an open book and an open mind, simple black print on white paper has the power to punch you in the gut and leave you breathless. I was reminded of this earlier today when a little note card fell out of one of the donations. It was from a mother to her daughter, and it began: As I sit here at my kitchen table with the sun shining warmly on me, I realize this is how you also make me feel … and once again, I’m transported out of my own life into another’s, and I’m happy for this mother, not just because she loves and is loved, but because she had the good sense to write it down. I will probably think about this sweet woman on my long ride home tonight, or later in the evening while I’m out walking the dog, and even if I don’t pass anyone along the way, I will not feel alone. Q k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 37

5 FAB

Kentucky’s first surviving quintuplets are choosing careers

38 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

B Y JAC K B R A M M E R PHOTOS BY JESSE HENDRIX-INMAN

D

uring their engagement, Steve and Stephanie Powell of Louisville talked about how many children they wanted.

Steve picked zero to two, and Stephanie preferred three or four. They ended up with six—five of whom were born within 3½ minutes of each other.

That made the Powell children the first surviving set of quintuplets born in Kentucky.

The babies attracted headlines when they were born on Oct. 28, 2001. Now 22, two will graduate this spring from Bellarmine University. Another graduated in December 2022 from Bellarmine and is now studying at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. Another owns a Culver’s restaurant in Louisville and is married, with one child and another on the way. Another has his emergency medical technician license and is interviewing for jobs.

The quintuplets entered this world weighing between 2 pounds, 4 ounces and 2 pounds, 12 ounces. It was two months before all got to go home from the hospital.

“We learned so much as we went, raising five children at once,” Steve said. “Yes, it was tough at times, but I would go through it all again.”

FIVE BABIES IN A FEW MINUTES The Powells married on Nov. 13, 1998. Both were born in Louisville and are now 51. They came from small families: Steve had one brother, while Stephanie had no siblings.

The two met at St. Matthew’s Baptist Church but did not start dating until they attended a small get-together years later in 1997. Steve has a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Louisville, and Stephanie has a bachelor’s degree in nursing from UofL and a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Kentucky. k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 39

Stephanie said.

Steve now “Steve was a works in little shocked, maintenance at and I was just Southeast happy.”

Christian The Powells, Church, and to say the least, Stephanie is a were excited. nurse At 30 weeks practitioner for of pregnancy, Norton’s the quintuplets Pulmonary The Powell quints: top, from left, Samuel, Ella, Jackson, Chloe and Jacob; above, were born.

Specialists. the family, from left, Samuel, Ella, Henry, Steve, Stephanie, Jackson, Chloe, Jacob, Stephanie had Before their and Autumn. been on bed rest third wedding since July and anniversary was in the hospital for more than two months. arrived, the couple had five children.

Jacob was the first born, followed by Jackson, Chloe, The spontaneous conception of quintuplets is extremely Samuel and Ella. Jacob and Jackson are identical twins. rare: The average estimate is 1 in more than 60 million Volunteers from Southeast Christian Church, the births. Fewer than 20 sets of quintuplets are born in the Powells’ home church, helped the couple take care of the United States each year. Most recent quintuplet births are five babies. The church provided a person around the the result of assisted reproductive techniques such as clock at the Powell home for several months and diapers fertility-enhancing drugs or in vitro fertilization. for about the first two years. Friends and neighbors, along The Powells used fertility drugs. with the church people, offered plenty of food. “The “I had an ultrasound early in the pregnancy and found church was wonderful to us,” Stephanie said. quickly after the drug that we were having five babies,” 40 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

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Kentucky

Multiples

GROWING UP AS QUINTS Steve and Stephanie generally could identify each child easily but admit they had some problems early on with the identical twins. “Each child had his or her own personality, and we tried to raise them as normally as we could,” Stephanie said.

In the early years, the children caught a lot of attention. People wanted to take their pictures. A TV network even invited the family onto a talk show about the quintuplets, but the Powells declined.

The children were home schooled and were avid readers.

They loved to play in a wooded area in the family’s big backyard. Other activities over the years included archery, dodgeball and soccer.

They had some toys but gravitated toward making up their own games. Several of the children volunteered at nonprofits, such as a Christian camp, during their high school years.

Stephanie survived teaching her children how to drive and getting their licenses. They paid for their own cars through work—mostly at fast-food restaurants.

Both parents taught their children about the Christian faith. They were involved in the church’s Bible Bowl, a quick recall program where students compete over their knowledge of scripture.

“Our faith is the most important thing to us,” Stephanie said. “That’s the thing I’m most proud about in all of this, and they still are walking with the Lord.”

The most difficult struggle for the family occurred in July 2014, when Jacob developed acute myeloid leukemia. “We thought early on that we were going to lose him,” Stephanie said. Jacob had to endure chemotherapy and more than 100 transfusions.

But he survived. And all five of them are thriving today.

The parents told the quints in middle school that they would help them with college expenses, but they could not afford to send all five at the same time. The children worked hard and obtained various scholarships and grants to make college a reality.

They got jobs when they were 15 and opened savings accounts.

THE ADULT QUINTS

Bellarmine University is not the only Kentucky institution of higher learning that boasts multiples among its students. Top, from left, triplets Zaylie, Haddie and Kallie Kelso attend Murray State University, and above, from left, triplets Jonathan, Joshua and Joseph Creech from Hazel Green (Wolfe County) are freshmen biomedical sciences majors at Morehead State University.

42 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

All five Powell quintuplets enrolled at Bellarmine in the fall of 2020. They lived at home the first year of college, bringing to the school college credits they had already earned.

Bellarmine said in a Sept. 28, 2020, story that the quints did not plan to go to the same college. Each weighed options—local and regional, public and private—and, in the end, Bellarmine made the most sense for each of them.

The parents said they did not push the quints toward any particular college, but they liked their kids’ choice, with its small classes, navigable campus and proximity to home.

In his sophomore year, Jacob married. He and his

wife, Autumn, have a child named Sadie, and another is on the way. He owns and operates a Culver’s restaurant on Hurstbourne Lane in Louisville.

Jackson, who will graduate from Bellarmine in May with a business degree, is a manager at the restaurant.

Chloe graduated from Bellarmine in December 2022 and is working on her master’s degree at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is thinking about working in student ministries. When she started at Bellarmine, she had a financial-aid package of $45,755 from seven scholarships and grants.

Samuel left Bellarmine and joined the Army Reserves. He has an EMT license and hopes to land a job soon.

Ella graduates from Bellarmine in May. She plans to be an intensive care nurse.

Watching his five siblings grow up is Henry Powell. He is 13. “He feels like he is one of the quintuplets,” Stephanie said.

All of the quints say they have enjoyed their unique life together.

“It’s been cozy,” Ella said. “There is a super cooperative spirit among us.”

“I love being in a big family,” Chloe said. “We’ve had some great adventures. I’ve enjoyed it.”

“There were times when people would approach us in public and ask who’s who,” Samuel said. “That would never annoy us. That’s just the way it was. It was OK.” “I’ve enjoyed everything about being a quint,” Jackson said. “We are all friends.”

“Everyone treats each other as his or her own person,” Jacob said. “I learned a lot, and it helps me now as a father.”

‘TIME GOES SO FAST’ Steve said that he is proud of all his children. “I still am amazed at what has happened and what they have become,” he said. “We have enjoyed so much. The years go by so fast. Time goes so fast.

“We took many, many photos over the years, but I wish we had taken more—more videos—ways to always remind us of the good times we have had.” Q

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44 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2024

FAMILY of

FIRSTS The Kessler Scholars Program at Centre College provides financial and moral support for first-generation college students

BY JACKIE HOLLENKAMP BENTLEY

E

ven as a high school freshman in Alexandria (Campbell County), Chloe Hein knew her education wasn’t going to end the moment she graduated high school.

“As soon as I started high school, I knew I really wanted to get a good GPA so I could save up enough money to go to college,” she said.

She had her eye on Centre College and its strong study-abroad program, but she wasn’t sure it would be attainable.

Enter Hannah Stokes, a 2013 Centre graduate hired to run the college’s Kessler Scholars Program, a guidance and mentoring program supporting first-generation college students.

“Centre’s history with first-gen student support and success has long been something we’re very proud of,” Stokes said. “We’ve worked really hard to get to where we are with our first-gen programming, and the Kessler Program … recognized that in us.”

Centre welcomed its first class of Kessler scholars for the 2023-2024 academic year last fall. Hein, who was raised by a single mom, was among them.

“When Hannah reached out with the Kessler Program, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. This is actually something I’m able to do,’ ” Hein said. “No one else [in my family] got to go to college, but now I’m here. I can prove that my mom’s

struggles were worth it, and they got me here.”

• • •

The Kessler Scholars Program is not a scholarship program, though scholars do receive $5,600 for “highimpact” college enhancement opportunities they otherwise couldn’t afford, such as books, laptops and study-abroad funding.

That financial boost is a special feature, but Stokes said it’s not the program’s greatest perk.

“The Kessler program is intended for first-gen students who are low income but also have a high capacity for success if they’re part of a mentor program,” Stokes said.

“They are coming to college with a sense of resiliency, really strong senses of leadership, and they’re very determined to succeed … We really like to capture those qualities and make sure students feel those are amplified.”

In addition to one-on-one mentoring, the Kessler Scholars Program uses a cohort-based model to bring fellow first-gen students together.

“When you meet a student, you don’t know they are first gen. So, it makes it difficult to navigate a college experience when they don’t know who else is experiencing college like they are,” Stokes said. “The cohort model allows students to really connect in a smaller community capacity, where they can lean on each other as a family k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 45

Students from Centre College’s Kessler Scholars Program

unit. As they work together and collaborate and share experiences, it becomes a tight-knit support system for them from the beginning of their college journey all the way through graduation and sometimes beyond.”

Kessler scholar Ryan Jones used his funding to kick off his second college semester with a study-abroad trip to Spain. In a phone interview before leaving, the London native said having that financial fallback is great, but meeting fellow first-gen students last fall made his college experience much better.

“I think I would be in worse shape [without the Kessler community],” Jones said. “It’s all just been a really big help, especially as a first gen.” “[Centre] is a really small school, so being able to see people that I know from the Kessler Program all the time has been really lovely, and the cohorts are so close knit because we are a smaller campus,” Hein agreed.

• • •

Centre College is one of 16 colleges and universities across the country and the only one in Kentucky to be a part of the national Kessler Scholars Collaborative, which receives funding and support from the Judy and Fred Wilpon Family Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the American Talent Initiative. As part of the national collaborative, Centre and fellow member institutions—as well as scholars—can network with each other.

“It is an honor to be part of it,” Stokes said. “Our students really get to benefit from that national network 46 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2024

experience. We get to benefit, as a college, by the collaboration that we all share.”

Although this is the first academic year for Centre’s Kessler Scholars Program, Stokes said the inaugural class already has established a strong foundation to impact not only its students’ futures but the future of the first-gen program and the college itself.

“We spent quite a bit of time last fall talking about academic foundations for success, identifying resources for that,” Stokes said. “We also talk about how [the students] can plug those leadership skills and talents into areas of service, areas of social life, social justice and community impact. They’re starting to identify in this first year where that impact is going to be most beneficial to them and their community members around them.”

Stokes said while they continue to develop a greater sense of independence and confidence in navigating their college lives, scholars will be called upon to serve as leaders in the Kessler program.

“They’ll help to influence some of the activities we design,” she said. “They may serve as ambassadors for the program, talk to the press, or lead a tour. They get to serve in a significant capacity to help serve [the Kessler program] but to also help make sure that the Kessler experience is prestigious and impactful.”

Hein is all in to make sure that happens.

“It’s a great program, and I really hope it expands to other colleges,” she said. “It’s really been something special so far.” Q

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SEE KENTUCKY’S VIBRANT HISTORY COME TO LIFE. Learn how our past shapes our future as you explore Kentucky’s rich history, with heroic stories, interactive exhibits, fascinating tours, plus archives and genealogy resources. Inspiring and engaging for all ages, plan your unforgettable visit today. history.ky.gov

Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History Kentucky Military History Museum • Old State Capitol

48 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2024

A section for Kentuckians everywhere … inside Kentucky Monthly.

The 1901 Kentucky Derby was the 27th running of the Kentucky Derby. The race took place on April 29, 1901.

K ENTUCKY XPLORER E All About Kentucky

Volume 39, Number 1 – February 2024

Louisville’s Main Street, 1922 In business from 1854-1954, the Carter Dry Goods Company moved into this building on the 700 block of West Main Street in 1878. In 1977, the city of Louisville purchased the building and transformed it into the Museum of Natural History and Science, now the Louisville Science Center. The 700 block of Louisville’s West Main was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Photo from UofL Archives & Special Collections.

Your Letters -- page 50 The Falls of the Ohio -- page 56 Statesman and Diplomat John Sherman Cooper -- page 58

“I Remember” By Our Readers

and More!

Featuring Things Old & New About Kentucky

50

THE KENTUCKY EXPLORER

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

Letters to the Kentucky Explorer Letters may be edited for clarification and brevity.

Anyone Know the Neikirks?

My name is Patti Neikirk Moree. I am the daughter of Charles Edward Neikirk, 1922-2002, who was born and raised around Springfield. My dad was in the Kentucky National Guard when the troops were federalized into service for World War II. His unit was the 106th Coast Artillery AW Bn SP. He was in Battery C. The unit name was changed during the war to the 106th AAA AW Bn SP (self-propelled).

I am looking for the family of a soldier, also from Springfield, whose parents knew my dad’s parents, George A. Neikirk and Margaret McFatridge Neikirk. The soldier received a letter from his parents when the 106th was in Italy in May 1944. The letter stated, “Please give Charles our condolences on the death of his father.” This was the first my dad had heard that his dad was ill, much less that he had died.

I know this is a longshot. I have been researching my dad’s service for about 15 years but don’t have much personal information because he rarely spoke about the war until he was dying in 2002. Most of those bits and pieces had little pertinent information. I can be contacted through email.

Thank you for your help.

Patti Moree, Claremore, Oklahoma pfnm62@gmail.com

Facetious Footprints My partner and I (both from Harlan) got a “kick” out of the article “Clever Cow Shoes” (August 2023 issue, page 53).

We acknowledge that moonshiners are known to be sneaky, but we never expected them to be so creative!

Thanks for sharing!

Tinker Slack and Harvey Brock, Ormond-by-the-Sea, Florida In memory of Donna Jean Hayes, 1948-2019

FOUNDED 1986, VOLUME 39, NO. 1

Nope, Not in the 1930s I would like to point out an error in the caption of the photo on page 53 of the November issue (“Sometimes, the store came to you…”).

The photo had to have been taken in the 1940s, probably after the war. The truck in the photo is a 1940 1.5-ton GMC AFKX-352 4X4 small arms repair truck. Only 974 were built, and all later trucks were 2.5-ton 6X6s.

These trucks were outfitted as workshop maintenance units that had to keep up with front-line units. The armorers, who repaired a unit’s small arms, had these trucks outfitted for their work, as would the ordnance men who worked on cannons and howitzers, mechanics who worked on motors and vehicles, and technicians who worked on field telephones and roads, to name a few.

If you look under the truck in the photo you can see the front axle has a differential and is powered.

I have attached a photograph of a restored one.

David Morse, Frankfort 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 appears inside each issue of Kentucky Monthly magazine. Subscriptions can be purchased online at shopkentuckymonthly.com or by calling 1.888.329.0053.

Founded in 1832, Broadway Methodist Church is Paducah’s oldest church.

February 2024 51

Louisville Courier-Journal Culinary Archive:

February Is for …

Published Apr. 10, 1953

Published Feb. 8, 1959

Published June 28, 1947

Hurrah, February is National Fasting Month! Oh, wait.

That’s no fun … I want to celebrate the Great American PIE Month, instead. There may be nothing more nostalgic than your grandmother’s apple pie—so fragrant, juicy and steaming hot right out of the oven. I will have to have that memory vicariously through you, since my grandmother could mess up a bowl of corn flakes. I kid you not.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Food and Nutrition, a pie is any sweet or savory food cooked in a dish that is covered with pastry. That leaves a lot of room for creativity, which was an important feature when pies were used to prolong the life of food—especially fruit.

This variation is certainly reflected in the Courier-Journal recipe box. It was quite the challenge to choose from all the pie recipes published over the years. I’ve selected four pies from the 1940s and ’50s. Maybe your grandmothers made these old-timey pies.

There is a Basic Pineapple Lattice pie from 1953, a Scotch Butterscotch Pie from 1947, and two from 1959—a Peppermint Candy Pie and a Brown Sugar Pie from Bardstown’s Old Talbott Tavern.

Get your ice cream ready and enjoy.

Published Jan. 16, 1959

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

In 2021, Sullivan University acquired The Louisville Courier-Journal’s culinary archives, which include 30,000 recipe cards, 1,500 cookbooks and decades worth of newspaper clippings. Each month, Kentucky Explorer shares a piece of this history, along with a recipe or two, and takes a look at how Kentucky cooked. For more information about Sulivan University, please visit Sullivan.edu or call 1.800.844.1354.

McCreary County, Kentucky’s 120th county, was established in 1912 and named for two-time Gov. James B. McCreary.

4 THE 52 THEKENTUCKY KENTUCKYEXPLORER EXPLORER Send memories to Deborah Kohl Kremer at deb@kentuckymonthly.com or mail to Kentucky Monthly, Attn: Deb Kremer, P.O. Box 559, Frankfort, KY 40602.

“I Remember” Send your memory in today!

By Our Readers

Is It Butter Yet?!

If I overchurned the butter, it became greasy and hard to form a ball of butter. Granny scooped out

By Carol Ingle, Scott County all the clumps of butter and put them in a pan from That’s what I used to ask my granny when I which she strained all the liquid. She used was churning. I hated that job. I wish I knew cheesecloths to get as much liquid out as possible. how long it took to make butter. It seemed like The buttermilk that was left in the churn was hours back when I was growing up in the 1950s poured into a big glass jar. Granny used buttermilk in Wayne County. to make biscuits, dumplings and pie crusts. She Our cow got milked in the mornings and liked to pour buttermilk over cornbread and eat it. later during the day. If we went anywhere, we Not me. I hated the smell. got home just before milking time. Granny My arms hurt so badly after churning. Granny skimmed off the cream from the milk and put rubbing alcohol all over my shoulders and arms dumped it into the churn. The churn was made to help the ache. from heavy stoneware and had a long wooden We had a big radio that operated with a battery. stick with a wooden X at the bottom of the The only time the radio was turned on was to listen The Louisville stick. It had a round disk that fit over the X, to the news and the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday Pottery Indian called a dash. When the churn was half full of night. We did not waste the battery on nonsense, Head Blue cream, it was time to churn. I think it held a but my smart granny bribed me into churning by churn that couple of gallons. I’d sit in a chair with the letting me listen to the radio. She knew if I could churn at my feet. The churn had a stoneware lid Carol used. listen to music, I’d do anything in this world for her with a hole in it. The stick was pulled up and down without moaning and whining. I’d do anything to get to through the hole. Granny lifted the lid and looked at the hear music. To this day, my love for music is in the top five smelly cream to see if it was butter. She knew when it was loves of my life. ready just by looking at it.

The Old Farmhouse and the Fire

By Charles Wilson, Middletown My brother, sister and I were raised in an old whiteframe farmhouse in Shelby County. I was born there and often wondered why I was born in the house and not at the local hospital. I was told that when my sister, Doris, was born, Daddy had driven so fast to the hospital, 7 miles away, that as soon as he pulled up in front of the hospital, his Model T Ford caught fire. Daddy said, “I’ll never do that again.” Thus, I was born at home.

The old seven-room house was typical of its day. It had electricity and well water, with a pitcher pump in the kitchen. There was an outhouse in back and coal-burning stoves and a fireplace. There were two sets of stairs.

The house had personality; some of the rooms had names. One was the “Other Room.” “Where’s Doris?” someone would say. “She is in the Other Room.” We all knew where she was. Then, there was the “Old Room.”

This may have been the living room a couple of generations before, but by then, the floor was sagging. It was where all the “stuff” was kept, such as the World War I hat that dad wore in the Army, the old typewriter mother used at work, some long brown hair mother had cut off back in the 1920s, and a trunk containing letters some ladies had sent to my dad in the Army, usually beginning with “My

Dearest Fulton.” Dad had built a model of a thrashing machine, which was in the Old Room, along with a beautifully carved airplane propeller. Dad was into that, as airplanes were in their beginning days.

I mowed the yard each week with an old rotary blade mower—no gasoline motor—and I once helped Mother paper the ceiling in the upstairs bedroom. We stood on a table, and she had a long starched roll ready. I helped her hold the roll while she placed it onto the ceiling, lapping it over with solid-color paper. I think the idea was to cover up a few cracks that had developed in the plaster.

Then, there was the fire. It was June 1952, a hot summer night with a bad electrical storm brewing—lots of thunder and lightning. Dad was always frightened of these storms—too many lightning strikes in the country. He gathered us onto the stair steps away from windows. After the storm subsided, we went out and looked around to see if there were any buildings around the countryside that may have been set on fire. All looked clear, except maybe a little smoke smell. Then we went back to bed.

Doris’ bedroom was adjacent to mine and our brother, Bob’s. Mother and Daddy were up the other set of steps, separated from us. We were asleep, but Doris kept gazing out the window as she could at a reddish glare. Over her room, the sheathing under the metal roof was on fire.

“The longer you live, the more likely you are to have something to say.” Barbara Kingsolver, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist

February 2024 53

Lightning had struck! She figured it out, and we immediately got a ladder and buckets of water to try to put the fire out. It was wasted time. Too scared to go back upstairs to get clothes, the first thing that I went for was the new Arvin TV. I grabbed it and got halfway across the room and the wires jerked loose. We got a few other things before it got too dangerous.

We all got out, but the old house burned rather quickly.

The Simpsonville Volunteer Fire Department arrived, and the members asked if they should help. We elected to let it continue to the ground, since it was almost there anyway.

By then, it was about 5:30 in the morning. We were dairy farmers, and the cows didn’t understand our dilemma and wanted to be fed and milked. So we looked back

at our smoky ruins and started our day.

We were blessed. Our tenant house was empty at the time, so Mother and some neighbors cleaned it up, and we moved there. We rounded up some furniture. Bob and I slept on a mattress in the attic. It was about 100 degrees, but most nights we were tired and slept well. I hate to think what might have happened if Doris had not seen the glare of the fire. Dad found a builder to rebuild, and we moved in around Thanksgiving.

I have often thought that I’m sure glad it was not the dairy barn that caught fire. What would we have done with 50 cows to milk twice a day?

The old house needed lots of work. Dad was able to afford a new one, so God was very good to us.

Campus Days at UK’s Holmes Hall

By Patti Grace, Lexington In August 1958, two wide-eyed innocents from small towns—Yvonne Nicholls of Worthington and Patricia Mullins of Shifflett (Greenup County)—moved into a beautiful dormitory on Lexington’s University of Kentucky campus at the corner of Limestone Street and Euclid Avenue across from the Student Union Building. Both of us wondered who our roommate would be and what the year held for us as we entered the lovely new structure with its wide horizontal steps and pristine landscaping. Holmes Hall reminded us of a classy building straight out of the portfolio of Frank Lloyd Wright. How could we be so fortunate to be chosen as freshmen to occupy the first floor of this new building?!

Inside, it was even better. The living room where our guests came to wait for us was plush and bright. Nearby, on the first level, there were a couple of ping-pong tables to engage in some friendly competition with our fellow students or guests. The rooms were freshly appointed with two single beds, two desks, a nice closet and even a builtin sink. The facilities were cutting edge for that time.

Imagine that there were no phones, restrooms or showers in each room, but none of the dorms had those in the rooms. We were thrilled to be there.

Rules and regulations were different then. Only women could venture past the entrance floor, unless it was a maintenance person. Then, it was made known that an outsider was visiting, for many young ladies yelled, “Man on the floor!”

The original Holmes Hall, above, was demolished in 2014. In 2016, a new Sarah Bennett Holmes Hall, right, opened in the same location.

Dedicated on May 25, 1958, Holmes Hall was named for Susan Bennett Holmes, the dean of women from 1942-1957.

Holmes was named state mother for Kentucky in 1944, and in 1996, she received the prestigious Sullivan Medallion.

Holmes received her bachelor’s degree in 1929 and master’s degree in 1939 from the University of Kentucky.

From left, Yvonne and Patricia, dressed for a fraternity costume party, in the hallway in Holmes Hall,1958; Sarah Bennett Holmes spoke at the dedication of Holmes Hall, May 25, 1958; Holmes’ granddaughters revealed the plaque for Holmes Hall at the dedication; the Sarah Bennett Holmes plaque on campus today.

In 2005, milk was declared the official drink of Kentucky.

6 THE 54 THEKENTUCKY KENTUCKYEXPLORER EXPLORER

They may come in all shapes and sizes, but

Home Is Where the Heart Is

By Wendy Collins, Lt. Col., USAF, Nurse Corps (Ret.), Paducah

I

n the late 1940s, my daddy, William B. Collins Jr., who had served in World War II, had been laid off from the L&N Railroad. He worked at Blue Front Grocery at 43rd and Church Streets in the Latonia neighborhood of Covington.

We had been living in an upstairs apartment at my paternal grandparents’ house, but when Momma got pregnant two months after my brother, Baird, was born, they were asked to leave.

Daddy’s boss told him about the city selling streetcars and advanced Daddy $100 to purchase one. The boss, named Art, had an empty lot next to his house, which was at the end of Wischer Drive in Taylor Mill. All I remember about the location was that we had a circular driveway, and that is where the streetcar was placed.

Occasionally, when my brother and I played outside, Momma saw a fox in the yard. She got out Daddy’s trusty gun and shot the animal. We didn’t have a bathroom per se, so Daddy took the “honey bucket” and disposed of its contents every morning. Momma cooked on a hot plate in the kitchen. As

From left, my momma, Helen Hamilton Collins; me; my daddy, William B Collins Jr.; and my brother, Baird Collins.

you can see from the interior photo of the streetcar, Momma and Daddy worked on the inside to create rooms.

I don’t remember much about living there, except that the home was long and narrow.

I have two stories about the fate of the streetcar. One was that it had been moved from the site and the other was that it had been relocated over the hill at the back of the property. We didn’t have a backyard, as there was a steep dropoff into a ravine. I don’t know which story is true.

We lived in the streetcar for only two or three years before we moved in with my maternal grandparents, Walter Albin and Mary Agnes Platz. Walter ran the L&N Railroad office at the Latonia Station. My grandparents turned their home into a two-family residence so we could move out of the streetcar. We lived with them until 1958, when I was 10. At that time, Daddy purchased the only home he ever owned at 3905 Tracy Avenue in Latonia.

We were pretty poor but richly loved by my parents.

If anyone has any information about what happened to the streetcar, please email Wendy at formerltc@yahoo.com.

Early Cars Were Light on Frills

By Mark Mattmiller, Cynthiana I grew up in Louisville, and I remember when not every family had a car. Grocery stores, hardware stores and drug stores were everywhere. City buses stopped on almost every corner and provided transportation to work and to downtown. I also recall when I first started driving—how simple the cars were and how different they are from cars today.

Operating one automobile was just like operating any other. The headlight dimmer switch on all cars was operated by the driver’s left foot. There was a round metal switch sticking up out of the floor on the left. The driver just tapped it to dim the headlights and then again to put them back on bright.

The heater controls were all alike and simple. One lever controlled the temperature, and a second determined if the air blew on the windshield, the floor or somewhere in between. A third switch set the blower speed (low, medium or high).

There was a small window in front of each front

1950s Ford Thunderbird dashboard

window called “the vent,” and, of course, the windows were moved up and down by turning a hand-operated crank. There were no electric windows.

Windshield wipers were run by some kind of vacuum system. I think there was only one speed: on. When we drove up a hill, the wipers slowed down, and if the hill

Lake Cumberland was created with the construction of the Wolf Creek Dam in 1952 and …

February 2024 55

there are on most cars today, and was steep enough, they stopped everywhere you looked, you saw altogether. some guy driving with his girlfriend There was only one rear-view or wife sitting right next to him. The mirror, and it was on the inside just position of the seats had to be where it is on today’s models. There changed by pressing a lever and were no outside side-view mirrors. pushing with your feet.

Drivers had to really turn around to I remember when there was an see what was behind them. Inside oil-pressure gauge, a waterrear-view cameras hadn’t even been temperature gauge, a speedometer dreamed of. and a gas gauge—and that was it.

Automatic transmissions were in Kids today don’t know the meaning of “roll They were pretty much in the same their infancy and rarely seen. The up the windows.” order across the dashboard on all first was the Chevrolet Power Glide, cars. That really was a cool thing which came out in the 1950s. If you about the old cars: They were virtually all the same. wanted to drive, you had to learn how to operate a clutchThere were no windshield squirters, no automatic door driven standard gearshift. There was no such thing as locks, no seat belts and few radios. And you couldn’t start power steering. your car from inside your house.

Front seats were continuous from one side of the car to My, my! How did we ever make it? the other: There were no obstructions in the center, like

The Mysterious Bridegroom from Kentucky

By Mary Gomide, Canada

G

reetings from Canada! I am an amateur genealogist who has researched my ancestors for more than two decades without ever finding any link to Kentucky. I did spend a few days in Lexington several years ago, but that is the extent of my connection to the state until August 2018, when I purchased an old book from a locked, “special items” case in a thrift shop near my home in Southeastern Ontario, Canada. It was a circa 1858 register containing local Methodist marriage records. My purchase of it was an offshoot of my hobby of rescuing antique photograph albums and family Bibles from thrift shops and yard sales with the goal of researching them and returning them to descendants of the original owners.

Using the register as a springboard, I researched the brides, bridegrooms and reverends and wrote a nonfiction book titled The 1874-1890 Long-lost Register of Reverend R. Clarke and Reverend D.E F. Gee. The unusual surname of one of the bridegrooms, his birthplace, and his mother’s noble-sounding name piqued my interest. I devoted an entire chapter to my findings. He also was the catalyst for this article.

On April 11, 1889, 29-year-old Jas. G. Scrugham (born in Kentucky) married 23-year-old Etta McColl (born in Canada) in Trenton, Ontario. The bridegroom’s parents were listed as “Jas. & Theodosia,” and the bride’s parents were identified as “John J. & Lucinda.”

I discovered the name James G. Scrugham and variations in several records in Kentucky and elsewhere in the United States. For example, in January 1885, numerous newspapers across the US broke the sensational story about a bank cashier named James G. Scrugham who had stolen money from his employer, the Lexington City National Bank.

A smattering of records from Canada included the following—a few tidbits of information but nothing that linked them to the groom, the bank cashier or to Kentucky: A student named Jas. G. Scrugham attended the Ontario

Agricultural College in Guelph, Ontario, from 1885-1887; a stamp dealer named J.G. Scrugham offered stamps for sale in Belleville, Ontario, in 1882; an “Auction Sale of New Household Effects” at the residence of Mr. J.G. Scrugham was advertised in the April 2, 1892, issue of the Daily Intelligencer newspaper in Belleville, Ontario; the name Jas. G Scrugham appeared in 1890 among the members of the Dominion Commercial Travellers’ Association and, again, in the members’ list for 1896; a salesman named James G. Scrugham was arrested for stealing from his employer, according to a notice in the Daily Intelligencer newspaper on March 13, 1896.

Turning back to records from the States, further research about the “bank absconder” from Lexington showed that his full name was James Grinstead Scrugham (1857 Lexington, Ky.–unknown). Some family trees on Ancestry.com and Family Search suggest he died in 1891 in Toronto, Ontario, but that suggestion is unsourced. His mother’s name was Joanna (née Foreman) (1833 Washington, D.C.–1911 Fayette, Ky.). He and his wife Theodosia (née Allen) (1857 Missouri–1937 Fayette, Ky.) had two children. Son James Graves Scrugham (1880 Lexington, Ky.–1945 San Diego, Calif.) was the 14th governor of Nevada. Daughter Mary Scrugham (1885 Lexington, Ky.– 1965 Lexington, Ky.) was an educator and was active in the women’s suffrage movement.

In conclusion, records documenting where and how James and Etta Scrugham lived and died after their wedding in Canada could not be found, nor could it be determined if any link existed between them and James Grinstead Scrugham or others who shared the bridegroom’s name. Perhaps the information presented here will spark a search by members of the Scrugham family.

If you have any questions about my research into the Scrugham family or about my book in general, please visit my Facebook page named “The 1874-1890 Long-lost Register.” Thank you.

… is the 25th-largest dam in the United States. It originally was called Wolf Creek Reservoir.

56

THE KENTUCKY EXPLORER

A distinct landmark for explorers, frontiersmen and pioneers:

The Falls of the Ohio

By Bobbi Dawn Rightmyer, Harrodsburg

A

lthough technically located in Clarksville, Indiana, the Falls of the Ohio State Park was an important historical site in the settlement of Kentucky in the late 1700s. It is located on the banks of the Ohio River across from Louisville. The park is part of the Falls of the Ohio National Wildlife Conservation Area and is named Map of the Falls of the Ohio by Georges Henri Victor Collot. for a series of rapids within a fall of 26 feet over a distance Courtesy of Library of Congress. of about 2 miles, making it the only navigational hazard on Boone had instructions to take different routes till he came the Ohio River. Robert LaSalle, a French explorer, is the to the Falls of the Ohio and if no discovery there, to return earliest recorded visitor to the falls in 1669, and many home through the Cumberland Gap.” The two messengers historical figures visited this early “Gateway to the West.” first reached Harrodsburg, then proceeded to the Falls, In the spring of 1773, James Harrod—the founder of warning men along the way. They returned home by way Harrodsburg, the oldest English settlement west of the of the Cumberland Gap 68 days after they had left, Allegheny Mountains—joined up with Capt. Thomas Bullitt, Virginia’s chief surveyor, to survey land at the Falls traveling more than 800 miles on their journey.

On May 27, 1778, George Rogers Clark traveled to the of the Ohio. They spent several weeks in Pittsburgh at Fort Falls of the Ohio, and his men began planting corn and Pitt burning and hollowing out logs to make pirogues, or felling trees at the small outpost on Corn Island. Although canoes, and laying in supplies. Because there were no forts not a military post, the recently mustered militia west of the upper Ohio River, Harrod’s group had to make rendezvoused on Corn Island for sure the surveyors had plenty of axes, Clark’s push into Illinois on June 24. butcher knives, blankets, extra The day the militia pulled out there moccasins and hunting shirts, in was a solar eclipse, causing addition to bullets, gunpowder and superstitious reactions among the men. fishing tackle. They also needed Corn Island was abandoned after 1779 surveying equipment, including a rod, with the establishment of Louisville. chain and compass.

Early in the summer of 1780, the On July 8, 1773, Harrod and Bullitt commander at Detroit dispatched reached the Falls and began to lay out British Capt. Henry Bird with a militia a town in what is present-day of 150 white men and 100 Native Louisville. However, Col. William Americans to take the Falls of the Ohio.

Preston, the official surveyor of Fincastle On their march down the Miami River, County, Virginia, complained about the Bird’s men recruited more allied Native law violations he thought were occurring Americans to aid in their fight, bringing at the Falls, so Lord Dunmore, the his total to 850 men. On June 22, Bird’s governor of Virginia, ordered him to campaigns silently surrounded the Falls register the Falls of the Ohio surveys in but then attacked the patriot settlement Fincastle records. of Ruddle’s Station, located on the south With the Revolutionary War looming fork of the Licking River. After only a few on the horizon, on July 8, 1774, Daniel shots from Bird’s artillery, the fort Boone and Michael Stoner were sent by surrendered. Ruddle’s Station was one of Capt. William Russell, the military only two fortifications captured in commander of Fincastle County, to notify Top, detail from a historic Kentucky during the Revolutionary War. Harrod and the other pioneer men of the postcard of the Falls of the In the fall of 1780, Virginia did away increasing Native American hostilities.

Ohio. Courtesy of Bobbi Dawn with the county of Kentucky, setting up Russell wrote: “I am in hopes, that in two Rightmyer; above, marker at the three new counties: Jefferson, Lincoln or three weeks from this time Mr. Boone Falls of the Ohio Fossil Beds. and Fayette. Jefferson County would be will produce the gentlemen surveyors Courtesy of Falls of the Ohio on the south side of the Kentucky River, here, as I can’t believe they are all killed. State Park.

Big Bone Lick State Park’s name comes from the Pleistocene megafauna fossils found there.

56 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY NOV EMBER 2 0 2 0

February 2024 57

northwest of Benson Creek and running south to the was the site where Meriweather Lewis and William Clark nearest waters of Hammond Creek and northwest to the met and planned for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Falls of the Ohio. Fayette County would be north of the The interpretive center at the Falls of the Ohio State mouth of the Kentucky River and northeast around Park, 201 West Riverside Drive, Clarksville, Indiana, is Boonesborough. Lincoln County “embraced the residue of open Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday, 1-5 the original county of Kentucky” with Harrodsburg at its p.m. The park grounds are open 7 a.m.-11 p.m. Fishing, center. hiking, fossil viewing, bird watching and picnicking are The exposed fossil beds at the Falls of the Ohio are among the most popular activities. from the Devonian Period, also known as the Age of Admission is $9 age 12 and up; $7 ages 5-11; and those Fishes, spanning about 419-359 million years ago. under 5 are admitted free. Parking is $2. An annual The 220-acre fossil bed at the Falls of the Ohio State entrance pass covers parking but not Interpretive Center Park is the admission. main feature of August the park, through attracting October about 160,000 provides the visitors best annually to the accessibility to 1,404-acre the 220 acres National of fossil beds, Wildlife as the river is Conservation at its lowest Left, fossil at the Falls of the Ohio. Courtesy of Kentucky Educational Television; right, Fossil Area. level during bed at the falls. Courtesy of Falls of the Ohio State Park.

The Falls this period.

Kentuckian Jane Lampton Clemens: the mother of Mark Twain

By Sam Terry, Glasgow Jane Lampton Clemens was born June 18, 1803, in Columbia, in Adair County. Neighboring Casey County was named for her maternal grandfather, William Casey.

In 1823, Jane married John Marshall Clemens, a Virginia native who was living in Adair County, where he practiced law. Clemens was described as a “somber and unaffectionate” man, and Jane had married him to “spite another man.” The newlyweds lived in rented rooms in the John Field House, one of Columbia’s three oldest homes located on present-day Reed Street.

The Clemenses moved to Tennessee for several years, where they started a family and later relocated to Florida, Missouri and eventually Hannibal, Missouri, where John died in 1847. After John’s death, Left, Jane Lampton Clemens and her son, Samuel, right.

Jane lived near and/or with three of her children in various states.

Through all of the family troubles she maintained a kind of Jane and John were the parents of seven children, four perky stoicism, which was lighted considerably by her love of whom lived to adulthood, but the most well known was of gossip, gaudy spectacles like parades and funerals, their sixth child, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (some bright colors, and animals.” The author also admitted that sources reveal that Jane insisted Samuel’s middle name his mother had “come handy to me several times in my was actually Lampton in honor of her uncle), born in 1835. books, where she figures as Tom Sawyer’s ‘Aunt Polly.’ ” Samuel became known around the world by his pen name, Jane Lampton Clemens died in October 1890 and was Mark Twain. buried in Hannibal, Missouri.

Twain said of Jane, “My mother was very much alive, The Jane Lampton Chapter of the National Society of [her] age contented for nothing; fond of excitement, fond the Daughters of the American Revolution in Columbia, of novelties, fond of anything going was of a sort proper Kentucky, is named in honor of Mrs. Clemens. for members of the Church to indulge in …”

In another recollection, he elaborated, “She was of a Sam Terry is the creator and author of the Sam Terry’s Kentucky sunshine disposition, and her long life was mainly a blog, which can be found at samterryskentucky.com or by the same holiday for her. She always had the heart of a young girl. name on Facebook.

The Cumberland River was called Wasioto by the Shawnee Native Americans, who lived in the area.

58

THE KENTUCKY EXPLORER

John Sherman Cooper: Statesman and Diplomat

By John W. McCauley, Lexington

just honest and sincere. He garnered the support of Chandler Democrats and defeated popular Kentucky Rep. John Young Brown Sr. in the general election. erhaps one of our nation’s greatest statesmen, the In the U.S. Senate, Cooper became known as an gentleman from Somerset was a champion of the poor independent Republican and, perhaps, somewhat of a and working class. Known for crossing party lines, Sen. maverick. Having been questioned by members of his own John Sherman Cooper took great pride in his party for not toeing the party line, he reminded them that independence and representing the people he served. In he wasn’t elected to represent a political party but to his first term in the United States Senate, he voted with represent the people. He was successful in passing each party approximately 50 legislation to provide federal support for public education percent of the time. and joined Sen. Alben W. Barkley to support voting rights.

Born Aug. 21, 1901, to In 1948, Cooper lost his re-election bid in a close race to John Sherman and Helen U.S. Rep. Virgil Chapman.

Gertrude (Tartar) Cooper in Cooper began practicing law in Washington, D.C., and Somerset, he was the second in 1949, he was appointed by President Harry S Truman to of seven children. His family the United Nations General Assembly. He also served as was prominent in business and politics. In 1918, Cooper, an advisor to the Truman administration in efforts that led who was class president and to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). poet, graduated from In 1951, Chapman was killed in a car accident, and Somerset High School. He Cooper decided to seek the unexpired term. He defeated held numerous jobs Sen. Thomas R. Underwood, who had been appointed by throughout his youth, Sen. Cooper at the Gov. Lawrence Wetherby in the general election. Cooper including working in a coal White House. Courtesy of supported numerous public works projects and public mine.

John W. McCauley. housing and, on occasion, opposed the administration of Cooper attended Centre President Dwight D. Eisenhower on legislation and policy.

College before earning a In 1954, Cooper faced Barkley in the race for senator. bachelor of arts degree in 1923 from Yale University. He Cooper, a liberal Republican, and Barkley had similar attended Harvard Law School but eventually returned platforms. No one could have defeated the popular home due to his family’s financial losses and, Barkley, and Cooper lost his Senate seat for a second time. subsequently, his father’s death.

In 1955, President Eisenhower appointed Cooper as Cooper passed a state examination and was admitted ambassador to India and Nepal. The same year, he married to practice law. During his only term in the Kentucky Loraine Rowman Shevlin, a friend of Jacqueline Bouvier House of Representatives, he supported free textbooks for Kennedy, wife of Sen. John F. Kennedy. The Coopers and school children. In 1929, he was elected Pulaski County judge, a post he held for eight years. Having served during Kennedys become good friends. the Great Depression, this period was instrumental in On April 30, 1956, Barkley died while in the U.S. Senate. shaping his strong support for social programs.

With the encouragement of President Eisenhower, Cooper In 1935, he ran for governor but lost in the Republican resigned to seek Barkley’s seat. The Democrats nominated primary to former U.S. Rep. King Swope of Lexington. former Gov. Wetherby, but with the support of Chandler Swope lost to Lt. Gov. Keen Johnson in the general Democrats, Cooper won the election. During that term, he election. supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960.

During World War II, In 1960, Cooper finally Cooper enlisted at age 41 in was elected to a full term in the U.S. Army, where he was the Senate, defeating former commissioned a second Gov. Keen Johnson. He lieutenant and later a captain. became a close confidant He served in Gen. George and respected advisor to Patton’s Third Army in the President Kennedy, European theater and received especially regarding the a Bronze Star Medal.

Soviet Union. Cooper In 1945, after serving a few supported the 24th months as circuit judge, Amendment, the Civil Cooper resigned to seek the Rights Act of 1964 and the unexpired term of U.S. Sen. Voting Rights Act of 1965.

A.B. “Happy” Chandler, who In late 1963, President The Warren Commission, from left, former CIA Director Allen became commissioner of Lyndon B. Johnson W. Dulles, Rep. Hale Boggs, Sen. John Sherman Cooper, baseball. Cooper was not appointed Cooper to the Chairman Chief Justice Earl Warren, Sen. Richard B. Russell, flamboyant or a great orator, Warren Commission John J. McCloy and Rep. Gerald R. Ford.

P

The National Saddle Horse Breeders Association was formed in 1891 in Louisville and …

February 2024 59

charged with investigating the assassination of President Kennedy.

Cooper was a vocal opponent of U.S. escalation in Vietnam, urging President Johnson to seek other methods for peace in southeast Asia. In 1965, Cooper joined Sen. Jennings Randolph to sponsor the Appalachian Regional Development Act, which created the Appalachian Regional Commission. He also authored the National Defense Education Act, which provided funding to educational institutions at all levels.

In 1966, Cooper faced former Rep. John Young Brown Sr. for a second time and won re-election by 217,000 votes.

In 1968, he supported the Civil Rights Act and, with Sen. Frank Church, co-sponsored legislation to end the U.S. escalation in Vietnam. He also supported the safe return of U.S. prisoners of war.

On Jan. 21, 1972, Cooper announced that he would not seek re-election. During his time in the U.S. Senate, other Kentuckians he served with were former Gov. Earl C. Clements, Sen. Thruston B. Morton and Sen. Marlow

Cook. At the time, Barkley was the only Kentuckian who had served longer than Cooper in the U.S. Senate.

In 1974, he was tapped by President Richard M. Nixon to serve as the first U.S. ambassador to East Germany. In the wake of Watergate, Cooper was appointed to that post

by President Gerald R. Ford. Upon returning home, he practiced law in Washington, D.C. Senator Cooper died on Feb. 21, 1991, in Washington, D.C., at the age of 89. He was preceded in death by his wife, Loraine, and buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

In 1963, I met Sen. Cooper while on a family vacation to Washington, D.C., with my father, Joe McCauley, then mayor of Middlesboro. He and the senator were friends, and Sen. Cooper graciously received us in his office. He let me sit in his chair and inscribed a book to me. My last visit with Sen. Cooper was in 1984, while on the road with my boss and Cooper’s successor, Sen. Walter D. Huddleston.

To the state and nation, John Sherman Cooper was a statesman and diplomat; to me, a role model.

Kentuckians’ Reputations Preceded Them American victory. The American forces As Americans fought the War of successfully defended the city against 1812, Kentuckians were summoned to the British attack on Jan. 8, 1815. The New Orleans to prepare for battle. The heavy fighting lasted just a few hours. militiamen were incorrectly led to The British suffered many casualties, believe that munitions were to be while the Americans had relatively few handed out in New Orleans. losses.

It is estimated that 2,500 members The battle had significant symbolic of the Kentucky militia reached New importance and boosted American Orleans on Jan. 4, 1815. morale, even though it occurred after Gen. Andrew Jackson said, “Not the Treaty of Ghent had been signed, one man in ten was well armed, and officially ending the War of 1812. The only one man in three had any arms at news of the victory reached the United all.”

States after the treaty had been ratified.

The Kentuckians lacked weapons, Andrew Jackson, 1823.

Despite the good outcome, Old proper bedding and clothing, so the Hickory, as Jackson was known, was still perplexed. residents of New Orleans provided guns, and the women “I don’t believe it,” Jackson allegedly said. “I have sewed around the clock to equip the soldiers with the never seen a Kentuckian without a gun and a pack of cards right garments. and a bottle of whiskey in my life.”

The Battle of New Orleans resulted in a decisive

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Contact Deborah Kohl Kremer at deb@kentuckymonthly.com.

… in 1980, the association’s name was changed to the American Saddlebred Horse and Breeders Association.

past tense/present tense

by Bill Ellis

Here I Am at 84 And there are many things I don’t know or understand

F

irst, I want to wish all Kentucky Monthly readers a Happy New Year.

I celebrated my 84th birthday at 10 minutes after midnight on Jan. 1. As the first baby born at the old Danville hospital on Jan. 1, 1940, I received a ton of coal.

The ton of coal was welcome for my family during what proved to be a cold winter. My pop worked at the old Kentucky Utilities gas plant. I spent my first six weeks in an incubator, which undoubtedly saved my life.

Aunt Mary, my mother’s sister, jokingly (I think) said I looked like a “drowned rat.”

But to the business of this article. At my age, there are many things I don’t know or at least understand. For many years, I thought I understood American politics.

There was the Republican Party. There was the Democratic Party (many of my Republican Party friends always wanted it called the “Democrat” Party). Things began to change a few years ago, the nature of which I still don’t understand.

We are on the threshold of a momentous 2024 presidential election. What will happen, I have no idea. I am fearful for our democracy.

God Bless America. We need “You” now more than ever.

• • •

A recent 3,000-plus-mile auto trip through the western states emphasized to me the fact that I do not know enough about the history of Native Americans.

Along the way, I reread Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, the classic account of the white man’s attempt, mostly successful, to sideline the history of an entire race as well as displace them from their homeland.

Growing up in Shelby County on my beloved Snow Hill, it was as if Native Americans existed only in American history books. Someone always had to be the “Indians” when we played “Cowboys and Indians.” And this downplaying of Native Americans in our country’s history was true all the way through college, as was that of African Americans.

It was as if Native Americans, after a few battles and subsequent treaties, willingly left Kentucky so that all the whites, many of whom had slaves, could crowd in.

We sang “The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home” with nary a thought about the “American” Native Americans who went off to the western reservations.

Some stayed, of course. In more recent years, we read 60 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2024

and hear about their celebrations right here in Kentucky.

Reservations are scattered throughout the United States. Native Americans are treated as separate from whites. Therefore, they can have casinos on their property.

As a kid, I collected flints and wondered at the fine workmanship. Granddaddy Ellis owned a perfectly formed stone axe, which he stored in his garage. I marveled at the shape and heft of the axe. I learned a valuable lesson: Such relics should be stored under lock and key. A neighbor walked off with it one day.

To learn more about Native Americans, look for the article “We Are Here” in the July 2022 issue of National Geographic. Next, use your skills on the internet for other articles.

Check The Kentucky Encyclopedia index on page 1,012 to find specific articles about various tribes and events such as “Augusta as site of village.” Be sure to visit sites where various tribes predominated. Kentucky has one of the lowest percentages of Native Americans in the country— less than 1 percent of our population—but they are here after all the attempts to drive them away.

• • •

Read. Read. Read. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a good place to start. Kentuckians Before Boone by A. Gwynn Henderson is an excellent book published by the University Press of Kentucky for “new readers.”

I am a fan of N. Scott Momaday and am reading House Made of Dawn for the second or third time.

Ken Wolf, who retired from Murray State University in 2008, has an interesting article entitled “Living Well in a Disappearing World” in the fall 2023 issue of Kentucky Humanities magazine. In the world we live in today, with all of its violence; state warfare; hunger; and poisoning of our atmosphere, soil and oceans, there must be some philosophy that we can follow and have faith in to solve our many problems.

Wolf maintains that there is a choice called tragic optimism, developed by psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman. A tragic optimist is someone who sees “the inevitable tragedies of human existence while trying not to be overwhelmed by them or replace them with a false positivity.” That’s me: “Tragic Optimist Bill.”

Maybe there is still hope for improving and preserving our environment so that my young great-grandchildren will, eventually, live in a better, safer and cleaner natural world.

Readers may contact Bill Ellis at editor@kentuckymonthly.com

field notes

by Gary Garth

Winter Trout

A

winter afternoon, and fishing conditions are far from ideal: a cloudless sky and brilliant sun, its shard-like refractions ricocheting off the gin-clear creek and somehow darting behind my sunglasses.

The temperature has climbed to nearly 40, but the sunshine and absence of wind makes it feel warmer. A shade too warm for the wool vest beneath my jacket.

The riffle in which I’m standing narrows to a gurgling chute that flattens into a pool under the county road bridge. A couple of trout hover near the tail out. They gently wave in the current but display no interest in the fly I’m offering. I change the menu, lengthen the tippet with a piece of an almost thread-like 6x fluorocarbon, tipping it with a tiny black midge with a touch of silver. I take advantage of the current to make a drift cast. Nothing.

A four-door F-150 rumbles onto the bridge and stops.

The driver’s window descends, revealing a face of indeterminable age that’s mostly concealed by a salt-andpepper beard, wraparound sunglasses and a cap.

“Doin’ any good?” It’s the universal fishing greeting.

I answer with a back-and-forth head shake, although this isn’t exactly true. At the upstream bridge access, I’d hooked two trout and landed one, a chunky rainbow that had some color. I didn’t get a look at the second fish.

“This sun makes it tough,” the driver offered. “You could use some clouds.” I nodded in agreement.

“Yeah. I could.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

The truck inched forward then stopped.

“I fish here some in the summer when I can,” the bearded man added, gesturing with a head tilt toward the downstream side of the bridge. “That’s a pretty good spot.

It’s where they stock.”

I answer with a nod. “Thanks.”

This time, the truck rolled off the bridge, up the hill and out of sight.

...

Trout are not native to Kentucky (in pre- and early settlement days, a few Appalachian streams might have harbored native brook trout, but evidence is scant, and opinions vary). But thanks to an aggressive trout stock program by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, the prized sport fish is now found across much of the Commonwealth.

The state game agency regularly stocks about 390 miles of streams, creeks and rivers with trout. Most are rainbows, but some browns and a few brook trout go into the mix. A handful of streams, including the one I’m fishing (Trammel Fork in Allen County), are managed under special catchand-release, artificial-lure-only winter regulations. Details with stream locations can be found at fw.ky.gov/Fish/Pages/SeasonalCatch-and-Release-Trout-Streams. aspx.

The Cumberland River below Wolf Creek Dam is the state’s prize trout fishery. The cold-water release from the dam provides the needed habitat, and the federal trout hatchery at Wolf Creek provides the fish. As a trout fishery, the 76.7-mile-long Cumberland flowing from the dam to the Tennessee state line rivals any cold-water tailrace in the country.

Surprisingly, Kentucky’s trout fishing opportunities expand during the winter.

Fishery officials stock trout during the winter in waters that, due to summertime water temperatures, will not support the cold-water species year-round. These include 44 of the 45 popular Fishing in Neighborhoods (FINs) lakes, which are scattered across 27 counties from Hickman to Harlan. Seven FINs lakes are in Jefferson County. Two are in Fayette. They are stocked four times during the winter season. Twenty-six FINs lakes got trout in October, and 18 were stocked in November. Stocking resumes in February and March. Check page 3 of the current fishing guide for license requirement and bag limits.

The FINs winter trout stocking schedule can be found at fw.ky.gov/Fish/Pages/Planned-Monthly-Trout-StockingSchedule.aspx. All 44 FINs lakes are scheduled for a February trout stocking. There is one near you.

...

I had moved to the downstream side of the bridge and waded onto a narrow gravel tongue. The position required an upstream cast and downstream drift. I hooked fish on back-to-back casts but lost both, the second snapping the thread-thin tippet.

I didn’t notice the truck until the driver, still clad in the cap and sunglasses, spoke. I don’t know how long I’d been observed.

“That’s a good spot,” he said, then the Ford rolled off the bridge and toward the direction of town. I was unsure whether I’d been told something or asked something.

Readers may contact Gary Garth at editor@kentuckymonthly. com k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 61

calendar

FEBRUARY 2024 From the Stitches in Time Exhibit

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

Ongoing The Kentucky Sugar Chest,

Ongoing Stitches in Time Exhibit,

Speed Art Museum, Louisville, through April 7, 502.634.2700

Kentucky Museum, Bowling Green, through July 26, 270.745.2592

<<<

4

7

Little Women,

Women’s Suffrage and African Women’s Voices,

The Carson Center, Paducah, 270.450.4444

Kentucky Museum, Bowling Green, 270.745.2592

11

Sunday Seminar: Bee

12

Ann Patchett with Kevin Wilson, Kentucky

Program Orientation, Mahr Park Arboretum, Madisonville, 270.584.9017

Center for the Performing Arts, Louisville, 502.584.7777

18

19

Cirque Zuma Zuma, Preston Arts Center, Henderson, 270.826.5916

25

Ernie Haase and Signature Sound: Decades of Love, The Carson Center, Paducah, 270.450.4444

Presidents Day

26

BabyTron in Concert, Mercury Ballroom, Louisville, 502.583.4555

13

14 Valentine’s Day

20

21

Center for the Arts, Danville, 859.236.4692

Burl, Lexington, 859.447.8166

27

28

Sing & Swing Jazz, Norton

The Life and Music of George Michael, Lexington Opera House, Lexington, 859.233.4567

Kyle Tuttle in Concert, The

The Botany of Beer In-person Workshop, Yew Dell Gardens, Crestwood, 502.241.4788

THURSDAY

1

Dining in the Dark – A Keeneland Crafted Event, Keeneland Race Course, Lexington, 859.254.3412

FRIDAY

2

The Clock Struck One, Spotlight Playhouse, Berea, through Feb. 4, 859.756.0011

3

Twitty & Lynn A Salute to Conway and Loretta, The Plaza Theatre, Glasgow, 270.361.2101

8

9

10

Historical Society, Louisville, 502.635.5083

Mountain Arts Center, Prestonsburg, 606.886.2623

Virginia Theater, Somerset, 606.679.6366

15

16

Stained Glass Theatre, Newport, through March 2, 859.291.7464

Shelby County Community Theatre, Shelbyville, also Feb. 17 and 23-24, 502.633.0222

22

23

24

Glema Mahr Center for the Arts, Madisonville, 270.821.2787

Yum! Center, Louisville, 502.690.9000

Pop Music in the Reagan Era, The Filson

Murder on the Orient Express,

Riley Green: Ain’t My Last Rodeo Tour, Appalachian Wireless Arena, Pikeville, 606.444.5500

29

Aaron Lewis in Concert, Corbin Arena, Corbin, 606.258.2020

Chris Janson in Concert,

Our Town,

Melody Angel in Concert,

Ongoing Bowling Green: Our Town Exhibit,

For a more extensive listing of events, visit kentuckymonthly.com.

Josh Gracin in Concert, The

17

Zoso – The Ultimate Led Zeppelin Experience, MegaCorp Pavilion, Newport, 859.900.2294

Journey and Toto in Concert, KFC

Ongoing Gallery Exhibit: Small Things,

Gallery 104, Kentucky Museum, La Grange, through March 2, Bowling Green, 502.222.3822 through Mar. 7, 270.745.2592

a guide to Kentucky’s most interesting events 62 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2024

SATURDAY

Soaring vocals with 3 female back up singers, a 4-piece rhythm section and 3-piece horn section!

Feb17

Mar20

Mar22

Apr9

Martha Linda Rondstadt Glenn Miller Alfreda Sings EXPERIENCE ORCHESTRA REDBONE ARETHA

thegrandky.com 502.352.7469

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 63

vested interest

Robin Regiment

R

ecently at Casa Fiesta, a popular Frankfort restaurant, I shared a dream with Al Wink, one of the many coaches I used to write about as a sportswriter. His response was: “You’ve finally lost it.”

So, I hesitate to tell this true story, fearing y’all might lock me up.

About this time last year, there was a late winter storm followed by an abnormally warm and sunny day. I saw an opportunity to clear the remaining leaves out of the bushes around stately Vest Manor, a one-third-acre parcel above Cedar Run, a creek that empties into the Kentucky River south of Frankfort.

Exiting my garage, I saw two robins, one rather large and the other not, examining an ant hill in my front yard.

From their expressions (if robins have such), I appeared to interrupt a meaningful discussion. They did not fly away but watched me as I began my tasks.

The next day, the two birds were joined by a third, and from my dining room window, I watched as they performed what appeared to be military drills. It was soon apparent that the hefty bird could not fly. She had taken refuge in the flower bed dominated by several sticker bushes and a Japanese Maple.

When she emerged from the flower bed, the smaller birds took posts at 45-degree angles to her left and right, where they remained STEPHEN M. VEST while she foraged for food. When Publisher + Editor-in-Chief she retreated to the brush, they flew away but, on cue, returned several times a day throughout the spring and summer.

Only the changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery shows greater precision than the Cedar Run Robin Regiment. Day after day, week after week, it continued.

When I mowed the lawn, the sentries would be up in the Japanese Maple, and I wouldn’t see the general. She emerged once I had returned to the house, and they’d assume their previous posts.

I kept expecting a neighborhood cat to disrupt the formation, but no. The routine continued until fall, when the trio disappeared.

There is no moral to this story. It’s not an intended analogy. I wonder if other people see such things but are, like me, hesitant to share.

• • •

On Feb. 23, please join us at The 1857 Hotel in Paducah to learn why it’s called 1857 as opposed to 1856 or 1858.

From 5-8 p.m., we’ll host an evening in the Purchase, showing off all the great stuff that makes West Kentucky unique.

The exact plans were still being formulated at press time, including a special event on Feb. 22, so keep an eye on your email and check the Kentucky Monthly Facebook page and kentuckymonthly.com because we’d hate for you to miss any of the reasons why you can’t “Pooh Pooh Paducah,” which you can hear Bill Murray sing by visiting bit.ly/3RZTHfQ. • • •

I’m amused by the number of people who call Kentucky Monthly wanting to renew their “prescriptions,” and I often use the stories as part of my public-speaking repertoire.

I explain how, when the callers say it, I seldom laugh. I think, “Yep, people want subscriptions but need prescriptions.” Maybe it’s a tribute to Dad, who, in the early days, blanketed doctor’s offices with copies of the magazine. Maybe when they think Kentucky Monthly, they think about where they first saw it—some medical facility—and get confused.

Maybe?

I sometimes give away free subscriptions when I’m out on the road. “I’m like a dope dealer—hoping that the reader will become addicted and must refill their prescription to the magazine.”

The audience usually laughs.

The other day, I had a call that kept me chuckling all day.

“Hello,” I said. “Kentucky Monthly, may I help you?”

“Well,” said the caller, “first off, I love your magazine. I love everything about it. Secondly, could you check and see if my prescription has perspired?”

After a long pause, I couldn’t help but quip, “I don’t think it has—it’s been in the mid-30s all week.”

Kwiz Answers: 1. C. Character Dewey Finn is wearing the shirt when he is thrown out of the band he founded and forced to pretend to be his roommate, Ned, to get a job at an elite private elementary school; 2. True—two locations in Louisville and one in Florence; 3. C. Black Jack in Simpson County is the site of the Black Jack Jog, an irregularity in the border of Kentucky and Tennessee and the subject of a uniquely Kentuckian (and perhaps apocryphal) origin story; 4. B. The jump shot; 5. True—his mother, Martine Yewell Tompkins, died in Curdsville (Daviess County) in 1998, when she was 109 years old; 6. B. Coach Woolpert of Danville won 60 consecutive games and two national championships (1954-55 and 1955-56) at USF; 7. B. After Hitler broke an appointment, she sent word through German emissaries that she was no longer interested in response to attempts by the German dictator to reschedule; 8. C. The second-floor ballroom, with its 25-foot-high ceiling, was a roller-skating rink; 9. A. Cromwell was elected state librarian in 1896 and held four other offices in her lifetime; 10. B. Born in Millersburg (Bourbon County), Kidd worked her way through the insurance industry before transitioning into politics.

64 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY F EBR UARY 2024

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Take your senses on a winter adventure.

Winter changes every scene in nature. And Kentucky State Parks provide all kinds of remarkable vistas and selfie moments. Experience untrampled trails and then retire to a quaint cabin or legendary lodge.

Plan your amazing getaway now at parks.ky.gov.