Out & About Kentucky Style … Tornado

With little regard to the historical significance of anything created by nature or man, or more importantly human life, an F4 tornado dropped all sorts of destruction on a widespread section of our state on Dec. 11.

Gary West is an author and News Journal columnist.

As tragic as it was, bad things often times bring out the best in people. It matters not that for the most part only the western portion of Kentucky felt the wrath. Regardless of where we live we are all Kentuckians, and my oh my have Kentuckians responded and come to the aid of their brothers and sisters, especially children.

I have been fortunate to travel Kentucky, north, south, east and west, over the last several years. And yes, two of those trips, took me to Mayfield and Dawson Springs.

Both small communities have been hit by storms before, but no one had ever felt or seen anything like this: a tornado spewing out 155 mph winds hovering on the ground for a reported 200 miles. It saw little difference in passing over a door-mounted Christmas wreath while picking up a 100-year-old tree or a 9,000 pound steel storage container, or a concrete block building. In the end mother nature had her way.

In Mayfield, just a few miles from Murray, the entire state has rallied around this Graves County town, just as it has Dawson Springs, Benton, Central City, Bowling Green, and every other town touched by the horrific results of this storm.

My trip a few years ago to Mayfield connected me to several restaurants I was writing about at the time. Of course, anyone who follows sports knows about the tradition of their high school football team … several state titles.

You may travel throughout the world and visit hundreds of cemeteries, but in all probability you will not see anything like the Wooldridge Monuments in Maplewood Cemetery in Mayfield.

The oddity of these sixteen statues lined up as if ready to move forward in a small-town parade is totally out of the norm. Well before his death in 1899, Henry Wooldridge began commissioning the figures to be placed in the cemetery.

Wooldridge, who went by the name of Colonel, made his living buying and selling horses. Considered a man of means, his later years revolved around creating this unorthodox collection of people and animals.

These statues are so unusual that they have been written about in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, photographed by Walker Evans in 1947, used as a backdrop in the “In Country” movie, and even alluded to in a William Faulkner story.

Wooldridge initially paid $1,000 for a statue of himself sculptured from marble in Italy. The remaining fifteen were completed in Paducah and Mayfield.

His entourage includes his widowed mother, three brothers, three sisters, two nieces, two dogs, a fox and a deer. To make it a little more strange, Wooldridge, who never married, is the only one buried here.

Making this Mayfield graveyard scene even more difficult to understand, the Colonel has two statues of himself, one in his younger days, standing tall, and the other stately siting on his fifteen-hand high horse, Fop.

It was reported that $6,000 was spent on all of the sculptures and that Wooldridge intended to add more, but died before his plan was realized.

This Mayfield tourist attraction is referred to as “The Strange Procession That Never Moves.” Hopefully this still holds true. A few years ago, an ice storm did some damage that was quickly repaired.

Fancy Farm. Who hasn’t heard of this place even if you’ve never been there? It’s just 10 miles from Mayfield, and once a year, the first Saturday of every August, it becomes a political hot bed. It has been that way since 1880.

From throughout Kentucky 15,000 people, including dozens of office-seekers, converge on this village. Let’s hope they still come back.

Dawson Springs, not a large place, took a savage hit from the storm. For sure more than it deserved. Rain and lightning would have been enough.

This Hopkins County town, not far from Madisonville, once was a magnet, pulling people in because of its abundance of natural mineral springs.

“People came here because they thought the water had cure-all benefits,” said Jenny Beshear Sewell who oversees the Beshear Funeral Home in Dawson Springs.

Several years ago, she toured me around town while I was there to write a story about Riverside Baseball Park. As a first cousin to former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear Jenny took pride in her family’s generational ties to the town.

One thing for sure … when I left Dawson Springs that day I knew a whole lot more than when I arrived to meet her at the funeral home.

For instance: At one time the town had 41 hotels and boarding houses, and although back then in the winter the population was 1,500, once spring and summer arrived it ballooned to 15,000.

In 1914 the Pittsburgh Pirates and their legendary shortstop Honus Wagner arrived in Dawson Springs, and more than a century later it’s still talked about.

In those days big league teams in the east didn’t travel to the deep south like they do today. It wasn’t until later that rail lines became more developed into that area of the country.

Riverside Park sits in a sharp bend of the Tidewater, an 80-mile river that flows into the Ohio River.

Teams still play on this hallowed site, where some of the greatest to ever play the game took their turn in the batter’s box.

The old bones of the park are quite evident, and a visit here hints at a smell of Cracker Jacks and the sound of a crack-of-a-bat. The old ball park did suffer some damage.

Dawson Springs is just off the Western Kentucky Parkway at Exit 24.

The little town of Breman, in Muhlenberg County took a hit with loss of life and major destruction. One of its claim to fame is the hometown of Ray Harper, a former All-State basketball player and now a well-known coach.

The town I live in, Bowling Green, is bleeding. We have taken a broadside hit from the tornado: loss of life, major destruction and a reaching out from pure strangers wanting to help.

Back on Dec. 18, Western Kentucky University played Appalachian State in the Boca Raton Bowl. Before the teams met, the athletic booster club for the team from Boone, N.C., set about to raise money for the relief efforts back in Bowling Green and other effected parts of Kentucky. At last count it had totaled more than $20,000.

“We are witnessing the best of America,” WKU Athletic Director Todd Stewart

stated to our local newspaper.

From one end of Kentucky to the other an outpouring of support has come to every town and county impacted by the tornado. It’s just what we do.

There’s no excuse, get up, get out and get going! Gary P. West can be reached at westgarypdeb@gmail.com.