The Bluegrass and Beyond

Ed and Kay Thomas watched as Scott Clark used a metal detector around an old bur oak near a circa 1810 farmhouse they are restoring in Bourbon County. Photos by Tom Eblen

PARIS — I always thought it would be fun to have a metal detector. I wasn’t so much interested in hunting for buried treasure as finding bits of history hidden a few inches beneath my feet.

Scott Clark, an Internet business consultant in Lexington, has similar interests. An avid metal detectorist since 1985, he has become quite skilled at it — and increasingly passionate about improving the ethics and image of his hobby.

Metal detecting doesn’t have the best of reputations, thanks to “treasure hunters” who look for relics on Civil War battlefields or pock-mark parks in search of lost valuables. Many historical archaeologists view detectorists about as favorably as a brain surgeon would a witch doctor.

But serious detectorists are trying to change that. Earlier this year, Clark was part of a group that worked with archaeologists to explore James Madison’s Montpelier estate in Virginia. Clark co-authored an article with Montpelier archaeologist Matthew Reeves on the blog of the Society for Historical Archaeology about how the two groups can work together and literally find common ground.

Clark has a blog at Detecting.us and often writes about best practices in the hobby. Those include always asking landowners’ permission before detecting, sharing finds with them and digging carefully so grounds are not damaged. He also avoids truly historic areas, such as battlefields.

Clark often donates his services to people who have lost valuables outside. Last month, he found a wedding band for a Versailles man after it slipped off his finger while he was mowing his yard.

Clark said he never accepts payment or rewards, but people often thank him by arranging access to interesting sites he can search. “The currency of the hobby is permission, which requires being trustworthy and transparent,” he said.

Clark detects to relax and for the love of history rather than profit. He said he has never sold anything he found — and even if he did, it wouldn’t begin to cover the thousands of dollars he has invested in detecting equipment.

Mostly, Clark finds old shoe buckles, keys, buttons, tools and coins. His most valuable find? A silver 1838 half-dime, worth a couple hundred dollars.

Clark said he likes to detect in places where people would have gathered a century or more ago — and lost things out of their pockets. That includes the grounds around old homes, schools, churches and stores.

Clark offered to show me how detecting works, then asked if I knew of a good hunting place. I immediately thought of Kay and Ed Thomas.

The Thomases live in a beautiful home in Bourbon County that her ancestors built in 1792. While restoring the place, the fun-loving couple delighted in finding interesting objects from the past. They are now restoring another place nearby — a circa-1810 brick farmhouse that her family bought in the 1940s.

As I suspected, the Thomases jumped at the chance to have Clark search their yards. Ed Thomas tagged along with Clark for the better part of three days while he carefully went over the ground with his detector, watching its dials and listening to its beeps, squawks and squeals.

To the untrained ear, the detector sounded like an arcade video game. But to Clark, the tones and gauges indicated the presence of objects in the ground — how big they were, what kind of metal they were made of and how deep they were, indicating how long they had been there.

Clark’s most interesting find on the Thomases’ property was a coin silver filigree bracelet with ivory cameos, which Kay Thomas thinks a long-dead relative bought on a European tour. He also found a few old coins, including an 1868 penny; spoon bowls of silver and pewter; a 1937 American Legion fob; old livestock tags and pieces of horse tack; and the remains of tools.

“Normally, I find three times this much stuff,” Clark said, clearly disappointed.

But the Thomases were thrilled — and not surprised that he didn’t find more.

“My relatives were frugal people!” Kay Thomas said. “If they had lost a gold ring, they would have been out here 24/7 until they found it.”

Ed Thomas also found something: a new hobby. For his birthday last Friday, his wife gave him a metal detector.

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The new documentary, Wonder: The Lives of Anna and Harlan Hubbard, by Louisville filmmaker Morgan Atkinson and narrated by author Wendell Berry, will have its first Lexington showing at 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 28, at the State Theatre, inside the Kentucky Theatre, 214 East Main St.

After the showing, I will moderate a panel discussion about the film and the Hubbards with Atkinson, Meg Shaw and Bill Caddell. Shaw is head of the Lucille Little Fine Arts Library at the University of Kentucky, where the Harlan Hubbard Image Collection is archived. Caddell was a longtime friend of the Hubbards.

Doors open at 6:45 p.m. The showing is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by Idea Festival University, a project of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp.

The Hubbards were a talented couple who spent nearly 40 years living apart from the modern world, first on a shanty boat, floating down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and then in a cabin they built along the Ohio River in Trimble County.

I wrote about Atkinson’s film in November.  Click here to read my column. For more information about the film, go to: Annaandharlan.com. For more information about the Idea Festival, go to: Ideafestival.com.

“What Henry David Thoreau did for two years on Walden Pond, the Hubbard’s did for forty years in Kentucky,” Atkinson said. “I hope the film will inspire people to be open to adventure in their own lives, whatever that may be.”

Wild Turkey master distiller Jimmy Russell prepares to taste some Old Barbee, distilled in 1901 and bottled in 1914. Photo by Mollie Eblen

You don’t have to be a bourbon whiskey expert to know that age is good and more age is usually better. But how old is too old?

I have pondered that question for 25 years, ever since I was given a pint of Old Barbee. It was distilled in 1901 when my wife’s great-grandfather was president of the company that made it.

This bourbon was aged for 13 years in a charred, white-oak barrel to acquire its color and flavor, just as bourbon is made today. It was bottled at 100 proof in 1914, according to the tax stamp, but never opened.

I always wondered: Would this Old Barbee still taste good? Or, after almost a century in a bottle, would it be nasty — or even poisonous?

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to find out.

I took my grown daughters, Mollie and Shannon, to Anderson County to open and taste my Old Barbee with one of Kentucky’s bourbon experts: Jimmy Russell. The third-generation distiller has worked at Wild Turkey for 59 years and been the master distiller there since 1966.

Russell explained that bourbon does all of its maturing in the barrel. Once bottled, the process stops. As long as the amber liquid remains clear, he had told me, my Old Barbee should taste as good as the day it was bottled.

The cork stopper and celluloid wrapper had started to disintegrate in recent years, causing nearly half the bottle’s contents to evaporate — distillers call it “the angels’ share.” As Russell readied some snifters, I removed the cork carefully.

I had heard about Old Barbee since the late 1970s, when my wife, Becky, and I began dating. According to her family lore, it was a smooth bourbon with excellent flavor.

My wife’s great-grandfather Herman Volkerding was born in 1869 to a German family in Cincinnati. He moved to Louisville and worked for John T. Barbee & Co. By the early 1890s, he was the distillery’s president.

The company’s offices were on Louisville’s Main Street, then known as “Whiskey Row.” The distillery was in Woodford County, along Griers Creek near the Kentucky River, within two miles of where Wild Turkey is made.

John T. Barbee & Co. prospered, and Volkerding and his wife, Mary, lived in a West End mansion with their eight children. But he died in 1912 at age 42, and his partners sold the business to the Weller distillery.

When Prohibition came in 1919, the remaining stock of Old Barbee was sold as “medicinal whiskey,” which required a doctor’s prescription. The Woodford County distillery was abandoned and reclaimed by nature.

I have researched Old Barbee over the years, and that led me to the person who, in 1987, gave me the unopened bottle.

My daughters and I watched as Russell poured small samples into four snifters. He swirled his glass and held it up to the light.

“It’s got a great color, that good, bright, which means it should still be a good-tasting product,” he said. “When it stays that same color all those years you know it’s well-made, been aged well.”

Russell took several deep sniffs. “It’s got a great nose on it,” he said.

Then he took a sip, rolling it around his mouth for several moments as Herman Volkerding’s great-great-granddaughters and I held our breath.

“Typical old-fashioned bourbon,” Russell finally said with a smile. “It’s got the sour mash, it’s got the caramel, vanilla, the sweetness. And that age it’s got a lot of woody, oaky taste to it.

“The thing I really like about it is the finish. It’s got a great finish on it. To me, that’s one of the most important things is the finish. What kind of taste does it leave in your mouth?”

With Russell having pronounced Old Barbee good, my daughters and I took sips.

Then, as if drawn by a sixth sense for special bourbon, Eric Gregory, president of the Kentucky Distillers Association, and Rick Robinson, Wild Turkey’s distillery director, walked in, and I offered them a taste.

We all agreed that the oldest bourbon any of us had ever had was mighty good stuff.

When Becky’s family came to our house for Christmas, I put eight small glasses on an Old Barbee serving tray she had inherited and poured everyone a taste. Then we offered a toast to Herman Volkerding for a job well done.

Click here to watch a video of Jimmy Russell taste-testing Old Barbee.

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 Kent Nickell photographed the tornado from his yard on Riverside Drive in West Liberty as it approached the city on March 2.

It hardly seems possible that 2012, the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s 220th year, has come to an end. As with most years, there was good news and bad news, joy and sorrow, beginnings and endings. What will we remember most?

Wildcat basketball fans will remember 2012 as the eighth year of nirvana for Kentucky’s secular religion. The University of Kentucky men’s team beat Kansas 67-59 to win its eighth NCAA crown and the first since 1998.

Fans will expect a repeat soon, if not immediately, but it won’t be with that team. After its brief residency in Lexington, the talented squad of underclassmen moved on to professional careers with the National Basketball Association.

Kentucky would have had an even better sports year if I’ll Have Another had had just one more.

After winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, the chestnut son of Flower Alley was scratched the day before the Belmont Stakes because of tendonitis. That disappointed horse racing fans who had hoped to see their first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.

The spring of sports excitement provided a measure of relief from tragedy. As March began, tornadoes raked the eastern half of Kentucky, killing 22 people. Among the hardest-hit areas were Morgan, Johnson and Lawrence counties.

West Liberty took a direct hit: dozens of homes, churches and businesses were demolished. That included the old and new Morgan County courthouses and another local landmark: the Freezer Fresh ice cream shop.

The people of West Liberty were down but hardly out. In the months since the twisters, the community has worked hard to rebuild and reimagine its future. Following the example of another tornado-ravaged town — Greensburg, Kan. — West Liberty leaders hope to use the disaster as an opportunity to rebuild using the latest energy-efficiency design and construction. Oh, and the Freezer Fresh is back in business.

Among 2012’s other highlights and lowlights:

Spring storms gave way to oppressive summer heat and drought that scorched Kentucky’s corn crop. Still, The Associated Press reported that state farm cash receipts were expected to surpass $5 billion for the first time.

Photo by Mark Cornelison

Dry weather prompted Mayor Jim Gray to ban amateur fireworks for the Fourth of July. Urban County Council members liked the peace and quiet so much they decided to ban them permanently.

Centre College in Danville hosted the 2012 vice presidential debate, repeating its much-praised performance as host to the 2000 event. Centre student leaders unsuccessfully tried to get the candidates to sign the campus “civility pledge,” but there was little civility to be had in this election year.

Petty partisanship by Democrats and Republicans resulted in state redistricting plans so skewed that the courts rejected them, at great expense to taxpayers. Despite the removal of some heavily Republican areas from the 6th Congressional District, four-term U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler lost his seat to Andy Barr, leaving Rep. John Yarmuth of Louisville as the Kentucky delegation’s lone Democrat.

The Kentucky General Assembly did manage to do something useful: It passed legislation to improve prescription monitoring and crack down on “pain management” clinics that have helped fuel the epidemic of prescription drug abuse.Gov. Steve Beshear removed the biggest thorn in his side by appointing state Senate President David Williams of Burkesville to a judgeship. Williams, whose tenure as Republican leader in the Senate created a lot of heartburn for Democrats, is now eligible for a sweeter pension when he retires.

Coal industry employment in Kentucky declined. Industry executives and their favored politicians whined about the Obama administration’s “war on coal.” But the main culprit was less coal use because of cheaper natural gas. Meanwhile, there were plenty of headlines about mine health, safety and environmental violations.

Richie Farmer, who became famous as one of the 1991-92 UK basketball team’s “Unforgettables,” probably would like to forget 2012. The year after losing his race for lieutenant governor as Williams’ running mate, Farmer went through a divorce and a scathing audit of his free-spending tenure as state agriculture commissioner.

In other official misbehavior: Knott County Judge-Executive Randy Thompson and Breathitt County Schools Superintendent Arch Turner went to prison for vote-buying, while the state Supreme Court removed Harlan Circuit Judge Russell from office because of a pattern of misconduct. The Breathitt schools were taken over by the state because of mismanagement.

Downtown Lexington’s economic renaissance continued, with the promise of more to come.

An imaginative redevelopment plan for Rupp Arena, Lexington Center and the sea of city-owned surface parking surrounding it was unveiled. Then planners began looking for ways to resurface long-buried Town Branch creek as a linear park to attract people and investment to downtown.

Louisville-based 21c bought the old First National Bank building so it can be converted into one of its acclaimed hotels and contemporary art museums.

The long-delayed CentrePointe project continued to evolve but remained a grassy field for downtown festivals. Lexington’s EOP Architects refined Studio Gang’s site plan into a nice design. But The Webb Companies still need to find tenants and more than $200 million in financing to make it happen.

On a sad note, the old Fayette County courthouse, which housed the Lexington History Museum, was closed because of lead paint hazard, underscoring the need to renovate that architectural gem in the center of the city.

Among notable transitions: Keeneland President Nick Nicholson retired and was succeeded by Bill Thomason. Lexington fire department veteran Keith Jackson became the force’s first black chief. UK football coach Joker Phillips was replaced by Mark Stoops, defensive coordinator at Florida State.

Eastern Kentucky University President Doug Whitlock and Georgetown College President Bill Crouch announced plans to retire in 2013. And the annual Ichthus Christian music festival in Wilmore, plagued by debts and perennial rain, called it quits after 42 years.

Among notable deaths: Gatewood Galbraith, Kentucky’s favorite never-elected politician; Monsignor Ralph Beiting, founder of the charitable Christian Appalachian Project; former UK first lady Gloria Singletary; equine photographer Tony Leonard; and Lois Gray, who helped her children, including Lexington’s mayor, build the family’s struggling construction company into a national powerhouse after her husband’s death.

Happy New Year.

When people ask about my job, I say that writing three newspaper columns a week is a lot like being a restaurant chef: you want everything to be good, but it must be done on time.

A good columnist is part reporter, part editorial writer and part storyteller. Thanks to a constant stream of reader feedback, I know when I’m hitting the mark.

As I looked back over my 140 or so columns in 2012, some patterns emerged. For one thing, I wrote a lot about old houses. That was partly because I renovated and moved into an old house in a great urban neighborhood this year.

Readers could relate to my columns about that experience, especially my guilt at needing to get rid of a half-century of National Geographic magazines. Thanks to readers, those magazines are now being put to use by two schools and an artist.

While researching my “new” home, I was put in touch with a woman who grew up there between 1924 and 1943. She told me about the house, including her childhood “secret hiding place” behind the wall of an upstairs bedroom.

I wrote about Kentucky homes and buildings much older, grander and more interesting than mine: Helm Place; Spindletop Hall; Floral Hall; Lafayette Academy; the Ripy mansion in Lawrenceburg; Ward Hall in Georgetown; Bethlehem Farm near Paris; and, most interesting of all, mysterious Elmwood mansion in Richmond.

I also wrote about new architecture and development: the never-ending saga of CentrePointe; redevelopment plans for parking lots around Rupp Arena; ideas for turning long-buried Town Branch Creek into a linear downtown park; and Parkside, Holly Wiedemann’s impressive affordable housing development.

I indulged my passion for local history whenever it seemed relevant to current events.

I told the story behind George Yeaman, a once-obscure Owensboro congressman made famous in Steven Spielberg’s movie, Lincoln. I talked with archaeologist Nancy O’Malley about her dig at Fort Boonesborough.

I learned about native cane to satisfy my curiosity as to why so many Central Kentucky places are named for a plant that has all but disappeared. I marked Black History Month in February with a series of columns, ranging from Lexington’s central role in the slave trade to the pioneering practice of Dr. Mary Britton.

Being a columnist is a great excuse to get to know and write about some of Kentucky’s most interesting people.

Writer Wendell Berry gave me a preview of his Jefferson Lecture. Katerina Stoykova-Klemer told me about her journey from Bulgaria to Lexington, and from engineering to poetry and publishing. Jacqueline Roberts recalled her years singing with balladeer John Jacob Niles. And fourth- and fifth-generation horse doctors Ed and Luke Fallon discussed how equine medicine has changed.

Along the way, I told the stories of three World War II veterans, businessman Stuart Utgaard’s spectacular rise, fall and rebound and Glenn Acree, the chief judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals who moonlights as a rock ‘n’ roll musician.

Some Business Monday columns profiled local institutions such as Chevy Chase Hardware, Michler’s Florist and Quillin Leather & Tack. Others looked at new, innovative startups such as CivicRush, Float Money and Bullhorn marketing.

Columnists are supposed to express opinions about current events and hot-button issues. So, like it or not, you heard what I think about big-money politics, gun control, climate change, corporate welfare, gay rights, health care reform and the “war on coal.”

Thanks to the Internet, local columnists can be read more widely than ever before. Luisa Sancen, a Mexican-born scientist living in Canada, sent me an email in January. She had been reading my column online for weeks to learn about Lexington because her engineer-husband had been offered a job here.

She asked me to tell her why they should move to Lexington. My response became a column, published in January. I told her that Lexington could be a beautiful and friendly place to live, a city big enough to be interesting but small enough that a committed individual could make a difference.

As 2012 comes to a close, I am happy to report that they did move to Lexington. They and their young daughter now live a few blocks from me. I finally met them earlier this month, and Sancen gave me perhaps the best reader comment I received all year: “So far, everything you said about Lexington is true!”

Aging bourbon at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort. Photo by Tom Eblen

What is the best way to end a fine Kentucky day?

Try this: A front porch with a pleasant view. A comfortable rocking chair. A friend with interesting things to say. A glass with enough fine Kentucky bourbon whiskey to float an ice cube or three.

The first sip should burn, but not too much. Hints of caramel and charred oak bounce off the back of your tongue. It is an intoxicating mixture of corn, barley, rye or wheat, limestone-rich water and a lot of Kentucky history.

Legend has it that bourbon was invented in Scott County in the late 1780s by Elijah Craig, a Baptist preacher. That may not be true, but it makes a great story: Nectar of the gods created by minister to teetotalers.

Bourbon has become a Kentucky icon, a signature state industry. What makes bourbon unique? First, it is the mixture of grains: at least 51 percent corn, malted barley, rye and/or wheat. It is aged in new, white oak barrels that have been charred by flame. The char is what gives bourbon its distinctive amber color and smoky flavor. That happens as clear whiskey is drawn in and out of the wood with the change of seasons.

Kentucky produces 95 percent of the world’s bourbon — and all that’s worth drinking. And don’t confuse bourbon with that charcoal-filtered whiskey that Jack Daniel and George Dickel make in Tennessee.

Bourbon has been big business in the Bluegrass since before Kentucky became a state in 1792. Settlers found the rich soil good for growing corn and the limestone water good for turning it into whiskey.

Why was it called bourbon? Again, there’s more legend than proof. But it probably had something to do with early Kentucky whiskey’s biggest export market: French New Orleans.

Bourbon making became a popular Kentucky enterprise. My great-great-great grandfather inherited a Jessamine County distillery from his father, according to an 1825 will. In the early 1900s, my wife’s great-grandfather was president of a Woodford County distillery that had its offices on “Whiskey Row” on Louisville’s Main Street.

Prohibition in 1919 was a kick in the gut to Kentucky’s bourbon industry. Only a few distilleries survived by making “medicinal” whiskey for people with enough connections to get a doctor’s prescription.

Bourbon distilling rebounded with Prohibition’s repeal in 1933, but as the industry consolidated, quality suffered. Sales plummeted in the 1960s and 1970s. Bill Samuels thinks it was because most bourbon then wasn’t very good.

About that time, Samuels was building his father’s Maker’s Mark distillery into an industry powerhouse by focusing on better quality and marketing. That sparked an industry turnaround.

Soon every Kentucky distillery was making high-quality bourbons — unique recipes that began attracting new fans around the world.

When friends used to ask me to recommend a good bourbon, I would offer a few suggestions. Now, I tell them that almost any Kentucky bourbon costing more than $20 a bottle will be good, so it’s just a matter of personal preference.

There is a lot of variety in bourbon, as there is in the way people drink it. Many bourbonistas turn up their nose at sweet mint juleps, and laugh out loud when someone mixes good bourbon with a carbonated soft drink.

Many purists like their bourbon on ice or “neat” — straight or with a few drops of water at room temperature. Some people keep their bourbon in the freezer to avoid diluting it with melting ice.

Bourbon is likely to remain trendy so long as creative distillers come up with tasty new recipes. But, please, let’s not get all snobbish like some of those wine and Scotch connoisseurs.

I once met a legendary distiller, a guy who helped developed some of Kentucky’s best-tasting bourbons. He even has a fine bourbon named for him. So I had to ask: how do you drink your bourbon?

He mixes it with Sprite.

Mayor Jim Gray often talks about Lexington aspiring to be a “great American city.” But two centuries ago, that is exactly what it was. Many visitors hailed Lexington as the most vibrant and cultured city in what was then Western America.

The reality and myths surrounding Lexington’s so-called Athens of the West era are explored in a new book of essays published by the University Press of Kentucky, Bluegrass Renaissance: The History and Culture of Central Kentucky, 1792-1852.

The book is already in stores, but it will be formally launched at a signing party Sunday, Sept. 16, at 4 p.m. at the Hunt Morgan House, 253 Market Street. The event is free and open to the public.

Bluegrass Renaissance grew out of a series of lectures in 2007 organized by the University of Kentucky’s Gaines Center for the Humanities and others. Book editors James Klotter, Kentucky’s state historian, and Daniel Rowland, a UK history professor and former Gaines Center director, compiled essays by 15 historians and writers, including my older daughter, Mollie, and me.

The book begins with essays by Klotter and Stephen Aron that place Lexington in the national context of the time and discuss the city’s quick transition from frontier outpost to cultured metropolis.

Gerald Smith and the late Shearer Davis Bowman write about slavery, the “peculiar institution” that built the region’s wealth and would eventually play a big role in both economic and moral bankruptcy.

Randolph Hollingsworth writes about the role women played in early Kentucky, while Maryjean Wall looks at the origins of the signature horse industry. Mark Wetherington and Matthew Clarke profile several influential characters, while John Thelin explores the role higher education played in development and civic pride.

Nikos Pappas writes about musical culture, and Estill Curtis Pennington explains how outstanding portrait painters helped bring artistic culture to Central Kentucky and left what little visual evidence we have of that era’s key players.

Patrick Snadon writes about how Lexington’s leading citizens embraced early America’s most accomplished architect, Benjamin Latrobe. He was commissioned to design six Lexington buildings. Only one survives: Pope Villa, one of the most avant-garde pieces of architecture built during America’s Federalist period.

Mollie and I wrote about Horace Holley, a minister lured to Lexington from Boston, and his role in transforming Transylvania University into one of early America’s most highly regarded universities. Transylvania played a central role in Kentucky’s early education accomplishments and Lexington’s “Athens of the West” reputation.

The book’s dates are somewhat arbitrary: 1792 is the year Kentucky became a state, while 1852 is when Henry Clay, Lexington’s most famous citizen, died. In reality, Lexington’s heyday didn’t begin until after 1800, and its economic, if not cultural, fortunes started waning around 1815. By the end of the 1830s, Lexington had begun a long slide into mediocrity and provincialism.

Lexington’s early prosperity was the result of rich soil, slave labor and the city’s prime location as a hub for early Westward migration and trade. But the city began to struggle after the invention of steamboats allowed two-way commerce on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, which favored river cities such as Cincinnati and Louisville.

Slavery became a huge economic and social liability for Lexington beginning in the 1840s, limiting economic innovation and sparking increased social and racial strife. By clinging so long to slavery, a huge amount of Lexington’s economic capital was wiped out by the Civil War; racism and violence that followed stifled growth and new ideas.

Lexington had lost its economic edge and pioneer spirit. With a few notable exceptions, such as the creation and growth of the University of Kentucky, the city remained intellectually and economically stagnant for nearly a century.

In a short essay that ends the book, Gray makes the point that the past informs the present, and history provides valuable lessons for those who seek to shape the future.

Mollie and I certainly discovered that while researching and writing our chapter. The spectacular rise and fall of Holley at Transylvania in the 1820s reflected issues and attitudes that have shaped two centuries of Kentucky history.

Holley saw huge potential in Kentucky and its people, but was bedeviled by religious disputes, power struggles and petty politics. He finally gave up and left Kentucky, frustrated by an anti-intellectual governor who saw more political advantage in building roads than investing in education.

This book’s title is something of a misnomer: “renaissance” means “revival.” The Athens of the West era was actually Lexington’s “naissant” period. Achieving renaissance is our challenge, and we would be wise to learn lessons from the past.

Mikhail Proctor assisted McKayla Gardner in a vaulting move on Diesel, a Thoroughbred/Clydesdale cross, in the indoor equestrian arena at Adventure Center of the Bluegrass in Woodford County. Photo by Tom Eblen

VERSAILLES — For an organization with a 575-acre campus that serves about 12,000 people a year with a wide variety of activities, Life Adventure Center of the Bluegrass is not very well known.

“We call ourselves the best-kept secret in Central Kentucky, and that is probably true,” said Byron Marlowe, one of the program directors. “I grew up in Nicholasville and had never heard of it before I came to work here.”

The non-profit center traces its roots to the Cleveland Home, a Versailles orphanage started in the late 1800s, and Life Adventure Camp, created in Estill County in 1975 to instill confidence and self-esteem in at-risk youth.

The center now has a broad mission statement: It “engages, educates, and empowers our community to build respect, responsibility, and self-esteem through teamwork, communication, and environmental stewardship using hands-on learning in a natural setting.”

The center has started several programs aligned with that mission, and it is trying to raise its public profile, Marlowe said. The center has a new Web site (Lifeadventurecenter.org), is about to hire a new executive director and is expanding its programs.

The center will host its first adventure race, the Bluegrass Challenge, on Aug. 25. Teams of two or three people will race by hiking, canoeing and mountain biking to complete a series of objectives between 9 a.m. and noon. The competition will have male, female, co-ed and family divisions. The entry fee is $50 a person.

“I designed this as the ultimate race I would like to race in,” said staff member Chris McEachron, an avid adventure racer. Each team will get a map and 14 checkpoints to reach and accomplish problem-solving tasks. “We could have 200 teams and none of them could have the same experience.”

For the third year, Life Adventure Center will host what it calls Kentucky’s largest corn maze — 16 miles of paths cut through a six-acre cornfield, where maze designers have used global-positioning satellite technology to create a giant mural visible from the air.

The maze will be open Sept. 14 through Oct. 21. Admission includes hayrides, concerts, a pumpkin patch for little kids, a ropes course and other activities. (More information: Kycornmaze.com)

The center rents its facilities to companies and other groups for retreats, plus conducts activity sessions for school groups, military families and married couples in a series of “Play Date With Your Mate” weekends.

The corn maze and adventure race will help raise money for the center, which benefits from an endowment that covers more than half of programming costs. Other costs are covered by participant fees, grants, rentals and donations.

That allows the organization to offer educational programs to the public at affordable prices, plus provide scholarships for young people who otherwise couldn’t afford these experiences, Marlowe said.

When I visited Life Adventure Center earlier this month, the Carroll County High School girls’ volleyball team was spending an afternoon of team-building on one of the camp’s most popular facilities: a treetop challenge course of cables, a climbing wall and zip lines. Last year, 90 groups with 2,000 people used the challenge course.

Another popular program is equestrian instruction, which includes horseback riding and vaulting for children and adults in indoor and outdoor riding arenas, plus dozens of acres of meadows.

Vaulting — basically gymnastics on horseback — is an old European sport that has gained popularity here since the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, said Kara Musgrave, the equestrian program director.

Other school groups come for environmental education classes, which include wildlife and wildflower areas and a teaching garden.

“Some of the inner-city kids have never been in the woods before,” Marlowe said. “This really captures their imagination.”

There are primitive campsites and cabins, 15 miles of hiking trails, an outdoor picnic pavilion and a new assembly building for year-round indoor activities. The building is one of the first in Woodford County to be designed and built according to high environmentally-friendly LEED standards, Marlowe said.

While the center wants to continue reaching out to all segments of the Central Kentucky community, character-building for children will remain a primary focus.

“A portion of what we do is for the kids who need it and can’t afford it, the at-risk groups,” Marlowe said. “But all kids are at risk for something. All kids have influences that could turn them in a bad direction.”

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Many young people can’t wait to get out of school and get on with “real” life. But after several decades of careers and families, many older people can’t wait to get back into the classroom.

That’s because they have discovered that lifelong learning contributes to better mental and physical health and simply makes their lives more interesting.

You will find many of these people at Tates Creek Christian Church on Thursday, signing up for fall courses and activities at the University of Kentucky’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

With 1,300 active participants, the institute is the largest component of the university’s educational-enrichment programs for Kentuckians 50 and older.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of UK Board of Trustees’ 1962 decision to create a Council on Aging to explore then-President Herman Donovan’s interest in serving senior citizens.

Two years later, UK created the most famous piece of that effort: the Donovan Fellowship program, which allows Kentuckians 65 and older to take university classes tuition-free. Time magazine profiled the Donovan Scholars in 1966, calling it the first program of its kind in the nation.

UK’s lifelong learning programs expanded over the years, and they have grown dramatically since 2007. That was when the Bernard Osher Foundation of San Francisco provided UK with significant funding to create the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, one of 117 such programs around the country.

The UK institute’s motto: Where curiosity never retires.

For a $25 annual fee, institute members get admission to seminars, day trips and other activities. They also can enroll in non-credit courses, most of which cost $15 each. The courses meet from six to eight weeks, mostly on weekdays and some Saturdays, at churches and libraries all over Lexington. Some courses also are offered in Morehead and Somerset.

The program is open to people 50 and older, “although we don’t card anybody,” said Susan Bottom, chairwoman of the program’s advisory board.

“I love to learn and I love people who are curious and interested and energetic,” said Bottom, 64, who moved to Lexington to be near her nieces and nephews after a career in military logistics.

“These are the most amazing people,” she said of the institute’s students and instructors. “They’re interested in everything, and they bring their life experiences and knowledge with them. Just to be with them is so much fun.”

People who join the program can attend the Thursday afternoon forum sessions, each with a different speaker. This fall’s speakers will share their expertise on everything from Chinese opera and the cities of Siberia to the role of the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II.

This fall’s 39 course offerings range from computers to culture, plus history, literature, languages, performing and visual arts, and health and wellness. Subjects include digital photography, line dancing, painting, acting, advanced Spanish conversation and much more.

Instructors come from a variety of backgrounds, and their courses reflect their hobbies as well as their current or former vocations. For example, Tom Miller, a retired UK psychology professor, is teaching a class this fall in model railroading.

“We bring expertise but mostly our passion to the classroom, because we’re teaching our peers,” Bottom said. “It’s about staying young, staying connected, staying aware. It’s about the enjoyment of new things and new thoughts. No papers, no tests. Just learning.”

Bottom has taken courses in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights and in Chinese culture, but now she spends most of her time teaching. Her degrees were in journalism and public affairs, but her passion is history.

This fall, Bottom is teaching a history course: Napoleon and Wellington on the Road to Waterloo. Among the students who already have registered for the course is Anne Purple, who has been active in UK senior education programs since she moved to Lexington in 1990. At age 89, Purple has four children, 12 grandchildren and eight great-grand children. But she still makes time to exercise her mind and body.

“If you don’t use it, you lose it,” Purple said. “I remember a history teacher in college say, ‘Don’t ever stop learning!’ There are just too many facets of life to not keep your mind active any way you can.”

If you go

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute’s fall open house and course registration

When: 1-3:30 p.m., Thursday

Where: Tates Creek Christian Church, 3150 Tates Creek Road

More information: (859) 257-2656 or www.mc.uky.edu/aging/index.html

Luke Fallon of Hagyard Equine and intern Jackie Snyder check a mare in foal at Castleton Lyons farm. Alicia MacDonald holds the horse. Photos by Tom Eblen

Dr. Luke Hagyard Fallon is a fifth-generation Lexington horse doctor. What led him to keep up the family tradition?

“Lack of originality,” he joked.

“We never learned any better,” added his father, Dr. Edward Hagyard Fallon.

But his mother’s explanation seems more logical.

“It’s in our bloodline,” Priscilla Fallon said.

That’s the way it works with successful horses, so why not with the people who care for them? Luke Fallon, one of 17 partners in Hagyard Equine Medical Institute, has a pedigree that’s hard to beat.

The institute, which calls itself the world’s oldest and largest equine veterinary practice, was founded by Fallon’s great-great-grandfather, Dr. Edward Thomas Hagyard. It is considered the third-oldest family business of any kind in Lexington, after Milward Funeral Directors and Hillenmeyer Nurseries.

E.T. Hagyard was a British-born doctor’s son who studied veterinary medicine in Scotland and Canada before being summoned to Kentucky from his Ontario home in 1875 to save a prize shorthorn bull in Winchester named the Eighth Duke of Geneva. Hagyard did such a good job treating the bull’s gastrointestinal distress that local cattle and horse breeders persuaded him to stay.

Hagyard opened a veterinary practice in Lexington in 1876 that has been operated by his descendants and their partners ever since. The family’s patients have been a who’s who of Thoroughbred racing history: Man o’ War, Domino, Whirlaway, Citation, Affirmed, Secretariat, Storm Cat and many more.

But Luke Fallon’s pedigree doesn’t stop there. His parents grew up on legendary Lexington horse farms their fathers managed.

Ed Fallon, 80, who retired from veterinary practice more than a decade ago after developing Hagyard Equine’s 108-acre campus on Iron Works Pike across from the Kentucky Horse Park, grew up on Beaumont Farm, then the 2,400-acre spread of Keeneland founder Hal Price Headley.

Priscilla Fallon’s father, Arthur Roberts, a well-known American Saddlebred trainer, managed Winganeek Farm. Her family also includes top Thoroughbred trainer John T. Ward Jr., a third-generation horseman and executive director of the state racing commission.

“All of that comes together to create a nice tradition in Central Kentucky that I’m privileged to be a part of,” Luke Fallon said.

Fallon, 42, joined the Hagyard practice in 1996 after graduating from Cornell University’s veterinary school exactly 40 years after his father. In the span of their two careers, equine medicine has changed dramatically.

Hagyard treats all breeds of horses “and the occasional llama,” Luke Fallon said. But when Ed Fallon started out, he treated a lot of work horses and trotters, whose numbers have declined dramatically.

Now, after decades with Thoroughbred breeding as the focus, the practice is working more with sport and pleasure horses, with five of the firm’s more than 60 veterinarians devoted to them.

A big part of Hagyard’s business now is preparing more than 700 horses a year from the Keeneland sales for international shipment— something all but unheard of a few decades ago.

Equine medicine has seen big scientific advances, too.

“When I got out of school, we did everything out of the back of our car,” Ed Fallon said. Surgeries were rare because almost all work was done in the field.

Hagyard vets did some of the first equine surgeries, such as taking bone chips out of racehorses’ ankles, the Fallons said. Medical advances have enabled pregnancies to be diagnosed earlier and mares to be bred more often.

Field work is still a backbone of the practice, with Hagyard’s 36 vehicles logging more than 1.6 million miles annually. But about 6,500 surgeries are performed each year at Hagyard’s high-tech clinic, which has MRI machines for spotting leg injuries and a hypobaric healing chamber big enough for a horse to stand in. The practice treats about 2,500 internal medicine cases and about 500 critical-care foals.

“We now have a lot more tools at our disposal,” Luke Fallon said. “And we’ve been blessed with good owners who have been very trusting and let us try new techniques.”

Although Central Kentucky’s horse industry faces many economic challenges, Fallon expects it to rebound and continue benefitting from advances in veterinary medicine.

But will there continue to be a Hagyard descendant treating those horses?

The odds might be good. Fallon has two sons and a daughter, ages 3, 5 and 8.

“They all love horses already,” he said.

 Fifth-generation equine veterinarian Luke Fallon, right, with father, Ed, and mother, Pricilla.

Luke Fallon and Jackie Snyder unload equipment for checkups at Castleton Lyons Farm.

Luke Fallon checks a 45-day-old horse fetus during an exam of a mare at Castleton Lyons Farm.

Dogs in Castleton Lyons farm manager Jamie Frost’s truck provide an audience as veterinarian Luke Fallon checks mares.

Veterinarian Luke Fallon checks on a mare and her ill foal at Hagyard Equine Medical Center.

Glenn Acree, who plays bass, keyboard, harmonica and sings with the band Off the Clock, was struggling through a late-night gig last Saturday at the Parlay Social nightclub on Cheapside.

His voice was shot from an outdoor concert the night before at Keeneland, where temperatures in the 90s had sapped the 57-year-old musician’s strength.

Besides, it had been a stressful week: His high school baseball coach and another mentor from his youth had both died.

Oh, and he had been sworn in as chief judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

That’s right: When he’s not wearing a black robe and helping decide some of Kentucky’s most complex legal cases, Acree is wearing jeans and covering classic rock ‘n’ roll.

“I kind of tried to keep this extracurricular activity of mine a secret, because you don’t know how people will react,” Acree said. “But golf could never do for me what music does for me. This is a complete release.”

Occasionally, Acree will be onstage and an attorney who has practiced before him will come up with a strange look on his face and say, “Aren’t you judge …” Acree said. “Sometimes it’s people I know really well, and they didn’t know I did this.”

Musical talent runs in Acree’s family. His father “could pick up anything and play it,” he said. His uncles, Rollin and Johnny Sullivan, became Grand Ole Opry stars as the comedy duo Lonzo and Oscar. His nephew, Jordan English, is a rising professional singer and songwriter.

Acree joined the Army after graduating from Metcalf County High School in 1973. When his hitch was up, he went to the University of Kentucky and considered medicine, journalism and history. He spent a semester playing keyboard for the Kentucky HeadHunters, but he never wanted a music career.

Acree earned a master’s degree in history at the University of Maryland and was planning to go for a doctorate when his brother-in-law suggested law school instead.

Acree spent a decade with the Lexington firm McBrayer, McGinnis, Leslie & Kirkland, where Terry McBrayer became a mentor. He then did a variety of legal work with partners and on his own.

Among his clients were the state Realtor and homebuilder associations. Their conventions would sometimes end with Acree pulling out his guitar to entertain. “It was a nice tool for me to have to get to know my clients on a different level,” he said.

Word of Acree’s talent got around. In 1999, a friend asked him to perform with other amateurs at a benefit for Kentucky Children’s Hospital. “I said I couldn’t play in front of a bunch of people I didn’t know who weren’t drinking,” he said. But he did, and the audience approved.

Then Acree discovered his brother-in-law, Victor English, was a good singer and guitarist. They formed Off the Clock with friends. Their wives, Lisa Acree and Susan English, joined in as singers.

Benefit concerts led to paying gigs at bars, clubs and events, including Alltech’s annual international symposium. The band practices each week at Acree’s house and plays a gig or two a month. Other current band members are Pat Hanna, Phil Simmons, Bobby Zimmerman and Mike Marsh.

“None of us does it for the money,” Acree said. “At our age, if you gave us roadies, we’d do it for free.”

Former Gov. Ernie Fletcher appointed Acree to a Court of Appeals vacancy in 2006, and he was elected to the post soon afterward. On June 5, Acree’s colleagues elected him to a four-year term as chief judge. His first day on the job was July 1.

Acree knows two other Kentucky judges who play music on the side: Jeffrey Walson, a family court judge in Clark and Madison counties; and Steve Wilson, a circuit judge in Warren County, who for many years was lead singer with a band whose name always makes lawyers chuckle: Skip Bond and the Fugitives.

Wilson was one of the first people to congratulate Acree on his new job, but the call included a warning: “Just because you’re a judge, don’t be so highfalutin that you quit playing music.”

There seems little chance of that happening. “I don’t want people to think I don’t take this work seriously just because I have so much fun playing music,” Acree said. “But most people say, ‘It humanizes you, judge.’”

Since the first time I was involved with Lexington Children’s Theatre more than four decades ago, my acting career has taken me all the way from playing a dwarf to playing a toad. Fortunately, LCT has had much more success.

The non-profit organization, now in its 73rd year, has grown into one of the state’s largest children’s enrichment programs. LCT says it reaches 130,000 children throughout Kentucky each year with its resident and touring performances, classes and workshops.

If you want some good laughs for a good cause, LCT will have its annual Celebrity Curtain Call fund-raiser at 7 p.m. Saturday at the organization’s headquarters, 418 West Short Street. After a reception and a silent auction, there will be a series of short theatrical scenes starring well-known local people. Some of them actually have talent.

Lyndy Franklin Smith has performed on Broadway in the musicals A Chorus Line and The Little Mermaid. State Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr has quite a good singing voice. Others onstage will include former Vice Mayor Isabel Yates; actor and Herald-Leader music writer Walter Tunis; and TV newscasters Marvin Bartlett, Kristi Runyon Middleton and DeAnn Stephens.

I will appear in the role of Toad in a scene from Wind in the Willows. It is sure to be as riveting as my portrayal of Dwarf No. 4 in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs during LCT’s 25th anniversary season, 1966-67, when I was 8 years old.

My most memorable line in that play — “Dust? What’s that?” — was delivered after Snow White politely offered to tidy up the dwarfs’ cottage. My wife says it still reflects my attitude toward housekeeping.

I asked to try out for Snow White after my mother took me to see an LCT production of Treasure Island. It was the first time I had ever seen live theater, and it inspired me to somehow persuade my third-grade teacher to let me organize a classroom production of Treasure Island, costumes and all.

Appearing in Snow White was fun. Looking back, I realize that I was with an amazing group of talented kids.

Lydia Hodson, who starred as Snow White, went on to become America’s Junior Miss and a Kentucky television personality before her untimely death in 1991. Jay Bolotin, who played the prince, became a Nashville songwriter, artist, playwright and filmmaker.

The Dark Queen was played by Margaret Price, now a successful playwright, author, actress and lawyer. One of my fellow dwarfs, Skip Hollandsworth, is an award-winning writer for Texas Monthly magazine.

LCT was started in 1939 by young members of the American Association of University Women. Despite being an all- volunteer organization until 1971 — changing directors and performance venues almost every year — LCT sank deep roots in Lexington, thanks to tireless organizers and patrons including Marilyn Moosnick and Lucille Little.

In the 1970s, LCT transitioned from an organization that put on plays with child actors to an acting company that exposed children to professional theater. Plus, there were classes to teach kids dramatic skills without the pressure of performance.

It was a controversial change, but it has proven successful, said Larry Snipes, LCT’s producing director since 1979. In addition to after-school and Saturday classes, children may take summer workshops that culminate in a performance, or they may join one of LCT’s teen acting troupes.

“We weren’t trying to take it away from the kids but to give them more,” Snipes said. “There are probably 20 or 30 times as many kids onstage here now as then.”

LCT’s programming has exploded since it moved into permanent performance and classroom space on Short Street in 1998. The organization now has a $1.1 million annual budget, about 60 percent of which comes from performance revenue.

Snipes’ next goal is to create an endowment to support educational efforts without having to rely so much on ticket sales. Nurturing young creativity is what LCT has always been about.

“We’re not here to create the next Jennifer Lawrence,” he said, referring to the young Louisville-born star of the new movie The Hunger Games. “We want to give average kids an experience that will help them be more creative and more confident no matter what they end up doing in life.”

Celebrity Curtain Call

When: 7 p.m. April 14

Where: Lexington Children’s Theatre, 418 W. Short St.

Tickets: $60 in advance, $75 day of show. (859) 254-4546, Ext. 247, or LCTonstage.org

Storm damage Tuesday on West Liberty's Main Street. Photo by Tom Eblen

WEST LIBERTY — Joleen Frederick Phipps, the Morgan County attorney, stood on the sidewalk clutching one of her few possessions that wasn’t smashed or blown away when the tornado ripped through her hometown.

The figurine had been a gift from her late sister-in-law, and she had just found it unharmed in the rubble of her office, across Main Street from the shattered courthouse and not far from her demolished home.

“We’re all still in shock,” Phipps said. “Our town was struggling before this. These little businesses along Main Street were barely making it. But this is a close county; everybody here cares. We will come back.”

As Phipps spoke Tuesday, four days after the tornado, she was surrounded by workers installing new power lines and shoveling debris off roofs and sidewalks. She and other leaders of storm-ravaged Kentucky communities were grappling with citizens’ immediate needs and only beginning to think about the long and difficult process of rebuilding.

How do you recover? How does a town rebuild? For some advice, I called people who have been focused on that since tornadoes devastated Joplin, Mo., on May 22; Tuscaloosa, Ala., on April 27; and Greensburg, Kan., on May 4, 2007.

While many disaster-relief issues are obvious, don’t forget to pay special attention to the care of elderly people, said Robin Edgeworth, a leader of Tuscaloosa city government’s response and recovery effort. Some elderly people there died weeks and even months after the storm because they didn’t recover from the stress.

Edgeworth said it is vital to have good and constant communication with citizens, including social media, so they are informed and have a voice in decisions. (Tuscaloosa’s recovery public relations effort is led by a Lexington native, Meredith Lynch, daughter of Fayette Circuit Court Clerk Wilma Lynch.)

Expect to fight with insurance companies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “If something doesn’t sound right, challenge them,” Edgeworth said.

Officials in all three places said that once immediate needs for food, shelter and essential services are met, everyone should pause and think things through carefully before starting significant reconstruction.

The natural impulse for individuals and families is to try to return things to “normal” quickly, but that can lead to hasty decisions they will later regret.

“The thing is to get a trusted friend or relative who wasn’t there when it happened to help make some of those choices,” said John Janssen, who was Greensburg’s City Council president when the tornado killed 11 people and demolished the town. He then served a term as mayor.

Choose contractors carefully, and don’t pay in advance. “Don’t give your insurance check to anybody,” he cautioned. “The bottom- feeders all show up in situations like this. They will say they’ll put you back in a house right away, and then they take your check and run.”

Edgeworth said anyone who experienced loss in the tornado should register with FEMA, whether or not they were insured or think they might qualify for benefits.

“If there’s ever a federal allocation of money, that’s what they base it on,” she said. “If you haven’t registered, you’re not going to get your share of the money. It’s that simple.”

Thinking things through before making major reconstruction decisions is even more important for communities, officials said. That is why, nearly a year after their tornadoes, Tuscaloosa and Joplin are still working on their long-term plans.

“Our community leadership has been very intentional about planning for a long-term rebuilding effort,” said Kate Massey, an official with Rebuild Joplin, which is coordinating public and private recovery efforts in the southwest Missouri city, where the tornado killed 162 people and destroyed 8,000 homes and 450 businesses.

Joplin created a citizens advisory recovery team and has held many public meetings about reconstruction. “If there’s a process like that, it’s a tremendous way for everyone to feel that they are part of the effort and their opinions are being heard,” Massey said.

Edgeworth said Tuscaloosa realized it needed tougher building and zoning codes in parts of town where the tornado killed 43 people. That process has been difficult — and still isn’t done. “We’ve had a lot of pushback, that’s for sure,” she said.

Outdated building codes were only one of Greensburg’s problems. Much like West Liberty, Greensburg is a small county seat far from a major city. The town has struggled economically, and the population of about 1,200 is only three-quarters what it was a decade ago.

“There was a lot of pressure in our community to just slap it back together like it was before the storm,” Janssen said. “I was pretty vocal about if that’s what they really wanted, we would order plywood for Main Street while we were at it because we were going to be boarding up more buildings.”

A citizens group called Greensburg Green Town started working to convince residents that new buildings needed not to be stronger and safer, but much more energy-efficient. Since then, Greensburg has attracted national attention for embracing some of the most modern, environmentally friendly building practices. That was no small feat in conservative, rural Kansas.

“We said this is not a liberal/conservative kind of deal; it’s purely economic,” Janssen said. “It costs more upfront, but all that investment comes back to you after a very short period of time and makes your house much more affordable.”

Most rebuilt structures now have heavy insulation and high-efficiency windows. And many new homes, such as Janssen’s, have insulated concrete form walls and geothermal heating and cooling that are saving residents a fortune.

Now that the economy is improving, Greensburg’s reputation is attracting attention from economic development prospects. Janssen said a “green-type” manufacturing company recently expressed interest in building a facility in the town’s industrial park. It also was attracted by the work ethic of people with enough grit and determination to rebuild their town from scratch.

“I think the key is to take a deep breath and look at where you want your town to be 30, 40, 50 years down the road,” Janssen said. “If you were already boarding up Main Street before the tornado, don’t count on not boarding it up after the tornado unless you do something right.”

Kentuckians love a good story. But when it comes to recording the stories of blacks in the commonwealth, historians have had a lot of catching up to do.

Gerald Smith, a University of Kentucky history professor, makes that point in the introduction to a special black-history issue of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, which he edited for publication in April.

Historians had written about slavery in antebellum Kentucky, but a deeper exploration of the black experience didn’t really begin until 1971, Smith writes. That was when the Kentucky Human Rights Commission published Kentucky Black Heritage, a supplementary text for seven- and eighth-grade students.

Then, in 1982, The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians was published by Alice Dunnigan, who was born in Russellville in 1906. Dunnigan made history of her own in 1948 when she accompanied Harry S. Truman on a Western tour, becoming the first black journalist in Washington to cover a presidential trip.

A scholarship milestone came in 1985 when George C. Wright published a book about black life in Louisville between the Civil War and 1930, Smith said. Wright followed that five years later with the chillingly detailed study, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940. Wright, now president of Prairie View A&M University in Texas, and Marion Lucas, a Western Kentucky University history professor, published the two-volume A History of Blacks in Kentucky in 1992.

Since then, more academics have mined this rich vein, including Smith and fellow historians J. Blaine Hudson, John Hardin, Tracy E. K’Meyer and Douglas A. Boyd. Another valuable resource is the UK Libraries’ Notable Kentucky African American Database.

Smith, Hardin and Karen C. McDaniel are now editing the Kentucky African American Encyclopedia and trying to raise money to finish the book by 2014.

Smith said this issue of The Register is another significant milestone. The Register, created in 1903, is one of the nation’s oldest historical journals. The quarterly publishes work from leading academics, but it also tries to be accessible to average readers. It is a good mix of scholarship and storytelling.

Hudson writes about the free black community in antebellum Louisville, and Hardin tells the stories of key figures in the desegregation of higher education in Kentucky. Smith writes about Kentucky chapters of the Congress of Racial Equality during the civil rights movement. Joshua D. Farrington’s article looks at strategies used to pass public accommodation laws in Louisville in 1960 and 1961.

One of the most interesting stories, by Sallie L. Powell, is titled “It is Hard to be What You Have not Seen.” It tells about Brenda Hughes of Lexington and the complex issues of race, gender and sports culture that she navigated to become a pioneer in Kentucky’s unofficial religion, basketball.

The Kentucky High School Athletic Association certified Hughes as a basketball referee in 1973. She went on to become the only black woman to officiate at a Kentucky girls’ state tournament game during the 20th century.

Good timing helped Hughes, a young mother of two, succeed. In 1971, a federal judge had ordered the KHSAA to hire more black referees. That was because, 15 years after desegregation, half of student athletes were black, but only 1 percent of refs were. The year after Hughes became a referee, the federal Title IX law forced Kentucky to reinstatement girls’ high school basketball after a 40-year absence that many people blamed on sexism.

While studying at the old Dunbar High School and UK, Hughes’ only athletic opportunities were cheerleading. But she grew up with three brothers, and sports became her passion. The full-time postal worker became a part-time youth sports leader for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

“This is no front or cause for me,” she told Lexington Leader reporter Gary Yunt in 1973. “I want to be a referee.”

Hughes died in 1986 at age 39. Nine years later, she was inducted into the Dawahares-Kentucky High School Athletic Association Sports Hall of Fame. Her story, and others told in this issue ofThe Register, remind us that Kentucky history is a rich tapestry of stories, from epic social movements to a young woman determined to become what she has not seen.

This is a month to celebrate two Kentucky media giants. Al Smith just published his memoir, Wordsmith: My Life in Journalism, and Leonard Press celebrated his 90th birthday.

Smith, 84, might be the better known of the two. That is because the former publisher of several small Kentucky newspapers spent more than three decades as the founding host of Comment on Kentucky, Kentucky Educational Television’s weekly public affairs program.

But without Len Press, there might not be a Comment on Kentucky program — or a KET network.

KET is now known as one of the most innovative and admired public television networks, producing hundreds of hours of programming and other instructional materials that are used across the nation.

But Press recalled in an interview at his Lexington home last week that when he started lobbying state officials in 1958 to create a statewide educational TV network, “The whole idea was novel.”

In the early 1950s, Kentucky was a disconnected state of isolated communities and some of the nation’s poorest schools. Press and his wife, Lillian, were living in their native New England, where they had earned graduate degrees in communications from Boston University.

The Presses had never been to Kentucky, much less thought of moving here. But after intense recruiting by the head of the University of Kentucky’s Radio Department, Press agreed to come to Lexington to teach for a year. One year.

After a few months, though, Press knew enough about the emerging technology of television to imagine what it could do to improve education in Kentucky. His vision became KET, and that one-year commitment will soon be 60 years long.

While Press was absorbed in building KET, Lillian Press created her own impressive record of service. She organized and directed several major state initiatives, including the Governor’s Scholars Program for talented high school seniors, the Regional Mental Health Board and Comprehensive Care Centers. At age 87, she remains active in The Women’s Network, which she started in 2000 to get more women involved in the political process.

It took Len Press more than a decade to raise the political and financial commitments to launch KET. But the network’s value has been apparent since the day it went on the air in 1968. “So many people have told me how KET changed their lives,” Press said.

Because educational television was a novel concept when KET began, the young staff Press assembled did a lot of experimenting. “What they didn’t know, they made up for in enthusiasm,” he said. “They made it happen, with a lot of help from our partners around the state.”

Over the years, as many public TV stations began creating entertainment programming for national distribution, KET remained focused on education — and Kentucky.

KET now makes more instructional programming than any other state TV network. One course first created by KET’s Sid Webb — to help people earn high school equivalency degrees — is in its fourth generation and is used across the nation and in several other countries, Press said.

KET has helped unite Kentuckians with shows about the state’s arts, history and culture. Another major emphasis has been public affairs: covering General Assembly sessions, hosting election debates and producing widely watched programs such as Bill Goodman’s Kentucky Tonight and Comment on Kentucky, now hosted by Ferrell Wellman.

Televising the General Assembly “did a great deal for their deportment and dress code,” Press said. Comment on Kentucky has occasionally drawn the ire of powerful politicians, Press said, but the network has always been able to maintain its independence and credibility.

Press said he marvels at the progress KET has made under three succeeding directors since he retired in 1992. The network has been able to expand offerings through digital television and the Internet, despite budget and staff cutbacks.

Press said he is proud that KET has continued to be a force for educating Kentuckians and making them more knowledgeable participants in public affairs.

“The technology changes, but the premise of KET has not changed,” said Press, whose vision and determination made it all possible. “Does it work for the teachers? Does it work for the students? Does it work for Kentucky?”

Click on each thumbnail to see complete photo:

Proud Kentuckians, left to right: Col. Harland Sanders, Kent Carmichael, Griffin VanMeter, Whit Hiler. Photo by Tom Eblen

Three 30-something marketers who launched an Internet fundraising campaign to sponsor a Super Bowl commercial about the greatness of Kentucky fell considerably short of their $3.5 million goal.

The trio aren’t giving up, though. They plan to drop back and punt.

When the 60-day deadline on their Kickstarter.com fundraising drive expired Monday morning, Whit Hiler, Griffin VanMeter and Kent Carmichael had received 576 pledges totaling $112,287.

Not bad, but not nearly enough to place a commercial on the nation’s most expensive television buy. Because the project didn’t meet its goal, none of the pledges can be collected through Kickstarter.com.

VanMeter said the three plan to produce a commercial anyway and launch a new, smaller Kickstarter campaign to buy time on Kentucky stations to show it in or around the Super Bowl telecast on Feb. 5. They also will put the spot on their project’s Web site: KentuckyForKentucky.com

“All the marketing and branding people jumped on the idea and thought it was great,” VanMeter said. Many volunteered video production resources that will come in handy for making the commercial.

One thing that came out of the campaign, VanMeter said, was how many people are proud to be Kentuckians, and what a good brand Kentucky for Kentucky could be for T-shirts and other merchandise. So far, their website has been a compilation of little-known facts about great Kentuckians, contributed by the site’s users.

“It was a breath of fresh air that energized people,” VanMeter said of the fundraising campaign. “We know Kentucky is a great brand.”

Click here to read my Sept. 14 column about the effort. Here is the project’s website and Facebook page.

Workshop participants, faculty and staff pose after the 36th annual Mountain Workshops concluded Saturday in Somerset. Photo by Nina Greipel

I wasn’t in the paper Sunday or Monday because I was volunteering last week as a writing coach at the Mountain Workshops.

This was my 14th time since 1995 to help out with the annual documentary photojournalism workshops, which Western Kentucky University has sponsored for 36 years. As always, it was an amazing, exhausting experience.

Here’s how the workshops work: About 60 students from WKU and other universities from across the country, as well as working professionals who want to broaden their skills, assemble for a week each fall in a different small town in Kentucky or Tennessee. This year, it was in Somerset, Ky.

Workshop organizers from WKU’s photojournalism program bring together an amazing group of more than 100 professionals to be the participants’ coaches and support staff. The faculty and staff always includes some of the nation’s best visual journalists. This year’s coaches included several Pulitzer Prize winners and other top professionals who work, or have worked, at places such as Time, National Geographic, MediaStorm, NPR, the Washington Post, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times.

Over the course of five days, the coaches and support staff help students find stories in the community to tell through still images, video and words. It is an intense educational process that requires a lot of creativity, hard work and the ability to get by on little sleep. The results are always amazing.

To learn more about the workshops and see the amazing work this year’s participants put together in just a few days last week, click here.

It is an idea so crazy, it just might work.

Griffin VanMeter, Kent Carmichael and Whit Hiler are 30-something marketing guys. They also are native Kentuckians who are proud of their state and think everyone else should be proud of it, too.

A year ago, they had this idea: Let’s produce a television commercial promoting the “brand” of Kentucky and get it on the Super Bowl telecast.

“We want to show how much character and influence has come out of Kentucky and is still coming out of Kentucky,” VanMeter said. “It’s a big story we’re trying to tell, and we want to put it on the biggest stage possible. It would be the most talked-about Super Bowl commercial ever.”

The trio began in April by creating a Facebook page called Kentucky for Kentucky. Since then, more than 1,950 fans have contributed to lists and photo galleries of great Kentucky people, places and products.

Kent Carmichael, left, Griffin Van Meter, center, and Whit Hiler. Photo by Tom Eblen

Then, on Thursday, they went public with their Super Bowl idea using the hot crowd-funding Web site Kickstarter.com. An Internet video promoting the effort has gone viral, and media attention has come from, among others, the big tech news site Mashable.com and Advertising Age magazine’s Web site.

Their goal is to raise $3.5 million in 60 days. After five days, more than 200 backers have made online pledges of more than $41,000, in increments as small as $1. They have received two $10,000 pledges — “We can see who they are, so we know they’re legit,” said VanMeter, a partner in the Lexington marketing agency Bullhorn.

An effort like this would have been a lot harder before Kickstarter.com, which lets people pitch creative projects to a huge online audience. Backers pledge as little as $1 or as much as they want, but their credit card isn’t charged unless the idea reaches its fund-raising goal by the specified deadline.

Backers will get prizes: bumper stickers, T-shirts, maybe even a cameo appearance in the commercial. But unless the $3.5 million goal is met by Nov. 7, nobody is on the hook.

“Once we get this groundswell of support, some of the big people will get behind it,” VanMeter said. “Besides, this whole idea is so much bigger than a Super Bowl commercial.”

So what is the idea, really?

“The short answer is that it’s about Kentucky pride,” he said.

“As brands go, Kentucky is an awesome brand,” said Hiler, who works for Cornett Integrated Marketing Solutions in Lexington. “It’s a lot cooler than Doritos. We’ve got years on them.”

He has a point: Kentucky was America’s first Western frontier and has produced the likes of Daniel Boone, Abraham Lincoln, Muhammad Ali and George Clooney. It is the namesake of two of the world’s best-known brands — Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Kentucky Derby. Kentuckians have created everything from bourbon whiskey and bluegrass music to the traffic signal and the high five.

But, Carmichael noted, any Kentuckian who has lived elsewhere has heard the jokes about going shoeless and marrying your cousin.

Kentucky has more than its share of problems, including too much obesity and too little education.

“People need to believe in Kentucky, and that can help solve a lot of problems,” VanMeter said.

“There’s no agenda, no reason for anyone not to like this idea,” said Carmichael, a Lexington native and a copywriter for Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder, Colo. He said the three of them don’t plan to make any money on this project and are not fronting for any company, political group or “official” anything.

If they raise the money in time to reserve a commercial spot on the Super Bowl telecast Feb. 5, what will they do?

“The least of our worries will be getting the commercial made,” Hiler said.

With $3.5 million worth of public momentum, the three marketers said, they think Kentucky producers, directors, writers and actors would rush to help them make one awesome Kentucky commercial. Are you listening, George Clooney, Jerry Bruckheimer and Ashley Judd?

And if they don’t make it to the Super Bowl? Well, they already have drawn a lot of positive attention to an outrageously creative idea coming out of Kentucky. And that’s sort of the point.

Georgia Clemons is only 5 feet tall, but she cuts quite a figure: pastel suit, black high heels, hair coiffed and a twist of pearls around her neck.

She looks as if she could be dressed for her monthly meeting of the Daughters of the American Revolution, where she has been an officer for many years. Or she could be on her way to her beloved Porter Memorial Baptist Church.

But she is standing behind the front counter of Georgia’s Service Center, a circa 1963 filling station and auto repair shop at the corner of Nicholasville Road and Malabu Drive. She owns the place, and she runs it seven days a week.

“I dress like this every day,” Clemons said. “It’s a business, and my customers appreciate me looking professional. I never wear slacks — except when we have our DAR picnic.”

Clemons greets everyone who comes in with a big smile. “I know 95 percent of my customers by their first names,” she said. The seven men who work for her call her “Ms. Georgia.”

Clemons plans a “grand reopening” Sept. 30, 11 a.m. — 4 p.m., to celebrate her station’s recent switch to Sunoco gasoline. Gas will be discounted, and Sunoco will have a NASCAR race car there. The station had been independent after Chevron pulled out of Lexington.

“I just can’t get out of the business,” said Clemons, who has owned and managed three South Lexington service stations over 45 years. “It’s a good business, but you have to be dedicated and work long hours.”

Clemons works nearly 60 hours a week. “I don’t work as much on weekends,” she said. “I cook on Saturday and go to church on Sunday. But I’m always just a telephone call away.”

She never intended to be a businesswoman, much less a service station operator. She was a kindergarten teacher in her native Lancaster when she married Gomer Clemons, who had a Sunoco station two blocks from her current location.

He wanted them to have the same schedule, so he asked her to quit teaching and help him at the station. “I said, ‘I don’t know anything about the service station business,’” Clemons recalled. “He said, ‘There’s nothing to it but meeting people,’ and I love meeting people.”

They sold that station in 1990, but Clemons was hooked. “Gomer loves retirement, but not me,” she said. After a couple of years off, she bought a Marathon station at Southland Drive and Rosemont Garden.

“Naturally, when I went into business, he said I would fall flat on my face,” she said. “But I said, ‘I’ll show you.’” And she did.

After a successful decade at that location, Clemons leased and later bought her current station, which is bigger and on a busier street. “I love Nicholasville Road,” she said. “All the hustle and bustle.”

Clemons said talented mechanics, reasonable prices and personal service have kept her business strong. “Customers know we’re honest,” she said.

The new partnership with Sunoco included new pumps with automatic credit card readers. Her customers like the convenience, she said, “but they still come in to say hello.”

Doug Logan was one of those customers last week. “When I get through pumping gas, we get to talking,” he said. “She’s a good lady.”

Another was Ann Latta, a Realtor who works nearby and has been a friend and customer for 20 years. She had stopped to visit and have a candy bar earlier in the day, then came back later because she realized she had forgotten to pay for it.

“Everybody is somebody special when they walk in the door, whether or not she’s ever seen them before,” Latta said.

Georgia’s is one of the few stations that still offers full service, which includes cleaning the windshield, checking tire pressure and checking under the hood. Full service costs 25 cents more per gallon, although there’s no extra charge if the customer is handicapped.

Regular customers whose cars use premium gas know to fill up on “Wacky Wednesdays,” when it is discounted 7 cents a gallon. Compressed air is always free, even for customers who don’t buy anything.

Clemons’ mechanics work on all car makes and models. Because the station is open every day, from early morning until late at night, wreckers often bring in new customers whose cars have broken down.

“They know we’re going to make every effort to fix them and get them back on the road and not charge them an arm and a leg,” she said.

Clemons’ senior mechanic, Logan Adams, has been with her since she got back in the business with the Marathon station in 1992, and he had worked for her husband before that. Many other employees, including grandson Jason Hale, have worked there for many years. Supervising men has never been a problem. “We’re just friends,” she said. “But they know what I expect.”

The station has never been robbed — there is little money there; most customers pay by credit card — but Clemons keeps an old baseball bat behind the counter, just in case.

She has no plans to retire. “Retire? They’ll have to carry me out,” she said. “I think you stay younger longer if you’re working. You stay healthier, too. I can feel terrible, and I come to work and forget all about it.”

Clemons acknowledges that she is old enough to retire, but she won’t be more specific. “My mother always said a lady who would tell her age would tell anything.”

“She’s the only person I know who gets younger every year,” said Shannon Morris, a former employee who now teaches auto mechanics at a state technical college but still comes in to help.

Running Georgia’s Service Center is one of the joys in Clemons’ life, along with family, church and the DAR. “I just have a love for people,” she said. “You make friends in this business. They’re not just customers; they’re friends.”

Georgia’s Service Center

Where: 2398 Nicholasville Rd., at the intersection of Malabu Drive

Hours: 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Sun.

Contact: (859) 278-0914

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