Saving Stories

In this edition of WUKY's Saving Stories, Nunn Center Director Dr. Doug Boyd shares audio from two oral history interviews with former Urban League of Lexington president P.G. Peeples who recently passed away at the age of 81. Both audio clips take you inside the mind of one of Kentucky's most influential civil rights and community leaders.

April is National Donate Life month and WUKY's Saving Stories observes the occasion with this highly personal, fresh episode. Nunn Center Director Dr. Doug Boyd introduces us to two of his high school friends. But as you'll soon find out, this is a rather extraordinary reunion story.

March 2026 marks the 65th anniversary of the start of the Peace Corps and in this latest edition of WUKY's Saving Stories, Doug Boyd with the Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries shares audio from an interview with Sargent Shriver, the diplomat tabbed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to lead the independent government agency that sends American volunteers to partner countries for t...

March 2026 marks the 65th anniversary of the start of the Peace Corps and in this latest edition of WUKY's Saving Stories, Doug Boyd with the Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries shares audio from a Kentuckian who was one of the program's earliest participants. Angene Hopkins Wilson and her eventual husband Jack Wilson got accepted into the program and in 1962 were sent to Liberia. Ang...

Compromise has always been critical to the success of our political system yet its sorely lacking in the lexicon today. Nunn Center Director Dr. Doug Boyd shares interviews from two former Kentucky politicians who describe a time when members of both political parties got along and even socialized together.

In this edition of WUKY's Saving Stories we remember pioneering filmmaker Elizabeth Barret who recently passed away. Nunn Center Director Dr. Doug Boyd highlights an interview with former Appalshop fundraiser, co-producer and researcher Judi Jennings, who helped get the Stranger with a Camera project off the ground. She also talks about the pivotal decision to have Barret serve as the film's narra...

Doug Boyd, director of the Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries shares audio from a recent interview with Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton reflecting on the years-long team effort to celebrate the city's 250th anniversary.

October 28, the Lyric Theatre in Lexington's East End neighborhood celebrated 15 years of rebirth. The current iteration of the arts and cultural center was officially reopened in 2010. In a 2015 UK Nunn Center oral history interview local activist Tom Tolliver talks about the effort to revitalize the Lyric, which had been shuttered since 1963; a result of the end of city-wide desegregation of pub...

October 17 is an important day in the history of WUKY. The station formerly known as WBKY signed on for the first time on October 17, 1940. To mark the station's 85th anniversary, this special edition of Saving Stories with Dr. Doug Boyd from the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries, features an interview with Ruth Foxx Newborg, the first program director of the Beattyville, K...

Saving Stories returns with a fresh episode on the integration of baseball. Not the Jackie Robinson story but another event that happened right here in Lexington. Nunn Center director Dr. Doug Boyd shares audio from an oral history interview with Lexington native Bobby Flynn, who in 1947 helped the Lexington Hustlers become the first integrated baseball team in the South. Flynn was white but had b...

WUKY's Saving Stories celebrates Bourbon Heritage Month with this special episode. Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History Director Dr. Doug Boyd shares this 1991 interview with Frederick Booker Noe II, who discusses the bourbon industry and the history of Jim Beam. The Nunn Center has conducted more than one hundred bourbon-related interviews spanning generations of famous personalities, but it was...

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the US bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which essentially brought about the end of World War II. In this special edition of Saving Stories Doug Boyd, director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries shares an interview from a survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki.

As 250 Lex continues to celebrate Lexington's culinary traditions this month, we're highlighting this interview with Mamadou Savane. In 2018 the Nunn Center collaborated with Vanessa Grossl to interview immigrant entrepreneurs. The resulting project was called Savor, immigrant entrepreneur oral history project. Grossl conducted 20 interviews, many of which were conducted with food entrepreneurs he...

250 Lex is celebrating our culinary traditions. WUKY's Saving Stories serves up this behind the scenes look at Lexington's role in launching the Long John Silver's Fish 'n Chips restaurant chain. The very first Seafood Shoppe was located on Southland Drive. In 2009, the Nunn Center worked with Mike Hammonds to interview Warren Rosenthal; the business entrepreneur credited with taking the experimen...

The Lexington Legends baseball team has seen its share of ups and downs – including a head-scratching name change (anybody remember the Counter Clocks?) But now as the city gets ready to celebrate 25 seasons of professional baseball, WUKY’s Saving Stories has this look back at how it all began. Nunn Center for Oral History director Dr. Doug Boyd shares audio from a 2019 interview with Alan Stein,...

It’s Final Four weekend and sadly the Kentucky Wildcats came up short this year in their bid for a 9th national title. Bookending our look back at special moments in UK basketball history WUKY’s Saving Stories highlights another famous shot, the one Duke’s Christian Laettner hit in overtime against the Wildcats in the 1992 East Regional final in Philadelphia. The buzzer beater marked the end of an...

For three quarters of a century the month of March in Kentucky has been tournament time with hoops fever reaching a near fever pitch. And if you're wondering why UK Basketball is sometimes considered an official religion, we submit this audio as exhibit A. In this special episode of WUKY's Saving Stories, UK Nunn Center director Dr. Doug Boyd and Deirdre Scaggs, associate dean and head of Special...

Lexington is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year, and Saving Stories is shining the spotlight today on lifelong educator and activist Audrey Grievous. In this 1985 UK Nunn Center oral history interview Grevious talks about her involvement in demonstrations and lunch counter sit-in's in downtown Lexington in the early 1960's.

WUKY's Saving Stories remembers former Keeneland president and trustee Ted Bassett who passed away last week at the age of 103. In the summer of 2019, the Nunn Center and the UK Libraries partnered with Keeneland, the Keeneland Association, Keeneland Library and Museum Foundation, and the Thoroughbred Daily News to conduct a series of oral history interviews called Life's Work. And one of the firs...

Lexington is about to turn 250 years old in the year 2025, and Saving Stories will be featuring a number of familiar voices from our community. Jump starting that look back is this episode featuring former Vice Mayor Isabel Yates. The Nunn Center interviewed Yates in 1996 for a project involving members of the Lexington Fayette Urban County local government. Listen as she details how she got invol...