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Kentucky Stars 2002
2003 Award Winners
ROSEMARY CLOONEY
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Music, Film, Television
Rosemary Clooney is a Maysville, Kentucky native. Ms. Clooney began
her career in 1945 singing duets with her sister Betty for WLW Radio in Cincinnati. Four
years later, Rosemary signed a solo recording contract with Columbia Records. She
recorded her first single, “Come On-a My House” in 1951. It
was an immediate and enormous success and catapulted Rosemary to stardom.
Ms. Clooney’s horizons have expanded to include motion pictures, including the classic “White Christmas” in 1954.
In 1956-57 “The Rosemary Clooney Show” joined CBS television’s weekly variety show lineup. She was the subjet of 1982 CBS-TV movie, “Rosie, the Rosemary Clooney Story,” which was based on her autobiography, “This For Remembrance.”
Ms. Clooney’s first-ever Carnegie Hall performance was in 1991, followed by a tribute to Bing Crosby at Carnegie Hall in 1993. Her third appearance was in September 1996 and her fourth in June 1998.
She celebrated her 50th year singing professionally in 1995. Also in celebration of her fiftieth anniversary was “Rosemary Clooney’s Demi-Centennial: A Girl Singer’s Golden Anniversary Celebration,” a 90-minute mix of live performance and tributes which made its world premiere on the Arts & Entertainment Network in November, 1995.
Ms. Clooney was nominated for an Emmy Award for “Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series” for her role on NBC’s top-rated “ER”.
Rosemary Clooney passed away in 2002.
COLONEL EBEN HENSON
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Theatre
Eben C. Henson was born in Danville, Kentucky in 1923. A Kentucky Colonel,
Eben Henson has contributed to the face of theatre in the state of Kentucky
for over 50 years.
Henson was appearing on Broadway production with Bea Arthur, Tony Curtis, and Harry Belefonte when word of his father’s grave illness forced him to return to Danville. Giving up his career in New York, Henson carved out a new dream of writing and producing outdoor dramas and starting community theatres in five different towns.
In 1950 Colonel Henson founded the Pioneer Playhouse, the oldest outdoor theatre in the state. It is called the “Grandaddy of Kentucky Outdoor Dramas,” and also has a School of Drama.
Henson salvaged materials from gyms, hotels, schools, ghost towns and even a railroad depot to build Pioneer Playhouse, his “50 year hobby.” Henson has earned his living from farming and rental property and has never taken a penny’s salary for his work at the playhouse, contributing close to $1 million from his own pocket to keep his dream going over the years.
Each spring, the Hensons travel to New York to audition actors. They also select a handful of interns, who have the opportunity to work alongside experienced professionals in a constructive, hands-on environment. Notable actors who have been involved with Colonel Henson are John Travolta, Lee Majors, Bo Hopkins, and the late Jim Varney.
A community activist, in addition to his arts contributions, Henson has been Mayor of Danville, consulted with governors and presidents on arts organization and funding, helped form a Film Commission in Kentucky, and founded the Governors School for the Arts.
Colonel Henson reactivated Studio Players in Lexington, and served on the Board for three years. He directed their first two shows and was instrumental in getting approval from the Parks and Recreation Department to lease the carriage house on Bell Court for the current home of Studio Players.
HOMER C. LEDFORD
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Music
Everything that Homer C. Ledford touches turns to music. He can turn wood
from an old bed rail into a sweet-voiced dulcimer; make a banjo from an aluminum
can; turn a maple stump into a fine fiddle. And when Homer finishes an
instrument, he can pick it right up and give you a few quick licks from a favorite
bluegrass tune, or a chorus or two from an old gospel song before you can even
draw a breath.
Inspired by a neighbor who had made a fiddle completely out of matchsticks, Homer decided, at the tender age of eleven, to make his own fiddle. He used old dynamite boxes for the top and sides. And, since he didn’t know how to bend the wood, glued matchsticks together to make the sides. The fiddle actually played, though it kept coming apart because the glue wouldn’t hold. A couple of years later, Homer made another fiddle, which he still plays.
When Homer was 18, a bout with rheumatic fever lead to a turning point in his life. While recuperating from his illness, he attended the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, where he honed his woodworking skills and was introduced to the dulcimer. When a New York shop requested two dulcimers from the school, Homer was asked to try to make them. As he worked on the dulcimers, other students wanted them too, and Homer’s career as an instrument-maker was born.
He is now an internationally known dulcimer maker, having made over 5,800 handmade dulcimers. The dulcitar, a musical instrument he invented, was purchased by the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., for display. He also invented the dulcibro, dulcijo, and fiddlephone.
Homer organized the Cabin Creek Band and been its leader ever since. He plays 13 different musical instruments.
Homer has shared the stage with Ricky Skaggs, and Roni Stoneman of Hee Haw fame. He has opened for The Beach Boys, John Hartford, and the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe.
Homer was honored by his hometown by having a bluegrass festival named for him in 1986, ’87 and ’88.
LORETTA LYNN
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Music
To millions of people worldwide, she is country music. Since
the 1960’s, Loretta Lynn has been one of country’s modern pillars,
a woman whose rise from hardscrabble poverty to the heights of fame remains
the quintessential success story. A member of the Country Music Hall
of Fame, she has long been considered a legend, someone whose talent, perseverance,
and personality continue to embody all the best that is country music. Best
of all for fans of the genre, after 40 years in the business she is still bringing
her formidable creative energies to bear on the music she loves.
Loretta’s impact has never been confined simply to country music. She has had a major impact on modern culture without a conscious attempt at a “crossover.” Her autobiography, Coal Miner’s Daughter, became a #1 New York Times best-seller and then a critically acclaimed movie. She was featured on many of the nation’s top television shows, including “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Today Show,” and “The Tonight Show.” She has sung with both Conway Twitty and Luciano Pavarotti, and she has received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Lexington’s own University of Kentucky.
Loretta has released 70 albums, 17 of which went to #1, and has had 80 chart hits, including 55 top ten singles and 27 #1 singles. She has won more awards than any female artist in country music history: 21 CMA, ACM, and Grammy awards to date, along with a host of others.
Her latest CD, Still Country, has received high critical praise, earning favorable comparisons with her vintage recordings. It is also a compelling sign of her continued vitality as she continues to perform the music she has so consistently enriched.
As an entertainer, Lynn is still touring, making 60 or so concert appearances a year. As a matriarch, she oversees a family that includes six children and 29 grandchildren. As a businesswoman, she oversees her recently opened 18,000-square-foot Coal Miner’s Daughter Museum in Hurricane Mills, the working farm she and her husband, the late Mooney Lynn, bought in the 1960s and expanded through the years.
Loretta was born in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, in the heart of coal mining country. She was married at 10 to Mooney (from the nickname “Moonshine”) Lynn and had four children by age of 17. Her entry into music came at the urging of her husband.
Her first job was at the Delta Grange Dance Hall in Lynden, Washington, in 1960. That year, she released a single called “Honky Tonk Girl”, and the song went all the way to #14 on the Billboard singles chart. She quickly became a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and a part of the Wilburn Brothers Show, singing with them until 1971.
Loretta writes songs about life and lives a full and rewarding life of her own.
BOBBIE ANN MASON
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Literature
Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of the novel In Country, which is
taught in colleges and high schools nationwide, and the short story Shiloh,
one of the most widely anthologized stories of our time. She has won
multiple literary awards and honors, and her works have been translated in
to numerous foreign languages.. Two of her recent books, the novel Feather
Crowns and the short story collection Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail,
both won the Southern Book Award. Another recent book, her memoir Clear
Springs, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. This book tells
of her own life and the lives of her parents and grandparents in Kentucky.
Ms. Mason was born a mile outside Mayfield, Kentucky, in 1940, where she was raised on her family’s dairy farm. She became interested in writing as a young child – her first efforts were imitations of Nancy Drew mysteries.
She earned her B.A. degree in English and American literature at the University of Kentucky, a master’s degree at the State University of New York and a Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut.
Ms. Mason married fellow student Roger Rawlings in 1969 in Connecticut. Her first book, a work of literary criticism entitled Nabokov’s Garden: A Guide to ADA, was published in 1974. This was followed a year later by The Girl Sleuth, a study of girls’ detective fiction. She then began writing short stories, the first of which appeared in The New Yorker in 1980. She has subsequently published several books of fiction, for which she has received the PEN/Hemingway Award, two Southern Book Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hillsdale Fiction Prize, and other Honors.
Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Story, The North American Review, and elsewhere. Several of these stories have been selected for The O’Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, The Norton Anthology, and similar collections. She has published non-fiction in such periodicals as The New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times.
A movie based on her novel In Country – produced by Warner Brothers, and starring Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd – was filmed in Kentucky in 1988. Mason stated in a New York Times magazine interview in 1988 “I think it’s a matter of temperament and heredity and region. I think the style very much grows out of the place I came from.”
Ms. Mason lives in Kentucky with her husband, cats, and dogs. Her next book, scheduled for early 2003, is a biography of Elvis Presley. She is currently Writer-in-Residence at the University of Kentucky.
PATRICIA NEAL
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Music, Film, Television
Patricia Neal is without a doubt one of the most admired women of the American
film. From her work as an Academy Award-winning actress to her heroic
recovery from massive strokes to her humanitarian efforts on behalf of medical
rehabilitation, she offers a story as life-affirming as it is engaging.
Patsy Louise Neal was born in Packard, in Whitley County, in 1926. While still a young girl, Ms. Neal developed a keen interest in acting and frequently recited monologues at church and other gatherings. As a Christmas present from her parents, she was given acting lessons when she was eleven.
Education at Northwestern University for two years and experience in summer theatre led to work in New York City and soon earned several awards; among them the Tony (Antionette Perry) and the Drama Critics’ Award for Best New Actress.
Her stage success in 1946 led to many offers from Hollywood where Miss Neal made 13 movies in four years. While appearing in films in both Hollywood and England, she returned intermittently to the stage.
Resolving to go on with life, despite serious injury and a fatal illness with two of her children, Miss Neal continued acting and won as Oscar as Best Actress in 1964 for her performance with Paul Newman in Hud, and made In Harm’s Way with John Wayne. At the peak of her success, when she had started work with director John Ford on MGM’s Seven Women, tragedy struck again.
This time, Miss Neal, three months pregnant, suffered a series of strokes which left her partially paralyzed. Undaunted, Miss Neal began a successful struggle through years of rehabilitation. Her fifth child, Lucy, was born healthy. Miss Neal has become a champion in the rehabilitation field and worldwide symbol of hope and victory to stroke victims and others with disabilities.
Miss Neal returned to her career and received an Academy Award, earned distinguished television roles, and garnered three Emmy nominations. More recently, she has been seen on television in the Emmy-winning Hallmark Hall of Fame’s production of Caroline, and in guest appearances on several series programs, on Disney Cable, and in made-for-television movies.
In 1999, Miss Neal was featured as the title character in Robert Altman’s Cookie Fortune, a role which has received rave reviews and international acclaim.It was a warm welcome return after a decade-long absence from film.
Today, Miss Neal continues her acting career, travels and lectures extensively. She is a regular participant in the Theatre Guild’s Theatre-At-Sea programs and has recently appeared on stage in a production of A.R. Gurney’s play, Love Letters.
JAMES STILL
Awarded the Kentucky Star for Literature
James Alexander Still, Jr, born in 1906 in Alabama, educated in Tennessee
and Illinois but, at heart, from Hindman, Kentucky where he went in 1931 to
help with a summer camp for children. The following year, he became librarian
for the Hindman Settlement School. He spent one day a week delivering
books on foot to schools in remote hollows. Students called him the “book
boy.” Later he supervised the bookmobile program, often serving
as driver. [On a side note, Mr. Still did not own a car until he was
50.]
It was in Hindman that he began his long writing career, publishing his first book, a volume of poems, in 1937. In 1939 his friend Jethro Amburgey, a famous dulcimer maker, deeded Still his family’s log house (built in 1836) for as long as he lived. Hindman Settlement School and that two-story log house in Knott County became synonymous with the man, the personality, and the writer – James Still.
Mr. Still’s novel of mountain folk life, River of Earth, published in 1940, was called a “work of art” by Time magazine and is considered a classic – unquestionably his most enduring work of prose.
Kentucky appreciated James Still, appointing him poet laureate in 1995 and 1996. During the last ten years of his life, people across the state listened to him read his works with his musician friend Randy Wilson, and heard him tell stories or give talks; some even visited with Mr. Still on his birthday at his house on Dead Mare Branch in Knott County.
All of his writing is set in Kentucky and grew out of his experiences here.
The last stanza of his well-known poem “Heritage” reveals the strength of his connection to his place:
Being of these hills, being one with the fox
Stealing into the shadow, one with the new-born foal,
The lumbering ox drawing green beech logs to mill,
One with the destined feet of man climbing and descending,
And one with death rising to bloom again, I cannot go.
Being of these hills I cannot pass beyond.
James Still died in Hazard, Kentucky on April 28, 2001 and is buried at Hindman Settlement School. He is survived by the family of Teresa Reynolds, by Mike Mullins and Hindman Settlement School, by the many folks that knew and loved him, and by all future generations that read his writing.
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