By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
I recently was a guest speaker at the Shelby County Retired Teachers Association meeting and enjoyed the hospitality I received. To add some local color to my opening remarks, I mentioned being a fan of former University of Kentucky basketball great Mike Casey, who also led the Shelby County High School Rockets to a Kentucky state championship in 1966. I was also proud to mention that I had the honor of interviewing former governor Martha Layne Collins last year, another person with Shelby County roots.
Later, I thought more about the Shelbyville area: the beauty of rolling countryside, easy accessibility (off I-64), the inviting older downtown area and, of course, its people. There are good ones there now and in the past, many of whom are nationally noted. I did some quick research on those individuals (some of whom, of course, I already knew about) and thought I’d share a little from my findings. Let me share the disclaimer that this is a totally less than exhaustive group, but here goes.
Two born in or near Shelbyville served in the United States Congress in other states. James C. Allen (1822-1912), a Democrat, was an Illinois congressman from 1853 to 1857. Woodson Oglesby (1867-1955), also a Democrat, served in Congress in the state of New York from 1913 to 1917. He previously was a delegate to the 1912 Democratic National Convention. William Thorne (1845-1928), born in Shelbyville, served as Kentucky Gov. J.C.W. Beckham’s lieutenant governor from 1903 to 1907.
Shelby County native William Gregory (1825-1887) became the first mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, in 1853, while Elijah McGee (1819-1870), another Shelbyville native, became the mayor of the same in 1870. McGee was also a successful businessman who struck it rich in the California Gold Rush.
Steve Flairty, left, and Martha Layne Collins (Photos provided)
Frances Smith was born in Simpsonville in 1941 and later married Ted Strickland. She became the First Lady of Ohio when her husband served as the state’s governor from 2007 to 2011. Incidentally, she wrote a successful children’s book about Collins, called The Little Girl Who Grew Up to Be Governor: Stories from the Life of Martha Layne Collins (Denham Publishing, 1991).
Some may know of the book Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, a national bestseller in 1902. It was written by Shelbyville-born author Alice Hegan Rice. The book was based on events taking place in a slum in Louisville called Cabbage Path. There, Rice did work in a Sunday School mission and gained a love of the poor and an appreciation for “the nobility that lay hidden in even the most unpromising personality,” as she stated in her autobiography, The Inky Way. The Mrs. Wiggs story had three Hollywood versions produced, and one starred comedian and actor W. C. Fields. Rice wrote over two dozen books in her career and she was well-known, especially, for her use of “local color” and the use of dialect in that regard.
Shelby County’s Martha Layne Collins became the state of Kentucky’s first woman governor in 1983, serving one term. A hallmark of her term was persuading Japanese company Toyota to establish an automotive assembly plant in Georgetown. It has generally been considered a boon the state’s economy, including spurring other business satellite investments. It was reported in that period that she was under some consideration for Walter Mondale’s vice-presidential running mate in the 1984 national presidential campaign.
In the aftermath of her governorship, she served as president of St. Catharine College, in Springfield, Kentucky, from 1990 to 1996. She also worked in academic positions at the University of Louisville and Georgetown College. She’s also continued involvement in endeavors to bring economic growth to Kentucky through international cooperation. Among her many recognitions, the state’s Bluegrass Parkway was renamed the Martha Layne Collins Bluegrass Parkway in 2003; in 2010, the new Martha Layne Collins High School opened in Shelby County, making for two public high schools in the county.
Whitney Young Jr. became executive director of the National Urban League in 1961. He was born in Shelby County in 1921 and was the son of well-educated and highly achieving African-American parents. His father, Whitney Young Sr., served as president of the Lincoln Institute, Shelbyville, which was a noted all-black high school boarding school founded in 1912 and operating until 1966. Young Whitney graduated valedictorian from the school. His mother became the first postmistress in Kentucky and only the second in the United States.
He pushed for better employment opportunities for blacks, using influence with friends such as Henry Ford II. He helped organize the 1963 “March on Washington,” and he authored two books, plus co-authored another on issues of race. He won America’s highest civilian award, the National Medal of Freedom. This native Kentuckian, so influential in civil rights history, died of a heart attack on March 11, 1971 while swimming in Lagos, Nigeria at a conference he was attending.
J. Franklin Bell is another Shelbyville-born person of note. He was the U.S. Army chief of staff from 1906 to 1910. During the Philippine-American War in 1899, Bell led a regiment on the Philippine Islands and demonstrated great personal courage while fighting insurgents. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.
Besides winning Kentucky’s “Mr. Basketball” in 1966, Mike Casey averaged 18.7 points per game at UK, finishing high on the school’s all-time scoring list. Before his senior year in 1970, Casey suffered a severely broken leg in an automobile accident. That necessitated his redshirting a year and coming back to play his final year in 1971. Though he averaged 17 points per game that year, many believe that the injury left him unable to attain his previous performance level—and likely blocked his chances to play professional basketball. Casey died in 2009, at age 60, of congestive heart failure.
And no story about noted people from Shelby County would be complete without mentioning “Colonel” Harland Sanders, who began serving what would become Kentucky Fried Chicken in a gasoline station in Corbin in 1930. But years later in 1959, he and his wife, Claudia, opened a restaurant in Shelbyville and established the fledgling company’s headquarters there. The Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation was sold in 1964 to a partnership led by future Kentucky Gov. John Y. Brown. And yes, the rest is history.
This community just east of Louisville has certainly made its mark on both Kentucky and the nation.
Sources for the article were Wikipedia and “A Literary History of Kentucky,” by William S. Ward (The University of Tennessee Press, 1988).
Steve Flairty is a teacher, public speaker and an author of six books: a biography of Kentucky Afield host Tim Farmer and five in the Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes series, including a kids’ version. His new book, “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes #4,” has recently been released and is available for purchase here. Flairty is a senior correspondent for Kentucky Monthly, as well as a weekly KyForward and NKyTribune columnist and a member of the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Read his past columns for excerpts from all his books. Contact him at sflairty2001@yahoo.com or friend him on Facebook. (Steve’s photo by Connie McDonald)
