Lawrence Wetherby

Among the potential candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1951 was former governor A. B. "Happy" Chandler, who was about to be released as baseball commissioner.[16] Chandler and Clements were bitter political enemies, and the possibility of a Chandler candidacy provided the Clements faction of the Democratic party with the impetus to unite behind Wetherby to prevent Chandler from gaining the nomination.[16] Ultimately, Chandler did not seek the nomination and, despite implying that Clements controlled Wetherby, Chandler endorsed Wetherby on May 15, 1951.[17] Wetherby had little trouble defeating Howell Vincent and Jesse Cecil in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, polling the largest majority ever in a Kentucky primary race.[15][17]

In the general election, Wetherby faced Republican Court of Appeals judge Eugene Siler.[18] Siler was a fundamentalist Christian who claimed that the state government was full of corruption, and only he could stop it.[18] Citing the gambling in Northern Kentucky, bribery accusations against members of Clements' and Wetherby's administrations, and a 1951 scandal involving the University of Kentucky men's basketball team, he referred to Frankfort as "our Nineveh on the Kentucky River".[18] Wetherby countered Siler's accusations of corruption by removing one of the officials accused of bribery from office.[19] He deployed the newly organized Kentucky State Police to counter organized crime in Campbell and Henderson counties.[19] To further discourage crime, he supported legislation to revoke the alcohol licenses of establishments that allowed gambling.[20] Siler's pro-temperance and anti-Catholic views played well in the state's rural areas, but cost him the vote of the growing urban population.[21] Wetherby won the election by a vote of 346,345 to 288,014.[7]

Early in Wetherby's term, the state's revenues were inflated by the Korean War.[22] Having adopted a pay-as-you-go program for the state, he was forced to raise additional revenue after the war ended.[22] He did so by imposing sin taxes on cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, and parimutuel betting, but he was unable to convince the General Assembly to adopt a sales tax.[22]

Because three members of Wetherby's close family had been killed in automobile accidents on the state's roadways, improving roads was a high priority for Wetherby.[23] Using revenue from a two-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax passed under the Clements administration, Wetherby authorized the building, re-building, or re-surfacing of nearly 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of roads during his administration.[23] The most important of these was the state's first toll road—the Kentucky Turnpike—connecting Louisville and Elizabethtown.[20][24] He encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to construct a federal toll road connecting the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.[25] Other political leaders joined him, convincing Eisenhower to construct the long-talked-about Interstate Highway System.[23] Improved roads brought increased tourism, which Wetherby supported by increasing funding to the state park system and adding Breaks Interstate Park, a new park owned jointly by Kentucky and Virginia.[26] Wetherby also brought national attention to Kentucky as prime hunting and fishing land by conducting his own personal sporting excursions in the state.[25]

Wetherby tried to diversify the industries located in Kentucky to balance the state's primarily agrarian economy.[25] He expanded the Agricultural and Industrial Development Board and charged it with conducting land surveys to identify potential industrial sites.[25] He encouraged the development of modern airports in the state and supported the canalization of the Big Sandy River and improvement of the locks and dams on the Kentucky River.[25] He continued to personally lead tours given by the state's Chamber of Commerce.[25] Among the industries that came to the state during his administration were the General Electric Appliance Park in Louisville and the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah.[27] In 1954, he used the state police to quash labor unrest in Central City and other parts of the Western Coal Fields.[20] He was not a pawn of industry, however: he secured passage of the state's first laws regulating strip mining and killed a right-to-work bill in 1954.[25]

Neither did Wetherby ignore the needs of agriculture. Under his Green Pastures Program, measures were enacted to diversify crop production, improve beef production, and encourage soil conservation.[25] He secured federal flood control programs for the watersheds of the Salt, Licking, Green, and Kentucky Rivers, saving valuable farmland.[25] In 1952, Wetherby organized an agricultural council to consolidate the work of the state's agricultural bureaucracy.[25] He oversaw completion of the state fairgrounds in Louisville, a project begun under Clements, to better display the state's agricultural products.[24][25]

Improvements in education were a hallmark of Wetherby's term as governor. Over the course of his administration, he increased funding to education by $20 million.[28] He called for the creation of an educational television network and initiated the state's first publicly funded bookmobile program.[20] He supported the 1954 Minimum Foundation Program, an amendment to the state constitution that allowed funding to be allocated to school districts based upon need rather than number of pupils.[14]

In 1954 and 1955 Wetherby served as chairman of the Southern Governors Conference and urged the southern governors to peacefully implement desegregation as required by the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education.[14] He was one of five southern governors that refused to sign a statement opposing integration.[29] In Kentucky, he appointed an advisory council of both white and black citizens to oversee public school integration, which was accomplished with little acrimony compared to other states.[20] Desegregation was one issue where Wetherby and his lieutenant governor, Emerson "Doc" Beauchamp, disagreed, but because Beauchamp believed he would succeed Wetherby as governor, he did not openly oppose Wetherby's actions.[29]

Among Wetherby's other accomplishments were the creation of a Department of Mental Health and the construction of fifteen hospitals and thirty health centers throughout the state.[20] In 1952, he created the Youth Authority as a central point for the administration of services to delinquent children.[30] He constructed new state prisons, modernized the probation and parole systems, and established a more orderly system of selecting grand and petit juries.[20] He also oversaw some voting reform measures, including the provision of funds to purchase voting machines in areas where they were desired.[20] He was not as successful in the area of government reform. He failed in his efforts to amend the state's constitution to allow the governor to succeed himself in office.[20] He was also unable to win support for a plan to consolidate some of Kentucky's counties.[20] In 1955, the state's voters approved a constitutional amendment granting suffrage to eighteen-year-olds over Wetherby's objections.[20]

• "Athletic Hall of Fame". University of Louisville. Archived from the original on December 5, 2008. Retrieved November 4, 2009.
• Bolus, Jim; Billy Reed (1999). Louisville Cardinals Football. Sports Publishing LLC. ISBN 1-58382-048-5.
• Finch, Glenn (July 1972). "The Election of United States Senators in Kentucky: The Cooper Period". Filson Club History Quarterly. 46.
• Harrison, Lowell H. (1992). "Wetherby, Lawrence Winchester". In John E. Kleber (ed.). The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Associate editors: Thomas D. Clark, Lowell H. Harrison, and James C. Klotter. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-1772-0. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
• Harrison, Lowell H.; James C. Klotter (1997). A New History of Kentucky. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2008-X.
• Harrison, Lowell H. (1987). Western Kentucky University. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2734-3.
• "Kentucky Governor Lawrence Winchester Wetherby". National Governors Association. Archived from the original on January 3, 2015. Retrieved November 4, 2009.
• "Kentucky Republicans Pick Modern Crusader to Seek Post". Spartanburg Herald-Journal. October 22, 1951. p. D8.
• Kleber, John E. (Autumn 1986). "As Luck Would Have It: An Overview of Governor Lawrence W. Weatherby, 1950–1955". The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. 84: 397–422.
• Kleber, John E. (2004). "Lawrence Wetherby". In Lowell Hayes Harrison (ed.). Kentucky's Governors. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2326-7.
• Pearce, John Ed (1987). Divide and Dissent: Kentucky Politics 1930–1963. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-1613-9.
• Powell, Robert A. (1976). Kentucky Governors. Danville, Kentucky: Bluegrass Printing Company. OCLC 2690774.
• "Wetherby Gymnasium". Morehead State University. Archived from the original on December 16, 2014. Retrieved December 2, 2014.