Coming up on Kentucky Life... explore the history of the B-29 Superfortress, the plane used to deliver the atomic bombs during World War II.

The Pink Boots Society comprises movers and shakers in the fermented and alcoholic beverage industry.

Lexington-based artist Robert Morgan creates moving assemblage sculptures out of discarded family items.

And explore the life of Louisville native and business leader, Alice Houston, including her famous neighbor while growing up, Muhammad Ali.

All that and more next on Kentucky Life.

Everybody, welcome to another great episode of Kentucky Life.

I'm your host Chip Polston and welcome back to the International Museum of the Horse.

Now we visited the museum a little earlier in the season and now we're back to tell you a little more about it.

That's coming up, but first, the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington is often the destination for the Commemorative Air Force, a group from Texas dedicated to the preservation of warplanes flown during World War II.

One plane, a B-29 given the name FIFI by her crew serving in the Pacific Theater spent a day thundering over the skies of Lexington.

As Kentuckians looked up, they could imagine the sights and sounds of the sky filled with an armada of these planes.

Our first story gives us a deeper look at the history behind this aircraft.

Chip: On a sunny fall day in Lexington as people throughout the city heard the roar of engines, they looked up to see bombers from World War II flying overhead.

Every year, members of the Commemorative Air Force out of Texas visit the Blue Grass area with these vintage air planes, preserving the heritage of those who wore the uniform of the United States leading the world in defeating the axis powers of Germany and Japan.

I've got a love of history.

I grew up in the military, dad's career was also air force So, you get air force, you get air planes, you get history all rolled into one.

You can't beat that.

It's just wonderful.

Chip: While B-24s filled the sky over Germany and the European theater dropping their heavy loads, it was the B-29 Superfortress that would provide the air power needed in the Pacific to defeat Japan.

Burney: The B-29 is the bomber that ended World War II.

Just so much about this aircraft that's unique.

The pressurization, also the gun pods.

If you see the gun pods on the top and the bottom, those are remote controlled electronic gun sites.

The blisters on the side have electronic gun sites.

The bombardier had one, the tail gunner had one.

Chip: It was also a difficult plane to fly.

It had a very bad reputation to start with.

They had engine troubles coming out of production.

So, there was a lot of distrust to the aircraft and to fly those into combat took a lot of courage.

Chip: The most famous of B-29 missions was that of the Enola Gay delivering the atomic bomb, Little Boy to Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945.

The mushroom cloud that rose that morning signaled the destruction of Hiroshima and the beginning of the end to the war.

The pilot of the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets named the plane after his mother.

The B-29 of the Commemorative Air Force is named FIFI.

Paul Tibbets shared his stories with the airmen of FIFI.

Burney: When we got this plane out of mothballs and got her flying in the early '70s, Colonel Tibbets would fly in our Airshos down in Harlingen each year.

He was very blunt.

He wasn't ashamed for it.

He thought it was something the United States had to get done.

He was proud to have been a part of it and thought it contributed greatly to saving lives and ending the war.

Chip: Paul Tibbets also shared a strong tie to Kentucky.

He was inducted into the Army Air Corps at Fort Thomas, a military installation that gives its name to the city in Northern Kentucky.

Deanna Beineke, curator at the Fort's Museum, loves sharing the history of Fort Thomas.

In the early stages of our country the United States had created a military post for what was then the western frontier just miles away in Newport along the Ohio River, they would quickly discover a problem.

In 1883, the river went from its pool stage, this is in January and February went from its pool stage of 10 ft to 67 ft.

Wiped out the barracks.

In January and February of 1884 the river went to 70 ft.

The Department of the Army threw up its hands and said, "We're done, we're not throwing good money after bad."

"We need to find another location."

Chip: In 1887, then general of the army, Philip Sheridan came to what was known as the district of the Highlands searching for a new location.

Deanna: They got out to the point which is where the current Colonel's house sits and General Sheridan is 500 ft above the river.

He can see forever in both directions.

He was a graduate of West Point.

He said, "This is it, this is going to be the West point of the West."

Chip: In 1917, it would become the induction site for soldiers entering World War I.

Two decades later as World War II loomed on the horizon, over a quarter million soldiers would come through the fort, including Paul Tibbets.

The Fort Thomas History Museum holds stories of many heroes who have served in our nation's military.

Deanna: Betty Cook, she was a 1937 Highlands grad, Highlands High School.

She had three brothers and all four of them served in Europe during World War II.

As an army nurse, she served in a field hospital in Italy.

While she was serving, the hospital was attacked and she was wounded.

She was the first woman to receive both a bronze star and a purple heart.

Chip: And just as this museum tells the stories of Fort Thomas honoring its heroes, the roar of engines overhead reminds Lexingtonians of Paul Tibbets and those who gave so much.

Members of the Pink Boots Society are movers and shakers in the fermented and alcoholic beverage industry.

They make beverages with the highest possible quality, but more importantly, the Pink Boots Society aims to assist, inspire and encourage women and non-binary individuals in the fermented and alcoholic beverage industry to advance their careers through education.

Kate: When you're in this industry, you wear boots.

You wear waterproof, steel-toed protective footwear.

Women started wearing pink ones to differentiate ourselves in the brew house from our male colleagues.

More accurate through the fermentation...

The Pink Boots Society is the professional organization for women and non-binary people in the fermentation industry.

So, in order to join the Pink Boot Society, there is a membership application online.

The qualifications are that you have to be someone who identifies as female in the industry, earning your living from the industry or retired from the fermentation industry.

Each state has one chapter and there are meetings, we have collaboration brews once a year and it's an interesting and fun way to network with other people in the industry.

Stephanie: My title is Brewer, but I don't just brew.

I do pretty much everything in the brewery.

Washing kegs, filling kegs, cleaning tanks, stocking things, stocking the tap rooms, running the canny line and then also brewing.

Kate: I am a founder and brewer at Hopkinsville Brewing Company.

So, I do the day-to-day paperwork for the brewery.

I brew, I clean, I work the counter.

I'm a small business owner, so I do whatever needs to be done I have probably done it at one point or another.

Something that I think is really cool about the Pink Boots Society is that every year there is a collaboration Brew Day in honor of Women's History Month.

And so, the way that works is there's a hop company out of the Pacific Northwest that they will hold a meeting and get many members of the society together to come up with a special and proprietary blend of hops that they then make available to the members.

And we're able to purchase those hops and a portion of that purchase goes to a scholarship fund.

Stephanie: I was awarded a scholarship a year ago and I was able to attend a brew school of my choice and I ended up going to Chicago to the Siebel Institute.

I plan to apply for more scholarships through the Pink Boots and see if I can get some more.

I feel like there's definitely a need for the Pink Boots society just because the industry is so male dominated.

Kate: It's a safe space to meet other people in the industry and be able to compare experiences in a non-threatening manner and I think that it's been a fun way for me to be able to give back to the industry in terms of welcoming other women in and being able to participate in education.

Stephanie: Just in the five years that I've been a member, the percentage of women has already increased.

Basically, they say if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life and I do feel that way about the brewing industry.

It's a lot of fun.

A lot of hard work, but also still a lot of fun and it's definitely worth taking the job.

We're a very welcoming group and I think that's the best thing I can say about the Pink Boots Society is we are not a group of mean girls.

Chip: Well, we're really enjoying our time here at the International Museum of the Horse at the Kentucky Horse Park.

Joining us now is the executive director of the facility.

This is Lee Carter.

Lee, thanks so much for letting us be here today.

Thanks for being here.

So, tell us about the facility and what you feature here?

The International Museum of the Horse is one of our primary attractions.

We opened the building in 1978 and our mission is really, how do we connect humans to horses, right?

How do we connect the human heart to the horse?

And so really, museum is an educational piece for us that goes through that entire story about the horse and our interactions with it.

Chip: And you've got such a variety of exhibits here, your personal favorites.

If you're walking somebody through the museum, what are the things here that you really want them to see?

Yeah, we're standing in front of one right now.

God's boy.

It's the secretariat.

It's the 50th anniversary of Secretariat having won the triple crown, Nigel Finnell, the artist.

We have this on display with us this year and it's a tremendous piece that he crafted and sculptured.

You see the jockey Ronnie Turcotte as he looks over his shoulder in the back stretch of the Belmont.

So, right now, that's probably one of my most favorite attractions to look at.

And the whole sculpture is made up of small individual horses that he's put together there as well.

It's quite a sight to behold.

Lee: It is, and every horse is different and the more I look at it, the more things I see that are a little bit different and unique.

And so, you can really spend a lot of time just trying to see the nuances of it.

One of the neat things about the facility here that I think is really cool, Man o'War is buried just right outside.

Tell me how that came to be and what that means for a facility like this.

Lee: The fact that Man o'War is here, as is Isaac Murphy buried here as well, it's one of those things that really is unique.

It's something that, you know, again, we're all about connecting human, horses and telling that story.

And so, for us being the horse capital of the world to have Man o'War here, really again, brings that together.

And so, for us, it's a way to connect the dots, right?

Between what is truly Kentucky and one of our signature athletes in Man o' War.

And what do you really hope people, Lee, take away when they've had some time here when they've had a day and they could get out and wander around?

What do you really want them to come away with?

Lee: To me again, there is a special connection between people and horses.

We see the benefits of it every day.

There's emotional, physical, cognitive, all these benefits that come from horses, whether you compete with a horse or you just come and pet a horse.

And so, there's this mystical element that I think as folks come in and visit the horse park and they have the opportunity to go up to our Hall of Champions and give a peppermint to Point Given one of our thoroughbreds up there or they get to go to the Parade of Breeds and learn about the different aspects there.

Or they come in here to the museum and they go up to the Black horse from the Kentucky Turf exhibit.

They're just so much and we believe again that rich history that we have in Kentucky, that connection that we have with the horse is our goal.

It's our purpose to make that connection so that people understand what truly great creatures they are.

It's a remarkable facility.

Thanks so much for letting us be here today.

-Lee, great to meet you.

-Thank you.

Our next story asks a question that many artists have pondered.

How do you tell the stories of those people that society has overlooked?

One Lexington based artist has provided his answer while using disposable materials we overlook in our own lives to create vibrant assemblage sculptures.

Through these sculptures artist Robert Morgan tells us the stories we might otherwise not hear.

Robert: I've been collecting stuff since I was about three years old.

Things like premium 1960s circuit boards from primitive computers.

This kind of stuff is treasures in my world.

The assembled sculptures that I do are based on a formula that I developed when I was a little boy.

I was so inquisitive and without things as a child that I would pick up little lost and found objects.

Light bulbs, dead batteries, parts of transistor radios and arrange them in little displays on my bedside table.

And that formula is still the same formula that I use in my artwork today.

Telling stories with objects that I give personal meaning and symbols to.

My earliest memories are of my mother doing art with us kids.

She had five kids, no money and we learned how to make art the way she did in the poverty stricken childhood that she had on Troublesome Creek.

It was you made art out of whatever you found to make art with paper bags, newspapers.

Our big luxury item was Scotch tape.

She instilled in me that I was an artist and I really had a mentor that for the time period was way ahead of his time.

I was about 15 when I met Henry Faulkner and it made a really big difference to me as a young gay boy in the 1960s.

I was about 18 when my mother died and then I was about 31 when Henry Faulkner died.

So, two of the most influential people in my life.

And it was around that time period, I guess that I really started ramping up the alcohol and drugs and eventually was pretty dependent on alcohol and drugs to fuel my creativity.

I eventually hit bottom, had a near death experience.

So, I was 39 years old when I actually got clean and sober.

Part of what getting sober allowed me to do was to finish a whole part of my life that was unfinished.

I was able to start making the stories and putting to rest the spirits of my mother.

And then I went right into putting to rest the spirits of all my friends who died of HIV-AIDS and all my friends who died of drug addiction too.

It became integral to my artwork the struggle to maintain sobriety and making art became a tool to fuel the sobriety and vice versa.

The Crab Nebula is supposedly the brightest thing that humans have ever seen in the heavens.

The light is still reaching us from that explosion.

I lost a really dear friend who had been murdered and I had a real longing for understanding that loss.

And if we are all really made out of stardust, we're not really separated by death.

It's full of half defunct snow domes.

Some of them still have water in them.

If you shake them, you see the water rippling in them.

The water had turned to sludge and was about half full and I said this is the real story of these beautiful little worlds.

They're all little nightmares and bubbles.

A young guy who was living here, he had been a crystal meth addict and his mother had been his crystal meth supplier, which I thought was probably a really deep psychological trauma.

One night he was sleeping here on the couch and woke up in the middle of the night, he had a terrible nightmare.

He dreamed that he was being sucked down into this vortex very much like a blender and that there was somebody trying to help him back up out of this vortex and somebody who was pushing him back down into it.

I took that as a story about his childhood.

This is the force that was trying to help him up and this is the force that was trying to push him back down.

Everyone I knew was sick, suffering and dying with HIV-AIDS, too.

I was doing hands on care for numerous people who really had nowhere to turn to.

And then I was horrified that their families would show up after they died and clear out their apartments and their houses and throw everything in the street for the garbage man to take away.

Especially things like their personal photo albums and their sentimental souvenirs and stuff like that.

So, I would go back at night after they had thrown everything out and go through all the trash and save parts of these people's stuff.

A lot of the people and the stories that I tell in my art are people that fly way under the radar.

They are people whose stories people don't want to remember.

Stories that people try to erase even.

The stories of young drug addicts, young gay kids who are thrown out by their families and people who die in the gutter whose lives go by like a flash.

And so, it is no coincidence that I like to use disposable materials and turn them into important objects.

So, I'm doing the same thing with their story as I'm doing with the materials.

I'm taking what would normally be thrown away and investing it with power and beauty and value.

Businesswoman and philanthropist Alice Houston was born and raised in the west end of Louisville on Grand Avenue.

You might have heard of a neighbor of hers by the name of Muhammad Ali or heard of her father, the successful central high school coach, Willie Lee Keen, but our last story gives you a look into the life of Alice herself.

Follow us as we trace her upbringing and her eventual role as a groundbreaking and influential leader of the Louisville business community.

Alice: I was born here in Louisville, Kentucky on December the 15th, 1946, on Grand Avenue in the west end of Louisville.

And when I think about my life's experiences, I have to think about family, faith, education and athletics, but especially that foundation of growing up on Grand Avenue.

We all grew up in very grounded communities wherever we were in this city and that's very special.

And Grand Avenue was a very, very special place.

Grand Avenue was like a small community and it was a safe community.

However, she understood at a very early age what she could not do, because she was black.

Because when we were in segregated schools, we were taught our history, we were taught where we came from, how we got here and the struggles and we participated in the civil rights struggles.

So, we wanted and always wanted fairness not more just equal.

I come from such a legacy of strong, motivated, beautiful, impactful activist women.

This is one of my very favorite pictures, because it is a picture of my mama, and her sister Aunt May, Aunt Daisy, Aunt Julia, and Aunt Minnie.

All of these women were educated and served as role models to me.

This is a very special picture to me, because it's just kind of symbolic of our family.

My father was a coach at Louisville Central High School, which was an all-black high school.

And he coached there for over 30 years, 28 years and coached football and basketball.

Without a doubt Central High School under the leadership of Coach Kean, not only in basketball, but in the sport of football was the echelon of high school for the African Americans.

I mean, they were the school.

Alice: I went to Virginia Avenue Elementary School.

That was where the principal was Mr. Carl Liggins.

And every day we sang the Negro national anthem and the national anthem and we recited the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.

And I think in his own particular ways, he says, "Yes, we have a culture that is limited, right?

But we live in a bigger culture that is aspirational."

And I think that we became the first generation to actually be able to enact that dream.

Natalie: She and my dad grew up in the South, grew up at a time where opportunities weren't there and society put African Americans in a corner and said, "No this is what you're going to do and this is what we have for you."

And she broke all of that.

After we left the University of Tennessee, we got a really big opportunity to do a joint venture with a company out of Kenosha Wisconsin.

And over the next seven years, that partnership ended up being the largest minority transportation company in North America.

Greg: Alice is a real inspiration to the business world, because they see in her kind of the whole package, big brain, big heart, determination and then I think a lot of respect.

Natalie: Her intellect helps she and my husband to run this family business that my parents can trust that is going to exist for generations to come.

Allan: I've had countless people that have said to me, your mother helped me so much.

I don't know what I would have done without your mother.

I don't even know these people, but they reminded me of how much she's helped them in life.

When I said, "Alice, I want to build this sports complex."

I think we can have a sport and learning complex and she just, I mean, she was as excited as anybody.

She thought this is a great idea.

We should do this.

I will do anything to help you.

Alice is so relatable, she's so grounded, she's so down to earth, yet she gives you this like level that you want to aspire to.

So, she really puts together a business legacy, a community legacy and literally gives a prototype for like what it can look like.

There's no one like Alice.

So, when you meet an Alice, you don't let go of an Alice, like you stay very connected to your alice.

If you're fortunate enough to find an Alice.

Charles: I think that we all can learn a lot from the Houston story, not just those of us that live in Louisville or even just in Kentucky, but nationally.

When you think about an African American couple coming through segregation, overcoming those obstacles, getting an education, being successful business people, yet remaining grounded in who they are and not losing themselves in all the luxuries of life.

I think that's definitely a story that we can all learn something from.

Thank you so much for joining us here on Kentucky Life.

We've enjoyed having you and we've enjoyed our trip back to the Kentucky Horse Park and the International Museum of the Horse.

Hopefully, you've had as much fun as we've had.

Before we go though, I want to leave you with this moment.

I'm Chip Polston, cherishing this Kentucky Life.

á[river gushing] á[harmonious music playing]