In lieu of original content, we’re starting the year with something different: a listicle!

This week’s issue of Virtual Frazier Magazine consists of twenty-one of our favorite VFM contributions — thirteen articles and eight videos, arranged in order of publication — from 2021. That’s twenty-one stories, each of which shines a unique light on some aspect of the history of Kentucky.

First, Heather Gotlib investigates three downtown Louisville parking lots. She looks at the first century of Jewish Louisville, 1780s to 1880s. And she shows us a uranium glass sugar jar from Beecher Terrace.

Next, Stephen Yates takes us to Kosair Children’s Hospital, where in 1972 he got a hole in his heart patched. He then visits Wilderness Trail Distillery, where last summer he sampled barrel proof Bourbon.

Amanda Briede returns a flag to the family of its owner, a Japanese serviceman who died at Iwo Jima. She uses the 2021 Brood X cicada emergence as a nifty framing device, asking: What was happening in Kentucky during each previous emergence? And she pays respect to Sweet Evening Breeze, a pioneering drag queen in midcentury Lexington.

Brian West details his participation in the ENSEMBLE Study, a phase three clinical trial for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.

I take readers east to “Bloody” Harlan, where miners and deputies traded gunfire in 1931. I then head west to Eddyville, where I witnessed the solar eclipse in 2017.

Megan Schanie reflects on the enslaved persons listed on an 1821 Madison County estate sale bill.

Hayley Harlow Rankin embraces her Scottish roots at the Glasgow Highland Games.

Rachel Platt interviews Jenny Smith on her book Live the Impossible: How a Wheelchair Has Taken Me Places I Never Dared to Imagine.

Shelby Durbin traces cobblestones to a quarry on Corn Island.

Mick Sullivan highlights the 1980 U of L basketball championship banner his grandmother made using a breakroom hotplate. He delves into Elm Tree Garden — the Fourth Street Live! of the 1830s. And he explains how Magna Carta wound up at Fort Knox after Pearl Harbor.

Last, Casey Harden charts the evolution of Waverly Hills from a sanatorium to a ghost-hunting mecca.

As the editor of this newsletter, I’m inspired by the quality and breadth of the content my colleagues are churning out each week. Together, we look forward to bringing you more articles, videos, and educational content — culled from the evergreen history of the Bluegrass State — in 2022.

Thank you for reading.

Video: History of Three Downtown Louisville Parking Lots

Published in the February 8, 2021 issue.

Our education team prides itself on its ability to make even the most boring topics interesting. That’s why today we’re bringing you the story of… parking lots! Join us to learn about the parking lot named after the Louisville sisters who wrote the most famous song in the English language, the Frazier’s own parking lot, which pays homage to the site of many daring water rescues, and a parking garage attached to a building where a hidden history was recently discovered. When we say “history is everywhere, even beneath your feet,” we really mean it. After this video, you may find yourself using the phrase “as interesting as a parking lot” in an entirely new way.

One of the First Pediatric Open Heart Surgeries in Louisville, 1972

Published in the February 15, 2021 issue.

In our Cool Kentucky exhibition, we tell stories to showcase the most historically significant people, places, and things in Kentucky. I’d like to share a personal story about an innovative procedure that was not only somewhat historic in Kentucky — it quite literally saved my life.

I was born September 9, 1965, the first child of a young married couple, Dennis and Rita Yates. I was a seemingly healthy baby boy, but things are not always as they seem: The doctors diagnosed me with an atrial septal defect — meaning, I had a hole in my heart the size of a nickel. My heart was leaking blood on a constant basis, causing it to work harder than a normal, healthy heart.

When I was old enough to understand the situation, my parents relayed to me what the doctors had told them: My life expectancy was about thirty. Unless the hole in it was patched, my heart would have to work the equivalent of a typical life span in just thirty years. This news worried my parents to no end.

At the time, in the mid-1960s, open heart surgery was not being performed on infants — at least not on a regular basis, as it is today. The doctors knew right away I would need surgery to extend my life; however, the heart surgeons wanted to wait until I was older so that my heart would be bigger, in which case the surgery would not pose as much of a challenge to them.

When I was six years old, the wait finally came to an end: On June 4, 1972, Dr. Allan Lansing performed the operation on me at Children’s Hospital in Louisville. I became one of the first children to undergo open heart surgery in the city of Louisville. Dr. Lansing has since retired from practice; but back in 1972, if you needed open heart surgery in Louisville, he was the surgeon you wanted to do it. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had him as my surgeon.

While Dr. Lansing assured my parents he was confident the procedure would be a success, he did still remind them it was a new procedure, and would therefore pose certain risks. For my parents, who were twenty-nine years old at the time and had two younger children at home, facing that challenging decision must have been overwhelming. Dealing with a child who wants to play, run, and just be a kid when you know you can’t let him had to be very difficult for them — as difficult as it was for me to understand it.

This is where the “Cool” part begins. The staff at Children’s Hospital could not have been nicer to me, a scared six-year-old kid who really didn’t grasp the gravity of the surgery he was about to undergo. As the date of the operation approached, Dr. Lansing and his entire staff made every effort to put me at ease and assure me things would be ok.

Fortunately for me, the surgery proved to be a complete success. Over time, I was able to begin the life of a typical, healthy boy. To this day, I count my blessings for the skill and compassion shown by every person that took part in my care. If that isn’t cool, then I don’t know what is. I think it’s very cool to be a living result of what was then a cutting edge procedure, performed forty-nine years ago this June.

I’d like to express my gratitude to the caring and skilled medical team at Children’s Hospital. Because of you, I am alive and kicking twenty-five years and counting past what my life expectancy was at birth. I’ve attained the perfect job for me, Group Sales Manager at the Frazier History Museum, where I get to tell stories and lead Bourbon tastings — and I’m grateful for every single minute of it.

That’s pretty cool, if I do say so myself!

Video: Glasgow-born Aviator Willa Brown Chappell

Published in the March 1, 2021 issue.

Willa Brown Chappell (1906 – 92) was born in Glasgow, Kentucky to an African American father and a Native American mother. Though at the time the United States was heavily segregated and aviation was a very male-dominated field, Brown Chappell earned her master’s degree, then became the first African American to serve as an officer in the Civil Air Patrol and the first American woman in general to hold both a mechanic’s license and a commercial pilot’s license. We are proud to highlight Willa Brown in our Cool Kentucky exhibition, using her story to inspire those in the present and future. Her legacy raises a very important question: Who’s next?

Returning a Japanese Soldier’s Yosegaki Hinomaru, Pre-WWII

Published in the April 5, 2021 issue.

Last fall, Bernie Roke, the curator at the Aviation Museum of Kentucky, located at the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, paid a visit to me at the Frazier. He had come to ask for advice about packing and shipping a flag to Japan.

Akiyoshi Komazaki after receiving his father’s Yosegaki Hinomaru, 2020. Credit: Bernie Roke.

Bernie had found a Yosegaki Hinomaru, or Japanese Good Luck Flag, in the collection of the Aviation Museum. Such flags were gifts traditionally given to Japanese servicemen as they were deployed, having been signed by friends and family with notes and good wishes. These flags were often picked up as souvenirs after battle by American soldiers.

The flag at the Aviation Museum had been donated by a Kentuckian who had picked it up while serving for the United States during World War II. Bernie had tried for years to have the writing on the flag translated into English, with no luck. However, one day, he met a visitor to the museum named Yuki, who was able to help Bernie translate fifty of the fifty-six names inscribed on the flag.

Bernie and Yuki were able to determine the flag had belonged to Kinzo Takahashi, a Japanese soldier who had died during the Battle of Iwo Jima, which took place from February 19 to March 26, 1945. They were able to get in contact with the late soldier’s grandson, Hiroki Komazaki, to return the flag. Frazier Museum collections manager Tish Boyer and I helped Bernie unframe the flag and packed it up in archival materials to be shipped to Japan.

On December 19, 2020, Kinzo Takahashi’s son, Akiyoshi Komazaki, received his father’s lost flag. I was so proud to have been able to play just a little part in the process.

Though Bernie and Yuki were able to get in touch with the family of Kinzo Takahashi themselves, making contact is not always so easy. There is an organization based out of Astoria, Oregon called the Obon Society whose mission is to help return Yosegaki Hinomaru and other family heirlooms to Japan. For more information or to find out how they can help you return a similar item to its Japanese family, visit their website.

Reflections From a COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Participant, 2020 – 21

Published in the April 12, 2021 issue.

Before “getting shots into arms” became a catchall phrase for getting inoculated against COVID-19, there was a time in the not-too-distant past when another term was bandied about: “the Vaccine Race.”

Artwork by Marc Murphy published in the *Courier Journal*, December 2020. Credit: *Courier Journal*.

All through 2020, there was news every day about the latest research by pharmaceutical companies for a potential cure for COVID-19. From promising data in AstraZeneca’s early phase clinical trials with primates in Great Britain to approval of the first COVID-19 vaccine for general use, Russia’s Sputnik V, headlines about the latest developments for a cure were treated like standings in an arms race. However, this time, instead of aiming for the stars, as in generations past, we as a species were attempting to make “one giant leap” into breaking barriers on a cellular level.

So, when Pfizer/BioNTech released promising data for their phase three trials in November, much of the world gave a collective sigh of relief. After so much loss and grief people had experienced in 2020, it seemed that joy would cometh in the morning of 2021.

On December 14, for the first time, Americans received inoculations using the Pfizer vaccine. On that very same day, I officially entered the ENSEMBLE Study, a phase three clinical trial for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.

In partnership with UK Healthcare, Baptist Health, and Norton Healthcare, Janssen — J&J’s pharmaceutical arm — conducted this study to test the efficacy of their one-dose adenovirus vaccine. It was a randomized, double-blind trial in which participants were given a shot of either the actual J&J vaccine or a placebo. I was told by the nurse who administered my shot that I would not know whether I had received the real thing or the placebo until either the study had ended or Johnson & Johnson had received emergency authorization by the FDA to produce and distribute their vaccine in the U.S.

Either way, I would have felt like a winner. Over the summer, I had voluntarily entered my name into an online pool the National Institute of Infectious Diseases had posted calling for potential test subjects for clinical trials. After reading in the newspaper about the institute’s efforts to attract volunteers, I had decided to enter my name in the pool.

It was a shot in the dark on my part. But after feeling so helpless for so long in the face of a seemingly invisible and invincible force like COVID-19, I thought giving some of my time — and blood — for science was a way for me to help my fellow man, to beat back those demons, from without and within, that had sprung up since the onset of the pandemic. So, whether or not I received the vaccine that first day was beside the point. The point for me was to be of service, to help others first, and then, maybe, to help myself later.

From January through February, I made periodic visits to the Norton Healthcare vaccine study clinic, located at the old Methodist Hospital on Preston Street. Each time I paid a visit, a nurse drew blood from my arm for analysis and research. At home, I used a smartphone app two times a week. I did a check-in with the clinic, remotely, to note whether or not I had experienced symptoms or health concerns that I felt were related to infection with COVID-19. Throughout that time, I never felt like I had any concerns or symptoms related to COVID-19. I thought maybe I had received the vaccine, after all.

By late January, Johnson & Johnson had released its preliminary data from the ENSEMBLE Study, announcing that, by the company’s own analysis, the one-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of 72 percent in the United States. That means that, of the participants who received the vaccine in the U.S., only 28 percent experienced mild to moderate symptoms related to COVID-19.

Although that efficacy rate was found to not be as high as those of the vaccines produced by Pfizer (95 percent) and Moderna (90 percent), this rate was still well-received by the scientific community, for a vaccine with an efficacy rate within the range of 40 to 60 percent is considered to offer good protection against an infection from a given illness. By that standard, all three vaccines were exceptional candidates to combat the spread of COVID-19. And, like in the studies for the other two vaccines, there was a 100 percent efficacy rate against symptoms associated with a severe COVID infection and hospitalization in the ENSEMBLE Study for those participants who received the vaccine.

Lastly, unlike the two other vaccines, the J&J vaccine would not require storage in subzero temperatures, and it could also be administered to subjects with just one dose.

With all this data, it appeared to me and many others that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was on the fast track towards approval. And that’s what happened in late February, when the FDA Advisory Panel voted to approve an emergency use authorization here in the U.S.

Three weeks later, I received a message during one of my check-ins that I would finally be un-blinded in the ENSEMBLE Study. On March 22, I visited the downtown clinic again where I was told that in December I had in fact received the placebo. After that, I was offered a shot of the good stuff, which I heartily accepted. I had finally joined the Vaccine Race and had become inoculated.

I had maybe one day where I felt some side effects from receiving the J&J vaccine — body aches and some redness around my eyes — but after a day or two, I felt fine. Now, two weeks after receiving Johnson & Johnson’s single dose vaccine, I am fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

It is a reassuring feeling, knowing that I have made strides to get back to a normal life. Still, with a new surge in cases of COVID infections being reported here in the States, and with only 20 percent of the nation’s population fully vaccinated, I know that now is not the time to drop my guard. I still wear a mask when I am out in public. I still shy away from going out to eat or going to large public events.

Nevertheless, I take great satisfaction in the fact that in this small way I have done something to help turn the tide, to be of service. So, it is my hope that my own personal vaccine race will help inspire others to either get fully vaccinated and/or allay fears and myths associated with receiving any of the COVID vaccines.

And please, if you haven’t already, take your shot!

On This Date: Battle of Evarts, Part of Bloody Harlan, 1931

Published in the May 3, 2021 issue.

On the morning of May 5, 1931, gunfire broke out between union miners and coal bosses’ deputies on a mountain road by the Evarts railyard in Harlan County, Kentucky. The battle, which lasted just fifteen minutes, claimed the lives of three deputies and one miner. It would prove to be the deadliest incident of the Harlan County coal war of the 1930s, a period called “Bloody Harlan.”

Coal miners in either Harlan County or Bell County, Kentucky, 1931. Credit: Herndon Evans photographs, University of Kentucky Special Collections.

The war in Eastern Kentucky’s coal towns had been brewing for several years. The violence it begat was not new to the area — in fact, Harlan had the highest homicide rate of any county in the United States during the 1920s. But as historians James C. Klotter and Craig Thompson Friend point out in their book A New History of Kentucky (2017), it was the convergence of many factors — the sudden downturn in the coal industry, the lack of regulations protecting the miners’ right to organize and collectively bargain, and the bleak situation laid-off workers faced — that gave rise to the conflict between capitalists and workers in coal country:

“Harlan County had experienced a huge population increase in the years before 1930, and with that expansion came massive societal disorganization for those 65,000 people. The once-proud coal towns had fallen on hard times in the 1920s as coal prices dropped, and the scant profits often went to stockholders, not toward making repairs. Tensions rose, violence increased, and class animosity intensified. Then came the additional problems of the national depression. By 1932, one third of Harlan County’s mines had closed, and 4,000 miners had lost their jobs. Those who did work labored harder for less: Payment in the 1920s for digging a ton of coal was eighty-one cents; by 1931, it had fallen to thirty-five cents per ton. Relief from the New Deal lay in the future, so hungry, desperate, jobless people roamed the region, looking for work or just food. Company evictions left many homeless and hungry, and even more just angry. As one miner cried out, “We don’t live; we just exist.” And another stressed, “We don’t want to get rich. We want to eat.” (Klotter and Friend 352)

On February 16, 1931, the Black Mountain Coal Company announced a ten percent wage cut for miners. In response, the miners grew angry, staged a walkout, and appealed to the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for assistance. At a mass meeting convened in Pineville, a town in Bell County, Kentucky, the UMWA’s national vice president implored the miners to do their best to forge “a spirit of cooperation” with the bosses, hoping to reach a resolution. But the bosses would not cooperate: As retaliation for the union activity, they implemented mass firings and evictions in their coal camps.

Of course, to keep the mines operating, the companies had to enlist “scabs,” non-union workers who crossed the picket lines to replace miners who were on strike. A force of deputies called “gun thugs” — security officers commanded by Harlan County Sheriff J. H. Blair — was tasked with quashing any activity that could disrupt production.

That’s what set the stage for the May 5 incident at Evarts.

That morning, a four-vehicle “gun thug” motorcade made its way through the mountains. Three of the vehicles were there escorting the fourth, a truck loaded with household goods for scabs, when suddenly a gunshot rang out. As Kentucky Monthly contributor Ron Soodalter writes in the 2016 article “The Price of Coal,” while neither side would admit to firing the first shot, both sides had come prepared for bloodshed:

“According to prosecution witnesses in the murder trials that followed, a union leader had called a meeting the night before, and — aware that the deputies would be wearing bulletproof vests — had urged a gathering of some 300 union men to aim high. “Shoot to get meat,” he purportedly said. “Shoot their goddamn heads off.””

During the pivotal fifteen-minute battle, over 1,000 gunshots were exchanged, leaving four dead and several wounded.

Two days later, Governor of Kentucky Flem D. Sampson called in a force of about 400 Kentucky National Guardsmen to quell the violence and disarm the combatants.

Regardless, the union miners capitalized on their momentum: In the weeks that followed the firefight at Evarts, the strike spread to twenty-three different coal operations based in Harlan and Bell counties and the number of miners on strike ballooned from 1,800 to 5,800. By the end of that spring, 11,000 miners had joined the UMWA.

Ultimately, the Black Mountain strike came to an unsuccessful end. But the broader conflict in Kentucky coal country would persist through the 1930s, having all sorts of implications — economic, political, and cultural.

Simon Meiners
Communications & Research Specialist

Video: First Century of Jewish Louisville, 1780s – 1880s

Published in the May 3, 2021 issue.

The city of Louisville has an incredibly fascinating Jewish history, dating back to when Kentucky was still just a county of the state of Virginia. In this week’s “History was Here” video, I explore the first century of Jewish heritage in Louisville by highlighting four places with which you may already be very familiar.

Heather Gotlib
Manager of Youth and Family Programs

Brood X Cycle Timeline of Kentucky History, 1800 – Present

Published in the May 31, 2021 issue.

I have been dreading their arrival for years — a constant tickle of a worry at the back of my mind, a quiet flapping of wings.

Now, the Brood X cicadas are here, and the wing flapping isn’t so quiet. I have mildly traumatic memories from the last time they were here: cicadas carelessly flying into my face or getting stuck in my car on the way to theater practice. But this time, mixed with the disgust is a bit of fascination. I discovered that the first written record of Brood X cicadas appeared May 9, 1715, in a journal entry by Rev. Andreas Sandel, the pastor of Philadelphia’s “Gloria Dei” Swedish Lutheran Church. He writes:

“In this month some singular flies came out of the ground; the English call them locusts. When they left the ground holes could be seen everywhere in the roads and especially in the woods. They were encased in shells, out of which they crawled. It seemed most wonderful how being covered with the shell they were able to burrow their way into the hard ground. When they began to fly they made a particular noise, and being found in great multitudes all over the country, their noise made the cow-bells inaudible in the woods. They were also destructive, making slits in the bark of the trees, where they deposited their worms, which withered their branches. Swine and poultry ate them, but what was more astonishing, when they first appeared some of the people split them open and eat them, holding them to be of the same kind as those said to have been eaten by John the Baptist. These locusts lasted not longer than up to June 10, and disappeared in the woods.”

The first cicadas I saw this year were at George Rogers Clark Park during one of my morning dog walks. As I passed the graves of members of Clark’s family, some of the first European settlers in Louisville, I wondered if they had seen the Brood X cicadas, and what else was happening in Kentucky’s history on the years of their emergence.

So, I decided to go through Kentucky’s history and see what was happening every seventeen years, beginning with the first year of the Brood X cicada emergence after Kentucky became a state in 1792.

1800. The Red River Meeting House in Logan County hosts the first religious camp meeting in the United States, marking the beginning of the Second Great Awakening. In Jefferson County, the Clark family resides at Mulberry Hill in George Rogers Clark Park, where they would live from 1785 to 1803.

1817. The first commercial steamboat route from Louisville to New Orleans begins.

1834. The Whig Party is organized in opposition to incumbent U.S. President Andrew Jackson under the leadership of Senator Henry Clay from Kentucky.

1851. German Protestant Orphan’s Home is founded in Louisville.

1868. The Courier-Journal newspaper begins publication.

1885. Woman Triumphant, a marble statue by Joel Tanner Hart, is installed in the Fayette County Courthouse.

1902. The very first University of Kentucky basketball team, the women’s team, is organized. Its first game would take place the following February.

1919. A race riot occurs in Corbin where a white mob forces the city’s 200 black residents onto a freight train out of town.

1936. Keeneland Race Course opens.

1953. The Louisville Shooting Stars, a minor league hockey team, play in the International Hockey League.

1970. University of Kentucky students burn down the ROTC building in protest against the Kent State shooting deaths by the National Guard and the Vietnam War.

1987. Kentucky Kingdom amusement park opens at the Kentucky Exposition Center.

2004. The Frazier Historical Arms Museum is founded, now known as the Frazier Kentucky History Museum.

2021. Hundreds march in Louisville streets to mark the one-year anniversary of Breonna Taylor’s death.

I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly eager to see what will be happening here in Kentucky the next time the Brood X cicadas emerge from their seventeen-year nap.

Amanda Briede
Curator

Object in Focus: Madison County Estate Sale Bill, 1821

Published in the June 14, 2021 issue.

One of the ways individual lives and stories are preserved and passed down through history is through documents. A name on a deed, marriage license, will, or contract marks where someone has been and how they’ve spent their time on earth.

But what happens when a system of white supremacy and racist individuals take away not only freedom, but also a name?

Estate sale bill from Madison County, Kentucky, 1821

Look closely at the 1821 estate sale bill from Madison County located in the Frazier’s Border State: Kentucky and the Civil War exhibition and you’ll see a list of first names that ends with “woman and child” — along with a monetary value assigned to each. The enslaved Kentuckians listed on this document were likely sent to new owners as part of an estate. None of the individuals listed include a last name, and the “woman and child” are stripped of their names on the document altogether.

This Juneteenth, we acknowledge and honor the lesser-known and unnamed individuals who endured enslavement in America. Their stories are a part of the American story.

Lexington Orderly and Drag Legend Sweet Evening Breeze

Published in the June 14, 2021 issue.

James Herndon (c. 1892 – 1983), or Sweet Evening Breeze, is an incredibly interesting figure in Lexington’s history whose story I first discovered when reading through the Kentucky African American Encyclopedia in search of some “cool” people to add to Cool Kentucky. Sweets definitely fits the bill.

Sweet Evening Breeze by John Ashley, 1972. Credit: Faulkner Morgan Archive.

James Herndon was born in Scott County, Kentucky in the late 1800s. At a young age, he was abandoned in Lexington at the Good Samaritan Hospital where he lived and began working as a teenager, eventually becoming the head orderly. Locally known as Sweet Evening Breeze, or Sweets, he was known for his effeminate style, often wearing makeup, scarves, and jewelry, and at times dressing in full drag. As the movement for gay equality began in Lexington in 1969 – 70, Sweets was instrumental in helping to overturn Lexington’s cross-dressing ordinance, which required people to wear a minimum number of articles of clothing reflecting the gender associated with their sex organs. Despite being a gender non-conforming Black man in a racially tense Lexington of the Jim Crow era, Sweets was well liked in the community and was known for random acts of kindness such as baking cakes or giving shoes to poor families.

The Kentucky LGBTQ Historic Context Narrative 2016, prepared by the University of Louisville’s Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research, describes Sweets’ unique relationship with the University of Kentucky football team, serving as the bride in a “womanless wedding,” a practice that was fairly common across Kentucky in the 1920s to ‘40s:

“He was especially close to the then-all-white University of Kentucky football team, where he played the part of the bride in an annual mock wedding to that year’s quarterback. Indeed, in one of the few surviving photographs of Sweets, taken in 1954 or 1955, he is pictured on a couch, wearing a white dress and seated next to a University of Kentucky football player.”

I am happy to let you know we have completed the installation of the new “LGBTQ+ Kentucky” section of Cool Kentucky. Be sure to stop by and see it in person the next time you’re visiting the Frazier!

Amanda Briede
Curator

Barren County’s Glasgow Highland Games, 1986 – Present

Published in the June 21, 2021 issue.

Every year, families in Kentucky and across the United States gather in Barren County for the annual Glasgow Highland Games. Yet, another post-pandemic June has arrived without a caber toss and bagpipers playing in the fields of Barren River Lake State Park.

Pipe bands playing at the 2008 Glasgow Highland Games, May 31, 2008. Credit: Kyhiking.

I felt disappointed, to be sure, for I have desired to attend the games for a few years now — partly because my grandfather was from Glasgow, but primarily because I’m now married to a native Scotsman who hails from the Glasgow of the motherland. As I connect more to Scottish heritage in learning about Clan Rankin, a sept of Clan Maclean, I realize I share a kindred spirit with those in Barren County who rediscovered, or perhaps discovered for the first time, their own Scottish roots when the Highland Games came to town.

In the early 1980s, there seemed to be no shortage of Highland Games across the region, as many Kentuckians traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee or Grandfather Mountain in Linville, North Carolina for a weekend of celebration. Local newspapers regularly reported Scottish Country Dance groups and Pipe Bands from Kentucky who traveled to regional games like the Stone Mountain Highland Games outside Atlanta. Glasgow seems to have drawn inspiration from the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in particular, being one of the largest festivals in the country: Attendees gather in MacRae Meadows for games, food, and colorful fanfare every summer. People in Kentucky were clearly interested in the gathering of Scottish clans well before Glasgow stepped onto the stage, so it is fitting we can now claim one of our own.

The Barren County Chamber of Commerce officially unveiled the plan for an annual Highland Games on February 26, 1985, stating the festival’s intention to be a unique gathering with games, a ball, and bagpipes that would kick off with a Parade of Tartans, similar to the opening style of the Olympic Games. The efforts of then-Mayor Honeycutt, the Chamber, and community members like Bob Harrison (also known as Robert MacKenzie Harrison of Clan MacKenzie), the current president of the Games, together brought the Glasgow Highland Games to life. For many community residents, the festival sparked an interest to look further into their own Scottish heritage. If you visit Barren River Lake State Park, you can see the names of the Charter Clans that are carved into a monolith, which marks the site of the first games held from May 30 to June 1 in 1986.

The Highland Games have contributed to Glasgow’s civic development and identity for over thirty years now, having grown into an extremely successful event with about 10,000 attending annually. In 2001, Glasgow hosted the World Scottish Games, an international gathering that brought present-day Chiefs from Clan Irvine, MacTavish, and Urquhart, to name a few, from Scotland to Barren County.

Though the festival has taken a two-year break, I am hopeful the tradition will return in 2022. On a recent trip to Barren County, my parents had the chance to speak with locals who relayed the primary reason for postponing again: If they couldn’t put on the Highland Games how it should be executed, they didn’t want to do it at all. Sounds like true Scottish pride and spirit to me! Remaining cautious about large gatherings following a pandemic is vital, but I especially admire the intentional choice to delay an event so the full measure of meaning and honor can be felt by those who gather. I look forward to my first Glasgow Highland Games in the future, perhaps wearing the Clan Rankin tartan pattern!

To read more about the 2001 World Scottish Games, visit Electric Scotland's web page.

Video: Wheelchair Athlete Jenny Smith on Living the Impossible

Published in the July 5, 2021 issue.

Don’t tell Jenny Smith anything is impossible — she will prove you wrong!

She’s been proving folks wrong for about thirty-two years now, ever since she had an accident that resulted in a spinal cord injury, paralyzing her from the chest down.

I moved to Louisville and started working at WHAS-TV in July 1989, the same month as Jenny’s accident. Over the years, I covered stories on her, such as her travels to Afghanistan to deliver wheelchairs to those who didn’t have them.

Again, don’t tell her anything is impossible.

Now, she has written a book, Live the Impossible, a deeply personal account of both the physical and emotional impact of that day in Seneca Park.

Many in Louisville have gotten to know Jenny Smith through her story and her work and have supported her along the way.

If you would like to order a copy of the book, click here. You can also read more about her on her website, jennysmithrollson.com.

I just reconnected with Jenny this week to talk about her decision to write the book, what she’s learned about others and herself, her faith, and saying yes.

Corn Island Cobblestones Unearthed on Louisville’s Main Street

Published in the July 5, 2021 issue.

In the last week of May, city crews were working on a project near the Frazier Museum when they unearthed a cluster of cobblestones dating to the early days of Louisville. In an effort to preserve this piece of history, the crew decided to drop the stones off at our front desk.

The following week, some Frazier staff members took a little field trip to Jeffersontown where we visited our friends at Corn Island Archeology (CIA). CIA works on a number of projects, but we were visiting to learn more about the findings from their investigation of the Beecher Terrace Housing Complex in downtown Louisville. After we returned from our trip, I visited CIA’s website to learn more. Ironically, I discovered that the cobblestones on West Main likely came from Corn Island, CIA’s namesake.

Corn Island is located near the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. The site is completely submerged, but its most recent occupants were a little more than a dozen families in the late 1770s. A settlement was built on Corn Island in 1778, when General George Rogers Clark was on a secret mission to Kaskaskia, a French-held fort located in Illinois. However, shortly after Clark’s departures for a mission in Illinois, many of the settlers began to occupy the mainland. Following 1779, Corn Island had no settlements.

Although Corn Island was no longer occupied by Clark and his crew, many industries took advantage of the space. This is where our cobblestones may have come into the picture. Around 1840, the owners of Tarascon’s Mill leased a stone quarry on the island. They intended to mine limestone for cement making. However, there is also speculation that rock may have been mined from the island even earlier than 1840 — perhaps as early as 1806 — to use on Main Street in downtown.

We at the Frazier are thankful for the crew who gifted us this interesting piece of Louisville history. Donations such as these help us preserve the stories of local residents and better inform the community of its history.

If you would like to learn more about Corn Island, visit Corn Island Archaeology's website.

Sippin’ With Stephen: Ladies in Red With Wilderness Trail

Published in the July 12, 2021 issue.

Stephen Yates
Community & Corporate Sales Manager

First City-approved U of L Basketball Championship Banner, 1980

Published in the July 19, 2021 issue.

I’m told the members of my family were beside themselves with excitement on March 24, 1980 — the day University of Louisville men’s basketball head coach Denny Crum led his team to an NCAA championship, the first in the history of the program.

I say “I’m told” because I wasn’t actually there (I wouldn’t be born until the following year, 1981). However, there’s still a piece of solid, physical evidence from that celebration that attests to the Sullivan family’s Cardinal-red blood: a hand-made banner proclaiming “UL #1.”

On March 25, 1980, the day after the championship game, my grandmother, Shirley Sullivan, got permission from her boss, the Jefferson County Clerk, to take a long lunch. She spent the time buying red fabric and attaching iron-on letters with a pan she heated on the office hotplate. Later that day, she hung the makeshift championship banner from the window of her workplace, the County Clerk’s Office.

County employees at the Jefferson County District Courthouse fly the original “UL #1” banner, c. April 1, 1986. Credit: Sullivan family.

When Denny Crum and his team won the tournament again in 1986, my grandmother brought the banner back; in response, then-Mayor of Louisville Jerry Abramson requested to have it displayed in a more prominent window at the courthouse. In 2013, when the Cards men’s basketball team won their third championship, a plan was made for the historic banner to make a triumphant return; unfortunately, flood damage to the courthouse prevented that from happening. Perhaps it was fate.

Nonetheless, this historic artifact — the very first city-approved U of L basketball championship banner — remains in the Sullivan family, for now. It’ll go back on display whenever the Cards claim their fourth title.

Elm Tree Garden on Shippingport Island, 1829 – 73

Published in the July 26, 2021 issue.

Did you know one of the first beer gardens in Louisville was located in a treetop on an island?

Back in the 1820s to ‘50s, when Louisville was a major destination for German immigrants resettling in the United States, beer gardens started popping up around the city. For local residents, these beer gardens served a variety of purposes, providing a place where they could conduct business meetings, give or attend political speeches, or relax and socialize with friends. Although the proprietors of many of these establishments had come from Germany, it was a Frenchman who in 1829 founded one of the first in the area — a treetop beer garden located on Shippingport Island.

Detail of *The City of Louisville, Kentucky. The City of New Orleans, Louisiana*, 1857

Originally, Shippingport was a settlement on the south bank of the Ohio River opposite the Falls of the Ohio. It occupied a peninsula that connected to what is now the Portland neighborhood of Louisville. However, the construction of the Louisville and Portland Canal in the mid-1820s flooded the southern perimeter of Shippingport, creating an island.

According to The Encyclopedia of Louisville (2001), this island became the site of an elevated, treetop-themed beer garden:

“The Elm Tree Garden was located on the eastern end of Shippingport Island, founded in 1829 by Frenchman Joseph L. Detiste as Elm Tree Pavilion. Centered around a giant elm tree, the outdoor tavern was actually suspended aboveground on a platform built in the branches. By the early 1830s, Detiste had added an amusement park ride, a China Pavilion, a pagoda, a tree arbor, and a dance pavilion. It was renamed the Louisville Garden in 1868 but was selling only about ten kegs of beer a week. It was closed by 1873.” (80)

Built into and around twenty-four upward branches of the tree, the large wooden platform on which the tavern was situated measured 300 feet in circumference. Residents of mainland Louisville would cross the bridge at Eighteenth Street over the canal, climb a few stairs, then forget about terra firma for a while.

Activities on the platform and the surrounding grounds included footraces, horseraces, wrestling matches, gander pulling, mark shooting, marbles games, maze walks, locomotive rides, and more. However, a quick search for references to the garden in the Courier-Journal reveals the frequency with which guests engaged in unsanctioned activities, including fistfights, robberies, stabbings, and gunplay.

Unfortunately, the establishment ceased operating by 1873.

Mick Sullivan
Curator of Guest Experience

Total Solar Eclipse at Mineral Mound State Park, 2017

Published in the August 16, 2021 issue.

On August 21, 2017 — two weeks before the Frazier Museum adopted the brand “Where the World Meets Kentucky” — the world met Kentucky at Orchardale Farm.

The occasion was the Great American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse that was visible in a band extending across the contiguous United States, from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. Although millions of people residing in this “Path of Totality” could witness the phenomenon from home, 100,000 tourists from forty-six states and twenty countries instead traveled to southwest Kentucky. The goal was to be at or near the point of greatest eclipse, which happened to be at Orchardale Farm — a corn-, beans-, wheat-, and hay-harvesting operation situated between Cerulean and Hopkinsville.

Two of the tourists who made the pilgrimage to the Path of Totality were my friend Margaret and me. That morning, we hopped in her car, drove to Mineral Mound State Park in Lyon County, and encamped on a fishing pier jutting into Lake Barkley. That’s where we, and many other folks on and around the pier, the boat ramp, and the lake, witnessed the historic total solar eclipse.

Half of what I recall from the two minutes and forty seconds of totality is the way people reacted: Some gasped, one screamed “Oh my God!,” then most cheered and applauded or honked their car horns. But the other half of my memory pertains to nature: The sky got dark, the air got cool, and the confused crickets started chirping. I bobbed in the lake, wondering what the fish and snakes made of the sudden “nightfall.”

Looking back, four years later, I can’t separate that celestial event from the terrestrial setting in which we watched it. Kentucky — the land blessed with salt licks, tupelo swamps, bluegrass meadows, sandstone arches, limestone caves, and other bounties of nature — got a front row seat to a cosmic spectacle! That’s something rare, special, and worth celebrating.

In today’s issue of Virtual Frazier Magazine, we explore this special relationship between Kentucky and outer space.

First, Mick Sullivan interviews Paintsville-native astrophysicist Joe Burchett on the Hubble Space Telescope, named for Louisville luminary Edwin Hubble. Amanda Briede shares an Apollo 12 commemorative glass in the museum’s collection, Michael Phillips highlights Waggener High School alum and NASA Mission Engineer Tracy Drain, and Grace M. James Academy student Abigail Seow pays tribute to an astronaut who inspires her.

Pam Platt revisits a timeless debate (why not space and earth?), Rachel Platt reflects on her time covering NASA’s Sally Ride and Guion Bluford for Florida television, and Brian West sheds light on some astronomy-related historical sites and stargazing resources in Kentuckiana. Plus, Rich Boling traces a student’s 1985 science competition idea — incubating chicken embryos in space — to a Kentucky Fried Chicken internship and, eventually, the birth of a space research equipment firm.

I’ll leave you with a quote that, misattributed to Daniel Boone, has been circulating since at least 1818:

“Heaven is a Kentucky of a place.”

Simon Meiners
Communications & Research Specialist

Video: Creating the Logo for West of Ninth

Published in the September 13, 2021 issue.

Frazier Museum preparator Veronica Cosmopolis explains the process behind the creation of the logo for West of Ninth: Race, Reckoning, and Reconciliation.

History of Waverly Hills Sanatorium, 1883 – Present

Published in the October 18, 2021 issue.

This is the time of year when everyone is searching for the spookiest place to visit, a place where you can see floating orbs or hear unknown footsteps in the hall. We try to recreate these events with haunted houses or spooky experiences to get the sense of excitement that comes with an actual paranormal encounter.

But there is one place in Louisville that needs no eerie recreation, stunts, or actors: Waverly Hills.

Over the years, Waverly has been the focus of ghost hunting television shows and countless visitors hoping to confront a ghost. But we must remember there is a reason this place is considered spooky or haunted: Thousands of real people suffered tragedies there.

This is a brief history of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium.

In 1883, Major Thomas Hays purchased land where he built a family home and a one-room schoolhouse in which his children could be educated. Ms. Lizzie Harris was hired to teach and referred to the school as Waverley Schoolhouse, a nod to the Waverley series of novels by author Sir Walter Scott. Major Hays loved the name and adopted it for his land, calling it “Waverly Hills,” since the land was vast and hilly, providing wonderful views of the world around.

In the early 1900s, tuberculosis — also known as TB, consumption, and the White Plague — devastated communities around the world. Tuberculosis is an infectious bacterial disease that affects the lungs and causes cough and fever. It wasn’t known at the time that it was spread through tiny droplets released into the air. Jefferson County, Kentucky was suffering an outbreak of tuberculosis, and because little was known, other than the fact that the disease needed containment, a board was created to determine a location for a TB hospital. The current city hospital was over capacity with the number of cases growing rapidly. The board determined the hospital needed to be on the outside of town, in a location that provided fresh air, which was considered a treatment for the disease.

In 1908, the hospital broke ground on Waverly Hills and was much smaller than what we are familiar with today. The original structure was a two-story wooden building with fewer than fifty beds. The facility got upgrades in the following years, and in 1912 the hospital opened for the treatment of advanced cases with an additional fifty beds. In 1914, a children’s wing opened where ill children received treatment and residents whose caregivers were ill were housed.

With the disease continuing to spread and the original structure needing repair, construction on a new facility began in 1924, which provided space for 400 additional beds. The new facility opened on October 17, 1926, and was a city in and of itself. Onsite amenities included laundromats, water treatment facilities, a slaughterhouse, vegetable gardens, and a post office. It even had its own zip code. Employees of the hospital were required to live onsite to help contain the disease.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium served the Jefferson County community until 1961, when the hospital closed after tuberculosis was being successfully treated, making a facility that size obsolete. In the time the hospital was operating, 63,000 of its patients died from the disease.

The facility served as the Woodhaven Geriatric Center, a nursing home, from 1962 until 1982 when the state shut it down following reports of neglect. Ownership changed hands many times over the years, and various ideas for how the property should be used came and went. Plans were made first for a privately owned prison, which failed because of protests from neighbors, then apartments. In 1996, Christ the Redeemer Foundation, Inc. planned to construct an arts and worship center, along with the world’s largest statue of Jesus. The project was called off due to a lack of funding, and the facility was sold yet again.

In 2001, Tina and Charlie Mattingly purchased the facility, giving guided tours and opening a haunted house during Halloween. The proceeds of tours go toward renovating the interior of the sanatorium.

Video: Uranium Glass Jar From Beecher Terrace, Late 1800s

Published in the October 25, 2021 issue.

Heather Gotlib
Manager of Youth and Family Programs

Video: Magna Carta at Fort Knox, 1941 – 44

Published in the December 6, 2021 issue.

On the morning of December 27, 1941, two weeks after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, a U.S. Army truck guarded by a scout troop of the 13th Armored Division and Secret Service agents departed Louisville and arrived at the U.S. Mint’s gold bullion depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The truck’s cargo — half a dozen padlocked containers and packing cases — was carried to an underground vault beneath a steel and concrete structure deemed invulnerable to bombing attack. At 12:07 p.m., the vault was closed.

So what was the cargo?

It was a cache of historic documents: the British government’s Lincoln Cathedral copy of Magna Carta, 1215; the U.S. Library of Congress’s Saint Blasius-Saint Paul copy of the Gutenberg Bible, c. 1455; engrossed originals of the Declaration of Independence, 1776, and the U.S. Constitution, 1787; the original Articles of Confederation, 1777; the first and second autographed drafts of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, 1863; and the autographed copy of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, 1865.

The documents would remain at the facility until the autumn of 1944.

Source

“For Nearly Three Years Fort Knox Vault Held Declaration of Independence and Constitution.” The Courier-Journal. February 4, 1945.

Mick Sullivan
Curator of Guest Services

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