University of Kentucky

The Wendell H. Ford Research Center and Public Policy Archives recently acquired and processed the papers of former Kentucky Governor Louie B. Nunn. The 36 c.f. collection has been organized into eleven series and consists of Nunn's speeches, campaign material, newspaper clippings, county files, press releases, scrapbooks, photographs, film, videos, slides, and plaques.

Nunn was elected governor of Kentucky in 1967 and served during the height of the Vietnam War. He was both praised and condemned for ordering the National Guard to the University of Kentucky campus after the burning of the ROTC building there. His administration is credited with raising the sales tax ("Nunn's Nickel") to improve education, state parks, and mental health facilities throughout the state. The collection also contains information on the activities of Beula Nunn during and after the Nunn administration.

The Ford Center has also acquired and processed the Lawrence W. Hager Collection. Lawrence W. Hager was the former owner and editor of the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer newspaper.

The collection has been organized into seven series and contains a wealth of information about the Hager and White families, Owensboro/Daviess County politics, the operation of a daily newspaper, the establishment of a radio and television station, and many photographs. Of particular interest are the histories and photographs of many defunct Daviess County distilleries, as well as Owensboro street scenes from the 1960s.

Additionally, the Ford Center recently received over five hundred never previously seen letters and notes from Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter to Justice Stanley Reed. The material was a gift to the Ford Center from Justice Reed's son, Stanley Reed, Jr.

The material pertains to judicial activities with references to pending cases, legal and moral arguments, citations, statute law, Court history, and judicial and legal philosophy. One legal scholar has already found these letters and notes to be rich in content and commented that they will influence judicial research for many years to come.

The University of Kentucky Oral History Program

The U.K. Oral History Program recently acquired the oral history collection of noted oral historian Alessandro Portelli, author of The Death of Luigi Trastulli And Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (State University of New York Press, 1991). The interviews were conducted in eastern Kentucky and are being transcribed by the U.K. Oral History Program in preparation for a new book by Portelli.

The Oral History Program also recently received $42,000 from the Kentucky General Assembly via the Kentucky Oral History Commission to transcribe over 250 oral history interviews in the Col. Arthur L. Kelly American Veterans Oral History Project. This project contains interviews from veterans of World War Two, Korea, and the Vietnam War. The Oral History Office is compiling an annotated guide to the collection that will be mounted, along with the transcripts, on the Oral History Program Web page.

Submitted by Jeffrey Suchanek

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