LouLife

Attica Scott, Coordinator, Kentucky Jobs With Justice
Attica Scott’s son was watching television and saw a tantalizing ad for a fast-food restaurant. He turned to his mother and asked what the restaurant paid its workers. It may seem like an odd question for a 10-year-old boy, but not this one. His name is Advocate Scott, and his mom is coordinator of the Louisville-based Kentucky Jobs With Justice program.

Scott, 33, has served in her position for a year, advancing the cause of better-paying jobs and improved working conditions for Kentucky residents. The organization’s biggest victory during Scott’s tenure has been helping the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who harvest tomatoes for Taco Bell, squeeze more money out of the Louisville-owned restaurant chain to better their living conditions.

Another battle looms: During the coming months, Scott and an army of volunteers will be attempting to get the Metro Council to pass a new living-wage bill that would raise the local minimum wage to $11.48 an hour. “That’s where a family of three can afford a two-bedroom apartment,” Scott says.

Scott believes she was destined to have a social justice bent. Her parents named her after a New York prison that suffered race riots, she says, as a reminder of the struggle African-Americans faced in the turbulent 1960s when they were fighting for their civil rights. Scott spent part of her childhood in Louisville before her working-class parents moved to Los Angeles. They sent her back to Louisville to live with relatives after L.A. got too rough for raising a daughter.

However, Scott considers her Los Angeles time to be central in creating her interest in the welfare of others. Her family was surrounded by people of different races and religions. “I began to have an understanding of the struggles different people faced,” she says, especially when it came to wages. Everyone she knew struggled to make ends meet.

The first in her family to att/files/storyimages/college, choosing the historically black institution Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tenn., she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1994. She followed that with a master’s degree in communications from the University of Tennessee in 2000 and became the executive director of the National Conference for Community and Justice in 2001. But after years of living away from family, Scott and her husband, Alvin Scott, decided to settle in Louisville. He is from West Virginia and his father was a coal miner. “This work is important to him, too,” she says.

“I have to make sure that…we are lifting up the voices of workers, so it’s not just me — it’s the voices of workers across Kentucky.”

— Robyn Davis Sekula

Keith Look, Principal, Meyzeek Middle School
He’s now 33 and the principal at Jefferson County’s Meyzeek Middle School, but as a student himself Keith Look was not what you’d call focused on education. He graduated from Ballard High and then Centre College in Danville with, he recalls, “no idea what I wanted to do with my life.”

On a whim, he submitted a Teach for America application three days before the deadline, went through that recruitment program’s summer training in Houston, and in the fall of 1994 found himself conducting social-studies classes in a Baltimore city middle school. It was a tough first assignment: Look was working in what had been rated Maryland’s worst middle school, in a system where class sizes were capped at an unwieldy 41. So how did it go? “I got waxed,” Look says. “People say kids are challenging, but the challenge was me. The challenge is to realize that kids have all sorts of issues and . . . to manage those issues, because you have that responsibility.”

After earning a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania, Look served a stint as acting principal in another challenging urban school setting, West Philadelphia High, once named “most dangerous school” in the state. “Everything in a school is heavily influenced by what goes on outside the school,” Look says, noting that anytime anything bad happened in the surrounding neighborhood, TV reporters would do their on-air stand-ups from the steps of the school. “We were getting beat up by the media and by the district,” he says, but “we were never doing what was necessary to make those kids succeed.”

In August 2003, Look jumped at the opportunity to return to Louisville. “Meyzeek was going to give me a chance to do what I always thought could be done,” he says. “Kids are (often) blamed for their own failure, but we have to give them a chance to be in a successful setting.”

Meyzeek, which is both the middle school for Louisville’s Smoketown/Shelby Park neighborhood and a math/science/technology magnet open to all Jefferson County students, provided such a setting, with students ranging from among the most disadvantaged to some of the most affluent in the district. Look welcomes the challenge of making it possible for every child to succeed. “He is extremely dedicated to diversity and to making sure that all kids are learning at high levels,” says Sandra Ledford, the district’s assistant superintendent for middle schools.

Look is also fostering school-community partnerships through a youth service center and community school located in the building. In addition, Meyzeek is participating in a federally funded neighborhood revitalization effort involving school personnel and community organizations such as the Smoketown Neighborhood Association and the Housing Authority of Louisville.

— Barbara Myerson Katz

Kelly Downard, District 16 Representative, Metro Council
Perhaps no one in local politics will be more in the spotlight during coming months than Kelly Downard, the Republican member and former president of the Metro Council who has entered the race to become Louisville’s next mayor — challenging four-term Democrat Jerry Abramson.

Downard, 59, says he is ready to help Louisville take the bold steps needed to lure young residents back to the city. He says he has a plan, but is not yet willing to share his vision. “I think we’re a wonderful city that takes baby steps, and we need to take adult steps now,” he says. “If we want to attract younger generations to come back to Louisville, we’ve got to provide an energizing community.”

The private-sector retiree was active in the local banking business for more than 20 years. He was a founder of the Louisville Community Development Bank and the Louisville Real Estate Development Co. and served as president and CEO of both. That experience has yielded supporters from both sides of the political line; he says that nearly 20 percent of contributions totaling $130,000 brought in during the first three months of his campaign were from local Democrats.

“The sign of his being effective is the fact he was elected as (council) president and several Democrats crossed over to support him,” says Bill Stone, former Jefferson County Republican Party chairman. Stone, who has known Downard for close to 10 years, says the council member’s long experience in the private sector is great preparation for the mayor’s office. “He understands firsthand the impact of legislation on the economy,” Stone says. “He understands how local government can impact the business community that not only exists here but that we can attract.”

Downard was a political novice when he first ran for Metro Council. He says it became clear to him when he began serving his term that the city was not taking the steps needed to keep up with surrounding cities. “If you look at things that are important to the residents of the city — health and education — we have to challenge the people who are 21, 31 and 41 to stay and develop this city and enjoy it,” Downard says.

 “It’s going to be a hard campaign,” he says. “I’m applying for my last job.”

— Valerie Gritton

Heidi Caravan, Director of News and Programming, WFPL-FM
As a radio news reporter, Heidi Caravan has interviewed President George W. Bush (during a 2000 campaign swing) and covered former President Bill Clinton (who came through Kentucky twice in 1998). But the interview Caravan says she’ll never forget was one she did for the Kentucky News Network several years ago with convicted murderer Irvin King in rural Jackson County on the Cumberland Plateau. King was the first and, according to Caravan, remains the only Kentuckian ever to plead guilty to murder and request the death penalty. “He was close to my age,” she recalls. “He was remorseful. If only he had grown up somewhere else, he would have had different opportunities.”

What particularly caught Caravan’s attention was the striking resemblance between hardscrabble Jackson County, with its wrecked cars, outhouses and other visible signs of poverty and struggle, and her native Newfoundland, where she grew up in a town called Foxtrap and attended college in Stephenville and St. John’s. Now director of news and programming at WFPL-FM radio, part of Louisville’s Public Radio Partnership, Caravan, 37, started in radio as an evening disc jockey on a music station in her Canadian homeland, but later shifted into news. “Radio is so interesting,” she says. Where a breaking news reporter has to pause to line up camera shots for TV, she notes, in radio “you can go on the air right away.” 

Caravan and her husband arrived in Louisville on Derby Day 1997, prompted by a sliding Newfoundland economy to relocate for her husband’s information technology job. Advised by an immigration lawyer to find work in her old field, Caravan became a reporter for WHAS-AM and then the Kentucky News Network. Her status as a Canadian emigre brought her to a WFPL studio in 1999 when Caravan was invited to participate in a special State of Affairs talk show about Canadians living in the U.S. The following year, WFPL hired her as producer of SOA, the weekday public-affairs broadcast that has become a staple of local public radio. Last February she was promoted to director of news and programming.

Caravan’s goal is to make WFPL “the best news radio station in this market.” She brought in veteran reporter Tony McVeigh, who has 19 years of experience covering Frankfort politics, and promoted veteran staffer Rick Howlett to assignment editor, among other personnel moves — and expanded coverage so that WFPL is now the only Kentucky public radio station with week/files/storyimages/as well as weekday news. One new program, Studio 619, features a mix of features and interviews on Sunday mornings. Caravan has also expanded WFPL’s commentator pool from five to approximately 20 regular contributors.

“There’s always going to be a place for local (radio) news,” she says. “People are always going to want to know what the Mayor is doing, if there’s a traffic tie-up and what the weather is going to be.” If Caravan has her way, in Louisville they’ll find out first by listening to WFPL.

— BMK

Thelma Ferguson, President, Chase Kentucky
People use the term “banker’s hours” to refer to a cushy 9-to-5, no-weekends job. Those people haven’t met Thelma Ferguson, the new president of Chase Kentucky (formerly Bank One Kentucky).

Paul Costel, executive vice president for commercial banking there, recalls Ferguson’s drive to win a new client about four years ago. Vying with several large banks for the business, Costel and Ferguson stayed at the office until 9 p.m. one Friday night, then returned on Saturday morning at 9 a.m. to continue their work. Costel left at 2 p.m. that day to att/files/storyimages/a basketball game, only to receive a phone call two hours later from a still-at-it Ferguson.

“That demonstrated to me her competitiveness,” Costel says. “Thelma is very driven to succeed, extremely sharp . . . and very competitive.”

And yes, the bank secured the deal.

Ferguson, 46, ascended to her post in July, rising from her previous position as division manager for corporate banking. For her entire 20-year career in banking, she’s worked with businesses — mostly large, publicly held companies — helping them handle the present and anticipate the future. “There is always something new to learn in banking,” she says. “It never becomes one of those jobs that’s mundane or tedious.”

Ferguson grew up the youngest of five children in Memphis. Her mother was a social-services caseworker and her father
owned a moving business.

She chose biology as her major, thinking she might like to be a doctor. But after getting her bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, she decided against it, instead earning her master’s from the same school in science and planning. From there, she went to work for state economic development offices.

Later, in Nashville, she entered a Third National Bank training program because there was a female division manager there who wanted Ferguson to work for her upon the program’s completion. There were few women in the field, and not many minorities. “I thought banking was an industry where people were blazing new paths,” Ferguson says.

Although a boss once told her not to expect a warm reception in the business community as an African-American woman, Ferguson, who arrived in Louisville in 1997 when her husband took a job here, told him he was wrong — and says she’s never felt singled out since. “If it weren’t that way, I wouldn’t be here today,” she says.

Ferguson says as president she plans to continue Chase Kentucky’s existing charitable commitments, including to the Louisville Orchestra and Junior Achievement, and expand the bank’s market share.

— RDS

Ellen Call, District 26 Representative, Metro Council
When Louisville’s Metro Council was considering a citywide smoking ban, Ellen Call was the first Republican to immerse herself in the debate as a proponent of the measure. The 38-year-old Louisville native cited two reasons: the protection of public health and economic development.

Call has two additional reasons to support the ban — daughters Virginia, 9, and Sophie, 5. “Every project I have worked on has been with one goal in mind, and that is to make Louisville an attractive place for young people to live. My oldest is aware of the smoking ban and is very proud if it,” says Call, the 26th District representative. “I think the smoking ban is probably the most important thing we will ever do on this council. . . . For Louisville to be seen as a progressive city attractive to young professionals, we have to stay current with other major cities in the country.”

Call stuck by her beliefs throughout the debate despite challenges from some fellow Republicans. Her efforts seemed to pay off when the council passed the measure in August — with eight of the 11 Republican members voting for it. This ability to cross party lines and have a big-picture outlook contribute to her effectiveness as a council member. “She is articulate, she is focused, she is determined, and she has a broad, urbane vision,” says fellow council member and Democrat Tom Owen. “If things break (right) for her, I certainly think she has the potential for effective long-term government service.”

Although this is Call’s first elected position, she is no stranger to the political arena. She was active in local politics during her history-major undergraduate years at Harvard University and clerked for U.S. District Judge John Heyburn after graduating from the University of Louisville’s law school. In 2006, Call and District 18 Councilwoman Julie Raque Adams will launch Adams and Call Inc., a consulting firm designed to help Jefferson County judicial candidates run for election.

“With the passage of the merger,” Call says, “it wiped the slate clean in local politics and made it possible for someone like me to run for office and have a shot. I really love this city and want to see it grow and thrive.”

Call will launch her own Metro Council re-election campaign in 2008. After that? “I plan on keeping my options open,” she says, “because you just never know.”

— VG

Yung Nguyen, Entrepreneur
In 2000, many Americans watched the notorious Florida “hanging chad” election fiasco and shook their heads. So did Louisville businessman Yung Nguyen, but he decided to do something about it.

Nguyen, 46, started his own company, IVS LLC, in 2000 to create voting technology minus a paper ballot. The system, called Inspire Vote-by-Phone, uses an ordinary telephone to dial into a central computer. The voter then punches buttons on the keypad to indicate electoral choices.

Now IVS, located on Linn Station Road, may be poised for a big break. Its first customer, the state of Vermont, will hold a mock election this month to try out the new equipment. If the IVS system passes the test, says Nguyen, it could go online for all voters in an upcoming statewide election. “We knew that voting by phone is the best way. But since the idea is so new, we needed a champion, and Vermont is our champion,” he says.

Mike Davis, president and co-founder with Nguyen of the local Web-based business Appriss, says Nguyen’s skills almost guarantee him success at this new venture. “He’s brilliant in everything he thinks about,” Davis says. “He’s very much able to absorb and learn and think differently than anyone else. That’s why he’s terrific at thinking of ways to solve problems that no one else would think of.”

Raised in Vietnam, Nguyen fled its hard-line Communism in 1980 at the age of 17 by walking across Cambodia to Thailand. He lived in refugee camps and, after two years, came to Louisville through the Red Cross refugee program because he had an uncle living here. He arrived penniless and shoeless, but began supporting himself with low-level jobs in restaurants while taking classes at Jefferson Community & Technical College. “I didn’t compreh/files/storyimages/much of what the teachers said, so I had to study extra hard,” Nguyen says.

He mastered the material. Davis says Nguyen scored so high on a math test at JCC that the instructors assumed he had cheated, and made him take it again. He scored higher.

He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Louisville in 1985, then a master’s in computer science in 1987 and a master’s in mathematics in 1988. He worked at Electronic Systems USA Inc. with Davis, which is where they came up with the brainstorm that became Appriss, the company that was born after local resident Mary Byron was killed by a former-boyfriend-turned-stalker who had been released from prison. Byron was not notified when he was released. Appriss’ software solves that problem, notifying victims when offenders are released.

Knowing the tough time that immigrants have adjusting to the U.S., Nguyen started an after-school educational program for children of recent immigrants of all ethnic backgrounds called Lac Viet Academy. He knows that not everyone has the luck, or the pluck, he has had. “Luck has a lot to do with one’s success,” Nguyen says. “You have to work hard, but I’ve been fortunate that I made it out of Vietnam when others did not.”

— RDS

Dr. La Creis Renee Kidd, Molecular Epidemiologist
Consider for a moment the term “molecular epidemiology” — it’s a field of science that approaches disease on two levels, both microscopic and global. Talk to Dr. La Creis Renee Kidd, molecular epidemiologist and assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Louisville’s James Graham Brown Cancer Center, and you begin to understand why. “Genes alone cannot cause cancer,” Kidd explains. “You have to have the environment as well as the genetic component” interacting to result in disease.

For Kidd, the environmental influence of concern is the food we eat, and what’s consumed — and not consumed — by minority populations in the United States. In 2004, she was recruited to conduct research at the Brown Cancer Center, supported by the James Graham Brown Foundation with matching funds from Kentucky’s “Bucks for Brains” initiative. The goal, she says, was to study ways that would help reduce disparities in the rates of prostate and lung cancer between Caucasians and African-Americans, who have significantly higher occurrence and mortality rates from these conditions.

Kidd was conducting research in cancer prevention at the National Cancer Institute when U of L Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology chair Dr. David W. Hein met her. He was drawn to her expertise in both laboratory and population science. “We believe she will be especially effective in translating discoveries made . . . toward improving the health of patient populations in Louisville and the state,” Hein says.

For Kidd, the motivation, like the work, is personal as well as global: There’s a high incidence of cancer in her own family, including a grandmother, a grandfather and, recently, her father. “Once I got to grad school, I started to develop a strong interest in the role that diet plays not only in causing but preventing cancer,” she says, ultimately focusing on carcinogens that form in grilled or pan-fried meat and poultry, to which African-Americans as a group may have a higher level of exposure than Caucasians.

On the other side of the equation, research suggests that fresh fruits and vegetables contain micro-nutrients that might help to prevent some forms of cancer, but consumption of these potentially protective foods varies widely based on demographics. Access to good nutrition depends, in part, on income level and ethnicity, she says. To help reduce such disparities and gather information to inform her research, Kidd regularly attends state and local health fairs to survey dietary habits and provide information to the public on how to improve nutrition.

Kidd is also working to determine the role of specific genes in the development of prostate cancer. The potential of such research, she says, goes beyond explaining disparate prostate cancer rates among African-Americans and other segments of the population — it could also provide keys to better anti-cancer treatments, such as drugs that would block the expression of genes allowing uncontrolled cancer cell growth.

Kidd’s approach to cancer on two fronts — what she describes as her “dual life” as a scientist — has promising implications on all fronts, Louisville and beyond.

— BMK

Leslie Barras, Regulatory Issues Manager, River Fields Inc.
River Fields executive director Meme Sweets Runyon will never forget the first time she heard Leslie Barras speak. It was during a lengthy, tedious organizational meeting, and Barras’ was the voice of fact and reason wihin the group. That articulate voice piped up against the massive Ohio River bridges project during a hearing a few months later where Runyon learned that Barras, 47, was trained as an attorney but working as a middle school teacher. “I want to hire her,” she told a co-worker.

As it so happened, Runyon was looking for someone with exactly Barras’ skills set. The job title was regulatory issues manager, and the job description was to plow through mountains of forms and regulatory paperwork, translating it in a way that would get River Fields, and its members, heard in the community. When she accepted the job in 2001, Barras became the public face and voice of the citizens group at meetings concerning the mammoth bridges project.

The appeal of environmental law may be traced to Barras’ childhood. Growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, she was surrounded by chemical plants and oil refineries. Her father worked at a Texaco Chemical plant, as did Barras during college. Their home had no air conditioning, and breathing the chemical-laden air every night made her sick. “You would literally wake up at night and vomit, the air was so bad,” Barras says. “I had huge nosebleeds as a kid. It was just oppressive.”

Environmental law was just beginning to emerge in the 1980s when she was in law school at the University of Texas in Austin, after Congress passed laws requiring polluting plants to clean up their acts. Barras thought it was an intriguing, groundbreaking time to join the field. She worked as an attorney for an Austin law firm for three years, then signed on with Radian International in Austin as a consultant charged with helping companies comply with environmental laws. Radian transferred her to Louisville.

Barras gradually became disenchanted with the environmental consulting field, feeling that clients were becoming more interested in skirting the law than in actually making the Earth cleaner. She quit, went into teaching, and then met Runyon.

During the next year, Barras’ job will be to att/files/storyimages/a flurry of public meetings planned to seek input on the design of the new downtown bridge. River Fields would like to see a streamlined span to help keep river traffic flowing and to bl/files/storyimages/with downtown, she says. A bridge design is expected for public release within the next year.

Also, Barras will be evaluating a financial plan that a consultant is pulling together on the project, which is required by federal law. That plan is expected by the /files/storyimages/of 2005. “It will tell metro Louisville as well as the rest of Kentucky what happens to other priorities if we choose to fund one or both projects,” Barras says. “That document will be critical to the Kentucky General Assembly’s consideration for the next budget session.”

And, as River Fields is opposed to a proposed East End bridge, the organization may sue to stop it if necessary. “It’s certainly an option that’s under consideration,” Barras says.

— RDS

Jazz Covington, Center, University of Louisville Women’s Basketball
It’s not hard to get caught up in the force that is Jazz Covington. The 6-foot 2 University of Louisville center led last year’s women’s basketball team in scoring with an average of 17.9 points per game. In the process, the 20-year-old Covington scored her 1,000th point — as her final basket in a Conference USA semifinal game against Houston, which the Cards won 56-48 on the way to an appearance in the NCAA tournament — making her only the fourth Louisville basketball player to do so as a sophomore. She’s the first player from U of L ever to be invited to try out for the USA Women’s World University Team and this year has been named a pre-season All-American candidate and one of 30 nominees for the John Wooden Award, given annually to the top college basketball player in both the women’s and men’s divisions.

“She has unlimited potential,” says Tom Collen, her coach at U of L. “She’s really only scratched the surface of what she can become.”

Covington, who is from Adel, Ga., has a chance to make a splash now that Louisville is a member of the Big East. She has her sights set on playing Connecticut, Notre Dame and Rutgers, among others, in this high-profile conference. “I’m trying to get better than what I am because, in my opinion, I don’t think my game is where it needs to be right now,” says Covington.

Collen says he was lucky to inherit her when he took over the women’s team two years ago. “She’s obviously a very talented young lady,” he says. “She’s not an unknown quantity anymore. Everybody we play will focus their efforts to stop her.”

Covington acknowledges the increased attention on her now that Louisville is in a more prestigious league, but tries to keep it in perspective. “The only pressure you feel is the amount of pressure you put on yourself,” she says. “I put that on (myself) too much, to the point I get frustrated. My main goal this year is to be a better defensive player.

 “On the court I’m a leader, but in the locker room I’m just Jazz,” she adds. “I know when it’s time to be serious.”

— Valerie Gritton

Stephen Klein, President, Kentucky Center
For Stephen Klein, with his friendly manner and ready laugh, building new relationships comes naturally — an invaluable trait, given that he views partnerships and collaborations as keys to maintaining a strong arts community. As Klein, 58, begins his new role as president of the state’s top performing arts venue, he says his focus will be “trying to figure out the Kentucky Center, establishing my own relationships and strengthening those that already exist.”

This seems to be his specialty, as his extensive arts administration resume proves. While in Pittsburgh, as managing director of Pittsburgh Public Theater, he produced two world premiere August Wilson plays (Jitney and King Hedley II), as well as the musical By Jeeves, which made it to Broadway. He was a founder of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Alliance, a major coalition of local arts programs, and led fund raising that resulted in the building of a Michael Graves-designed arts center. These credits were all very appealing to the Kentucky Center’s search committee. Co-chair Juliet Cooper Gray notes, “I think it is Stephen’s history as a collaborator, as well as his positive energy, that made him such an ideal candidate.”

More impressive is Klein’s time in Washington, D.C., as executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, which he views as a career highlight. He initiated the affiliation between the Kennedy Center and the National Symphony, and led them on two tours of the Soviet Union, one of which culminated with a televised performance in Red Square. “Those were the pre-glasnost days,” he says. “We had a music director (Mstislav Rostropovich) who had been stripped of his Soviet citizenship and Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes was with us. It was a big accomplishment.” The D.C. post allowed him to work closely with senators and other politicians, something that has elevated his abilities to fund-raise.

Klein began his career onstage as a Boston University graduate, but quickly moved into administration and roles that he says gave him the freedom to do more by representing all aspects of the arts. Gray describes him as “courageous and innovative, visionary and entrepreneurial, willing to take measured risks in pursuit of excellence.”

For his part, Klein says, “I will bring continuity and stability to the Kentucky Center. I plan to be here for a while.”

— Katie Brown

Deborah Sunya Moore, Education Director, Louisville Orchestra
Musically speaking, you might say that Deborah Sunya Moore (“Sunya” is in honor of her Korean grandmother) is happiest when she’s multi-tasking: As auxiliary percussionist for the Louisville Orchestra, the 33-year-old loves playing the variety of instruments that provide what she calls “the spice of the orchestra” — snare drums, cymbals, triangle, marimba and others. It isn’t surprising, then, that Moore, who last month became the Orchestra’s full-time education director, particularly loves combining musical performance with education. “It says something about my personality,” she says. “I like to have a lot of things occupying my mind.”

The Indiana native and Oberlin Conservatory of Music grad says that she views “performance and education as two parts of the same thing.” The orchestra’s associate conductor, Robert Franz, notes that this right-brain-left-brain capacity is unusual. “We do, as artists, get focused on what we’re doing,” he says. “To be able to peek out and see it from another vantage point is a gift.”

“Artists have not only the privilege but the responsibility to share their art with young audiences,” Moore says. And she’s been doing that since 1996 as artistic director and a percussionist with Tales and Scales, an Evansville, Ind.-based quartet that Moore calls a “musictelling” company. The group’s blending of classical music and theater to create “music tales” for children has been seen in performance with such noted groups as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the Louisville Orchestra, where Moore’s husband, Brian Kushmaul, is a fellow percussionist. (Now that Moore is working with the LO full-time, she will continue with Tales and Scales as its part-time education director.)

The challenge, says Moore, is making music more accessible, not only to children but to everyone. “How do we let the community know that (orchestral) music is not just for a select audience, but for the whole community?” she asks. Children and adults alike must learn how to listen, Moore says, and having listened, must learn how to respond to what they’ve heard.

“For the culture to survive, we have to have art, and artists have to share their art,” she says — with all sorts of audiences.

— BMK

Clay Calloway, Associate Pastor, St. Stephen Baptist Church
Clay Calloway learned to become an activist for social justice as a youth —participating in causes while growing up in Louisville in the late 1960s. As a young boy and teenager, he was involved in open-housing demonstrations near his West End home and in University of Louisville protests that opened the door for African-American student opportunities. For Calloway, every up-close-and-personal battle he faced throughout his youth paved the way for his profound religious belief. “(Those) events shaped and molded who I am today. All of that had to do, I feel, with the call God had on my life,” he says.

He is now the associate pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church, the co-founder of the citizen organization No Murders Metro and president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Coalition — the first non-senior pastor to serve in that capacity. The 52-year-old Calloway was licensed at St. Stephen, where he served as assistant pastor from 1991 to 1998, and was ordained in 1995. “Clay is a unique treasure for Louisville,” says Highland Baptist Church Pastor Joe Phelps. “His activism, which is fueled by his faith, causes him to genuinely care for the whole city.”

Together, Phelps and Calloway launched No Murders Metro, a bold citywide spiritual campaign designed to combat murder and violence and to reassure residents that their communities are safe. No Murders Metro crosses all ethnic and geographical boundaries. “He has mobilized a diverse cross-section of the city’s church people to stand against violence,” says Phelps. “We couldn’t have done it without his leadership.”

For Calloway, No Murders Metro is not an end, but a beginning. New ideas to combat violence are always in the works, with many of the strategies coming from the victims of crime who have joined the effort. “Murder is an equal-opportunity destroyer,” says Calloway. “We are always keeping our eyes and ears open to do what we can to get the message out. God may have another strategy for us. The whole object is to reduce violence. We are just building momentum as we go.”

— VG

Gary Stevens, Hall of fame jockey
Louisville’s stable of celebrity residents gained a frontrunner when three-time Derby-winning jockey Gary Stevens moved here with his wife Angie last May. The Hollywood-handsome 42-year-old rider, who guided Winning Colors (1988), Thunder Gulch (1995) and Silver Charm (1997) to victories in the world’s most famous horse race — and received rave acting reviews as jockey George “The Iceman” Woolf in 2003’s Seabiscuit — says he left “the rat race of Southern California,” where he’d lived for 22 years, because “I’m ready for a little different kind of life.”

The decision to settle here was made during Keeneland’s April meet, he says: “Once we got here to Kentucky I felt very at home, and when the Churchill Downs meet started before the Derby I told my wife, ‘This is where I’d like to live,’ and she got a big smile and said, ‘Me, too,” and so here we are.”

Contrary to some reports in the press, Stevens says, he’s far from ready to retire from racing. (He tried that once, in 1999, but was back in less than a year.) Rather, in keeping with his reputation as a “money rider,” he says he’ll remain “selective in the races I ride,” meaning you’re much more likely to see him in higher-purse week/files/storyimages/races than on weekdays. This year he’s won about 20 percent of the races he’s ridden in, finishing “in the money” in about half. As this story goes to press, Stevens is closing in on 5,000 career wins.

Meanwhile, he says, “I must have 60 (movie) scripts on my desk,” most of which put Stevens not in jockey roles but in police roles. “I’ve become very close friends with (actor) Joe Pesci and I asked him, ‘How come all these guys want to cast me as a cop or as a detective?’ He said, ‘You’ve got cop eyes — they don’t lie.’”

Stevens says that although he’ll continue to travel to both coasts and abroad to ride top Thoroughbreds, he doesn’t int/files/storyimages/to make Louisville merely a base camp. “If I’m going to live here,” he says, “I want to be involved in the community.” To that end, he now sits on the board of directors of the recently opened West End School for boys.

— Jack Welch