Business

Downtown Shelbyville often is in a state of flux, but recently there are signs that it’s on the verge of significant change.

“I was noting today [Wednesday] as I was walking up Main Street that we recently lost three businesses, but we had four come in, and now there’s three more,” said Eilene Collins, the executive director of the Shelby Development Corporation. “It’s a trend we’ve seen lately, businesses moving around, but I think everyone is settling in.”

He wouldn’t want this to confuse you, but the new orthopedic surgeon who just dusted off his shingle in Shelby County actually got his start in Simpsonville – at the FB Purnell Sausage Company.

The way Andrew Duffee tells the story, he was a medical student in Louisville and needed some ligaments to use to practice surgical procedures.

“When I was writing my personal statement for orthopedics, I told them I started in a slaughterhouse,” he said. “I came out to Al Purnell’s and got my start.”

Corinne Kephart may be new to the field of county agriculture agent, but she is hardly new in the field.

You could say, in fact, that Kephart, who was named in April to replace Brett Reese as the oracle for farming in Shelby County, has been out thereall her life, having most recently served as the horticulture agent at the Shelby County Extension office and before that as 4-H agent.

Martinsville is a long way from Albuquerque, N.M., but Jonathan “Odie” Thompson has made a smooth transition from the bluegrass to no grass.

After his college football career led him from Western Kentucky University to Merced College and then to the University of New Mexico and later to Canada, Thompson said he found a home in the southwest but sure misses Kentucky.