Sunday, May 29, 2011
EKB Capsule News...Kentucky...5-30-'11
- Two year old Cameron Baldridge, a Floyd County toddler, was laid to rest Saturday after he drowned in a neighborhood pond across the street from his home in the Minnie community. The boy's funeral was Saturday at 11:00 A.M. at the Drift Pentecostal Church.
- Former Governor Ernie Fletcher's "resort-like" home in Frankfort is now for sale with an asking price of $465,900. Fletcher and his wife, Glenna, bought the home and nearly 4 acres near the Kentucky River in northern Franklin County about eight years ago for $313,000, but now have begun making plans to move back to Lexington to be closer to aging parents. Fletcher, chief executive officer of Alton Healthcare, was governor from 2003 to 2007 and had previously served in the state legislature and Congress. The home has undergone major improvements since they purchased it.
- Ciara Williams, 25, a former Lexington woman, was in critical condition at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta Sunday but doing "better than anticipated" after falling from a 10th floor window of the W Atlanta-Midtown about 3:15 A.M. Saturday. Police say Williams and LaShawna Threatt, who died, were celebrating Threatt's 30th birthday and "play fighting" when they hit a window and crashed out of it. Police say Threatt hit a slanted sunroof on a structure below while Williams rolled off and fell further to the patio on the ground. Several who saw the women say "they were leaning against the glass and the glass caved in." Dallas Wright, who graduated from Bryan Station with Williams in 2004, moved with her to Atlanta in 2007.
- The Ohio State Highway Patrol Troopers say 56 year old pilot Steven Hall of Catlettsburg and 45 year old instructor Edward Edwards of Ashland suffered minor injuries and were treated at the scene when a small plane lost power and crashed in a southern Ohio field. The plane took off from the Ashland-Boyd County Airport in northern Kentucky and went down Saturday evening a few miles northwest near Haverhill, along the Ohio River. Hall and Edwards reported that the plane's engine sputtered and it eventually lost power before crashing.
- Crews have begun to restore a historic one-room schoolhouse in central Kentucky that was built in the early 1900s to educate black students. The Rosenwald School in Sadieville was one of about 5,000 around the nation built for that purpose. After the school closed, the building was used as a fellowship hall for Mount Pleasant Baptist Church. The city of Sadieville bought the facility in 2008 with plans to restore it for use as a cultural heritage center. Volunteers are doing much of the work.
- Steven Michael Skidmore was sentenced Friday to a year and four months in federal prison for lying to the FBI about burying $250,000 belonging to Bill Erpenbeck, a homebuilder convicted of bank fraud. Erpenbeck was ordered to forfeit $34 million after his 2003 conviction for stealing from banks and home buyers. Skidmore buried the money at a private golf course, but, by the time federal agents dug it up eight years later, it was so deteriorated officials were not sure how much had been recovered.
- Efforts to restore American chestnut trees are taking root in the Louisville area. Nuts from a research farm in Virginia that were bred over 28 years to be blight resistant were planted at public and private sites in the Louisville area this year. Also, members of the Kentucky chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation are breeding offspring of the state's 20 surviving trees for blight resistance and research. An orchard in Oldham County is expected to bear nuts this fall for the first time. The president and CEO of the American Chestnut Foundation, Bryan Burhans, says the ultimate goal is to restore the American chestnut to the Eastern forest so it can again provide an abundance of high-quality food for wildlife and strong, rot-resistant timber.
- A wet spring in Kentucky has delayed planting grains and some farmers will have to decide whether to give up on corn crops and move on to soybeans. The entire state has had greater than average rainfall over the past 60 days, with some parts getting up to 13 inches more rain than normal. In Kentucky, corn and soybeans account for more than half and as much as three-fifths of the annual cash receipts for planted crops. University of Kentucky agronomist Chad Lee says that in a normal year farmers would switch over to soybeans by June 1st.
# posted by Homer Owens @ 10:24 PM 
