Saving Stories

October 17 is an important day in the history of WUKY. The station formerly known as WBKY signed on for the first time on October 17, 1940. To mark the station's 85th anniversary, this special edition of Saving Stories with Dr. Doug Boyd from the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries, features an interview with Ruth Foxx Newborg, the first program director of the Beattyville, KY radio station.

Saving Stories returns with a fresh episode on the integration of baseball. Not the Jackie Robinson story but another event that happened right here in Lexington. Nunn Center director Dr. Doug Boyd shares audio from an oral history interview with Lexington native Bobby Flynn, who in 1947 helped the Lexington Hustlers become the first integrated baseball team in the South. Flynn was white but had been rejected by the white teams because he was small. In the interview Bobby Flynn tells the story of being asked by manager John 'Scoop' Brown to join the Negro League team, and the reaction from members of the local white community.

WUKY's Saving Stories celebrates Bourbon Heritage Month with this special episode. Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History Director Dr. Doug Boyd shares this 1991 interview with Frederick Booker Noe II, who discusses the bourbon industry and the history of Jim Beam. The Nunn Center has conducted more than one hundred bourbon-related interviews spanning generations of famous personalities, but it wasn't until recently that Boyd and staff discovered this rare conversation between Noe and a Kentucky middle school student. The interviews were part of an educational media project under the direction of Henderson County North Middle School teacher Roy Pullam.

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the US bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which essentially brought about the end of World War II. In this special edition of Saving Stories Doug Boyd, director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries shares an interview from a survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki.

As 250 Lex continues to celebrate Lexington's culinary traditions this month, we're highlighting this interview with Mamadou Savane. In 2018 the Nunn Center collaborated with Vanessa Grossl to interview immigrant entrepreneurs. The resulting project was called Savor, immigrant entrepreneur oral history project. Grossl conducted 20 interviews, many of which were conducted with food entrepreneurs here in Lexington. One of those individuals was Mamadou Savane. Better known to all of us as Sav. He talks about opening his West African restaurant (Sav's Grill) and starting a side ice cream business (Sav's Chill) that eventually became his primary venture which today we know as Sav's Gourmet Ice Cream.

250 Lex is celebrating our culinary traditions. WUKY's Saving Stories serves up this behind the scenes look at Lexington's role in launching the Long John Silver's Fish 'n Chips restaurant chain. The very first Seafood Shoppe was located on Southland Drive. In 2009, the Nunn Center worked with Mike Hammonds to interview Warren Rosenthal; the business entrepreneur credited with taking the experimental fast food concept nationwide.

The Lexington Legends baseball team has seen its share of ups and downs – including a head-scratching name change (anybody remember the Counter Clocks?) But now as the city gets ready to celebrate 25 seasons of professional baseball, WUKY’s Saving Stories has this look back at how it all began. Nunn Center for Oral History director Dr. Doug Boyd shares audio from a 2019 interview with Alan Stein, who along with other prominent members of the community, led an effort to bring minor league baseball to Lexington. In this portion of the conversation Stein recalls a literal 11th hour curveball his group had to handle before presenting its best case to an MLB franchise expansion committee. It’s a story you have to hear to believe.

It’s Final Four weekend and sadly the Kentucky Wildcats came up short this year in their bid for a 9th national title. Bookending our look back at special moments in UK basketball history WUKY’s Saving Stories highlights another famous shot, the one Duke’s Christian Laettner hit in overtime against the Wildcats in the 1992 East Regional final in Philadelphia. The buzzer beater marked the end of an era for the team affectionately known as “The Unforgettables.” Nunn Center director Doug Boyd shares interviews with UK players Sean Woods – who hit the Wildcats’ go-ahead basket with two seconds on the clock, and John Pelphrey, one of the defenders responsible for guarding Laettner on the long inbounds pass; a split-second moment that he admits misremembering. Doug even shares a clip of a song he wrote about the game and the aftermath called 1992.

For three quarters of a century the month of March in Kentucky has been tournament time with hoops fever reaching a near fever pitch. And if you're wondering why UK Basketball is sometimes considered an official religion, we submit this audio as exhibit A. In this special episode of WUKY's Saving Stories, UK Nunn Center director Dr. Doug Boyd and Deirdre Scaggs, associate dean and head of Special Collections, join Alan Lytle to re-live one of the most dramatic moments in UK Basketball history called by the legendary sports broadcaster Claude Sullivan; a thrilling triple overtime win over Temple University in Memorial Coliseum. All made possible by the recently deceased Hall of Famer Vernon Hatton who hit THE SHOT. RIP Mr. Hatton.

Lexington is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year, and Saving Stories is shining the spotlight today on lifelong educator and activist Audrey Grievous. In this 1985 UK Nunn Center oral history interview Grevious talks about her involvement in demonstrations and lunch counter sit-in's in downtown Lexington in the early 1960's.