My first zine, or what I did with my laidoff October.

1. Fleur la Libre
n u m b e r o n e
the passed on issue

2. Next to losing your income, the hardest part of being laid off –
with no real warning it was coming – is … oh, it’s a pop psychology
phrase from the world of relationships I hate to use but must: lack of
closure. No proper goodbye.
I worked 13 years at The Courier-Journal, during which I attended
many coming and going celebrations for coworkers, threw parties for
some myself, wrote up funny presentations for some of them. I can’t
count the times I stood in the middle of the newsroom as journalists,
copy editors, photographers -- professionals who had worked decades in
that deteriorating building at Sixth and Broadway -- retired amid well-
deserved fanfare. I also stood by at plentiful, awkward cake ceremonies
for passers-through who were leaving to pursue better opportunities.
Well, fuck some cake.
I had no opportunity to say goodbye to coworkers: no one wants
to be seen crying and in shock in the newsroom or to be the object of so
much pity. I also didn’t have a chance to officially say goodbye to the
funeral directors and other sources whom I’d gotten to know in so many
phone calls, who helped me, among other things, track down families
who might be willing to talk to me for a newspaper story at the worst
possible time.
There was no time to ease into the idea that my obituary writer
identity was being taken away. I wrote a lot of other things, but
obituaries were considered by most everyone to be my forte. I have a
knack for it, people have told me. I’m not bragging. Survivors and
friends told me I got some essence of the real person into those stories.
It’s as much a mystery to me as anyone how exactly that happened.
This zine is my personal goodbye letter to that obituary writer,
who remembers bits and pieces of all those stories and will always be
grateful for having been able to write them, for being trusted with them.
These are my personal reflections about a few randomly selected people
I often remember because I frequently see reminders of them and they
inspired me.
Most of these people had news obituaries published in The
Courier-Journal when they died and I've tried to attribute that
information accordingly. A few pieces are personal essays on the topics
of death and obituary writing.
-- Paula Burba

3. So I’m sitting here thinking I’ll probably take most of my
Room & Board
meetings here now and come here to do some writing from time to
time. I’m waiting for someone now to talk about possible business.
I’m facing the gigantic bulletin board by the front door. If
there is one there are 50 posters, flyers, photocopies and whatnot
tacked onto that bulletin board and taped around its perimeter. The
side of an adjacent soft drink cooler is almost covered, too. Most
notices don’t cover up the next one, but keep a respectable-though-
I’m not a regular at the original Highland Coffee. I’ve
thin distance so as not to block anyone else’s news.
been in a handful of times, interviewed and wrote about the
Everything interesting going on in this city must be
owners once and got more than one lead for newspaper stories
represented on that board. Some of it I’ve heard about and some of it
here, but I haven’t been in as patron often. They once had a
I haven’t. Nothing’s outdated: it’s by-and-large dedicated to the
downtown location close to the paper where I stopped in at least
possibilities of events still to come, not full of yesterday’s news.
once a day for a couple of years, but they closed that shop quite a
Mainstream stuff like “Avenue Q” at the Kentucky Center and
while ago. This original spot feels so much more intimate, like
“The Three Musketeers” by the Louisville Ballet have their big-
everyone else is a regular and I’m just a sitcom walk-on.
money posters tucked in amongst more modest flyers for hustle-for-
I’m not sure why I feel that way. The least condescending
it folks like the Alley Theater and the 23 String Band CD release
baristas anywhere, ever, work here. “Everyone welcome here”
party. Guitar lessons, boot camp, portraits, fundraisers for rescuing
vibes ooze from here. It’s reminiscent of the heyday of Haight-
pit bulls...
Ashbury or Greenwich Village, puts you in the mind of what you
I wrote newspaper stories in one way or another about at least
know about those places: flower children and punk rockers, folk
a quarter of the stuff on that board. I’m a civilian now, but I still see
singers and poets, Stonewallers and Black Panthers, meetings,
one blatant story up there begging to be written and at least half a
organizing, pushing change, the like -- even if, I imagine, it’s
dozen leads on other stories. Not my job to pitch them anymore.
cleaner and tidier here.
I’m just going to sit here and wait, contemplating a sheet of
I’ve been coming here more often since I was kicked off the
white paper with a an octopus sketched on it in black marker with
corporate grid. If there’s one thing that’s not overwhelming or
this message: “The guy who was teaching me how to draw an
obvious here, it’s any notion that corporations control anything
octopus died before we were done.”
that matters.

4. Phyllis Knight
I wrote an obituary for Phyllis Knight Gifford in October 2008,
but my conversation with her about her husband, Sam Gifford, when
he died in 2002 was one of my most memorable obituary conversations.
I could almost literally feel her charisma over the phone.
Phyllis Knight (her professional name) represented, to me, the
epitome of the golden age of media in Louisville. She told me a little
about it, too -- those glorious Bingham years I’ve heard so very much
about. She was at the television end of the Bingham empire at WHAS
and then, after a full career on-air, became the the first full-time
director of WHAS Crusade for Children.
Even though it was a golden age, women were still widely
regarded as second-rate journalists (at least from what I've gleaned)
except a few who just weren’t having it. I think she was one of them.
I was unaware how naive and uninformed I was when I spoke to
her, but I instinctively knew she was being gracious with me. I
remember thinking I’d give anything to sit down to lunch or coffee or
bourbon with her and listen to as many of the stories about those salad
days of local media as she could stand to tell -- the good and the bad.
She came to Louisville in 1955 and worked at WHAS radio before
moving to television, where she became Louisville's Oprah when
Oprah was still a toddler. Among the countless people she interviewed
were Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, Buster Keaton,
Minnie Pearl, Johnny Unitas, the Rev. Billy Graham and Ralph Bunche
(I had to look him up, add one more thing I learned because of Phyllis
Knight.).
Her Kentucky Derby coverage and hats were legend, but she also
reported on topics not discussed in polite society at the time, like
adoption, cervical cancer, sex education and mental illness. She had
depression and endured some publicity nightmares while ill. She made
a comeback after a seven-year struggle, boldly going public with her
own experience and reporting on the need for better mental health care.
As she told me about Sam Gifford's career at WHAS she
mentioned without reservation or skipping a beat that he was married
to someone else when they met, but they fell in love. They were
married 45 years. Taboo and scandal didn’t seem to phase her. "I was
always somewhat of a renegade," she told The Courier-Journal in a 1975
story. She was 81 when she died, a 1992 inductee into the Kentucky
Journalism Hall of Fame and 1999 inductee into the Jefferson County
Office for Women's Hall of Fame.

5. The Flock of Finns at Waterfront Park always reminds me that
"I thought everybody had an
even though he was a celebrated folk artist with an impressive roster
idea. I've got ideas I haven't even
of collectors, 89-year-old Marvin Finn was not wealthy when he died
turned loose yet," he said in that
in January 2007.
story.
It wasn’t because Finn mismanaged money or was necessarily
He first sold his work yard-
exploited by the art world. He just didn’t seem to care about money.
sale style in front of his apartment
“Money isn't everything,” a retired Finn said in one interview
in the old Clarksdale housing
for The Courier-Journal. “I could care less about it. Like I said, I
project and later at a hobby show.
don't do this to make a living or nothing. I just like to meet people
Even after he was “discovered” by
who enjoy my work."
the local art world proper, Finn still
He was born poor in Alabama, grew up poor, and as a young
sold his pieces for beyond modest
man followed an older brother to Louisville, where he married and
amounts -- reportedly in the ballpark of $15 to $60. This spring The
had five children. His wife Helen died in 1966 and he raised their
Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, where Finn’s work has been
children by working whatever jobs he could get with no formal
featured since the museum opened, raffled one of Finn’s signature
education -- on barges, in construction, at gas stations.
roosters. The piece was valued at $2,500. Raffle tickets were $20 each.
But he was far from uneducated. When he wasn’t working in
I will eternally be in awe of Finn’s imagination and his distaste
fields as a child, he was watching his father, a sharecropper, carve
for greed to the end.
and whittle wood and build things out of whatever was on hand.
And I’ll always be proud of Louisville for doing something so
Finn made toys for his children as his own father had done for him;
honorable and imaginative as installing the Flock of Finns at
elaborate toys like doll mansions and construction machinery that
Waterfront Park before Marvin Finn passed away.
moved, all built from materials like clothespins, popsicle sticks and
I hope he
thread spools and painted with whatever leftover paint people gave
enjoyed that bit of
to him.
recognition and
At some point he branched out into bigger, more imaginative
appreciation. I hope it
projects. He once described his creative method to The Courier-
was more meaningful
Journal: "I always have in my mind how I'm going to make a thing
to him than cold, hard
look, and when I get it done, that's how it looks. ... I have a different
cash. I hope he knew
imagination every time I start doing something.”
how high he set the
Flock of Finns
bar for folk art
around here.

6. Andrea Pecchioni
its 10th season there in 1988 and eventually had two theater spaces and offices
there until it became too expensive to maintain. They sold the building to KDF
in 1995. She resigned the next year and KCT soon folded.
I’ve never been inside that building, but I imagine much evidence of her
heart and ambition and vision has faded by now. I secretly hope not.
Andrea Pecchioni died of cancer in February 2003 when she was just 58
years old. She moved here in 1978 and worked as a reporter at WHAS for a bit.
She performed at Actors Theatre in at least one of the early Humana Festival
plays, as well as working in the subscriptions department. She was acting in
Shakespeare in the Park when she got the idea to start KCT. I imagine she loved
acting in Central Park: she struck me as the epitome of an Old Louisvillian. I
think like many who live in that neighborhood, she wasn’t a native Louisvillian.
I remember she lived on Ouerbacker Court because it was the first time I’d ever
heard of it. Her daughters made it sound like an inviting, near-magical place.
I remember meeting her daughters, who came to The Courier-Journal and
Every time I see “Kentucky Derby Festival, Inc.” on the
talked to me about her in the lobby. They must have been there to drop off her
front of this building, I think of local theater matriarch Andrea
picture -- the majority of people didn’t have digital images they could email on
Pecchioni.
short notice back then and they’d either bring a picture to me or I’d send a
She started the Kentucky Contemporary Theatre and was
courier service to pick one up at their home.
its artistic director for 16 years. The company was reportedly the
I quoted one of her daughters in the CJ obit: “That theater really didn't run
first modern alternative theater company in Louisville,
on money. It ran on her heart.”
presenting such avant-garde work that an alderman (precursor to
Pecchioni herself once described her vision to the newspaper as this: "My
Metro Council representatives) tried to shut down one
feeling is that a theater makes its mark in the world not by doing works that are
production.
done by other companies, but by doing works that will soon be done by other
This was a woman after my own heart.
companies."
She raised a quarter of a million dollars from investors –
I hope the history of KCT survives somewhere in Louisville. That
who does that? – to buy that building, which had last been a used
building, sometimes literally and sometimes more subconsciously, makes me
car dealership, and renovate it into theater space. KCT opened
cheer for her and then it breaks my heart every time I pass it.

7. Baryshnikov married Big on “Sex and the City,” and who probably really did
hang out at Studio 54). Harlowe Dean supposedly talked the iconic
ballet dancer into accepting a thoroughbred as payment, instead of
was here. cash, for the big Memorial Auditorium show. The show sold out
and has been cited as a turning point for ballet in Louisville.
I suppose we have iconic performers who come to Louisville
now, but it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to see
Baryshnikov perform here, in that building with a dedication
plaque outside that (still) says “The World War.”
xoxo, I remember talking to Bill Mootz, long-time arts critic for The
Courier-Journal, when I was writing Dean’s obituary. He knew
everything about the arts here, it seemed, and vividly remembered
Harlowe Dean
hanging out (or some classier, artier term for “hanging out”) with
Baryshnikov and Dean the night of that performance. Mootz
remembered who attended the party and what they were drinking.
Mootz died just a couple of months after I talked to him for Dean’s
Every time I pass Memorial Auditorium, I think of two things: the obituary, but one of his successors wrote his obituary instead of
me.
one time I’ve been inside it for an Ani DiFranco concert (so long ago I
Baryshnikov was here in the 1970s but Dean was here to stay.
don’t want to think about the number of years and why I couldn’t begin
After leaving the staff of the Louisville Ballet, he started HBA Ltd.,
to remember what it looks like inside) … and the time Mikhail which brought acts like the Peking Opera and Isaac Stern and the
Baryshnikov came to dance in Louisville. Vienna Boys Choir to perform in Louisville.
Baryshnikov came to Louisville because of Harlowe Dean, who had He lost his hearing in
found his way here to lead some of the city’s big arts groups. He the last few years of his
managed the Louisville Orchestra and was an officer of Music Theatre life. His daughter told
me he was even more
Louisville and then became general manager of the Louisville Ballet. He
appreciative of the
even performed with the Kentucky Opera once. ballet during those
He was a voice instructor, a native of Michigan who studied at the years, as a vehicle for
University of Kentucky and then spent 40 years in New York where he him to continue
was a behind-the-scenes kind of guy in the entertainment industry. experiencing the fine
arts. He died in May
Those New York connections facilitated that performance by
2006 at age 89.
Baryshnikov (yes, the one who played Carrie's last boyfriend before she

8. In addition to its convenient spot downtown, the building was
Madame
owned by attorney Larry Jones. I did write an obituary about Jones.
He built his own theater upstairs from the restaurant, Squirrelley's
Tea Room, where he regularly performed. I remember him, too: a
charming lawyer who loved to entertain with magic, by all accounts.
Zelda
A gracious, no-
nonsense lady,
Madame Zelda
summed up her
palm-reading career
to me about a year
before she died: “It's
been really very
interesting, because
Passing Bearno's by the Bridge, I often remember Shirley A.
we're all after the
Drake, better known to many as Madame Zelda.
same thing--love and
She died in August 2008, but her obituary in The Courier- money and money
Journal made no mention of her intriguing careers – only one of and love. ... We all
which was reading palms in her gypsy-decor alcove of restaurants want our lives to be
occupying that space at Second and Main streets. (Neither did it running smoothly. ...
mention her age. "I'm like my mother. ... She always thought a lady I've had some funny
didn't tell her age. ... I'm old, let's put it that way," she once told me experiences in
during an interview.) there. ... Dealing with
I wouldn't have known she died if a friend of hers hadn't the public, it's just...
called and told me. I didn't write an obituary about Madame Zelda, sometimes it's funny
but I once did a memorable interview with her for a business piece. and sometimes it's
Before she was Madame Zelda, she told me, she'd done sad. But mostly I
commercials, have really happy
theater and voice- memories."
over work. There I remember having my palm read by Madame Zelda three times. The
on the site of the first time I had just moved to Louisville and wouldn't even get a job at the
original Galt CJ for several more years. The second time was, I think, a few years later,
House, she'd read during a party. The third time, I wrote down every bit I could remember of
the palms of many what she'd told me as soon as I got back to my table in the restaurant. It
attorney, judge and was the summer of 2007. She said lines in my left hand indicated
prosecutor types everything converging, but not connected. I'd come into more money, she
who frequented the said, and noted my tendency to be guarded about money comes from
old Timothy's and childhood. She said she saw a big, sweeping move, very good move, in the
then Bearno's. next 10 or so years. She said I'll win awards and find success with writing.

9. Death Becomes Her I don’t “see dead people,” but I do remember them. All the
time, everywhere.
I wrote obituaries for years. Many, many years. There’s one corner on Main Street where three stories converge.
A lot of people think: what an interesting occupation. Other I see places for things that once happened there, routinely look for
people think: what special kind of touched or stupid is she for them: sidewalk spots where civil rights leaders picketed for
stalling out so low on the journalism ladder? integration of now-disappeared movie theaters; abandoned,
Most people will never have to cold-call someone rife with downtown, family-owned department stores; stages in upstairs lofts
grief, quiz them about someone beloved who isn’t yet resting in the where theaters started; schools and churches where teachers and
cold, hard ground or returned to dust and ashes. preachers impressed those who grew up to preach and teach more,
It was almost 20 years ago the first time I called a brand-new again. Passing hospitals I think of doctors, professors, scientists who
widow. Her husband dropped dead that morning of a heart attack. left research to help cure what killed them. I look for evidence of old
An editor wanted a specific date I did not know (it was pre-Internet clubs where the single mother welder sang torch songs some nights.
journalism). I couldn’t afford to, but I would rather have been fired Painters, dancers, writers, poets, photographers – art
than call this woman that day, asking newspaper-story questions. makers with gusto and prophecies and legacies: they stay with
I protested, stalled. I finally had to make the call, hoping she me. I’m agnostic at best, but nuns have blessed me and I don’t
would not pick up. mind it.
She picked up. She graciously answered questions. Sometimes I was struck speechless, a knot stuck in my throat
I’ve made such phone calls hundreds of times since, written hearing a widow say “forgive me” for not controlling sobs while
probably a thousand obits. describing her husband, a Pearl Harbor survivor dead of pneumonia
I tried to do other things, outside newspapers, a couple of on their return from volunteering at Ground Zero, or a mother in
times. tears proudly describing her long-ill 9-year-old son’s bravery and
There’s a cliché in the newspaper business about ink getting dignity. Men, too, ask for moments to compose themselves, talking
in your blood. I don’t know about ink, but life stories are in my about those they loved.
blood now. Writing them is like second nature — but never routine. I have heard so many stories, been witness to the finish of so
The panic of making that phone call never goes all the way away many lives. I’ve adopted philosophies from some – simple, graceful
and the absurdity of summing up a life, or just some facet of one, in things like “do not hate” and offer “peace and blessings.”
brief, tidy copy never stops being… absurd. I remain terrified of my own death.

10. assignment to cover Zimmerman and the Society for the
Arts. (That photographer was Alfred Eisenstaedt, who
shot the iconic “V-J Day in Times Square” photo of the
sailor kissing a nurse, as well as 90 cover shots for Life.)
In 1958 the Arts in Louisville House opened on
Zane Street at Garvin in the former home of the old
Louisville Athletic Club. (The enormous building burned
l e o z i m m e r m a n to the ground in May 1969.)
This art house had a theater, art galleries, music
I’ve heard and read about many long-gone arts groups, but Leo room, library, restaurant and wine cellar/bar. The jazz
Zimmerman’s Society for the Arts might be the one that most captured my concerts were legendary (Dizzy Gillespie performed
imagination and envy. there) and as a private club it was racially integrated
Zimmerman was an abstract painter. A Male graduate, he got an art years ahead of the city at large.
degree at UK after World War II -- during which he served in the Army The society broke up in 1963, due to “staff cultural
Medical Corps (he'd planned to become a doctor like his father) and spent exhaustion,” according to an entry in “The Encyclopedia
of Louisville” Zimmerman wrote himself. After that he
some time in France, where he studied painting. He entered an art contest
stepped back from the public arts scene.
when he got home after the war and won first prize -- enough money to
He worked as a facilities manager at the Louisville
get him back to Paris where he continued studying and producing art. He Free Public Library for a little over a decade and
and a friend partially funded their life in Paris by selling popcorn – somewhere along the way in the 1950s had invented the
apparently an unfamiliar concept to Parisians at the time. Silicoil Brush Cleaning System, materials and a method
Back home in Louisville to stay, in 1953 he opened the Carriage to clean paint brushes without damaging them that’s still
House Art Supply Store on Fifth Street. Literally a carriage house, he had around today. Meanwhile, he hadn't stopped producing
a gallery in the former hayloft and offered art lessons to the public. Also art.
using the space was a theater group led by C. Douglas Ramey, who would With his “Rural-Mural” and conventional oil on
later found the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival (Shakespeare in the Park). canvas days mostly behind him, in the last quarter of his
In 1955, Zimmerman founded the Society for the Arts, a nonprofit life Zimmerman created his Sluball and Slu Cube
that published an arts magazine in several incarnations – beginning as paintings (best seen and not described). These involved
“Arts in Louisville Magazine,” then “The Louisvillian” and then a shorter paintings rigged to present optical illusions with circles
biweekly “Gazette of the Arts in Louisville.” In a couple of years they and cubes. When he got an Apple computer, he set about
began sponsoring an arts festival. producing thousands of works now known as his “Apple
This group was so vibrant, avant-garde, successful, renowned, or all Art.”
of the above, that Life magazine sent a photographer to Louisville on Despite his shunning of the arts spotlight, a show
of his Sluball paintings was held in 1989 at the
University of Kentucky under the name Leo Wrye.
Zimmerman died in April 2008 in Louisville at age
83. A retrospective of his work was held this spring at the
Cressman Center on Market Street. The show was titled
“Return to Main Street,” reminiscent of his early “Main
Street Facade” prize-winning painting that financed his
return to Paris as a young artist after the war.

11. I knew very little about Catholicism when I moved to Louisville Institutum Divi Thomae in Cincinnati. Later in her life she wrote and
in 1995. As an outsider and a former Southern Baptist girl who once lectured about medical ethics.
felt called to be a preacher when she grew up, I always thought Her enduring legacy to Louisville history was serving as the last
Catholicism was ancient and regimental and way too complicated. president of her alma mater, the old Ursuline College. She led the
The fact that there was a celebrated holy man at the helm of it all women’s college through its final five years before it merged in 1968
didn’t win any points in my mind, either. I’d gotten full-up with with Bellarmine College (now the thriving Bellarmine University).
sexism in my own denomination. When she assumed the college presidency her vision was clear.
So how do you reconcile all that when you have to start writing She described it in a Courier-Journal story like this: “Here (in a
about beloved nuns and priests who made big contributions to this women’s college) they can realize their potentials of leadership and
city? Well, you have to open your mind. authority without encountering the psychological barrier that exists
Nuns may be a mystery or a funny Halloween costume to most when women at a coeducational school compete for office with men.”
people who aren’t Catholic, but my personal experience with them In hindsight, was that a feminist approach or the opposite of
(granted, a limited number) has been to be inspired by them. When a feminist? Archaic or progressive?
sister died, I would inevitably talk to other sisters from her religious No matter, it was the 1960s and enrollment was a little more
order, who seemed to me to be genuinely good-willed. Once I learned than half the number needed for the college to thrive, Seibert said in
a bit about what they’d done with their lives, I was awestruck. Case in Wade Hall’s “High Upon a Hill: A History of Bellarmine College.”
point: Sister M. Angelice Seibert. The college made the decision before their situation reached dire to
Sister Seibert was 82 when she died in October 2004. She’d been merge with Bellarmine.
an Ursuline Sister of Louisville for 64 years and was Mother For a while the school went by Bellarmine-Ursuline College, but
Superior/president of the order for most of the 1980s. Her entire life that lasted only three years before reverting back to just Bellarmine.
was centered around that Catholic compound on Lexington Road near I’m not Catholic, so I can say out loud: this fact has pissed me off -- if
the protestant seminaries. She’d graduated from the Ursuline only on behalf of Sister Seibert -- as typically patriarchal since I
Academy and earned her undergraduate degree from Ursuline found out about it.
College, then taught there herself. Some justice came about, however, in 1975 when Seibert was
She was a science scholar, earning doctoral degrees in the first woman in Bellarmine’s history to deliver the commencement
biochemstry and enzyme chemistry in the early 1950s from the address. Bellarmine awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1992 and
Sister M. Angelice Seibert
recognized her as president emeritus in 1995.
Pardon me, Sister Seibert, but it was about damn time.

12. turned out we’d met once before through another friend. I’ve
the
always been glad you talked me into taking that place. I lived the
hell out of life in that place, girl.
Apartment
I pass by your old house over this way more now, too, but
truthfully I try not to too often because I get so sad. But sometimes
I go by on purpose, just to keep remembering.
Remember us sitting on that porch drinking beer and
Girl, I pass that old apartment building sometimes now on
smoking cigarettes? Sometimes we’d pass a bottle of Southern
my way to a friend’s place — remember that apartment with the
Comfort, too. God, how the hell did we ever have so much to talk
crazy steep parking lot where Tony threw bricks through your
about? We never, ever ran out of shit to talk about. Remember that
window or some such bullshit stunt after you left him for good?
big-ass standing ashtray? It was like a fucking piece of furniture.
Ha — remember how we used to analyze and dissect every
We could fill that thing in one sitting.
stupid fucking thing every stupid fucking boy we were fucking
I wonder if we started to grow up after your baby. I guess a
did or said all the fucking time?
little. Remember how we pitched a blanket in your backyard and
Then I remember just steps up the hill is the apartment
still talked shit about fucking boys, but also stopped to watch the
where you lived when you really fell in love, head over heels
baby coo and smile, some crazy preemie miracle we couldn’t get
(and vice versa, we’d say). Love of your life.
over? Especially you.
I still like it how those two buildings are back-to-back.
Oh, you and your blissed-out joyful ass — so happy you
Last year I moved back to that neighborhood where I lived
made fun of your damn self. Your Gatlinburg shotgun wedding
when I really partied. Remember that apartment with Fort Knox
and your little bundle still make me smile sometimes. But fuck, I
gates? You had a hell of a time getting in to feed my cats while I
might not ever be able to look at one of those pea-pod Halloween
was on vacation and flipped out because my car got towed and I
baby costumes again, like you had already ordered and never got to
never thought to leave you keys to the goddamn car, too. How
see him wear. Those still make me cry.
the fuck were we supposed to know there’d be be street cleaning
You remember how I hate to cry in front of people, right?
that week? Stupid fucking city.
You, you always threatening to go all cheerleader bitch on me to
Remember the duplex you went with me to check out —
make me laugh.
the one sitting up that gigantic hill, with a red bedroom and
I still miss you.
orange living room and an off-street parking space? That girl
still living there let us in to look around and was so cool and

13. I lived in Clifton for about 10
years, a few of them on the street
across from Bussmann’s Bakery. I
Jim
never went to Bussmann’s, but it
was a landmark everyone from
Louisville seemed to know for the kuchens, doughnuts and pastries. I
Willoughby
learned the story of that little bakery when Konrad Bussman died in
April 2004 at age 74.
His family moved around Europe during World War II, as he
barber
studied and became a master baker, married and had two sons. He
immigrated to Louisville when he was 26, speaking no English, only
to discover the family members who’d sponsored him to America
shop
were sent abroad by the Army. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jim Willoughby in 2007 for a
A Louisville minister helped find him a place to stay and a job at profile about him and his barber shop in Germantown.
He ran that barber shop for exactly 50 years, according to the
a bakery where he worked until he opened his own shop at 1842
small sign in the window from which “Willoughby’s Barber Shop”
Frankfort Avenue, which he later moved to its current location at 1906 has recently been removed. Willoughby died last October at age 76.
Frankfort Avenue. He owned his bakery for four decades. He didn’t close the shop until about three weeks before he died.
I regretfully did not get to write an obituary for him. Now I
He closed Bussman's Bakery in 1996, but not until he was
drive past that empty shop on Oak Street all the time, making my
finished with all the Christmas baking for his regular customers. He way from Old Louisville to the Highlands, and remember him. He
sold the business in 1997, which continues under the Bussman name. was one of those people I could have interviewed all day, and did
talk with for much longer than I logically should have. I couldn’t
help myself.
He told me about how the weather was wreaking havoc on the
price of hay over in Southern Indiana and about riding his motorcycle
from Pekin to the shop, 60 miles round trip, and how he rode the
rodeo when he was young and liked to fly airplanes back when it was
an affordable hobby.
He’d finished the eighth grade in his native Crittenden County,
where he was born in a log cabin. He earned his GED in the Navy
then went to barber college in Louisville. He raised his family in
quarters behind the shop and could tell you the history of
Germantown and make it entertaining. It was easy to understand
why he'd been a successful barber: he was a pleasure to listen to.

14. M ay o r
he was told. That is so common sense I feel
confident hardly anyone would do it that way now.
I can’t speak for all 55 shows held the first weekend
of October, but every time I’ve been it's been fair
of St. James Court weather.
Bird didn’t just get the neighbors together to
raise money. Neglect and disrepair weren't the only
threats to the once-wealthy and elite-occupied Old
Instead of looking at the St. James Court Art Show as a major
Louisville. Urban planning was also bearing down
hassle (as it really can be in Old Louisville), for the past two years
on it. Bird was a leader in fighting the city’s plan to
I’ve become a joiner. I even walked through it two different days
build a major road through the neighborhood. That
this year. I do this solely because of Malcolm Bird.
idea was finally defeated in 1969.
Bird was 83 when he died in July 2010. He was born in
He stepped down as chairman of the art show
Louisville and lived more than half a century in the Old Louisville
in 1967, two years before I was born. By then
neighborhood he helped revitalize.
attendance was about 40,000 people for around 200
It was Bird’s idea to string up a few pieces of local art and sell
exhibitors, according to the show’s web site, which
them so the neighborhood association, of which he was president,
also says now more than 300,000 visitors peruse
could raise money to repair the court's famous fountain. That
something like 750 exhibits each year.
fountain has been there since just after the 1880s Southern
It all started with Bird's idea to hang a few
Exposition -- where Thomas Edison premiered his fancy light bulb.
dozen pictures on clothesline strung from tree to
Bird was the unofficial “Mayor of St. James Court” in the
tree so they could keep that fountain from ruin.
1950s and 1960s when it and much of Old Louisville stood to
That’s what I think about as I walk around the art
deteriorate into further and eventual ruin. Instead, he was at the
fair now. Instead of cursing the behemoth, I marvel
helm of that now-celebrated Victorian 'hood reclaiming its
at Malcolm’s legacy. Maybe next year I'll listen to
landmark status.
chamber music as I stroll.
His actual day job was physical therapist, but he also played
cello and loved chamber music. There are now a recital hall and a
strings scholarship at the University of Louisville, both named for
him.
A few months before the first art show (Oct. 12, 1957), the
neighborhood association put on an operetta as a fundraiser on the
lawn of Ethel B. duPont, whose story is also fascinating. Her
duPont ancestors owned most of the area where the art show now
takes place, as well as what is now Central Park. She was
apparently not a spoiled heiress, but instead an activist and labor
organizer. I like it that she and Bird worked together.
Once he had the idea for an art show, Bird set the date by
checking with a meteorologist as to which calendar weekend had
the best odds for fair weather. It was the first weekend in October,

15. Educators from around the country, as well as reporters from
Walker, Foster & Carter Time magazine and The New York Times, came to Louisville to learn
from what Walker was doing here. He was a born leader, getting his
educators incorporated first school superintendent post at age 27 and retiring as a school
superintendent in Palo Alto 27 years later. He was 78 when he died.
1
Another educator I’ll always remember is Gladys W. Carter. She
I’ve written about a lot of educators -- elementary school
was 98 when she died in October 2007. She taught in one way or
teachers and principals to college professors and presidents. I didn't another for more than 65 years – literally a lifetime spent educating.
grow up here and don't have any children, so I've never really Her own education was in segregated schools: the old Louisville
learned the ins and outs of the Jefferson County school system. Colored Normal School and old Louisville Municipal College (the
University of Louisville did not admit African Americans until the
Sometimes that felt like a handicap, but in the end, it was probably 1950s, when she was in her forties). She started teaching before she
for the best. At some point I found myself always rooting for the old was finished with college and did her graduate work at Indiana
city school system -- the underdogs, but always (my impression was) University and the University of Chicago, teaching all along the way.
After 31 years as an elementary school teacher -- her most famous
filled with grit and determination.
pupil Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) -- most people would call it a
2
I remember speaking to Newman Walker on the phone from career. But Carter started working at the YWCA where she’d already
California when I wrote an obituary for Car Foster in March 2004. been a volunteer and then became a branch director. When she left
there, she opened a tutoring center in the basement of her home.
Foster was practically a folk hero of education to those who knew
She taught the children of “Louisville’s black elite,” as one news
him. He traveled an unusual career path, starting out as a college clip I read put it. Those kids of the most well-to-do sat right beside the
professor, then taking an administrative post in the old city school children whose parents couldn’t afford fees. In 1994 (around year 24
for this tutoring stint), she charged about $12 a week for tutoring. She
system, going to the elementary school classroom as teacher and later
told The Courier-Journal: “People can't understand why I would teach
stepped back up to elementary school principal. a child for $1.50 an hour. … Learning is more important to me than
You know the sort of people who are obviously, giftedly money. … Our people will never be able to rise to the level of
competition until we sacrifice to help them get there. I'm willing to
intelligent, but not conceited? The people other people always want
make that sacrifice."
3
to be around? I got the impression Walker and Foster were those kind I think when she said “our people” she meant African
of people. I was pretty sure either one of them could have talked me Americans and who the hell am I to question that?
into becoming a teacher, and I’m terrible with kids. She reminds me that I’ve written about several “black firsts,” as
the generation that led the civil rights movement here in Louisville has
When Newman Walker died in February 2009, I wrote his begun to pass away. I can't fathom the things people endured, the
obituary, too. He was superintendent of the old city school system for courage they had or the willpower they maintained to remain
its final six years -- before the city and county systems were forced to nonviolent while trying to desegregate the city.
I count myself among those – what must be a countless number
merge, unleashing controversy and, quite frankly, it seems, bitterness
of people – who learned something from these three educators, even if
and spite that are still around 35 years later. I never met them.

16. Actors Inc.
The first time I really paid attention to the history of Actors
Theatre was when Ewel Cornett died in June 2002 and Dann Byck
called the paper to tell me about it. Most everyone who’s much
interested in local theater knows about Jon Jory, the Humana
Festival, etc., but I’d never heard this story about how the whole So the race was on between Actors Inc. and Theatre Louisville.
shebang got started until then. Cornett beat Block to the stage. Actors Inc.’s four-production season
This story has a hand in all the fascinating elements of opened less than a year after the company was founded, with
Louisville: drama, downtown, ego, money versus substance, and a Christopher Fry’s “The Lady’s Not for Burning” on May 29, 1964, in a
Bingham. theater improvised on a shoestring budget in a loft above the Gypsy
Cornett was an actor. He graduated from Male High School, Tea Room on Fourth Street. It was reportedly legend.
appeared in the first season of “The Stephen Foster Story” in At some point, the powers that be decided Louisville wasn’t big
Bardstown and was performing in musicals at Iroquois enough for both theater companies and a merger was negotiated the
Amphitheater when he was 16. He went to UK and earned his following year, forming Actors Theatre of Louisville. Cornett and
bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois. Then it was off to Block were both kept as co-directors. Cornett gave it a go, but didn’t
New York City to work on Broadway, off-Broadway and with like the arrangement and so gave an ultimatum to the board in 1966:
touring companies. him, Block or someone altogether new -- pick one. Forced to choose,
He came home in 1964 to start a resident theater company. they picked Block, who stayed a couple more seasons, until Jory
Around the same time, his former Male classmate Richard Block arrived in 1969.
was getting together a new theater company for Louisville, too. After leaving Actors, Cornett left Louisville. He directed a
These two even played the same role in their senior play at Male, dinner theater outside Baltimore, then co-founded and served as
alternating performances -- practically foreshadowing their role in executive director of the West Virginia Arts and Humanities Council.
local theater history. He moved back home in the late 1980s and started a business
Block was more concerned with the logistics and financial teaching people to speak to audiences. Byck told me Cornett wrote a
planning for his undertaking, Theatre Louisville. His board was memoir about the early days of Actors, but I’ve had no luck finding
headed by Barry Bingham Jr. any trace of it online.
Cornett was focused on actors and named his company Actors There aren’t many of the heyday resident actors of Actors
Inc., with Dann Byck as president. Byck was CEO of his family’s Theatre left. At one time the company had a cast of resident actors
business, the old Byck’s department store chain. (Byck resigned in well-known to Louisville theater-goers, but that practice has gone by
1981, in his mid-40s, and moved to New York to pursue a more the wayside. The number of people who remember those early days
artistic career. He became a Broadway and film producer -- is also quickly fading.
including producing “Night, Mother” on Broadway, the Pulitzer I, for one, will always secretly (or not so secretly) admire the
Prize-winning play by Marsha Norman, his wife at the time. I fact that it became Actors Theatre instead of Theatre Actors. For that I
wrote an obituary for Dann Byck, too, when he died in March believe we might have these two to thank.
2009.) Ewel Cornett was 65 when he died. Dann Byck was 72.

17. Hixson was co-organizer of the Kentucky Pro-ERA Alliance and
the Kentucky Women's Agenda Coalition, spoke at the National ERA
Rally, was chair of the Kentucky International Woman's Year and led
Kentucky’s delegation to that Houston conference.
I had little knowledge of that conference or the significance of
Allie
the 1970s events before I wrote an obituary for Allie Hixson.
She was born on a farm in Columbia, Ky., graduated from high
school there and borrowed $10 for the bus to Louisville to look for
work so she could pay for college. She gave up that dream after three
Hixson years of secretarial work, but met her future husband who was
stationed at Fort Knox. They got married on V-J Day (1945) and both
International Women’s Year was 1975 and two went to Oklahoma State University, sharing his G.I. Bill. She got her
years later the National Women’s Conference was held in Houston, bachelor’s degree, but when he got a fellowship to Harvard, she
Texas. Delegates to the conference were to form a National Plan of became a full-time mother to their three young children. When the
Action to promote women’s equality. At that conference were Rep. youngest got to kindergarten, she started teaching and working on her
Bella Abzug, Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalyn Carter, Betty Ford, Maya graduate degree at U of L, then her doctorate.
Angelou, Coretta Scott King, Jean Stapleton, Betty Friedan, Billie Jean She was the first person to earn a Ph.D. in English from the
King … and Kentucky feminist Allie Hixson of Louisville. University of Louisville.
When Hixson joined the feminist cause at age 50, she did it with She led the English department at Louisville Collegiate School
gusto. In just two years, she was delivering the opening speech at a for four years, but resigned to move to a farm in Greensburg. There,
rally of thousands in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 57th she added the causes of rural woman to her itinerary. She held offices
anniversary of women’s right to vote. "We will make it in our time," in all sorts of organizations, local to state level, from American
she told them. "We will become first-class citizens, every woman in Association of University Women to Rural American Women and all
the USA. ... For my entire lifetime, women have begged and pleaded points between.
and argued and reasoned - and some have died without seeing I hope to remember her example, all her work on my behalf and
passage" of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. her ability to take up such dedicated activism when most people are
Unbelievably, so did she. She died in November 2007 at age 83. beginning to countdown to retirement.

18. “Do not hate.”
Ernie Marx
November 8, 1925 – July 8, 2007

19. Fleur
la
Libre
October 2011
A
Fly Crooked
Production
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