Jefferson Davis’ life still holds lessons

He was born in a log cabin in Kentucky, grew up to be president and led his nation through a bitter Civil War.

No, not Abraham Lincoln.

The other guy: Jefferson Davis.

The 200th birthday of the only president of the Confederate States of America is Tuesday, and it will pass with little notice.

A few modest ceremonies and a historians’ symposium are planned this month, and there will be a festival next weekend at Davis’ hometown of Fairview in Todd County. That’s where a 351-foot concrete obelisk was built to his memory in the early 1900s by old men of the Lost Cause.

The commemorations are in stark contrast to the two-year national celebration that began in February to mark the bicentennial of Lincoln, who was born eight months later and 125 miles away, near Hodgenville in LaRue County.

Lincoln achieved mythic status after he died a martyr as the Civil War was ending. In the pantheon of American heroes, he’s right up there with George Washington.

Davis, on the other hand, is a man few now want to acknowledge, much less celebrate.

Before the Civil War, few would have predicted their fates.

Lincoln was homely and awkward. He educated himself while working as a frontier store clerk. His military career was modest. He married well by Lexington standards, but the Todds had little influence outside the Bluegrass.

After holding small political jobs, practicing law and serving in the Illinois legislature, Lincoln was elected to a single two-year term in Congress. He won the presidency in 1860 with not quite 40 percent of the vote in a four-way race that included John C. Breckinridge of Lexington. Lincoln was openly mocked, even by some in his own government. His emancipation of slaves was not a popular move.

Davis, on the other hand, was the handsome ideal of Southern manhood. He left Kentucky at an early age, as Lincoln did, but returned as the only Protestant pupil at a good Catholic school in Springfield. He studied at Transylvania, then one of the nation’s best colleges, before leaving Lexington to attend West Point.

He served twice in the military with distinction and married the daughter of his commander, the future President Zachary Taylor. She died of malaria three months after the wedding. He married well a second time, too, securing a comfortable place in Mississippi’s plantation aristocracy. He represented Mississippi in the U.S. House, served as secretary of war and was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Davis opposed secession, but when Mississippi left the union, he resigned his Senate seat and a month later was elected president of the Confederacy.

“In some ways, the elevation of Lincoln over Davis isn’t quite fair,” said Brian Dirck, a history professor at Anderson University in Indiana and author of Lincoln and Davis: Imagining America, 1809-1865.

“Jefferson Davis was a talented man; before 1860, most people would have said he was more talented than Abraham Lincoln,” he said. “There are many people who felt (Davis) would have made a good president of the United States before the war.”

Davis did a remarkable job of holding together a confederacy founded on the principle that states’ rights supersede those of a central government. Throughout the war, he was constantly sparring with state courts and legislatures.

“I doubt anyone else could have done a better job, given the circumstances,” Dirck said.

“But here’s the thing: He lost. And by that I mean not only did he lose the war, he lost the battle for the Confederacy’s legacy, as well. After the war, he told anybody who would listen that the Confederacy was not about defending slavery, but rather the Constitution and states’ rights. He wrote a book to that effect - a really long, tedious book, I might add - and for a while people believed him.”

The Confederacy, of course, was all about slavery; the South’s wealth depended on it. Jefferson Davis led the fight for slavery and ended up as the poster boy for the most evil social institution in American history.

Davis’ view that slavery “was established by decree of Almighty God … it is sanctioned in the Bible” was conventional wisdom in the South of his day, where slavery had existed for 250 years. People used Scripture then to defend slavery the way others would use it later to deny equal rights to women and gay people.

The United States is great because it is a nation of values, and high on that list of values is equal rights. We really believe that stuff about all people being created equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, our entire history has involved struggles to make those words reality. In many ways, we’re still working on it.

I’ve always been fascinated by historic figures such as Jefferson Davis, the man who stood for all of the popular things and is now pitied for it.

And it makes me wonder: When people look back on us a generation or a century or two from now, who will be our Jefferson Davises? Whom will people revere, and whom will they pity?

New Hope for Kentucky’s recovering addicts

Drew Thomas isn’t what most people visualize when they think of a homeless alcoholic and drug addict.

Captain of his high school football team, scholarship athlete at Eastern Kentucky University, semi-pro player in Arizona. On the outside, Thomas seemed to be successful.

Inside, he was a mess.

“I kind of always knew I had a problem,” he said. “But it took me a long time to come to the realization that I couldn’t control my addictions.”

Thomas, 31, began drinking in high school. He got hooked on painkillers after a knee injury, then took up crystal meth. He was dismissed from his semi-pro team after failing a random drug test.

Back in Kentucky, alcohol and drugs consumed his life. His parents kicked him out, then his girlfriend kicked him out.

Thomas ended up at the Hope Center’s emergency shelter and, last October, entered its addiction recovery program. His goal is to complete the center’s recovery program as 800 men and 300 women have done since 1996.

“They saved my life,” Thomas said of the shelter.

The Hope Center will be able to save many more lives now that it has the George Privett Recovery Center, a 96-bed facility at 250 W. Loudon Avenue. The center will greatly expand the men’s recovery program while freeing much-needed space at the shelter down the street.

The Hope Center also operates a 40-unit transitional apartment complex, a women’s recovery center and recovery programs for men and women at the Fayette County Detention Center.

Gov. Steve Beshear used the new building’s dedication Thursday to sign an executive order creating a task force to advise him on the Recovery Kentucky initiative.

After signing an executive order creating the Recovery Kentucky Task Force, Gov. Steve Beshear shakes hands with state Finance Secretary Jonathan Miller, who will be the task force’s vice chairman. Dr. George Privett stands at left beside John Y. Brown III. Photos/Tom Eblen

Recovery Kentucky is building 10 addiction treatment facilities around the state that will accommodate 1,000 people and use programs modeled after those at the Hope Center and The Healing Place in Louisville. But the new facilities will only begin to meet the demand.

“The numbers we deal with in Kentucky are staggering,” Beshear said.

Experts say that more than 375,000 Kentuckians need drug or alcohol treatment. But it is a good investment: for every $1 spent on treatment, $7 is saved in health care and criminal justice costs.

Recovery programs are key to the Hope Center’s mission, because more than 70 percent of the homeless men who come there are addicts.

The new building is named for Dr. George Privett, a Hope Center board member who owns Lexington Diagnostic Center. Privett is an active donor and volunteer in many local charity and arts organizations. Earlier this year, he received a humanitarian award from the Kentucky Conference for Community and Justice.

“There’s nothing that I can think of better to do in life than to give someone the tools to help him get out of the death spiral of addiction,” Privett told more than 200 people who attended the center’s dedication ceremony.

Privett gave $300,000 toward the center’s construction, but it was truly a community effort. Other private donations totaled $600,000; Lexmark gave the land; the Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati donated $1 million; Central Bank provided financial services; and construction was handled at cost by Barkham Inc., the non-profit unit of Ball Homes. That company’s founders, Don and Mira Ball, are big supporters of the 28-year-old Hope Center.

Many other Lexington individuals and businesses donated furniture, equipment and even art for the walls. The value of the finished facility is about $3.5 million.

Earlier this week, I got a tour from staff members Kolan Morelock and Walter May, who were obviously proud of the building and the programs it will house.

The recovery program takes in addicts from the Hope Center shelter as well as some who are released from prison or are referred by judges. More than six in 10 participants succeed.

The program requires individuals to take responsibility for their behavior - and be held accountable by their peers. Participants must go through Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous programs, and do the chores necessary to keep the center and shelter running. In later stages of recovery, they also must get outside jobs.

As men advance through the program, they will move to progressively nicer dormitory rooms at the new center. “It reinforces the idea that what I am doing is making my life better,” May said.

Drew Thomas, the former football player, still has a long way to go in his recovery. But he said the Hope Center’s impact on his life already has been profound.

“I know that my attitude has changed 100 percent,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of personal relationships back with my family. Through my addictions, I had harmed them, stole things from them, done a lot of bad things to them.”

Thomas said he has learned humility for the first time in his life, and he has found a relationship with God.

“It sounds corny, because when I first got here, to be honest with you, I was real skeptical about the whole deal,” he said. “But looking back today, I owe them my life.”

A ceremonial ribbon-cutting Thursday marked the opening of the Hope Center’s George Privett Recovery Center. From left, Luther Deaton of Central Bank, Mira and Don Ball of Ball Homes, Bonnie Quantrell, Hope Center Chair Randy Breeding, Gov. Steve Beshear and Cecil Dunn, the Hope Center’s executive director.

A bike wreck teaches educator some life lessons

Life can change in an instant.

Stu Silberman, superintendent of the Fayette County Public Schools, learned that lesson on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, Oct. 8, 2006.

He was on a leisurely bicycle ride with a friend among the horse farms of northern Fayette County. He was riding slow, probably too slow, making a left turn and trying to put a water bottle away when he lost his balance.

“The next thing I know, the front wheel is wobbling and that’s all I can remember,” he said. “Somehow or another, the bike flipped over and I landed on my right side.”

Silberman hit the road hard, breaking his collarbone, several ribs, a hand and, most seriously, shattering his hip joint. “Thank God I had my helmet on,” he said. “It cracked in three places.”

An ambulance rushed him to a hospital, where the next day he had the first of six surgeries. Over the next several weeks, his body would acquire an assortment of metal rods, plates and screws - and a serious staph infection, among other complications.

“My life completely changed on that day,” Silberman said. “There were two or three times at different points where I thought I was going to die.”

Silberman recently had what he hopes will be his last operation. Physically, he’s almost back to normal. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally and professionally, Silberman says he will never be the same. Like many people, he has found that a life-threatening event can also be life-changing - mostly for the better.

“The first thing I learned is that this is an extremely caring community,” said Silberman, a New Yorker who moved here from Owensboro in 2004 with ambitious goals for improving Lexington’s public schools.

“There were over 1,000 cards that were sent,” he said. “I didn’t know until much later how many prayer lists I was on at churches and temples all over the place.”

One of the most difficult adjustments Silberman has made since his recovery is that he no longer rides his bicycle outside, where he used to put in 1,000 miles a year.

“Boy, oh boy, do I miss it,” he said. “That was my combination hobby and exercise, my outlet, my everything.”

Silberman has given up outdoor cycling until retirement, which he expects to be at least seven years away.

“If I pop over, I could be back in the hospital,” he said. “If it happened again, I think the community would have a much different reaction to it, and it would be very difficult for me to explain. … I have a responsibility to this whole community, and I feel that.”

To compensate, Silberman rides his bicycle in his garage. It is hooked up to a high-tech stationary trainer and a laptop computer. The system measures his speed, heart rate and other vital statistics in addition to tracking mileage. An integrated video system shows him riding stages from the Tour de France as he pedals.

While he misses the open road, Silberman loves the high-tech gadgetry. He lost 25 pounds after the accident, but gained 35 back. He needs to work some of that off, plus stay in shape for a cycling trip to France he has planned for retirement.

A long road back

Silberman’s wife of 38 years, Kathy, was his constant caregiver through months of recovery from surgery and infection and the long, painful weeks of rehabilitation at Cardinal Hill Hospital.

“I think he makes time for things more now,” Kathy Silberman said. “The idea that you’re here today, and tomorrow you might not be.”

The Silbermans were active in their Owensboro church but were too busy for church after moving to Lexington. Silberman called the accident a “major wake-up call.” During his recovery, they found a new home at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church.

“There is no question that your faith is strengthened, because when you’re lying there in bed, that’s what you’re thinking about,” he said. “You’re doing a lot of praying. At least I did.”

Melissa Bacon, a school board member who belongs to the same church, said Silberman has become extremely active - leading a stewardship campaign and leadership classes.

“I think the accident definitely allowed him to reach out and depend on his faith,” Bacon said. “I also think he’s a little more sentimental, because he appreciates things more.”

Silberman said he no longer takes simple things, like being able to walk, for granted. He has new respect for doctors, nurses and other caregivers, as well as for disabled people.

“I’ve just become really thankful for lots of stuff,” he said. “Being able to step into the shower - it’s just part of a daily chore until you can’t do it. It really makes you think about what you’re doing today, because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”

Silberman remains hard-charging, arriving at the office by 7:30 a.m. and frequently attending school events in the evenings and on weekends. Before the accident, Silberman said, he would stay up half the night responding to

e-mail. Now, he tries to be in bed by 9 p.m. and rises at 4 a.m. to do e-mail.

“You know, I’m kind of a workaholic,” said Silberman, 56, who is in his 34th year as an educator.

Speeding up the clock

Silberman credits his staff with keeping things running smoothly during his recovery.

“This school district didn’t miss a beat,” he said. “I really think we got better while I was gone, which is what I would have expected them to do.”

Silberman thinks he has become “more grandfatherly” with his staff.

One reason may be that he became a grandfather eight months ago when one of his three daughters gave birth to a daughter, Allie. Silberman’s motto for the Fayette school system is “It’s about kids,” and you don’t have to be around him long to see he’s all about this one.

Silberman said his accident has led him to focus more time and attention on staff development, mentoring and leadership training. Plus, he plans to take his broken helmet around to elementary schools to talk about bicycle safety.

He is especially proud that six staff members over the course of his career have become superintendents.

“There’s this sense that you have to pass along those kinds of things because you may not be here tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t think about that all the time - that I might not be here tomorrow - but subconsciously what ends up happening is your sense of urgency, or your clock, speeds up.”

That sense of urgency has made him put even more pressure on himself and his staff to achieve the school district’s goals of raising test scores and improving student proficiency.

Silberman said his stamina is back.

He recalled that Cathy Fine, the principal at Glendover Elementary, took ballroom dancing lessons last year. At her school’s winter program, which Silberman attended, she and her dance school partner put on a show for the kids.

Silberman saw Fine again recently at a school district career fair. Suddenly, he said, he grabbed her by the hand, and they took a few spins around the room, much to everyone’s surprise.

“I wanted our people to see that I’m back, and I’m dancing.”

For sale: Hunter S. Thompson’s childhood home — bullet holes, Gates of Hell not included

The Realtor’s listing says it all: “Although the current children are perfectly normal - Hunter S. Thompson grew up here!”

That’s right, the Gonzo journalist’s childhood home in Louisville is for sale.

Thompson’s father, Jack, bought the two-story, stucco bungalow in the Cherokee Triangle for $4,100 in the winter of 1943. The asking price now for 2437 Ransdell Ave. is $435,000.

Thompson, who committed suicide in 2005 at age 67, is almost as famous for his wild drug- and alcohol-induced behavior as for his rambling, first-person narratives that became known as Gonzo Journalism. The Rolling Stone magazine correspondent and author of several books, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is perhaps most famous locally for his classic 1970 magazine story, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.

“There are 40 million stories about Hunter in the neighborhood, and they all center around this house,” said Sandy Gulick of Kentucky Select Properties, the listing agent.

“Jim Thompson, nine years younger, remembered his older brother as a wild man who terrorized their house,” author William McKeen writes in Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson, which will be published in July by W.W. Norton.

McKeen said Jim Thompson told him about an elaborate tableau of the Gates of Hell that his brother painted on his bedroom floor. “He kept a rug over it, but required little prompting to reveal it to visitors,” McKeen writes.

Unfortunately - or, perhaps, fortunately - the Gates of Hell were sanded off the floor years ago, said McKeen, who heads the journalism school at the University of Florida.

The bullet holes also have been patched, said Hunter Thompson’s childhood friend, Gerald Tyrrell.

“I was in the house with him when he took his .22 rifle and, by mistake, put a bullet through the bedroom floor,” Tyrrell, 69, said in an interview Wednesday.

“The bullet went through the china cabinet downstairs and missed a plate by not much. There was a shard of wood in the corner of the cabinet that was just hanging. His mother and grandmother were out of the house at the time, so we glued it back and nobody ever noticed.”

Tyrrell said he has fond memories of the house: “We went to Hunter’s house every day after school, or all day if there wasn’t school. All of the neighborhood kids were there.”

Thompson amassed a large army of lead soldiers in the basement, which they used to wage epic battles in the in fortifications they dug in the backyard. His bedroom was filled with books - he was always a voracious reader - and lots of mementoes, including a flag he swiped from the nearby golf course, Tyrrell said.

When Tyrrell was in high school, his father made him stop hanging out with Thompson, who by then was frequently in trouble with the law for a wide assortment of petty crimes. After serving 30 days in jail on a robbery charge, Thompson left Louisville for the Air Force and returned only occasionally.

The 2,600-square-foot bungalow has been owned for 21 years by Rick McDonough, an editor with The Courier-Journal.

“An awful lot of people drive by and snap pictures,” McDonough said. After Thompson’s suicide, several people knocked on his door to express their grief, and somebody even left a filter-tip cigar and flowers on the sidewalk.

“It’s a curiosity,” he said. “But I don’t know that anyone’s willing to pay a premium for it.”

Yellow Bikes return soon to downtown Lexington

Christopher Rowe is passionate about bikes. Most recently, yellow bikes.

Get up early this summer and you will see him on the streets of downtown Lexington, pedaling an old blue bicycle rigged with a rack made of plastic pipe so he can tow one or two yellow bikes behind him.

Rowe is wrangler-in-chief for Lexington’s Yellow Bike program, which will begin its second year next week. About five dozen bikes will be rolled out from winter storage and put back on downtown streets for public use.

Last year, yellow bikes were placed throughout downtown, available to anyone who paid $10 for a key to the cable locks that secured them. The idea was for keyholders to ride a bike downtown and then lock it up for the next person.

When the program began, critics predicted the bikes would all be stolen within weeks. But Rowe said fewer than 20 of the 80 bikes were lost or destroyed.

“We had the highest percentage of retention of any program we’ve ever heard of,” he said. “There are still a few floating around. I just recovered one the other day.”

Christopher Rowe, shown last October, used a bicycle to tow Yellow Bikes to new locations and take them off to repair. Photos/Tom Eblen

New bike rules

New rules will make the bikes more secure, but a little less convenient to borrow.

People who pay $10 (or who paid last year) will get an ID card they can use to borrow a bike at one of at least five downtown locations. Bikes will come with sturdy “U” locks to secure them when they’re not being ridden, and they must be returned within three hours.

The time limit is designed to keep Yellow Bikes from wandering beyond downtown. “But if you can pedal to Paris and back in three hours, go for it,” Rowe said.

To get an ID card, Yellow Bike members must give a credit card number to guarantee the $300 replacement cost if they lose a bike in their care. The Yellow Bike program will begin issuing ID cards Saturday.

Rowe, an Adair County native who has lived in Lexington since 2002, took the part-time wrangler’s job last year because he loved the idea of getting paid to ride his bike around town every day. He fixed flat tires and mechanical problems, moved bikes to where they were needed and rounded up strays.

When not on his bike, Rowe, 38, edits Kentucky Epidemiological Notes and Reports and writes fantasy and science-fiction stories. Author Stephen King, who edited the 2007 edition of Best American Short Stories, chose one of Rowe’s stories as among the nation’s 100 best last year.

Rowe is a big believer in the Yellow Bike program, which receives no government funding but is supported by the Downtown Lexington Corp., several developers and other sponsors.

To Rowe, cycling is more than a form of transportation: It’s a political statement.

“It’s good for the rider, good for the environment and good for the community, too,” he said.

Rowe said he watched people of all ages and walks of life use the yellow bikes last year. One evening during Gallery Hop, he saw a lady wearing a little black dress and heels pedaling one down Main Street.

Last year’s casualties

The Atlas utility bikes were designed for running errands in factories. They’re rugged and easy to ride — single speed, coaster brakes, fat tires for stability. But they have their limits.

A few, which he now refers to as “carcass bikes,” were found in such bad shape that they were good only for spare parts. Somebody gave one bike a new paint job — Wildcat blue. Another bike was found personalized in a south Lexington neighborhood.

“Some kid had written his name all over it in magic marker,” Rowe said. “I don’t think he’s going to be a very effective bike thief.”

Rowe said he spent much of his time last year searching for wayward bikes. They frequently ended up near the University of Kentucky campus — and as far away as Nicholasville.

A surprising number of missing bikes were found because of tips to the Yellow Bike Hotline — (859) 425-2008.

“One thing I’ve learned in terms of sociology reminds me of the legendary Old West attitude toward horse thieves,” Rowe said. “I’m here to tell you that if you take one of these yellow bikes and put it behind your house, your friends, your neighbors, your landlord, your girlfriend … they are looking for an opportunity to rat you out.”

This year, Rowe hopes to spend less time “scouring alleys for lost bicycles” and more time maintaining the bikes and doing community outreach.

Rowe credits part of the Yellow Bike program’s success to support from Mayor Jim Newberry, Vice Mayor Jim Gray and Urban County Council members who are trying to make Lexington a more bicycle-friendly city.

When cyclists staged a protest ride last year after state transportation crews ignored the city’s request to paint bike lanes on Vine Street after resurfacing, the vice mayor showed his support by riding along on a yellow bike.

“I was riding behind him,” Rowe said. “I noticed that, by coincidence, he was riding bike No. 2. I thought that was so funny.

“And, you know, I’ve never found bike No. 1; that’s one of the ones that’s missing,” he said with a laugh. “So, Jim Newberry, I’ve got my eye on you.”

BORROW A YELLOW BIKE

Beginning late next week, Yellow Bikes will be available for loan to program members at these five locations:

• High Street YMCA, 239 East High Street.
• Third Street Stuff, 257 North Limestone
• Pedal Power bicycle shop, corner of Upper and Maxwell streets.
• The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, Gratz Park, corner of Second and Market streets.
• Downtown Lexington Corp. offices, corner of South Limestone and Vine Street.

Other downtown businesses interested in sponsoring bikes or becoming loaner stations may contact the Yellow Bike program at (859) 425-2008 or www.lexingtonyellowbikes.com.
ID cards may be purchased for $10 at the Yellow Bike booths at Mayfest on Saturday in Gratz Park or the Peace and Global Citizenship Fair on Saturday at Bluegrass Community and Technical College’s Cooper Drive campus. They also may be purchased at the Downtown Lexington Corp. offices in the Phoenix Building at the corner of South Limestone and Vine Street.

Retirement track: Loving those green-jacket jobs

Albert P. Horrigan, a retired state district court judge, comes down from his home in Flint, Mich., twice a year to work as a doorman at Keeneland. Photos/Tom Eblen

Take a closer look sometime behind the smiles of all those green-jacketed ushers, greeters and doormen at Keeneland Race Course.

You never know who you might see.

In pre-retirement life, they were a judge, a restaurant owner, a corporate executive, a fire captain and even the University of Kentucky police officer who guarded Coach Adolph Rupp.

Now, during Keeneland’s April and October racing meets, they work long days for modest wages opening doors and helping people get where they need to be. Some move to Lexington for the privilege. And they seem to enjoy every minute of it.

“We used to come down here for long 3-B weekends,” said Albert P. Horrigan, a retired state district court judge from Flint, Mich. “You know — betting, bourbon and burgoo.”

On one trip, Horrigan asked an usher how he liked his job. The next meet, Horrigan was an usher, too. That was seven years ago. Now, twice a year, the judge rents an efficiency apartment for a month and moves to Lexington.

“My son thinks I’m nuts,” he said. “He figured it up and finally said, ‘You’re paying them to work here!’ I said, ‘Yea, but it’s a vacation.

“Every Irishman has a place in his heart for an acre of land and a horse,” Horrigan said. “We don’t have anything like this in Michigan.”

The judge is one of 179 members of the Keeneland Guest Services staff. More than 80 percent of them are retirees, and about 70 percent of them live in Central Kentucky. But a few come from as far away as Michigan and Florida. And most come back meet after meet, year after year.

“We want someone who’s here for the experience,” said Howard McKenzie, an IBM retiree who leads the staff. “If they’re here for the money, they’re in the wrong place.”

Ric Hodges, who ran a convenience store in Winston-Salem, N.C., drives over twice a year and books a room at an extended-stay motel so he can usher.

“I’m having a ball,” he said. “I love talking to people. I love to see the horses run.”

Charles Ellis spent 35 years with Ashland Inc., where he was senior tax manager and a corporate officer.

“I always told my wife that when I retired I wanted to get ‘one of those green-jacket jobs,’” he said. So, four months after he retired in 1998, he was working at Keeneland.

Ellis’ main job is handling the trophies and managing awards ceremonies for sponsored and stakes races.

“There are no unhappy people in the winner’s circle,” he said.

Other times, Ellis ushers and acts as the “fashion police” on corporate-box row. Along the way, he has met celebrities such as actress Ashley Judd, NASCAR driver Michael Waltrip and legendary horse owners Bob and Beverly Lewis.

Bill Rice, 78, came to work at Keeneland after he noticed his neighbor loved the job so much. Now, he says, it’s the most fun he’s had since he was a UK cheerleader and went to the Cotton and Sugar bowls with Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant and the team in the early 1950s.

Tony Williams, a retired Lexington firefighter, leads a five-member team whose fleet of wheelchairs helps older patrons get to and from their seats. He’s been working at Keeneland for 35 years.

“There’s no place like Keeneland,” he said.

Robert Stoudemire, 69, is quick to agree. He spent 30 years on the UK police force, including several as Rupp’s body guard at home games. He retired in 1994 and was working at Keeneland the next year.

“I just love the horses, the scene, the good people,” he said. “I just love talking to people.”

The toughest part of Stoudemire’s job is keeping the grandstand aisles clear. But even that’s not too hard.

“If people are losing money, they’ll sometimes get rowdy,” Stoudemire said. “But they finally calm down. Sometimes, they even come back and apologize.”

Robert Stoudemire, a retired UK police officer who used to guard Coach Adolph Rupp at home games, talks with Keeneland patron Joan Jaber of Newport at the track Thursday.

Above photos:

Howard McKenzie, left, who has headed Keeneland’s guest services team for 21 years, greets old friend James “Smitty” Smith, who was enjoying the races Thursday. Smith was maître d’ at Columbia Steak House in Lexington for many years.

Charles Ellis retired as a top corporate executive with Ashland Inc. in 1998 and started working at Keeneland the next year. He manages the trophies and presentations for stakes races.

Could Wal-Mart thinking improve healthcare?

Wal-Mart revolutionized the way we shop by making America’s retail trade system more cost-efficient. Could it do the same with our dysfunctional health care system?

That’s a big question being asked these days at the headquarters of the world’s largest retailer.

One of the bright minds trying to answer it belongs to Marcus Osborne, 32, a Transylvania University graduate from Frankfort.

The way Osborne and other Wal-Mart executives are thinking about that question has huge implications.

Rising health care costs stung Wal-Mart several years ago when critics pointed out that many of its workers were on public assistance because they didn’t have health insurance. Rather than keep trying to avoid rising healthcare costs, Wal-Mart decided to attack them.

The company revamped its insurance plans to cover more employees. The company says nearly 93 percent of its workers now have health insurance, more than half of them through Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart also began launching initiatives to cut health care costs for customers. It started selling hundreds of generic prescriptions for $4, forcing other retailers to do the same. It started a chain of in-store medical clinics, which it hopes to have in 400 stores by 2010. In those clinics, nurse practitioners from local hospitals will provide basic medical services, and Wal-Mart will design and manage the business systems behind them.

Those ventures could be just the beginning.

“We’re looking at things like how could we work with providers to increase productivity, increase efficiency,” said Osborne, who joined Wal-Mart last June and is now senior director of business development/healthcare.

Other initiatives that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott has talked about include contracting with other U.S. companies to help manage how they process and pay prescription claims. Wal-Mart also is promoting the use of electronic health records and prescriptions, which Scott says would improve quality and safety while driving down costs.

Fixing inefficiency

“I’m personally amazed by the sheer inefficiency in the (American health care) system,” Osborne said. “I’m amazed by the lack of transparency, particularly to the customer. With all the political, business and social rhetoric around the need for change in the health care industry, I’m just astounded how little change is occurring.”

Wal-Mart doesn’t seem to be looking for big profits in health care. Rather, it wants to protect its core business. If customers can spend less on health care, they’ll have more to spend on the zillions of products Wal-Mart stores sell.

The company is looking for market solutions to rising health care costs, as opposed to government solutions, which Osborne also knows something about. After graduating from Transylvania in 1996, he worked in the White House for Clinton adviser Ira Magaziner and his public policy team. The team was then working on Internet policy, having just flamed out in its controversial effort to reform health care.

“I learned a lot from their pain,” Osborne said.

After leaving the White House, Osborne worked as a corporate consultant and earned an MBA at Harvard University. What led him to Wal-Mart were the opportunities he saw in both the company’s huge size and its innovative corporate culture.

“It strikes me as one of the few entities around capable and willing to take the action necessary to deliver meaningful change,” Osborne said.

Wal-Mart has been successful — and often controversial — because it knows what it does well and how to make the most of it. It creates efficiencies by squeezing costs, streamlining systems and giving customers what they want at the cheapest possible price.

Osborne thinks the problem with American health care is that companies and whole industries profit by exploiting inefficiencies in the system. That leaves little incentive to make the system efficient.

Lessons for Kentucky

That sounds a lot like Kentucky, where some people have prospered for generations by exploiting the inefficiencies of a small state with 120 counties and even more school districts.

And it makes you wonder: What could Kentucky learn from Wal-Mart? What core strengths could Kentucky government and industry leverage to solve health care problems and maybe even grow the economy?

Osborne notes that parts of Kentucky have an excellent health care infrastructure, yet the state overall has huge problems with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, poor dental health and substance abuse.

“Are there opportunities in business to actually create solutions from a wellness point of view?” he wondered. “Is there some way to make a business out of engaging people to take action?”

As it happens, Osborne’s wife, Cara, is part of one such Kentucky effort.

The 28-year-old Grayson native, who graduated from Transylvania and earned a doctorate in public health from Harvard, works from their home in Arkansas as a professor in the distance learning program of Frontier Nursing Service. The Hyden-based service is one of the nation’s largest trainers of nurse practitioners and midwives.

Whatever Wal-Mart does has a big impact. It is Kentucky’s largest private employer, with nearly 32,000 workers at 99 stores and two distribution centers. Wal-Mart’s approaches also could serve as models for other Kentucky companies, as well as government agencies, non-profits and entrepreneurs.

Like Wal-Mart, Kentucky must face up to some tough issues it has always preferred to avoid. If we are ever to improve health care in Kentucky, we must squeeze out unnecessary costs, invest wisely and encourage creative thinking by our brightest minds — minds like the Osbornes, the Kentuckians who now live in Arkansas.

From Kentucky to India, with love

It’s a long journey from a childhood in the Kentucky governor’s mansion to a wedding in India, complete with elephants and a white horse to ride in on.

But that’s the path of sculptor Edward Breathitt III, 48, who last month took an Indian bride in an elaborate Hindu ceremony.

Breathitt, whose late father Edward “Ned” Breathitt Jr. was Kentucky’s governor from 1963-1967, met his wife Prachi, 22, in an art and book store where she worked when he was on vacation last year in New Delhi.

Don Mills of Lexington, who was the governor’s press secretary, was among about 20 family members and friends who came from Kentucky, California and Arizona to attend a week of wedding events that included hundreds of guests.

“I went to represent his father,” said Mills, who has remained close to the Breathitt family. “I’ve been to a lot of weddings, but never one like this.”

Festivities began March 9 with a ceremony where the bride and groom exchanged rings. Breathitt arrived riding a ceremonial elephant. That evening, the bride’s older sister was married. (By tradition, she had to be married before her younger sister, Mills said.)

Breathitt’s wedding ceremony was on March 13 at a hotel in downtown New Delhi. Breathitt rode to the wedding on a white horse. Mills and others in the party rode in on three elephants, although Mills finished the journey on a white horse.

When Breathitt arrived, he was met at the door by his future inlaws and ushered into a room where he was surrounded by a group of men called pundits.

“Edward sat on the floor with them to participate in a prayerful ceremony,” Mills, a former editor of the Lexington Herald, wrote in an email the next day. “First of all, Edward’s feet were washed by his future father-in-law to cleanse sins of the past, as the pundits sat cross-legged, chanting ever-increasing rhythmic hymns. The ceremony covered a number of personal matters related to Breathitt, including his future prosperity, his religious thinking and what he hopes to contribute to the marriage and life in general.”

Breathitt, who was born in Hopkinsville, has lived and worked in Sedona, Ariz., and been an artist in residence at Murray State University. The bride is attending law school after earning an economics degree. The couple will live in New Delhi and a second home Breathitt renovated north of there in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Here are more details Mills sent the day after the wedding:

Prachi, his bride-to-be, entered the ballroom escorted by a number of Indian women, both young and old, including her mother. She joined Breathitt at the well-decorated, flowery stage to participate in the exchange of the garland, wrapping them together with a necklace-like arrangement of flowers. Then, countless photographs were taken of the sitting couple with just about everyone who attended the wedding coming to the stage.

The religious ceremony, including dinner but no liquor, went on for hours with one centered around a burning fire discussing seven vows for a happy marriage. Another one featured a marriage event, which took place in the 1800s between the Cherokee Indians. A special friend of Edward’s — Standing Bear, who knew the Hopkinsville native when he lived in Arizona — conducted the ceremony.

The evening ended with two events, both humorous and meaningful to the wedding. One involved dropping a ring into a bowl of water and flowers with Prachi catching the bouncing ring twice, meaning that she would be dominant in the marriage.

The other was the playful stealing of shoes worn by Edward by some young cousins of the bride. Breathitt’s sister, Linda, had to pay 5,500 rupees ($140) for their return. The wedding, finally, ended at about 2:30 a.m. It was a long and tiring day, which included an elephant ride to top it off.

Edward Breathitt III and his bride, Prachi Pratap, at the ring ceremony. Photo/Don Mills

Breathitt and wife at the wedding. Photo/Don Mills

Don Mills rides an elephant to the wedding. Photo/Albaelena Wejebe

Beshear: Politics getting in the way

Not to be outdone by Keeneland President Nick Nicholson, Gov. Steve Beshear had his own pithy introduction as the featured speaker at Lexington Forum’s meeting Thursday morning at Keeneland.

Beshear remarked on looking out over the beautiful Keeneland track, with horses going through their morning exercise. “It tells you two great, positive things,” he said. “One, is that spring is almost here. Two, the legislature’s almost ready to go home.”

Only about eight hours earlier, the General Assembly had approved a $19 billion state budget that makes almost nobody happy. In his remarks and in comments to reporters afterward, Beshear talked bout the budget, the legislature and the partisan bickering in Frankfort. Read Ryan Alessi’s report here on PolWatchers.

Then Beshear reflected on his view of Kentucky’s challenges and problems, partisan politics and his own political motivations and ambitions. Listen to a brief excerpt of his remarks by clicking the arrow below.

New Keeneland development? Don’t bet on it.

It was pouring early Thursday morning, and the forecast called for more rain Friday, when Keeneland will open its spring racing meet. But there never seems to be a cloud big enough to dim Nick Nicholson’s sense of humor.

The Keeneland president welcomed more than 100 members of Lexington Forum, the civic discussion group, to their April meeting in a dining room overlooking the track. Nicholson began by pointing out the wall of windows to the track and the beautiful countryside beyond. “We think what we need is a new 40-story tower out there,” he deadpanned.

Of course, there will be no CentrePointe at Keeneland. But it was good for a laugh.