Ace Weekly

Shhhhh. Come closer. This is something that the people within these pages don't want you to hear. I'm going to reveal to you their power. It's simple really. It's not like some Jedi master chucked them a light saber and learned 'em the force. It's not like God came out of the sky and handed them a crown like in some Monty Python film. They got where they are because they understand where power comes from. They are normal people like the rest of us ... who found out early that power emerges from the bottom and rises like cream to the top. It exists from simply thinking that you can do what you want to do — and more importantly — doing it. That's it. Power is one of our favorite things to talk about in that there is a general misconception that it can't be harnessed or changed. I study the power of resistance in literature and can write volumes on Voodoo, Martin Luther King, or Tupac for that matter. There can always be a dark side. For example, there's the money part that corrupts everything a little.

See, once you have power, you suddenly become a magnet to people with money (and money is nice). So they trade you cash for a little of your decision making ability, you do a "favor" here, you do a "favor" there— and wham! You're on an episode of the Sopranos wondering if your head's going to end up in a bowling bag. Okay not really . . . this is Lexington, people. But is important to realize that money can make good people do slimy things. Things that aren't good for the health of our small-big-town community. Once in a while, you get blessed with a regular White Knight who is incapable of being corrupted. A straight arrow/ good person who's always sure to do the right thing. But let's face it. Everybody hates that guy. He's the geek in class with hand permanently attached to the ceiling. He's the nerd who reminds the teacher to assign homework. So what do we do? We vote for the jock to make the nerd suffer. It's not right. If life was fair, uncorruptable nerds would have all the power. We'd all be driving hybrid cars, recycling, and appreciating world-music. They'd use their giant brains to think us out of financial debt, healthcare quagmires, and the education enigma, while efficiently whittling our work week down to 20 hours. There would be no drugs or crime because everyone would be super-involved in scrabble clubs and bowling leagues. It would be like . . . like . . . Canada. Ah, but we are Americans! We like the Bad Boys of power. We turn power into celebrity and vice versa. Think about it. Next thing you know they're using that currency we handed them for drugs, prostitutes, outstanding gambling debts, hiring their relatives, privatizing the military for corporate gain, or better yet—all of the above. We let loose nuts (who we wouldn't trust behind the wheel of our car) to drive our economy, government and civil associations. All for the sake of, what did Weber call it? Charisma? Please, charisma never fixed my computer when it crashed all to hell—but a nerd sure did.

Antonio Gramsci called it hegemony, or the theater of politics. Whatever . . . it just means that power is not innate to these people, and they would be nothing if all of us little people refused to acknowledge their "part."

What kind of power do we want in Lexington? Money? Celebrity? Vision? Intellect? As you flip through these pages, know that no one got where they are by any magical force. And if you think you can do a better job and make Lexington a better place—do it. Like the horoscope guy says, "Now is the moment of power" and "All power comes from within."

SAM BARNES
President and CEO of Fifth Third Bank, Kentucky, Inc., Lexington

Community Activities:
Good Samaritan Foundation, Director;
University of Kentucky Business Partnership Foundation, Director;
Transylvania University, Trustee;
Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Executive Committee, Director;
R.E.A.C.H., Director;
Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce, Director;
Rotary, Director;
Kentucky HorsePark Foundation, Director;
Downtown Lexington Corporation, Director (Past President)

Honors include:
United Way of the Bluegrass’s Eagle Award;
Volunteers of America, Award for Volunteer of the Year

Sam Barnes has been a fixture in the local financial community for more than a decade, since he assumed the position of president/CEO at 5/3 in 1993. He’s had a distinguished 30 year career in banking, which followed a stint in the Army (from which he received an honorable discharge), where he was a First Lieutenant.

There’s scarcely an organization in town that doesn’t count him as a director, or past director, ranging from the Headley-Whitney Museum and the LACC to the American Cancer Society.

He and his wife live in Lexington; one son lives in Atlanta and the other in Cleveland.

Barnes is reading Good to Great by Jim Collins and has Wynton Marsalis in the CD player.

Coby DeVary, senior vice president in commercial banking at 5/3 has worked for Sam Barnes for more than ten years. He says, “Sam Barnes is the consummate leader. Leading by example, motivating the team and inspiring a vision for the group are leadership traits Sam possesses. I see this daily not only at Fifth Third Bank but in the communities we serve. Sam has the unique ability to get the most out of you and elevate your contributions to the team goal. His passion for customer service, community service and just plain doing the right thing are unmatched.”

ANTHANY BEATTY
Police Chief

Community Activities:
YMCA Board of Directors;
Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America Bluegrass Council;
United Way of the Bluegrass

Honors include:
Outstanding Alum, EKU;
2003 Community Leadership Award, presented by the Kentucky State University Criminal Justice Club

Along with the water company and the smoking ban, Lexington’s police and firefighters have dominated the local news in the last year.

The top story is qualified, experienced police officers abandoning Lexington for better salaries and benefits; shorter hours; and (typically) safer gigs in smaller communities.

While these inequities have meant a semi-surge of popularity for the police department as a whole, most citizens have a fair-weather relationship with cops — handy when you need ‘em/ unwanted intrusions when you don’t. They’re just the folks you want to see if say, you find a dead body blocking your driveway (assuming you didn’t put it there), but nobody wants blue lights in their rear view.

Being the public face, and the leader, of any police department is a tough gig.

Chief Anthany Beatty joined the Lexington-Fayette Urban County division of Police in 1973. His career has progressed from Officer (1973) to Sergeant (1988) to Lieutenant (1991) to Captain (1995) to Major (1997) to Assistant Chief (2000). He was appointed to serve as Chief of Police on August 13, 2001.

He’s become known for engendering community alliances, and letting his staff take the credit where credit is due.

JIM CLARK
President, Lexington Arts & Cultural Council

Jim Clark knows Art.

In addition to having owned and managed a private art gallery in LA, in his former life before settling in the bluegrass, he managed a graduate level program at the Pratt Institute in New York and was the executive director of the Public Arts Fund of New York City.

When the LACC named Clark as its new president and CEO, he blew a breath of fresh air into Lexington’s art community.

He came here from Dayton, where he’d been serving as president/CEO of Culture Works since 1998. In Dayton, he was recognized as “one of the most influential people in Dayton” by a local biz publication because of the vital community work he accomplished there.

He recently co-curated, “If You Were Here” (closing October 30, so you can still catch it), described by the LACC as “An innovative and scholarly exhibition bringing together the work of nine, seemingly disparate artists from New York and Kentucky . These artists share a common thread in the treatment of an internal landscape in their work; an obsessive preoccupation with rendering a world constructed of enigmatic images that are amazing and, at times, unsettling.”

The exhibit originates at the LACC’s ArtsPlace Gallery and will travel to galleries in New York and Dallas. A color catalog accompanies the exhibition.

TIM KELLY
Publisher, Lexington Herald-Leader

Honors:
Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame
Knight Ridder 2003 Excellence Award Winner: Byron B. Harless Award

Tim Kelly is a rare (probably dying) breed of newspaper publishers who came up on the Edit side of the industry (as opposed to Advertising). It is, however, the type career path that seems more normal at a Knight Ridder than say, the vastly inferior Gannett, and it’s earned him a national reputation for editorial credibility.

Kelly began his journalism career in his hometown of Ashland as a part-time sportswriter for The Daily Independent.

Kelly and his family have since lived all over the country for his newspaper career, before ultimately settling at the Lexington Herald-Leader, as editor, then publisher.

There he’s become well-known within Knight Ridder as a publisher with an eye for grooming editorial talent.

At a reception last week welcoming editor Marilyn Thompson, he characterized her job as “chief journalist” for the paper, and in that capacity, he chose to go with “an investigator” (from The Washington Post).

Running the paper of record for the second largest city in the state is a daunting, unpopular, risky task. As Joseph Pulitzer put it, “a newspaper can afford no friends” and a newspaper’s publisher no doubt often finds himself in the same position.

SYLVIA LOVELY
Executive Director and CEO, Kentucky League of Cities (since 1990)
President of the NewCities Foundation

Awards/Honors:
Named one of Kentucky’s Powerful Elite; one of Kentucky’s Movers and Shakers; one of Kentucky’s Top Women of Influence; and Appalachian Woman of the Year

Civic Involvement:
Serves on boards of Kentuckians for Better Transportation, Kentucky Habitat for Humanity, and the Governor’s Commission on Family Farms.

Lovely recently wrote an Op/Ed piece about community, which includes some advice, “You might think you are already working to capacity. You might be a volunteer building Habitat for Humanity houses. You might serve as the chair of a local United Way drive. But you might want to do more—because there is so much more to do.

“To build greater communities we must look to improving the greater whole.

“A recent story about the great writer and slave Sojourner Truth illustrates what is lacking in community life today. Once she was speaking to a group when a man in the audience shouted up to her, ‘I don’t care anymore for you than I would a tiny little flea!’

“‘Well,’ she replied, ‘then it is my job to make you itch even more.’

“We should get up each and every morning and feel the itch. We need to question our community role. Are we the leader or the follower? It takes both. Do we compromise or not? Do we best serve by running for elected office, or in some other way that takes best advantage of our talent and abilities?

“Getting involved not only strengthens the community, it provides a personal sense of satisfaction. We feel more connected to others and more content in our lives. We have a greater sense of how we fit into the bigger picture.”

New Cities Foundation is a national nonprofit encouraging citizens to get involved in helping their communities thrive in the rapid technological change and global challenges of the 21st Century.

Kentucky League of Cities is a membership organization of more than 364 cities across the commonwealth.

POWER COUPLE
TERRY & ANN MCBRAYER

He is: Senior Partner, McBrayer, McGinnis, Leslie & Kirkland, PLLC

She is: president of Kentucky Eagle Beer

HONORS:
2004 Winner’s Circle Award presented by the Lexington chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners

McBrayer, McGinnis, Leslie & Kirkland PLLC is a Lexington-based law firm. Concentrations include lobbying for major corporations around the United States as well as work in economic development. They also focus on health care reimbursement, over-utilization, and Medicaid fraud, along with government relations. (McBrayer ran for governor in 1979.)

The firm has been voted Best Law Firm in Lexington by Ace readers in the last two Best of Lex readers’ polls.

W. Terry McBrayer, the firm’s senior partner, co-founded the State Capital Law Firm Group, a national association of 50 law firms who maintain extensive practices connected to law and regulation-making procedures and processes in each state.

McBrayer has held numerous leadership positions in state government, including state representative, speaker pro tempore and majority leader of the Kentucky House of Representatives. He also has served as commissioner of the Kentucky Commerce Department, chairman of the Kentucky Board of Tax Appeals and chief executive officer to a former governor. He ran for Governor in 1979. In 1995, McBrayer was chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party.

In the late 90s, he underwent bypass surgery, but still exercises daily and works six-day weeks, 12 hours a day.

In a ’98 interview with the Lane Report, he cited the drain on Lexington leadership as a crisis facing the bluegrass, saying, “No longer can a bank step up and say it will put in $100,000 to fund a certain study or project. Some other folks in this community are going to have to step up… You need community participation. And the community is divided. We don’t know what we want to be when we grow up.”

More than five years later, Lexington still faces these problems — with huge divisions over issues like the Water Company and Smoking Ban.

Don’t expect any campaign signs with McBrayer’s name on them anytime soon, as he admitted then he might have the maturity to run for office, but he no longer has the requisite “zeal.”

He and his wife Ann choose instead to find other outlets for their community advocacy and activism.

NICK NICHOLSON
President and Chief Executive Officer, Keeneland

Professional Affiliations:
Board member NTRA, the Thoroughbred Racing Association, and the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureaupast president of the Thoroughbred Club of America; vice chairman of the International Catalog Standards Committee; member of the International Stud Book Committee, on the executive committee of the American Horse Council; and director of the Kentucky Horse Park

Awards/Honors:
Lifetime Service Award from the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association; The Jockey Club Gold Medal Community Involvement; board of the Urban League; Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce; and KET Commonwealth Fund

Nick Nicholson, who was instrumental in the formation of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, took over as Keeneland’s sixth president in February 2000 —the first Keeneland president who has no direct lineage to those involved with the opening of the track in 1936.

That didn’t diminish his capacity and passion for the job. After working for Senator Wendell Ford for four years in DC, he returned to Kentucky and ran the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association/ Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders. He was later named the executive director of the Jockey Club, where he took a leave of absence to assist in forming the National Thoroughbred Racing Association.

He was instrumental in shepherding the bill that allows intertrack wagering.

DEBBIE REYNOLDS
Chief Operating Officer of First Corbin
Financial Corporation
President & CEO of FCFC Healthcare Group.
President & CEO of FCFC Retail Group

Many people who work with Debbie Reynolds might characterize her as the strong, silent type. She’s the dream COO of every CEO—a woman who gets the job done with no complaints, regardless of any obstacles or adversities that might be encountered along the way. Although she maintains mammoth budgets in areas as diverse as retail and healthcare; oversees 1800 employees (and countless construction and development projects); she has remained a quiet presence in the local business community. Although that’s starting to change.

Reynolds’ latest project is probably her most visible in the Bluegrass—oversight of the forthcoming opening of the Drexel Heritage Furniture Store and a second location of My Favorite Things — both to be located in Hamburg.

She’s worked her way through the ranks of FCFC over the past 28 years, beginning her career as Nursing Director at Hazard Nursing Home (in 1989, it was selected as facility of the year under her leadership; in 1994 she received an Administrator of the Year Award for that work).

Sandy Bowling has worked for Reynolds within the nursing home group for 18 years, and says, “She is one of the most amazing women I have ever met. Debbie has a way of making everyone feel important. She leads in a way that makes you want to do a great job—if for no other reason than to please her. She has the ability to be firm, yet kind, understanding and fair.”

Reynolds has a busy home life as well. She’s married to Greg Reynolds (Assistant Manager of Prestonsburg Social Security District) and lives in Lexington. New additions to the household are dachsund puppy Hunter, and Himilayan kitten, Bruce. Her two adult sons also live in Lexington.

Her nightstand reading material right now is Hug Your Customers, by Jack Mitchell and her CD player is filled with a collection of old-time gospel hymns.

DAN ROWLAND
Director of the Gaines Center for the Humanities/ Associate Professor of History (UK)

The Gaines Center for the Humanities is distinctive among special programs at state universities. Designed to enrich the upper levels of undergraduate study and thereby to offer exceptional opportunities for dedicated students, the programs of the center are open on a competitive basis to any student interested in the humanities, regardless of major or intended profession.

Rowland is widely known in the community as a longtime preservationist and advocate/activist—including his work with the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation, and specifically his leadership on The Pope Villa project (located on Grosvenor), a “work in progress.”

MIKE SCANLON
Vice-Mayor
Restaurant Entrepreneur

A controversial vice-mayor, Scanlon regularly grabs headlines by trotting out time-worn, folksy adages for the press (like the bon mot about how the Mayor treats the Council members like mushrooms... Get it? … Get it? Feeds ‘em crap and keeps ‘em in the dark! Har! That was a good ‘un back when God was a boy.) That said, for a likely future mayoral candidate, he’s been remarkably happy to loudly express unpopular positions (pro Smoking Ban, for example).

In a September AP wire report, he characterized the financial effects of the smoking ban as exaggerated, or more specifically, “baloney.”He added, “The smoking ban went into effect the same week UK students left town. This is where they start blowing these unbelievable numbers around: ‘My business is down 20 percent.’ From what? Last week? Business always slows down in the summer.”

On the entrepreneurial side, Thomas & King was co-founded in 1988 by CEO Scanlon in 1988 and is one the largest franchisees of Applebee’s International, operating about 80 of its signature restaurants in Arizona, Kentucky, and Ohio.

Scanlon provides ample evidence that “power” is not synonymous with “popular” when one person involved in this year’s selection process STRONGLY objected to his inclusion, asking “Are we really going to include a guy with corporate backing? during an election year? when it is more important than ever to make a big stink that corporations are souless entities who have no accountability to their community, environment, or employees for that matter. Corporations whose bottom line is to cut corners in quality, production, pay and service in order to make the highest profit for a few elite? Corporations who degrade our landscapes with trite architecture and serve us nitrite infested-preservative tainted-hormone induced food? Corporations who slap their names on our historical pasttimes all in the name of selling us more garbage that we don’t need, that we shouldn’t eat because it is slowly contaminating the human race up until the point that women under 20 shouldn’t breast feed because of the toxic chemicals that saturate their bodies? Corporations who build outside the city so we have to drive our fuel-burning automobiles to get there taking away business from a potentially sustainable but fragile downtown economy? And he wants to be MAYOR?! Sorry. It is just something that I feel strongly about. But now I have said my piece, and I am done. What about Jim Gray?”

When it was reiterated that Power and Popularity sometimes go together (as with Jim Gray, who was profiled in last year’s Power Issue) — sometimes they don’t.

That prompted the last word this person had on the subject, “Power . . . okay, I get it. But I think should be a direct comparison made between this dude and Nero (playing his fiddle while Rome burns) plus you should sock it to him with the breast milk thing. Breast milk get’s ‘em everytime.”

Riblets anyone? n