One of Owensboro most prominent residents was the late U.S.

Senator Wendell Ford.

Senator.

Senator Ford served 24 years in the U.S. Senate from 1974 to 1999 and was governor of Kentucky from 1971 to 1974.

He died in 2015 at the age of 90.

But his legacy lives on in Owensboro and beyond.

Our Kelsey Starks takes us to the Wendell Ford Government Education Center in Owensboro.

He was just granddad.

US lived right around the corner from us and his wife still does.

My grandmother still does too.

Clay Ford He was simply granddad, but the rest of the country might remember the late Senator Ford as a country boy from Yellow Creek, a moniker he often used to describe himself, but a real life persona.

His family remembers well.

It doesn't matter who you walk into a room with, whether it be you know, kings and queens and presidents and people that had special titles or, you know, the anybody that you'd run into on the street.

Or when he walk into a restaurant, he went to the kitchen first to say hello to those people that were preparing things and and doing the difficult work on a day to day basis.

And those folks were just as important to him as anybody else.

But Senator Ford was an important force in Kentucky, and national politics.

He was the first Kentuckian in history to be elected lieutenant governor, governor and U.S. senator, serving as Democratic whip in Congress.

He's credited with crafting a compromise to break a five year deadlock on the passage of the Family Medical Leave Act.

He also sponsored the motor voter law that made it easier for Americans to register to vote.

But it wasn't any law that became his greatest legacy.

It's not that he wasn't a partizan in some aspects of retail politics and campaigning.

He was that was important to him.

And he fought for what he believed in, of course, But his.

But once the cameras were turned off and it was time to to get things done on behalf of Kentuckians, he didn't care what letter was in front of your name.

Most often he wanted to create relationships that would be beneficial to the people that he represented.

The art of compromise is at the center of this.

Senator Wendell H. Ford.

Government Education Center in his hometown of Owensboro, established upon his retirement in 1998, teaching young people the importance of three pillars he considered the foundation of democracy, civil discourse, cooperation and willingness to compromise.

For him, I think it was to inspire the next generation of young leaders.

And the the mission of the center, though, was built around those three core principles that guided him in his career that were so made him so unique that we think made him so unique.

This idea of civility and cooperation and compromise that we think is somewhat unfound in our leaders today.

In 2012, the program expanded to include the Ford Statesmanship Academy, a four year program for local high school students to learn about state and local government, but most importantly, about leadership.

We have students who are engineers and scientists.

We have students who work on the Hill.

We have students who work in business.

We have students who are running nonprofits.

We have some great success stories of students emailing us and calling us, saying The principles that you taught me in that program are some of the most important that I've ever learned.

I learned to listen to professors who are different than me, colleagues who are different than me, a viewpoint that I thought I could never sit and listen to or understand were always going to be a nation, a community filled with Republicans and Democrats and conservatives and liberals.

And if we don't learn how to compromise and cooperate and be civil when it comes to crafting solutions to move our communities forward, then I think and Wendell thought that there was no hope for the future.

We want kids to know that they can make a difference in their communities and that they can make a difference in their friends lives and in their lives and in their children's lives in the future just by getting involved.

You don't have to be involved in politics, but you do need to be informed about what's going on in your community, in your school systems, and in government.

And don't be shy.

Don't be scared to step in, because if you're if you're not willing to participate, then who is?

For Kentucky Edition On the Road in Owensboro, I'm Kelsey Starks.