Today's Features

As a result of my service aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp during the Battle of the Atlantic in 1941 and 1942, I have developed a great interest in these powerful but vulnerable vessels that changed the course of naval warfare during World War II.

In previous columns I have written about USS Wasp and USS Hornet. Both of these ships were sunk in the Pacific during the latter part of 1942, but later the larger, modern carriers that replaced them completely destroyed the Japanese fleet.

When Shelby County native Drew Howell released his first book, Expendable Assets, he said more books would follow.

He hasn’t let readers down on that promise, recently releasing Irish Pennant and promising even more books will be published.

Maybe word about all that chili that Simpsonville City Clerk Debbie Batliner has cooked for Light Up Simpsonville celebrations has made its way around the state.

Batliner’s all-day cooking has fed thousands of residents during the past decade, but that is only exemplary of the long and lavish list of accomplishments that earned her the 2012 Clerk of the Clerks award from the Kentucky Municipal Clerks Association. The honor, presented in April, was announced last week by the KMCA.

Between 1783 and 1786, Joseph Hornsby, prosperous and prominent resident of Williamsburg, Virginia, had acquired five land grants in present-day Shelby County (which was then Jefferson County, Va.), including 2,400 acres on Plum Run and 400 on Fox Run.

In 1797 or early 1798, Hornsby, then a widower, brought his family to Kentucky, making his home on his 2,400-acre tract near Simpsonville, now in Shelby County, which he called “Grasslands.”