>> This week on Kentucky Life, Eastern Kentuckians in Pikeville are reclaiming the word hillbilly with the Hillbilly Days Festival.

A group of students explore the world of fashion with guidance from a professional fashion designer.

You may have heard of Stonehenge, but did you know Kentucky has a Stonehenge of its own in Munfordville?

Finally, the most over-buried cemetery in the United States sits right outside of Louisville.

That's coming up on Kentucky Life.

>> Hey, everybody.

I'm Chip Polston, your host here on Kentucky Life and today we are here at the absolutely beautiful grounds of the Headley-Whitney Museum in Lexington.

There is so much to see here.

Can't wait to dive in and talk to some of the great folks here but Before we do that, here's a question for you.

What comes to mind when you hear the word hillbilly?

Is it jalopies and outhouses?

Or maybe it's bare feet and overalls.

Whatever it is, it's probably not good, and yet in Pikeville, you can find all these things and more at the Hillbilly Days Festival, which takes place every April, but Hillbilly Days isn't just another joke about hillbillies.

Instead, it's a way for Eastern Kentuckians to reclaim the hillbilly altogether and to do it for a good cause.

>> Hillbilly is a very common term.

It's also very malleable, so it can be used in all different contexts.

In Kentucky, >> it's very much thought of as tied to Appalachia, but in general, I think it means someone from the hills who is out of step with modern life, or maybe not even familiar with it, who, on the positive side, has a good strong sense of family and kin and community, knows who they are, is tied to the land.

On the more negative side is backwards, ignorant, potentially socially inappropriate.

A hillbilly is an incredibly widespread image, and we can think about it in television, in music, in advertising, in other forms of popular culture.

And of course also, people in the region see these images as well, and hear these stories as well, and it does shape, I think, and limit the ways they perceive themselves.

To reappropriate a term is very difficult.

It's also always happening.

It is an important effort to reclaim one's own identity and to set the terms for yourself of who you are and what these terms mean.

Hillbilly Days Festival, I think, is a perfect example of that.

We have people of the region using the image for their own purposes, poking fun at themselves, but also setting the parameters of what those images are.

So >> to me, a hillbilly is really about community and service.

The goal of Hillbilly Days as a festival has always been about the Children's Hospital in Lexington.

It's a chance for everyone to come out and have a good time, act a little silly, and ultimately do it for a good cause - so it's our opportunity to give back and support the community.

So today, Hillbilly Days is three days of fun and celebration.

We've got live music on three different stages all around the town.

We've got food and attractions and fun and games for everybody of all ages.

I think the festival really is important because it all goes back to that whole concept of the festival with a heart.

We're able to come out, have a good time.

A lot of >> people like to dress up and you know, exaggerate the hillbilly image, just all for a good cause and I think it all comes back to that reason of how it started.

To a lot of people, it's a reunion.

A lot of people, it's heritage.

A lot of people just getting together as a group.

And you know, Eastern Kentucky, we're all hillbillies.

We like to have company.

We like to have friends over.

We like to entertain.

I think it's all about helping people.

I think people in Eastern Kentucky want to and always do try to help.

If there's a disaster anywhere in the state or in the United States, people in Eastern Kentucky are one of the first people to start donating.

But I think helping the Shriners raise money for the Shriners Children's Hospital in Lexington is a big reason why it's been so successful, because mountain people, they want to help each other and help others.

>> Today we're looking at 45 year, what started out to be just a small festival in '77, with just maybe a thousand people.

Now we're looking at over a 100,000 people that come through this little town.

The goal was to have fun and bring people in because Daddy and Harris, man, they just like people.

They wanted to be around the crowd that was just fun.

That's what Hillbilly Days is about.

You come to town, and you see how you do the dress.

You be who you want to be, who you'd like to be, who you'd like to portray, and what kind of image you'd like to have for a couple days.

Then you can go home and get back to reality, so to speak.

I think the hillbilly image, it goes up and down according to what you think.

I have my own thought about it.

The best people in the world.

That's a >> hillbilly.

We get labeled so many different ways of hillbilly.

Hillbilly is a way of life.

Our music plays such a major heritage in the hillbilly way of life.

Music was a way of refuge.

A lot of the settlers here would use music from a hard day's work.

That's how they would rest.

The old time fiddle and banjo music, the mountain music, is such an important role in that because the old-timers, that was their escape.

That was the way to have a good time.

That was the way to celebrate a job well done, a wedding, and sometimes even a funeral.

It's all developed from the culture of being a hillbilly Appalachian American.

The word hillbilly gets labeled.

The word hillbilly sometimes gets trashed.

A hillbilly is not a trashy thing.

A hillbilly is a wonderful thing.

A hillbilly is a good-hearted mountain person.

People love hillbilly people and I'm proud to be one.

>> Our next story follows a group of students in Lexington who took an opportunity to dive into the world of fashion.

Starting with repurposed clothing, they designed, cut, and stitched their ideas together.

With guidance from an award-winning fashion designer, these students learned lessons of sustainability and self-confidence.

>> I just love that I can now express myself in a bigger way than I could ever do before this camp.

Camp Carnegie is a creative space for middle school-age students to come and experience the Carnegie Center in a new and creative way.

As an artist, I've always felt that it's important to teach >> your craft to other people.

I think that's just natural.

I have a skill and a craft that I've cultivated.

Someone taught me, and I want to share it with people.

>> The Stitching the Self class was a phenomenal opportunity for our young campers to work with a renowned fashion designer located here in Lexington to learn about not only making clothes, but how to repurpose existing clothes into their own.

>> I am involved in fashion in Kentucky, I think in a very forward movement that is focused on sustainability and creating really unique clothing that helps people to express themselves.

Sustainability is important for a lot of reasons.

Fashion is one of the industries that uses a tremendous amount of water.

Choosing to reuse, choosing to recycle, it's not only better for the environment, but it's fun.

It's a really fulfilling way to dress yourself and express yourself.

The camp was so amazing.

I was shocked, honestly, at how quickly the students had their ideas.

They had their clothing.

They knew exactly what they wanted to do.

The funnest part for me was >> being able to create the design by myself, and seeing my ideas actually come to life, and also just helping other people.

>> It's really important to see how naturally creative and imaginative that humans just are, that children are really ready to create something.

Just rip it.

They just needed the permission to do it.

Perfect.

>> Shopping with a group of 12 children was a little bit daunting.

It was just fun to look through and find something that I could change up.

>> They did so well of helping each other, partnering up.

It was just amazing that they were able to find something that was perfect for each of them.

They all had just a small budget, $10 to $15.

>> I had a lot of clothes in my cart.

It was really hard to narrow it down, but I knew what I was going for.

Okay.

You have a solid concept.

You have a solid concept.

I'm excited.

Dasha, I thought, had such clear vision.

She had beautiful drawings of her pieces.

Her ideas were really thorough and thought out.

I transformed a daisy dress into a cute top with a ruffle on top.

This shawl I'm wearing, it was in fact just a scarf.

I cut the shoulders out to make it fit me.

>> Some of these kids could have been creating lines of clothing.

Some of them were creating really marketable products.

Brooklyn's piece was super cool, this funky, rugged jacket that just has this energetic pattern.

It was asymmetrical and had rough edges.

I loved it.

>> Using a sew machine, it was fun, but it was hard.

>> Sewing is not just an outlet for creativity.

It's just a really practical skill that can save money.

This one is so cool.

>> At first, it was scary because I thought I was going to mess something up, but it was really fun.

Oh, >> you did great.

Being able to set these kids down and put them at the sewing machine, some of them for the first time so that they can accomplish it and be like, "Yeah, I did this.

I helped.

I was able to do this myself."

Yes.

Good job.

Good job.

But what was most important for me was to teach them confidence.

Confidence in their own choices and confidence in their personal expression.

If you just like the clothes that you're wearing, you're going to like yourself better.

You're going to feel more confident in front of your peers.

I learned that I >> shouldn't be afraid to express myself through my clothes, which is my favorite thing to do.

>> What I'm wearing shows off who I am.

It can make me be more confident in myself.

She taught me that my ideas are the best ideas for me.

>> I just wanted to find a mantra, just something that was going to be easy for them to understand, just to help them moving forward in any choices that they're making, that they need to choose what's best for them.

By encouraging them as individuals, then it makes it easier for them to encourage each other.

>> Because they need a space where they can just be free to be who they are and let the creativity flow however it flows, without restriction.

We wanted to foster that space so that they can do that.

>> Everybody was so happy and so proud to showcase the things that they had made.

Everything was so different and so unique.

It just felt wonderful, really, to see these kids blossom, to just unlock a part of themselves and make them feel really proud of who they are and what they had made.

>> So we continue our tour of the Headley-Whitney in what has to be one of the most interesting parts of the museum.

Here with me is Christina Bell, executive director.

Thanks so much for being with us today.

Thank you for having us.

Tell us about the Shell Grotto.

What is this place?

>> This is, for me, the most interesting part, or one of the most interesting parts, of the museum.

The Shell Grotto was designed and done by George Headley in the early '70s because he appreciated the Shell Grottos of Europe in the 18th century, and he wanted to have one.

So he took his three-car garage and made it into this beautiful space.

He collected shells from all over the world.

So this is an international, probably one-of-a-kind shell collection.

It took probably nine months for George to be in this building with a hot glue gun, and he designed all of this.

So he did this himself.

He did this himself.

Wow.

The floor is a coral floor from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or the Keys, I should say.

Also, he had his friend, Carl Malouf, design these mosaics in the ceiling.

There was a story that Carl had done two or three of them, and he didn't think he could finish the last one.

George says, "Surely, you can do this.

The Sistine Chapel was done."

So his friend was happy to be put in that class- That's wonderful.

... >> so that's when he finished.

You made a reference to George Headley.

Who was he, and why is he so important to be known?

>> I think George was a very interesting person and artist.

He wanted to be a jewelry designer, so he studied in Paris and New York.

He landed in Beverly Hills, California, where he had a shop at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

He designed jewelry for the stars of the day in the '40s, like Joan Crawford and others.

He was quite well known and quite respected as a jewelry designer.

How did he land here?

He at some point decided to move back to his home in Lexington.

This is the family home.

He married Barbara Whitney.

Together they decided to build the Library and the Jewel >> Room.

Talking about that Whitney connection, how does all that come to play with this being the Headley-Whitney >> location?

Barbara Whitney was Sonny C.V. Whitney's sister and Sonny C.V. Whitney was married to the famous Marylou Whitney.

So the Whitneys, after Barbara and George had built the main museum, Sonny and Marylou built the other part of the museum, which is where we do major exhibits today.

Right.

>> The connection of the museum to the community and the state, where do you see you fitting in >> with all of that?

Yeah.

I think that's a great question.

We have a really unusual place, I believe.

There's nothing like this in the whole Southeast area.

We have beautiful, large gallery spaces.

We're able to show retrospective exhibits of 30, 40 and 50 years of artists' lives' work.

Particularly, we've been focusing on Kentucky artists the last few years.

Wonderful.

>> Which is a perfect tie in-there.

That's great.

Thanks so much.

Christina Bell, Executive Director of the Headley-Whitney.

We're going to continue to roam around a little bit.

Okay?

Thank you.

Can't wait to check more out.

Munfordville resident Chester Fryer was considered by some to be an outsider artist working in stone.

But Chester modestly considered himself to be a person who just liked to work with rocks.

Either way, a visit to Mister Fryer's property in Hart County reveals one of the state's most interesting and unusual creations.

>> Chester Fryer built this about 20 years ago, or over 20 years ago.

He has many formations around his property, but Stonehenge is the most popular.

>> They're just old and something different.

They're one of the oldest things on Earth.

Maybe these rocks that we're fooling with here might have come from ice ages.

I'm one of them guys who wants to know more on that.

>> His imagination is just something.

To see everything that he has built, he can just see things in the rocks.

He's dug them up from the Earth and brought them here for people to enjoy.

>> I do enjoy fooling with rocks.

It's not that hard of work.

It looks hard, but it's not.

Got to do something.

Enjoy working.

I enjoy it.

It's a gift.

Lucky to have >> it.

Here in Munfordville, we have pride in this.

People have come from all over the United States.

We have had people from other countries that would come here.

They would stop in the welcome center and know about Stonehenge and want to come.

We would send them out here, and a lot of them will come back to us and just say how amazing it is and how much they enjoyed it.

>> Well, the first thing, I built the outline of it, and on the last, I build the center because I hadn't found the rocks to fit the center.

I was out looking for rocks one day.

I found 15 rocks to make the horseshoe in one little old spot.

It's like it was meant to be built.

You got to have a little imagination of what you're doing to make it look good.

>> Chester Fryer is not just an eccentric.

He is an artist.

It's just amazing to see what he's built out of rock.

I think >> I got a gift.

How can you have a job you enjoy doing?

Most people got to work for a job they don't even want to do, right?

When you got a job that you got a gift to do it and don't know how you got it and you enjoy doing it, that's pretty lucky.

>> I think Chester has had a logistical miracle keeping this here.

With all the heat, and then the cold, the snow, we've had tornadoes, we've had everything, and it has just stood proud.

It has never moved.

I think he did an amazing job getting this set up where it would just stay here forever.

>> Eastern Cemetery, located only minutes from downtown Louisville, is known as the most over-buried cemetery in the entire United States.

With 28 acres of land, 138,000 bodies lay where only 16,000 should reside.

Through volunteer work, the Friends of Eastern Cemetery are doing what they can to make right the decades of neglect and abuse.

>> The first time I walked through it, the grass was probably six to seven feet tall throughout most of the cemetery.

I assumed that it was abandoned to where people just didn't even come here anymore.

It felt like a really sad place.

It just felt like it needed some love.

>> What was happening in the 1850s is people were moving west.

Gold was being discovered, California, the Dakotas, that sort of thing, and people would publish, "This family is moving on to Saint Louis," or "They're going to see gold in California."

At that point, we start seeing a lot of these lots being sold to the cemetery.

They would buy them back.

I think the seller thought, "Well, I have two dead children buried here," because infant mortality was high.

So they're going to leave those graves alone and only use the remaining six.

Well, what ended up happening is they started using the whole lot.

Older sections, individual sections, single sections were just used repeatedly.

It got to the point where they would bury from one end all the way to the other, and then they would just start over and over again.

Section two, we know for a fact, has been reburied entirely three times and partially probably a fourth time.

This idea of friends of came from me.

I have friends that are friends of the National Park System.

This is where Friends of Eastern Cemetery came from.

There's no legal liability.

There's no ownership so they can take care of the property.

>> Friends of Eastern Cemetery officially started in March of 2013.

This is our 10th summer out here, our ninth year.

It's been a pretty great experience getting to know a lot of the people that come out.

We've had certain companies, certain groups in the community, that have really stepped up and helped out in different times when we needed it.

I wasn't sure if it was going to work right off the bat.

We've had a great turnout over the years, enough to keep going.

>> Well, the people that caused the over burial were the board of directors, board of trustees.

They ordered the people on the ground to do the over burials.

When the people on the ground, this is how it got caught or how they got caught, would bring them human remains and say, "There's somebody buried here before," the administration said, "Rebury them respectfully in and around the one you're burying."

That got to the point where that upset people.

Once word got out that people were buried in previously used graves, families would come and say, "I want my aunt removed.

I want my daughter removed."

We removed hundreds of sets of remains.

We had to identify them.

They got moved to other cemeteries regionally and locally.

There were crowds.

There were crowds of people coming through here.

>> My thought process in the beginning was all of these people that are buried here, there were promises made to them, and those promises have been broken.

The people that are buried here in this cemetery, they are the people that built this city into what it is now for us.

Walking around here for the first time, it occurred to me that it was our duty as a community to pick up where the other people left off and fulfill the promises that they broke.

>> Cemeteries, necropolises, cities of the dead, they're a reflection of our society.

This cemetery and the two others that were owned by this corporation abused people when they were at their worst.

The people were burying their kinfolk, their parents, their daughters, their children.

They're grief-stricken, and here these people are taking advantage of them.

>> They've been through so much.

This place is stigmatized for them.

It's a place that really takes a lot of energy and courage to come back to after the experiences that they've had, not only with the person that they love that died, but then finding out that there was a lot of bad things happening after that.

The volunteers that come out are people that hear about it, want to get out and do something good in the community.

People have all kinds of different reasons for coming, but it seems like it's always good people, and the good people always stay.

>> Thank you so much for joining us here at the Headley-Whitney Museum.

We cannot wait to come back to this absolutely spectacular place.

Until then, I'll leave you with this moment.

I'm Chip Polston, cherishing this Kentucky Life.