Moonlighting in far western Kentucky

A tug pushes gravel barges up the Mississippi River at Columbus in Hickman County.

Linemen for Galaxy Cablevision work in Milburn in Carlisle County. Photos by Tom Eblen

Kentuckians often describe the length and diversity of their state with the phrase, “From Pikeville to Paducah.” But there’s still a lot of Kentucky west past Paducah. I spent Thursday evening driving past rich fields of corn and pretty little communities along Highway 80 between Mayfield and the Mississippi River. What a sweet summer evening. Once the sun set, the bugs were so thick they sounded like sleet on my windshield.

Thanks for an online readership milestone

I began this blog four months ago, and it already has been read more than 50,000 times, as of yesterday afternoon. That pales in comparison to the daily readership of columns that appear in the newspaper and those posted directly on kentucky.com, but it’s not a bad start.

Even better, though, is that readers have left more than 730 comments so far. Like any online forum, this blog has its share of anonymous trolls. But most of those leaving comments are behaving themselves. Some are using their real names, which I encourage. And many, many readers on all sides of various issues have left thoughtful, passionate comments that have enriched our civic conversation. That’s the goal.

I’m leaving soon for Fancy Farm in Graves County, looking forward to a weekend of lively political debates and some of the best barbecue around. Watch the Herald-Leader, Kentucky.com and this blog Saturday and Sunday for reports on both.

What makes public space work?

With all of the discussion about downtown development, I’ve been thinking about public space — what makes it work and what doesn’t.

For 10 years, I’ve worked across Midland Avenue from Thoroughbred Park, one of downtown Lexington’s jewels. The front of the park is a people magnet. I almost never walk or drive by without seeing someone there examining sculptor Gwen Reardon’s amazing horses and jockeys.

Most of the time, people are taking pictures, too. If you search the online photo-sharing site Flickr, you’ll see that people have posted dozens of pictures of that bronze horse race and the beautiful stone fence behind it. This time of year, the fountain also gets a good workout from hot children taking a dip.

The back side of the park simulates the rolling horse-farm fields of Central Kentucky. In the middle is a long lawn. The park has trees and nice benches, which are almost always empty. It looks like a great place to eat lunch on a pretty day, but I never see anyone do it. I think I’ve done it only once or twice. I wonder why I don’t go more often?

On a recent vacation trip to New York, I spent some time in Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library in Midtown. A few years ago, the park was rescued from drug dealers and prostitutes. The city fixed it up and turned it over to private management. There’s a beautiful lawn, often with a stage at the end, shade-tree alleys on each side, carts of books for people to read and free wireless Internet access.

This oasis in Manhattan’s concrete jungle is always full of people reading, relaxing, working on their computers or meeting with friends. A lot of things make Bryant Park work, but the key may be the little green bistro chairs. The park has hundreds of these elegantly simple, lightweight metal chairs with wooden-slat seats and backs. There also are matching tables and stools. People can move them anywhere around the park and group them in ways that meet their needs at the moment. (Good security and management keeps them from leaving the park.)

Walk into Bryant Park early on a summer morning and you’ll see lots of interesting arrangements of empty chairs and tables. You can almost see the activity and hear the conversations from the day before. Even when it’s empty, Bryant Park looks like a busy place where people love to be.

Often, it’s not the grand plan but the small touches that make the difference, whether they are exquisite works of public art or simple green chairs.

Passing of The Dame a blow to young people

As I watch The Dame on Main Street being demolished, I see a neglected, century-old building that could have been reused to give the proposed CentrePointe development more character and class.

But many others - people the age of my daughters - see something different: They see the loss of an important piece of their culture. To them, it’s almost as if somebody took a wrecking ball to the Lexington Opera House or the grandstand at Keeneland.

The circa 1901 building that housed The Dame is being demolished to make way for the CentrePointe development. Photo by Mark Cornelison

One of those people is Matt Jordan, 22, a University of Kentucky senior from Elizabethtown. I got to know him last year when he was a student in the journalism class I teach.

Jordan’s passion is music, and last month he wrote a touching piece in the Kentucky Kernel, UK’s student newspaper, about what The Dame meant to him and his generation.

“It was a cultural breeding ground for Lexington that can’t be bought, copied or easily replicated,” he wrote. “This one venue drew together punk rockers, bluegrass purists, Latin dancers, indie hipsters and average Joes … It was a gift while it lasted.”

When I called Jordan the other day, he had trouble putting into words what made The Dame special during the five years it existed. It wasn’t the building or location, although both were great. It was the way the club became a magnet for up-and-coming musicians and their fans, and the way it created a sense that buttoned-down Lexington could be a cool place for young people to live.

No urban planning expert planned it, no architect designed it, no developer built it. It grew organically and became an artistic success, if not always a financial one.

“I don’t want to say The Dame was the Lexington music scene, but it was pretty much the most important spot,” Jordan said, noting the club’s willingness to take risks on emerging bands and artists with limited appeal. “They were willing to book almost anybody once.”

While The Dame was most popular among over-21 college students and young professionals, it also attracted regular patrons in their 30s, 40s - and a few older ones.

The Dame’s owner, Tom Yost, said Tuesday he is actively looking for a new location either downtown or close to UK.

“We haven’t found the right fit yet,” Yost said. “Several landlords have come to us, and the support in the community has been off the charts.”

Jordan said he hopes it doesn’t take much longer for The Dame to reopen or a similar venue to emerge.

Fans standing in line at The Dame braved frigid temperatures to see Kenny Chesney perform in March. Chesney was the biggest act to play at the club, which took a chance on up-and-coming performers. Photo by David Stephenson

“I was in Athens, Ga., recently, and several musicians I know asked about The Dame and said, ‘So where do we play there now?’” he said. “The Dame was something that made people my age proud of Lexington and gave them a reason to stay here.”

Jordan noted that the fire marshal last February closed The Ice House, on Cross Street off West Maxwell, which was becoming a popular venue. It wasn’t zoned as a music club, and there were fire safety concerns. Local officials also have shut down performances in residential neighborhoods. Jordan doesn’t blame the officials; they’ve done the right thing, given the circumstances.

“But it just seems that this city keeps sabotaging itself,” he said.

There aren’t many places in Lexington for twentysomethings - and almost nowhere for those younger than 21 - to go for cutting-edge music.

However, Jordan is encouraged by growing support among city officials and business leaders for creating downtown entertainment venues. Good things are happening at Victorian Square, and ambitious proposals have been made for entertainment districts along Manchester Street and around Cheapside.

When Commerce Lexington took 175 local leaders to Austin, Texas, in early June, officials there stressed the huge role live music and entertainment play in their city’s economic vitality.

Austin civic and business leaders have figured out how to nurture music clubs and other venues, which often aren’t the most profitable enterprises, because they realize they help provide the quality of life sought by bright, creative people - especially up-and-coming young people. Those are the people who power the companies that can become a city’s economic engines of the future.

Many Lexington leaders seem to get it. There has been a lot of encouraging talk, and some good work done by the city’s Downtown Entertainment Task Force.

Matt Jordan is a bright, creative guy - the kind Lexington needs to attract and keep. While middle-aged professionals like me have been fretting about the future of the media business, Matt has been creating it. His blog, www.youaintnopicasso.com, covers popular music and attracts enough readers and advertising to pay his rent.

Jordan graduates from UK in December. He hasn’t decided whether to stay in Lexington, although he would like to. Where else might he go?

“I would love to move to Austin, Texas, which has tons of appeal,” he said.

There are many important questions to consider as we watch bulldozers finish clearing debris from what was The Dame. Here are three of them: Will The Dame reopen or be replaced? Will bright, young people find reasons to stay in Lexington? What more can we do to keep them?

READ music critic Walter Tunis’ reflections on the dame at his blog, The Musical Box.

Bringing Henry Clay’s ideals to a new generation

To many people, Henry Clay is a slightly familiar name from the distant past. Wasn’t he a politician? Didn’t he live in Lexington?

But to the 51 rising university seniors from 50 states and the District of Columbia who head home Saturday after spending a week in Lexington, Clay is now much more. Their study of his legacy may help them change the world someday.

At least, that’s the goal of the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship’s first Student Congress, which was held at the University of Kentucky and Transylvania University. The center was created last year by the Henry Clay Memorial Foundation, which operates Clay’s Ashland estate on Sycamore Road.

Clay, who lived from 1777 to 1852, was one of America’s greatest statesmen. He represented Kentucky in the U.S. House and Senate, was speaker of the House and ran unsuccessfully for president several times.

Known as ”The Great Compromiser,“ he negotiated the treaty that ended the War of 1812 and engineered compromises in Congress that stalled the Civil War three times.

The center’s goal is to promote Clay’s ideals and skills of conflict resolution, conciliation and compromise in a nation and world that badly needs them.

”If you look at the world today and the polarization – red and blue – at home, we could certainly use more compromise and win-win conflict resolution skills,“ said advertising executive Bill Giles, who co-chairs the center with Thoroughbred breeder Robert N. Clay.

The effort – one of those big ideas that makes so much sense you wonder why somebody didn’t think of it sooner – was the brainchild of several Kentuckians. It has picked up heavyweight support, both locally and around the country. The national advisory committee is chaired by retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, who before retirement was an influential U.S. senator from Kansas.

Eventually, the organization hopes to leverage Clay’s legacy into a Lexington-based center for international conflict resolution, perhaps playing a role similar to that of the Carter Center in Atlanta. The first step is the Student Congress, which will become an annual event.

”It’s extremely timely, especially when you listen over the past decade to the decline in the quality of the national and global debate,“ said D.G. Van Clief, the center’s president and a former president of the Breeders’ Cup. ”This is a terrific opportunity to build awareness of these skills in young people, skills they’ll need to be good executives, jurists and diplomats.“

Carey Cavanaugh, director of UK's Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, spoke to students participating in the first Student Congress of the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship this past week. Photos by Tom Eblen

The students were nominated by U.S. senators and university officials. They were an impressive and diverse group, men and women of all races and political persuasions. About 75 percent were political science majors and minors, and they came to Lexington with considerable experience. Many had studied overseas or worked in congressional or governor’s offices.

The students spent a couple of days studying Henry Clay, his ideals and how they relate to today’s world.

They visited Ashland and heard from Clay scholars. They visited Frankfort to discuss state and local governance, then turned their attention to international affairs and the importance of diplomacy and dialogue.

Kassebaum-Baker spoke Wednesday night after a dinner at Three Chimneys Farm, and O’Connor sent videotaped remarks.

Carey Cavanaugh, a former ambassador and peace negotiator who directs UK’s Patterson School of Diplomacy, led much of the program and lined up a strong group of speakers.

They included a United Nations official now negotiating a dispute in Asia; New York Times and MSNBC political reporter John Harwood; and Andreas Kakouris, Cyprus’ ambassador to the United States.

Carey Cavanaugh, director of UK's Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, left, talks with Mindy Shannon Phelps, executive director of the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship, and D.G. Van Clief, the center's president.

”In the past five days, it’s hard to think of a corner of the world we haven’t touched on in the discussions,“ Cavanaugh said. ”They had a number of people talk to them who are dealing with world problems that are happening right now. It has given the students perspectives they wouldn’t have gotten at their schools.“

Indeed, in Cavanaugh’s debriefing with the students Friday, they raved about the program – but weren’t shy about offering suggestions.

”I learned more this week about foreign policy than I learned all last semester in foreign policy class,“ said Elizabeth Edwards, a student at Catawba College in North Carolina who had spent a year interning for former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C. ”I’ve never met so many people my age who are so smart and love our country so much.“

Alex Bachari, a Loyola University music major who is the Louisiana campaign coordinator for Students for Barack Obama, said he felt inspired and empowered by Clay’s legacy and the Student Congress.

”You guys expect us to lead the Free World in a positive way,“ Bachari said. ”After coming to this program, I feel like I can go out and do anything I want. And I know everybody here feels the same way.“

Sitting in the sessions and listening to this remarkable group of young people ask questions and discuss issues, I got the impression that many of them will be running our government, corporations and major institutions in a couple of decades. And that’s a good thing.

Henry Clay would certainly be proud.

CentrePointe: Ignoring past won’t move us forward

The Webb Companies’ motto is ”Developing Tomorrow’s Landmarks.“

A more appropriate one might be ”Stuck in the 1980s.“

The company’s handling of the ­CentrePointe hotel-condo-retail project has reeked of 1980s development strategy: Plan in secret, avoid public input, cut back-room deals with key city leaders, bulldoze citizen opposition and bulldoze the site.

As a Herald-Leader editorial pointed out Wednesday, the whole fiasco has been a failure of civic leadership and public process.

It also has been a failure of imagination by developers Dudley and Woodford Webb and by Joe Rosenberg, who owns much of the block.

The wrecking machine has torn down several buildings and may soon come for the one truly historic building on the block, which has for years housed Rosenberg’s jewelry and pawnshop.

Built in 1826 as part of ”Morton’s Row,“ it is downtown’s second-oldest commercial building. If it looks dilapidated, you can blame Rosenberg’s neglect of the building.

Dudley Webb has said that none of the buildings on the block is truly historic. ”It’s not like Lincoln ever shopped there,“ he once said. (Actually, Abraham Lincoln may have shopped there. It was a store when he visited his in-laws in Lexington.)

Until the past couple of decades, buildings weren’t considered worthy of preservation unless they were associated with a famous person or event, or unless they remained architecturally intact and in their historic context.

Since the 1980s, though, preservationists and urban planners have seen another value for old urban buildings of character, even if they weren’t ”historic“ by the traditional definition. They don’t want to preserve them as relics, or save them as museums. They want to incorporate them, or their façades, into contemporary buildings with new uses.

If you’ve listened to Webb’s critics — from Vice Mayor Jim Gray to the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation to the citizens’ group Preserve Lexington — that’s what they’ve argued for all along.

Why? Such ”historic fabric“ reflects a city’s history and unique sense of place. And when old and new are woven together in creative ways, it makes for a more interesting — and valuable — development.

If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t see that kind of project being done all over the country — and all over the world. The old buildings are those developments’ prime space for restaurants, bars and shops. That’s because they are unique and inviting, and they give a project a human scale.

I just came back from a few days in New York City and was amazed at the transformation of the SoHo neighborhood, where formerly dilapidated old industrial buildings with cast-iron façades have been turned into ritzy shops and some of the city’s most expensive loft apartments. Streets that were deserted in the 1980s are now filled with people.

By contrast, ­CentrePointe’s massive, monolithic design looks like what developers were building in Atlanta in the late 1980s when I was living there. Granted, many Lexingtonians would prefer that to some cutting-edge modern architecture. And it’s certainly better than all of the ugly 1970s-style buildings Lexington is saddled with downtown, on the UK campus and at schoolyards and office parks around town.

But as many architects, developers and construction executives have told me, CentrePointe could be so much better than the renderings Dudley Webb unveiled in March. And it would be a more successful project if he had engaged the public and gotten more creative professional advice.

That’s sad, because CentrePointe could define downtown Lexington for a century.

A development that could creatively blend Lexington’s colorful past with architecture that looks toward the future would be much more inspiring, especially to the bright young people Lexington needs to attract and retain. Those people may have been born in the 1980s, but they won’t stay long in a city that looks like it’s stuck there.

*******

Here are several examples of historic buildings and architecture mixed into contemporary redevelopment. Do you know of other good examples? Send me an email with a photo or link.

A closer look at the CentrePointe concepts

Beverly Fortune’s story Tuesday and my column Wednesday gave an overview of three alternative design concepts for CentrePointe that were developed over the weekend by students at the University of Kentucky’s College of Design working with prominent architects and designers from UK, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The goal of the 48-hour workshop wasn’t to develop finished designs or exact plans. It was to look at ways the 1.7-acre block could be used to accomplish the goals developer Dudley Webb has stated as well as to create inviting street-level space and a signature piece of architecture. The main goal, though, was to stimulate thinking and explore possibilities.

Here are some of the renderings the three teams came up with during the workshop, which was organized by Michael Speaks, the dean of the college, and architecture faculty member Drura Parrish. The workshop also included advisers from UK’s Historic Preservation Program.

The first group of concept designs was developed by a team led by UK faculty members Liz Swanson and Mike McKay. Swanson and McKay have been based in New Orleans for the past three years leading a UK design studio there. The second group was developed by the team led by Paul Preissner of Chicago, head of Quavirarch and a faculty member at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The third group was developed by a team led by Heather Flood and Ramiro Diaz Granados of Los Angeles, partners in the design firm of F-Lab and faculty members at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Click on each photo to enlarge it.

Sound thinking behind strange-looking designs

I wasn’t surprised by the public’s negative reaction to three out-of-the-box designs dreamed up over the weekend as alternatives to Dudley Webb’s proposed CentrePointe tower.

A story in Tuesday’s Herald-Leader included renderings of the concepts developed during a marathon 48-hour workshop. The designs were done by three teams of students from the University of Kentucky’s College of Design working under prominent architects from UK, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The designs were unconventional. A couple of them were almost bizarre. They were nothing like traditional Lexington architecture. And they were nothing like Webb’s 1980s-style glass tower that has been criticized as too massive and bland to put in the middle of Lexington for the next century or so.

Readers posted dozens of comments about the designs on Kentucky.com — and most of them were scathing.

I understood the reaction. It was my first reaction, too.

Then I took a deep breath and thought again.

These weren’t finished plans, or even real ­proposals. They weren’t meant to be. They were creative ideas, developed quickly and offered up to spark other ideas that might lead to something special. That’s the way innovation works.

Like Webb, I was out of town Monday and couldn’t attend the students’ presentation. So I went over to UK on Tuesday to get a briefing from Michael Speaks, the college’s dean, who organized the workshop.

”It’s a lot of stuff to do in a couple of days,“ Speaks said before walking me through each concept. ”These are not final designs by any stretch of the imagination. But they show what can be done.“

Each team was told to confine itself to the block and try to stay true to the ­CentrePointe proposal — a hotel, luxury condos, a restaurant and retail space.

”These architects approached this in very different ways,“ Speaks said. But he noted that there were many things all of the designs had in common.

All three teams wanted to keep some of the historic buildings that have been a big part of the CentrePointe controversy and weave them into contemporary new construction. The most valued buildings were the Joe Rosenberg building, which dates to 1826, and the century-old building that housed The Dame music club.

All of the teams wanted to keep the Farmers Market on the block, and some added an amphitheater, a small park and other public space. Indeed, perhaps the most appealing part of all of the concepts was how they offered open, inviting pedestrian space at street level.

All three teams thought the project could be more effectively developed in phases, rather than all at once. And they all thought Webb was trying to cram too much square-footage onto the 1.7-acre block.

All chose to have several towers, rather than the one monolith Webb has proposed.

Speaks noted that in all of the designs, the towers were the wildest and least-finished part of the concepts — and the part that elicited the most negative public reaction.

”You look at these project concepts and think how crazy they are,“ Speaks said. ”Then watch the Olympics, look at what they’ve recently built in Beijing, and think again. They won’t look so crazy a month from now.“

By late afternoon Tuesday, more than 1,500 people had voted for their favorite design in the Kentucky.com poll. Webb’s design was leading the closest alternative 2-to-1.

”We’d be surprised if CentrePointe wasn’t winning, in a way,“ Speaks said. ”A lot of people want to support what’s easy, what they’re used to seeing, what’s being done elsewhere.“

Of course, the workshop process was all backward. This type of brainstorming session should have been done at the beginning, as has been done by developers of the proposed Lexington Distillery District project on Manchester Street.

Architecture workshops like this are intended to look at the location, the surrounding areas, and the needs a building is trying to satisfy, and to explore ways to meet those needs.

The goal is to produce a design that solves all of the development’s ”problems“ and adds something more: Value for an entire area, or even a city.

CentrePointe, on the other hand, was developed in secret and unveiled as a done deal. Webb has wanted no creative or public input. So it looks like we’re stuck with a piece of recycled architecture two decades out of date.

CentrePointe seems to be a done deal, and Webb might continue to thumb his nose at critics.

But public discussion surrounding CentrePointe and the awareness of downtown development it has created might pay off in the future.

”I don’t care how many people laugh and make fun of these projects,“ Speaks said as he paged through the three workshop concepts on his desktop computer.

Then he clicked on ­Kentucky.com to check the latest online poll results.

”If we can get 1,500 people to look at these ideas and think about design, then we’ve accomplished something.“

Dawahares: Finale for a family retail empire

When she heard that Dawahares Inc. was closing nine of its 31 stores in a dramatic bid to survive, a longtime customer went to the Fayette Mall store and bought a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of clothing.

”She said, “I’m sorry I can’t afford to buy more,’“ said Richard Dawahare, his voice cracking. ”She was trying to help us out.“

A month later, when the rescue plan fell short and Dawahare’s announced it was going out of business, customers began stopping by the Pikeville store to pay their respects.

”That was the term they used … pay their respects,“ said Harding Dawahare, the president and CEO. ”They just came in to share their stories about how much they loved Dawahare’s over the years.“

From Pikeville to Paducah, Dawahare’s might be the state’s best-known family business. It’s no wonder: Kentuckians have been trading with the Dawahare family since 1907, when Serur Frank Dawahare moved to Appalachia and began carrying a peddler’s pack through the coal camps.

The company’s demise has saddened loyal customers, but there’s only one way to describe the Dawahares’ feelings: It’s like a death in the family.

”The family and the business were almost one and the same,“ said Harding, 57, one of six grandsons of S.F. Dawahare now working in the company, along with two great-grandchildren. ”It was very, very difficult to separate the two.“

S.F. Dawahare came to New York City from Damascus at the turn of the last century and met his wife, Selma, at a Syrian singles dance. On the advice of her brother, they moved south, thinking there might be opportunity for a merchant in the booming coal fields.

The Dawahares saved enough money to open their first store in East Jenkins in 1911. Within a few years, the business was growing almost as fast as the family, which included eight sons and three daughters. Grateful to his adopted country, Serur named three of his sons after U.S. presidents — Woodrow Wilson Dawahare, Warren Harding Dawahare and Herbert Hoover Dawahare.

S.F.’s goal was to have a store for each son — the daughters were expected to find husbands — and he almost did it by the time he died in 1951. The family expanded to Lexington in 1961, building a flagship store in Gardenside Shopping Center.

Eventually, the company would have Dawahare’s clothing and Cat Bird Seat collegiate apparel stores scattered throughout Kentucky and across the line in West Virginia. Liquidation sales began Friday.

A family, a company

The end has been hardest on S.F.’s four surviving sons, who are retired from company leadership and declined to be interviewed.

Last week, five of the third-generation Dawahares working in the company gathered around their big oak conference table. The cramped corporate offices were dark and quiet; employees were paid through last week, but there was no longer a need for many of them to come to work.

The Dawahare cousins spent the week tying up loose ends and turning the company’s inventory over to liquidators. They also were coming to grips with the loss of an institution that has been such a big part of their family.

S.F. taught his sons the ethic of many hard-working immigrants: Whatever happens, stick together. All made careers in the family business except for Hoover, who loved politics and represented Whitesburg in the state House of Representatives for a dozen years.

He operated Hoover’s furniture stores in Lexington, Hazard and Whitesburg. It was a separate company, but ties remained close. Brother A.F. Dawahare, who retired as Dawahare’s CEO in 2001, now runs Hoover’s, which remains in business.

”My uncles, especially, could not and still do not separate the business and the family,“ Harding said. ”Our generation has tried a little bit more to separate the two. Even though they’re intertwined, we try to run the business like a business and the family as the family.“

There was tension when some younger Dawahares wanted to pursue other passions. They left for careers as a caterer, a hedge-fund manager and a foreign correspondent, among other things.

”My uncles would say if you were leaving the business, you were leaving the family,“ Harding said. ”And we would say, no, you’re still in the family, you just choose not to be in the business.“

Richard, 53, studied to be a lawyer. ”My dad just said, “Do whatever you want to in life, but you’re crazy if you don’t take advantage of this opportunity“ to be part of the business, he said.

Richard passed the bar, but his first job offer came from Macy’s in Kansas City. He soon realized that retailing was his passion after all.

”I came back because I love my cousins,“ he said. ”And I love the uncles first. They were like Santa Claus my whole life. Not just giving stuff, but it was fun. It’s impossible to overstate how much joy there was my whole life around the uncles.“

Said Harding: ”The cousins all grew up like brothers and sisters.“

The Dawahares have always been an opinionated, outspoken bunch.

”Fighting internally about the business is not a bad thing,“ Harding said. ”It’s a good thing for people to try to get their point of view expressed and out on the table. For the most part, we’ve always fought with each other from a position of respect, most of the time.“

Even last week, the darkest of times, there was affectionate humor to break the tension.

Joe Dawahare joined the interview late, and he was introduced as the corporate attorney, secretary and treasurer. ”So, really, this is all his fault,“ Harding quipped. Everyone laughed except Joe, who didn’t catch the remark. ”What did you say?“

At another point, Richard was waxing poetically about the company’s emphasis on customer satisfaction. ”We never would let a customer down. Never!“ he said.

”Well, I did once,“ Harding deadpanned.

More laughter.

What went wrong?

Hindsight and regrets are inevitable. For example: not making the successful Cat Bird Seat stores, which sell University of Kentucky and University of Louisville branded merchandise, a separate company.

But it’s a miracle Dawahare’s Inc. lasted as long as it did. Most family-owned retailers were out of business by the 1980s. In the past few months, the softening economy has taken down other retailers such as Goody’s Family Clothing.

Dawahare’s always survived by knowing its customers, serving small towns and finding niches that set it apart from competitors. ”We had some good merchandising skills that kept us competitive with the best of the best,“ Harding said.

But challenges kept coming. Clothing prices have been flat for a decade, yet wages and other business costs continued to rise. National chains were able to buy goods cheaper than Dawahare’s, further squeezing its profit margins.

Take, for example, designer Tommy Hilfiger’s popular clothing. ”When Tommy was hot and people wanted it, there was only one place to get it in the small towns, and that was us,“ Harding said. Then, late last year, Hilfiger eliminated two lines and signed an exclusive deal with Macy’s. Suddenly, $5 million in sales became zero.

The potential for growth in small towns is limited. And it didn’t always help that Dawahare’s sold clothes for all ages. Big competitors could focus on niches, such as young people, and market more effectively to them.

”We had a core base of customers who loved us,“ Harding said. ”We just could not grow our market share.

”We actually did have a plan in place that would have shown profitability this year,“ he said. ”We eliminated one-third of our corporate overhead, and we cut another 10 percent out of store payroll and other expenses. But the cash flow wasn’t there“ to quickly repay $5 million in debt to Fifth Third Bank.

”I have to say that Fifth Third has been a great partner,“ Harding said. ”They’ve worked with us over the last two years. It’s not their fault that we’re in this situation; it’s our fault.“

Saying goodbye

What’s next for the Dawahare family?

”I think most of us are looking for jobs,“ Harding said.

There are thoughts about trying to buy some of the stores out of bankruptcy. Richard mused about running stores as community co-ops. Harding rolled his eyes. ”Don’t associate my name with that,“ he said.

Amid the sadness, there is also guilt. Justified or not, there’s no escaping it.

”You feel like you let your family down, you let the employees down,“ Harding said, noting that 500 people will soon be without jobs.

”We tried hard, we worked hard. We never ran a business where the owners went and played while everyone else worked. We all had jobs with responsibilities, and we showed up every day to do them. But there’s always the sense that we didn’t get it done, we let the rest of the family down. That’s always in the back of your head.“

Also in the back of their heads, they knew that few family businesses survive the second generation. By the third and fourth generations, they’re on borrowed time, especially in an industry that has been turned on its head.

”I think it’s hardest to know that we’re not going out on our terms,“ said Serur Dawahare, 44, one of youngest of the third generation. He has spent a lot of time recently writing recommendation letters for employees seeking new jobs and scanning the newspaper for opportunities that might be good for them.

Dawahare’s ownership was divided among 39 family shareholders, most of whom didn’t work in the company. The stock never paid dividends. But now it’s gone.

”The family has been great,“ Richard said. ”They haven’t blamed those of us working here. If I were in their shoes, I might be tempted to.“

”We have a good family,“ Harding said softly.

Then Richard turned philosophical: ”It’s tempting to visualize my late father and grandparents and uncles and aunts in heaven, looking down and wondering …. It’s too easy to be negative and say they would be so ashamed. But I do not feel that way! I know that in their hearts they know we did what we could to make it work.“

Harding shifted the conversation back to earthly matters.

”I would thank every employee who ever worked for us, every customer who ever shopped with us, every family member who put their heart and soul into this thing,“ he said. ”We had a good run.“

Time capsule holds potluck of memories

Nothing makes you feel old like watching a time capsule being opened – and remembering the day it was sealed.

I was 7 years old on that Sunday – Jan. 9, 1966 – and Southern Hills Methodist Church was dedicating its new sanctuary on Harrodsburg Road at what was then the edge of town.

We all gathered near the main door and watched as a copper box was cemented behind a cornerstone engraved ”1965.“ (Construction always takes longer than planned.) My parents told me the box was a ”time capsule“ that would be opened someday in the future, and people would look at the things inside and see who we were.

A few years earlier, as a wave of growth and development swept across the farmland south of Lexington, Methodist leaders decided they needed a church there. Southern Hills was started in 1959 by a few dozen families, including mine, and a dynamic young minister, Don Herren.

The congregation met in the old Picadome School until a church building was ready two years later. A little more than a year after the futuristic-looking sanctuary was completed, Southern Hills had more than 1,000 members.

Last Sunday, Southern Hills United Methodist Church began a yearlong celebration of its 50th anniversary. I don’t get back there very often. During the 22 years I was away from Lexington, I became active in another denomination.

When I arrived for the celebration service, I didn’t know the time capsule would be opened. All my parents had said was that the Tuttle family was barbecuing chicken for a dinner afterward. That’s all they needed to say.

Monthly potluck dinners were a staple at Southern Hills. But the serious food was reserved for one Sunday each summer when John Tuttle and the men of the church barbecued hundreds and hundreds of chickens and served them with baked beans and cole slaw. The sermon always seemed to go faster that day as the smoky aroma drifted in through the air-conditioning vents.

Tuttle was a poultry specialist at the University of Kentucky’s College of Agriculture, and he was always looking for ways to promote chicken. Like Colonel Sanders, he developed his own special blend of herbs and spices. He died years ago, but his children still have a company make up the sauce mix in bulk. Every few years, my father and I buy a five-pound bag.

Tuttle’s son and two daughters, dressed in special aprons embroidered for the occasion, were cooking away outside when I found a pew with my parents and read in the bulletin that the time capsule would be opened.

With help from Wiley Finney, a charter member well into his 90s, the Rev. Bill Moore carefully removed the box’s contents for everyone to see. There was a membership roster, other church documents and a photo of the sanctuary’s groundbreaking ceremony in 1964. Finney remarked that one man in the picture had died the previous week.

Herren, who served three terms as a Fayette County school board member and chairman, died in 2004. His wife, Pat, a music professor who always sang in the choir, was honored with a bouquet of roses.

The capsule held a complete copy of the Lexington Herald of Jan. 7, 1966, and several clippings of Herald and Leader stories and photos marking early milestones in the church’s life. I’ve always found it interesting that the simplest things we put in the newspaper will be clipped, saved and cherished.

It was fun seeing the time capsule opened. But as I looked around the sanctuary, the whole place seemed like a time capsule, reflecting both my life and the transformation of Lexington over the past half-century.

Seated in the pews were several of my old friends and their children, and many more of their parents – my old Sunday school teachers and Boy Scout leaders. So many familiar faces. In my mind’s eye, I still see many of them as the young UK professors, IBM engineers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, builders, teachers and salesmen whose labors and dreams would help make Lexington the city it has become.

It is moments like that when you realize a church is more than a building or a place to worship. It is a community built on faith, fellowship, dreams – and, if you’re lucky, great barbecued chicken.