By Chris EvansBrushes with Fame may turn out to be a regular feature in The Press. It’s been lots of fun finding out about friends and neighbors who have had a brush or two with famous people or famous events.
Since the last column regarding such brushes, I’ve received a few new stories. Here are a few:
Being on the East Coast, brushes with fame are sometimes easy to come by for former Dycusburg resident Matthew Patton. He’s a fairly regular contributor to The Press, has authored a few books about local history and maintains a Web site http://www.dycusburg.com/. Patton sent me an e-mail right after the last Brushes with Fame column. Here’s what he had to say:
At the University of Kentucky, he met Angela Y. Davis, who spoke to his class on prison reform. On Aug. 18, 1970, Davis was the third woman and the 309th individual to appear on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List because she was implicated in a prison escape. She was later exonerated of the charges. She is now a professor at UCLA. Patton spent several hours that weekend showing her around Lexington.
He met Diane Sawyer at a journalism conference in New York City and chatted for several minutes about, of all things, how difficult it is to get nonstop flights from the East Coast into Kentucky (Sawyer is a Louisville native).
He met former President Bill Clinton in Philadelphia on July 4, 2004, at the National Constitution Center and he has an autographed copy of his book, “My Life.”
Currently, Patton is working now on setting up a telephone interview with Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate John Edwards. Patton works for a publishing company in Philadelphia. He shared several other brushes with fame, but we’ll move on to some others.
Sister-in-law Andrea Mick sent in an e-mail and photo of her brush with the WWE. She’s flying in for a Labor Day visit and figured the timing was right to get her mug in The Press next to Hulk Hogan. Like Patton, she’s something of a jet-setter, touring around the country and working in one big city after another.
Your chance of running into a famous person is much better in Denver or New York than it is in Mattoon or Sheridan. Andrea says she visited with the Hulk in a Denver nightspot. She’s also had some brushes with pro football and baseball players. Denver Bronco quarterback Jay Cutler lives in her apartment complex, which overlooks Coors Field.
Getting back closer to home, Wayne Keeling sent me a letter regarding a legendary visit by President William McKinley (pictured) to Nunn Switch back in the early 1900s.
He wrote: “The McKinleys that lived near Nunn Switch were relatives of President McKinley. One day when the president was traveling through this area on the presidential train, it stopped at Nunn Switch and parked on a side track.”
Keeling went on to tell that the president was met at the railroad line by some of his kinfolk, who took him off in a horse-drawn buggy to their home nearby.
Faye Conger verified the story as a long-told family tale. Her father, Riley Emerson “Emmie” McKinley, often told the same thing, Conger said.
A Cleveland, Ohio native, McKinley was president from 1897 to 1901 when he was assassinated by a lone gunman, Leon Frank Czolgosz, at Buffalo, N.Y., during the Pan-American Exposition.
Chris Evans is editor and publisher of The Crittenden Press. You can reach him at chrisevans@the-press.com.
