For more information:
• General Burnside Island State Park, P.O. Box 488, 8801 South Highway 27, Burnside, KY 42519, (606) 561-4104
• Lee’s Ford Marina, 451 Lee’s Ford Dock Road, Nancy, KY 42544, (606) 636-6426

Producer, videographer, editor: Ernie Lee Martin

Twinkle, Twinkle

Christmas Island

This holiday edition of Kentucky Life begins with a visit to Christmas Island at General Burnside Island State Park in Pulaski County, featuring three miles of drive-through light displays.

Burnside is named for Civil War Gen. Ambrose Burnside, who used it as a base for defending Union loyalists in eastern Tennessee during the Civil War. It is Kentucky’s only island state park, occupying what used to be the highest ground in the town of Burnside. When Wolf Creek Dam was built in 1952, impounding the Cumberland River to create Lake Cumberland, it was the only part of town that remained above water level. (Most of the residents had already moved, establishing a new town site. Kentucky Life Program 312 is a half-hour special on the history of Burnside.)

Since our visit in 2002, the holiday light display has been moved to nearby Lee’s Ford Marina, on Hwy. 80 about 4.5 miles west of Somerset.

For more information:

• Forkland Community Center, (859) 332-7839

Producer, editor: Joy Flynn
Videographer: Scott Neukam
Audio: Charlie Bissell

Dinner with Friends

Christmas dinner at the Forkland Community Center

Dinner is next on the itinerary, and it’s a community effort. The people of Forkland, in southwestern Boyle County, gather each year for a cooperative holiday celebration at the Forkland Community Center. This old-fashioned neighborly gathering features a children’s choir and a cornucopia of food home-cooked by volunteers.

The building, a former school, was built during the New Deal days of the Works Progress Administration and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For the annual Christmas dinner, each room is decorated around a different holiday or historic theme.

Producer: Dave Shuffett
Videographers: Joy Flynn, Dave Shuffett
Editor: Dan Taulbee

Music of the Wolf

Tenor Warren Wolf

Warren Wolf actually came to our studio for his segment of Kentucky Life, but he hails from Greensburg, the Green County hometown of host Dave Shuffett. He’s a city police officer there—but as this visit demonstrates, he’s also a talented tenor.

Accompanied by guitarist Ron Curry, Wolf sings “Our Father” and “I Wonder as I Wander.”

For more information:
• Rudolph’s Christmas House, 204 N. Gratz St., Midway, KY 40347, (859) 846-5500

On Location

Segments in this episode originally aired as part of Kentucky Life Program 724, an extended holiday edition. Dave’s new introductions were taped at Rudolph’s Christmas House in Midway. Look for canine co-host Sadie in the closing montage of wintertime sights and sounds: Like most dogs, she loves a good romp in the snow!