Sherry Chandler

An evening with Georgia Green Stamper

While I am in the mode of featuring Kentucky’s remarkable women writers, let me invite you to attend An Evening With Georgia Green Stamper Georgia, who has Grant County roots, will be sharing stories from the past about that community and it’s people tomorrow evening (August 19) at the Grant County Board of Education Building, 820 Arnie Risen Blvd, Williamstown. The event begins at 6:00 pm.

Georgia will be reading from her new collection of essays, You Can Go Anywhere: From the Crossroads of the World.

Here awhile back, when Georgia read at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, a member of the audience asked her whether she’s working on a second collection. At which point, Georgia chuckled and reminded us all that she publishes these columns biweekly and they do add up.

Which is my way of making a segue into recommending that you read one of Georgia’s latest columns, her tribute to our classmate J. Howard Olds, who lost his battle with colon cancer a few weeks ago.

Howard, known as “Bubby” to one and all, is another of our classmates who spent his life writing. But while I write poetry, Georgia writes memoir, and Larry Webster does political commentary, Bubby wrote sermons. And I hear tell they were Cracker Jacks.

Bubby spent his life as a Methodist minister. Some of you who live locally may remember the television spots he did when he was assigned to a church in Lexington. At the end of his life he was minister to Brentwood United Methodist Church in Nashville, where he grew the membership to 7,000. As Georgia describes him:

With a full head of snow white hair, and towering in his clerical robes, Bubby looked like a figure Michelangelo might have painted. I was somewhat awestruck at the grandness of the church, too. As Bubby joked, his high pulpit alone was larger than some of the Kentucky churches he’d preached in.

But while I celebrated his success from a distance, I never knew this ministerial Howard Olds. Except for Christmas cards, we went our separate ways after high school. For me Bubby was always the laughing classmate who was senior class president to my secretary, who played “Father” in the senior play while I played “Mother.” These roles may give you some notion of the real-life roles Bubby and I played in our class. I don’t know about him, but I was usually the girl guys asked for advice about their love lives. Still, we got to share a stage kiss, and in rehearsals, too.

Below, a photo of the senior class officers from the 1963 Owen County High School year book, from left to right: Donna Perkins, yours truly, Howard Olds, Rita Suter, and Lucy Baker. (If I remember correctly we were instructed to stride purposefully, like the important people we were.)

Possibly related posts:

Helen’s backbeat

Georgia Wallace

Henry K. Leadingham Prose & Poetry Reading & Reception

Green Eggs and Hamlet

Evening with Poets

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