Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: November 1, 1942– Larry Claxton Flynt, Jr.

Image from www.freeinfosociety.com

From The Kentucky Encyclopedia -
Larry Claxton Flynt, nightclub owner and magazine publisher, was born November 1, 1942, near Salyersville in Magoffin County, Kentucky, the son of Larry Claxton and Edith (Arnett) Flynt. He attended public schools in Salyersville, not going beyond grade school. He served in the army in 1958 and in the navy during 1959-64. He then worked in a General Motors factory in Dayton, Ohio.

Flynt's controversial career began in 1970 when he opened the first Hustler Club in Dayton, followed by others in the Ohio cities of Columbus, Toledo, Akron, and Cleveland in the next four years. These establishments mixed a nightclub atmosphere with striptease shows and simulated performance of sexual acts. In 1974 Flynt started Hustler, a men's magazine specializing in female nudity and scatological and sexual humor, and Chic, a similar magazine for women, both published in Los Angeles. The publication of these two magazines resulted many times in his arrest on obscenity charges. On March 6, 1978, after testifying in his own defense at a trial on such charges in Lawrenceville, Georgia, Flynt was the victim of an assassination attempt that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Flynt married Althea Leasure on August 21, 1976; they had four children: Tonya, Lisa, Teresa, and Larry Claxton III. Flynt's wife died on June 27, 1987.

Sources at UK Libraries:

Flynt, Larry., and Kenneth. Ross. An Unseemly Man. Los Angeles, CA: Dove : Distributed by Penguin, USA, 1996. Print.
PN4874.F54 A3 1996, Young Library - 5th Floor

Smolla, Rodney A. Jerry Falwell v. Larry Flynt : The First Amendment on Trial. New York: St. Martin's, 1988. Print.
KF228.F35 S65 1988, Law Library – Second Floor

Stone, Oliver., Janet. Yang, Michael. Hausman, Scott. Alexander, Larry. Karaszewski, Miloš. Forman, Woody. Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward. Norton, Columbia Pictures, Phoenix Pictures, and Columbia TriStar Home Video. The People vs. Larry Flynt. Culver City, Calif.: Columbia TriStar Home Video, 1997.
AV-D3074, Young Media Library

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: October 31, 1921 – Otis A. Singletary

 Image from www.uky.edu

From The Kentucky Encyclopedia –
Otis Arnold Singletary, Jr., historian and educator, was born October 31, 1921, in Gulfport, Mississippi, the son of Arnold and May Charlotte (Walker) Singletary. He was educated in the Gulfport public schools, at Millsaps College (B.A. 1947) in Jackson, Mississippi, and at Louisiana State University (M.A. 1949, Ph.D. 1954). He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy during both World War II and the Korean War.

In 1954 Singletary joined the history department of the University of Texas, where he taught and served in a number of administrative capacities. In 1961 he accepted the position of chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. During 1964-65, on leave from the university, he directed the Job Corps of the federal government's Office of Economic Opportunity. The following year he resigned from the university to become vice-president of the American Council on Education. In 1968 he left this post to become vice-chancellor for academic affairs of the University of Texas system. In 1969 he became president of the University of Kentucky.

Singletary assumed his presidential responsibilities during the turmoil kindled by the Vietnam War. His entire tenure was beset by ruinous inflation in the national economy, crippling stringency in the education budget, and unsettling vicissitudes in state politics. Yet he was able, through vision, purpose, and personality, to achieve impressive gains in both the physical and financial resources and the academic quality of the university. He retired from the presidency in 1987.

He was married on June 6, 1944, to Gloria Walton; they have three children: Bonnie, Scot, and Kendall Ann.

CHARLES P. ROLAND, Entry Author

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Birdwhistell, Terry L., and Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. Otis A. Singletary Oral History Project. 1987.
Special Collections Library - Oral History Collection

Singletary, Otis A., and Kenneth K. Bailey. The South in American History. 2d ed. Washington: Service Center for Teachers of History, 1965. Print. Publication (Service Center for Teachers of History) ; No.3.
016.975 Si646s, Special Collections Library

Singletary, Otis A. Negro Militia and Reconstruction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963. Print.
E668 .S59 1963, Special Collections Library

Birth Dates of Notorious Kentuckians: October 30, 1945 - Drew Thornton

Image from www.kentucky.com


From Wikipedia (Accessed October 26, 2016):
Andrew C. Thornton II (1945–1985) was a head member of "The Company", a drug smuggling ring in Kentucky. The son of Carter and Peggy Thornton of Threave Main Stud farm in southern Bourbon County, Kentucky. Thornton grew up living a privileged life in the Lexington, Kentucky area and attended the prestigious private Sayre School and the Iroquois Polo Club along with other Lexington blue bloods. He later transferred to Sewanee Military Academy and then joined the army as a paratrooper.[1] After quitting the army, he became a Lexington police officer[2] on the narcotics task force. He then attended the University of Kentucky Law School. During his tenure, he began smuggling.[3]

After resigning from the police in 1977, Thornton practiced law in Lexington.[1]

Four years later he was among 25 men accused in Fresno, California, in a theft of weapons from the China Lake Naval Weapons Center and of conspiring to smuggle 1,000 pounds of marijuana into the United States.[1] Thornton left California after pleading not guilty and was arrested as a fugitive in North Carolina, wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a pistol.[1]
He pleaded no contest in Fresno to a misdemeanor drug charge and the felony charges were dropped.[1] He was sentenced to six months in prison, fined $500, placed on probation for five years, and had his law license suspended.[1]

On a smuggling run from Colombia, having dumped packages of cocaine off near Blairsville, Georgia, Thornton jumped from his auto-piloted Cessna 404.[4] In the September 11, 1985 jump, he was caught in his parachute and ended up in a free fall to the ground. His dead body was found in the back yard of Knoxville, Tennessee resident Fred Myers.[5] The plane crashed over 60 miles away in Hayesville, North Carolina.[6] At the time of his death Thornton was wearing night vision goggles, a bulletproof vest, Gucci loafers, and a green army duffel bag containing approximately 40 kilos (88 lbs.) of cocaine valued at $15 million, $4,500 in cash, two gold Krugerrands, knives, and two pistols. Three months later, a dead black bear was found in the Chattahoochee National Forest that had apparently overdosed on cocaine dropped by Thornton.[7]

The story of Thornton was examined in Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justice and in Sally Denton's The Bluegrass Conspiracy.[8] Robert L. Williams, Cowboys Caravan, looks into the death of his son David, and his skydiving relationship with Thornton. Thornton was also detailed in a Discovery Channel double-length episode of The FBI Files named "Dangerous Company" in 2003.

His death also served as the inspiration for the story arc of season four of FX Network's Justified. The beginning of episode one features a flashback to 1983 in which a male falls to his death, parachute still attached, with bricks of cocaine scattered around his body. The bag that had carried the cocaine becomes the focus of a mystery roughly 30 years later.

Known associates

• Harold Brown, DEA agent
• Bradley F. Bryant, childhood friend and partner in "The Company"
• William Taulbee Canan, former Lexington police officer
• Dan Chandler, son of Kentucky Governor Albert Benjamin "Happy" Chandler, Sr.
• James Purdy Lambert, owner of Lexington's Library Lounge night club and friend and business associate of Governor John Y. Brown, Jr.
• Henry S. Vance, staff member of Governor John Y. Brown, Jr.
• Wallace McClure Kelly Also Known As "Mike Kelly" - associate in Lexington (now deceased)
• David "Cowboy" Williams, skydiver, good friend, alleged smuggler, died in plane crash, two weeks after Thornton.
• Rebecca Sharp, girlfriend and confidante of Andrew Thornton.
• Derrick W.James,A/K/A "Rex", associate in Fort Lauderdale, Fl., arrested in December, 1982, for selling "lookout list" of the federal government. The "lookout list" consisted of three possible routes from South America to the United States: between Mexico and Cuba, between Cuba and Haiti, and between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The documents at issue were marked "UNCLASSIFIED." After a guilty plea, he received a 10-year sentence for selling unclassified information. He served just under two years. He owned a transport business, called Cargo Dominica, which he operated from the Hotel Susserou in Roseau, Dominica.

References

 1.Cocaine-Carrying Chutist Was Ex-Policeman, Lawyer, Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1985, retrieved August 5, 2012

2. http://www.lfucg.com/police/index.asp

3. DeMott, John S. (1985-10-12), "Cocaine's Skydiving Smugglers", Time: 2

4. AP (1988-02-08), "Woman to Go on Trial As Smuggler's Helper", The New York Times: 1

5. "American Notes Drugs", Time, 1985-09-23: 1

6. National Transportation Safety Board (1985-09-11). "NTSB Accident Report Identification: ATL85LA273". NTSB. Retrieved 2007-02-17.
7. "'Bluegrass Conspiracy' tale never gets old". kentucky. Retrieved 2016-03-22.

8. "Cocaine and a Dead Bear", The New York Times, 1985-12-23: 1

9. Sally Denton, The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power Greed, Drugs and Murder, revised edition, Avon, 1990; Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2001.

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Denton, Sally. The Bluegrass Conspiracy : An inside Story of Power, Greed, and Murder. 1st Ed. in the United States of America.. ed. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Print.
HV5825 .D46 1990, Special Collections Research Center

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: October 30, 1881 – Elizabeth Madox Roberts

  

Image from en.wikipedia.org


From The Kentucky Encyclopedia –
Born on October 30, 1881, in Perryville, Kentucky, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, novelist and poet, was the second of eight children of Mary Elizabeth (Brent) and Simpson R. Roberts, both school teachers and descendants of Kentucky pioneers. In 1884 the family moved to Springfield in Washington County, where Simpson Roberts opened a grocery store and worked as a surveyor and engineer. From her father Roberts learned Greek and Roman mythology and heard reminiscences of the Civil War (he served with the Confederate Army).

As Springfield had no public schools, Roberts studied at the private Covington Institute; in 1896 she went to Covington to live with relatives of her mother while attending high school there. In 1900 she entered the University of Kentucky , but ill health and lack of funds forced her to leave. For the next ten years she taught at the family home in Springfield and in new public schools in the area, becoming familiar with the rural inhabitants, their vernacular, and their customs. Troubled by respiratory ailments, she spent long periods at a brother's home in Colorado, where she published In The Great Steep's Garden (1915), a collection of poems illustrated with photos of flowers by Kenneth Hartley.

In 1917 Roberts entered the University of Chicago, where she studied with Robert Morss Lovett and Edith Rickert; belonged to the University Poetry Club; and became a friend of Glenway Wescott, Yvor Winters, Vincent Sheean, Janet L. Lewis, and other writers, and an acquaintance of Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry. Roberts's poems appeared in Poetry, Atlantic Monthly, and other journals during her Chicago years. After graduating with honors in English in 1921, she returned to the family home in Springfield, where, never married, she spent most of her remaining life except for periodic stays with her sister in California and New York. Under The Tree, a collection of poems based on childhood memories, appeared in 1922; thereafter Roberts focused on writing fiction.

Roberts's first and finest novel, the time of man, was published in 1926 to international acclaim; it made Roberts, says William H. Slavick in introducing the reprint of 1982, "the first major novelist of the Southern renascence." Its psychological insights presage the work of Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty. Roberts viewed the "wandering tenant farmer" as a symbol of the human odyssey; her central character is Ellen Chesser, daughter of one such man and wife of another. Ellen toils and suffers until she realizes herself, "flowering out of stone." Comparable in quality to this first work is The Great Meadow (1930), which portrays life on the Kentucky frontier during the years of the American Revolution.

Roberts's other works include My Heart And My Flesh (1927); Jingling In The Wind (1928); A Buried Treasure (1931); The Haunted Mirror (1932), a collection of short stories; he sent forth a raven (1935); black is my true love's hair (1938); and Not By Strange Gods (1941), short stories. Song In The Meadow (1940) is a collection of her later poetry.

In the 1930s Roberts lost her readership and fell into relative obscurity, although she was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1940. Diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 1936, she suffered declining health and died in Orlando, Florida, on March 13, 1941, leaving an unfinished novel about the Louisville flood of 1937 and an unfinished epic poem about Daniel Boone . She was buried in Cemetery Hill in Springfield.

DAVID F. BURG, Entry Author

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Rovit, Earl H. Herald to Chaos. Lexington: U of Kentucky, 1960. Print.
PS3535.O172 Z8, Young Library - 5th Floor

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, Clare Leighton, Robert Penn Warren, and William H. Slavick. The Time of Man : A Novel. Lexington, Ky.: U of Kentucky, 1982. Print.
PS3535.O172 T560 1926, Young Library - 5th Floor

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox. Black Is My Truelove's Hair. New York: Viking, 1938. Print. SOLINET/ASERL Cooperative Microfilming Project (NEH PA-23510-00) ; SOL MN09129.05 KUK.
PS3535.O172 B650 1938, Young Library - 5th Floor

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: October 30, 1850 - Robert Burns Wilson

 Image from www.state-journal.com

From The Kentucky Encyclopedia –
Robert Burns Wilson, artist and poet, was born to Thomas M. and Elizabeth Anne (McLean) Wilson on October 30, 1850, near Parker, Pennsylvania. An orphan at the age of ten, Wilson lived with his grandparents in Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1871 he moved to Pittsburgh, where he studied art and shared a studio with John W. Alexander. After a year, Wilson moved to Louisville, where his drawings included a crayon portrait of Henry Watterson , editor of the Courier-Journal. In 1875 Wilson moved to Frankfort, Kentucky, where local residents were the subjects of most of his portraits, in oil, crayon, and charcoal. He reserved watercolor for Kentucky landscapes, many depicting the Kentucky River and Elkhorn Creek, among them The Land of the Sky, The Cedars of Culmer's Hill, and The Quiet Fields. Several of his Kentucky landscapes were well-received at both the 1883 Louisville and 1884 New Orleans exhibitions.

One of Wilson's poems, " When Evening Cometh On," was published in Harper's Magazine in 1885. He published three books of poetry: Life and Love (1887), Chant of a Woodland Spirit (1894), and The Shadows of the Trees (1898). Wilson wrote " Remember the Maine" shortly after the sinking of the battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor. The poem, set to music, brought instant acclaim to the author and became the U.S. battle song in the Spanish- American War.

Wilson married Anne Hendricks of Frankfort on March 4, 1901. They had one daughter, Elizabeth. The family moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1904, where Wilson believed his painting would have a wider audience. He died on March 31, 1916, in Brooklyn and was buried in the Frankfort Cemetery. 

See
J. Winston Coleman, Jr., Robert Burns Wilson: Kentucky Painter, Novelist and Poet (Lexington, Ky., 1956).

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Coleman, J. Winston. Robert Burns Wilson : Kentucky Painter, Novelist, and Poet. Lexington, Ky.: Winburn, 1956. Print.
ND237.W74 C6, Fine Arts Library - Closed Stacks

Smith, Joshua Soule. Joshua Soule Smith Papers, 1865-1903. (1865). Print.
52M1, Special Collections Archives

Fox, John. Fox Family Papers, 1852-1962, 1852-1920 (bulk Dates) (1852). Print.
64M122, Special Collections Archives

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: October 29, 1923 – Georgia Davis Powers

  Image from www.uky.edu

From The Kentucky Encyclopedia –
Georgia (Montgomery) Davis Powers, civil rights leader and state senator, was born October 29, 1923, in Springfield, Washington County, Kentucky. She was the only daughter of the nine children of Ben and Frances (Walker) Montgomery. In Louisville she attended Virginia Avenue Elementary School (1929-34), Madison Junior High School (1934-37), Central High School (1937- 40), and Louisville Municipal College (1940-42).

From 1962 to 1967 Powers (as she has been known since her second marriage) served as campaign chairperson for candidates running for a variety of offices, including mayor of Louisville, governor of Kentucky, and the U.S. Congress. She was Kentucky chairperson for the Jesse L. Jackson presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988, and the first black woman to serve on the Jefferson County Democratic executive committee, beginning in 1964. Powers was one of the organizers of the Allied Organization for Civil Rights, which worked for passage of the statewide Public Accommodations and Fair Employment Law in 1964.

Powers was the first black woman to be elected to the Kentucky Senate, serving from January 1968 to January 1989 as a Democrat. As senator, she chaired two legislative committees: Health and Welfare (1970-76) and Labor and Industry (1978-88). Powers was also a member of the Cities Committee, Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee, and Rules Committee, as well as secretary of the Democratic caucus (1968-88). Throughout her Senate tenure, Powers championed blacks, women, children, the poor, and the handicapped. She sponsored or cosponsored an open housing law; a low-cost housing bill; a law to eliminate the identification of race from Kentucky operator's licenses; an amendment to the Kentucky Civil Rights Act to eliminate discrimination based on race, gender, or age; an equal opportunity law; the Equal Rights Amendment resolution; Displaced Homemaker's Law; and a law to increase the minimum wage in Kentucky.

Powers served on the University of Louisville board of overseers, the board of directors of the Kentucky Indiana Planning and Development Agency (KIPDA), and the governor's Desegregation of Higher Education Implementation Committee. In 1981 she helped lead the efforts to retain Kentucky State University as a four-year institution of higher learning, and in 1982-83 was a leader in the successful opposition in a referendum to merge Louisville and Jefferson County. In 1989 Powers received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Kentucky and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Louisville.

Powers was married to Norman F. Davis from 1943 to 1968; they have one son. She married James L. Powers in 1973.

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Powers, Georgia Davis. I Shared the Dream : The Pride, Passion, and Politics of the First Black Woman Senator from Kentucky. Far Hills, N.J.: New Horizon, 1995. Print.
F456.26.P68 A3 1995, Young Library - 4th Floor

Powers, Georgia Davis. Celia's Land : A Historical Novel. Louisville, Ky.: Goose Creek Pub., 2004. Print.
PS3616.O884 C35 2004, Special Collections Research Center

Kentucky Historical Society, and Kentucky Oral History Commission. Living the Story the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky. Frankfort, KY]: Kentucky Historical Society, 2001.
AV-V3226, Young Media Library

Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: October 29, 1912 – Joy Bale Boone

Image from exploreuk.uky.edu


From The Kentucky Encyclopedia –
Joy (Field) Bale Boone, poet, was born October 29, 1912, in Chicago to William Sydney and Edith (Overington) Field. She was educated at the Chicago Latin School and the Roycemore School for Girls in Evanston, Illinois. Boone has resided in Kentucky for more than half a century, principally in Elizabethtown (1937-75) and in Elkton. She was married to physician Shelby Garnett Bale from 1934 until his death in 1972; they were the parents of six children. In 1975 she married George Street Boone, an attorney, and moved to Elkton.

Boone began her literary career in Kentucky as a reviewer for the Louisville Courier-Journal in 1945. She edited two collections of Contemporary Kentucky Poets (1964, 1967). In 1964 she founded the literary magazine Approaches and served as its editor for eleven years. Since relinquishing the editorship to Wade Hall, she has served on the editorial board for the journal now known as Kentucky Poetry Review. Boone's long narrative poem The Storm's Eye: a Narrative in Verse Celebrating Cassius Marcellus Clay, Man of Freedom 1810-1903, was published in 1974 by the Kentucky Poetry Press, and was reprinted in the tenth anniversary issue of Approaches. Her Never Less Than Love was published in 1972. Individual poems have appeared in numerous poetry journals, and she is one of two Kentucky poets featured in the award-winning video Poetry: a Beginner's Guide, produced at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green .

For several years, Boone served as president of Friends of Kentucky Libraries . She has chaired the Robert Penn Warren Committee at Western Kentucky University since its inception in 1987. In 1990 she was appointed to the board of the Gaines Humanities Center at the University of Kentucky , and she chairs the endowment committee for the University Press of Kentucky. Boone's awards include the Distinguished Kentuckian Award from Kentucky Educational Television in 1974 and the Sullivan Award from the University of Kentucky in 1969.

MARY ELLEN MILLER, Entry Author

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Boone, Joy Bale. The Storm's Eye : A Narrative in Verse Celebrating Cassius Marcellus Clay, Man of Freedom, 1810-1903. Louisville: Kentucky Poetry, 1974. Print. Poets of Kentucky Ser. ; No. 7.
PS3552 .A452 S8, Young Library - 5th Floor

Boone, Joy Bale., and Friends of Kentucky Libraries. Contemporary Kentucky Poetry. Elizabethtown?: Friends of Kentucky Libraries, 1964. Print.
PS571.K4 C6 1964, Special Collections Research Center

Boone, Joy Bale. Even without Love : Poems. S.l.: S.n., 1992. Print.
PS3552.O644 E940 1992, Special Collections Research Center