Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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his maternal grandparents lived. Te train tracks that run parallel to Woodland Avenue, not far from his grandparents��� house, once brought a train carrying President Franklin Roosevelt, and Jones was there to see him. Te home at 1365 Cypress, an odd six-sided structure, seemed larger to Jones then, but he loved everything about it, from the spacious rooms to the apples and grapes his grandmother Turman grew in the deep lot behind the house. She kept chickens, too, and when she���d wring a few necks and chop of some heads, Jones says, ���We knew we were gonna have a nice chicken dinner.��� We stop at the intersection of 28th and Virginia. On one side sits what looks to be a large old Masonic temple, built in the 1920s, which Jones knew as Winslow���s drugstore and a movie theater. On the northeast corner was his mecca ��� the former Parkland Library, a Carnegiefunded building dedicated in 1907. Today the well-maintained stone structure is a Louisville Metro Police facility but retains its original inscriptions around three sides: the words ���Louisville Free Public Library��� and PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SCIENCE, ART, HISTORY, bike ride away, and at a gym at 26th and Slevin in Portland. Boxing was important. Jones fought at 160 pounds, then 175. His brother Logan fought at 135 and became a Golden Gloves champion. I ask if he recalls his record, and with a wry smile, Jones says, ���I do, but I���m gonna keep it a secret. I won more than I lost, let���s put it that way.��� He delivered the three knockouts, and the only time he was knocked down came while sparring with Logan, who was about to start a professional career when he was drafted into the Korean confict. Logan died of cancer at age 53. ���He was my best friend and a truly wonderful man,��� his brother says. T he tour complete, we pull into his company���s garage near Fifth and Main. Earlier, when we drove up to his second childhood home on Garland, Jones realized for the frst time that it, too, was missing. I���m pretty sure, I say, that he���s not the nostalgic type. But he does appreciate how fate has worked in his life, and how where he grew up infuenced ���Education is the passport in our society, and to me that���s the most important single thing in our community.��� TRAVEL AND BIOGRAPHY. ���Every Saturday Mom would take one of us kids and we���d pull the wagon over and fll it with books for the whole family,��� he says. Jones credits those books with helping him develop the voracious mind that got him through the University of Louisville and Yale Law School after serving three years in the Navy. Tough his father joined the Army after World War I and did not attend college, he had two brothers who graduated from law school. Te fact that they were the only two people young David knew in Louisville who owned automobiles was not lost on him. ���Tat���s what got me to go to law school,��� he says. ���It sounds like a shallow reason, but if you grew up like I did, knowing there was a profession where you could earn some money ��� it fueled my ambition, if you would.��� Jones��� time in the Navy and at Yale, 1954-���60, were his only years away. He came home for a position at the Wyatt law frm, and to a city where the civil-rights struggle had moved to the forefront, which Jones learned frsthand through pro bono work for the American Civil Liberties Union. Somewhere in there, he and his friend Wendell Cherry found time to start a healthcare company. W e head west on Virginia Avenue, which has larger and more stately homes, and then north and east, past Victory Park, a two-block oasis between 22nd and 23rd and bounded by Greenwood and Kentucky. With so many shotgun houses, green space was limited, and Victory Park was the Jones boys��� go-to. Algonquin Park to the southwest was a less-frequent stop, he says, and they also played in Shawnee Park, a 15-minute who he met. If he���d grown up in Crescent Hill, for example, he may have never known the young Jim Tornton, founder of Torntons, whose gas stations are ubiquitous in Louisville. Tey met when Jones was in high school, working six nights a week for Surety, which had six gas stations around Louisville. Jones was the ���traveling night man,��� meaning he spent one night a week at each station. Te two reconnected when Tornton became a legal client, and they���ve been friends ever since. Tese days Jones stays busy helping raise funds for 21st Century Parks and pushing to build bridges. He still owns Main Street Realty, whose properties include the Summit and Brownsboro Crossing. He and wife Betty, a Crescent Hill girl he met at U of L, have been married 58 years and have fve children and 11 grandkids. Public education remains his main passion (he���s proud of his son, David Jr., who was recently elected to the Jeferson County school board); he says it���s the only way to combat the decay that has crippled his old neighborhood and so many like it across the nation. ���I���m not an expert, but I doubt there���s a major city in the world that doesn���t have neighborhoods that are not well kept,��� he says. ���Education is the passport in our society, and to me that���s the most important single thing in our community: How do we create the expectation that every child will learn to read comprehensively, write coherently and understand basic math? ���African-American kids who get a good education are making major contributions to the city. My hope is that every child that grows up in a neighborhood like that has the same opportunity to gain (the kind of ) good education that changed my life.��� Seattle Boston Kansas City Paducah Oklahoma City Chattanooga Houston Yes It Can Be Done 7 cities that turned things around LowerTown, Paducah, Ky. Art district, anyone? Its Artist Relocation Program offered incentives for artists to move in, such as rezoning the area for mixed use. Chattanooga, Tenn. Aggressive from all angles In 1969, Walter Cronkite named Chattanooga the ���dirtiest city in America.��� The city cleaned up with an emphasis on tech and green energy. It now boasts one of the world���s longest pedestrian bridges, a 20,000-seat stadium, high-tech jobs, zero-emission electric buses, mve miles of river walk, a Volkswagen headquarters and an Amazon distribution center. Third Ward, Houston Target historic homes Project Row Houses in a historic ward southeast of downtown attracted African-American artists to move in and mx up a 1��-block stretch of 22 abandoned shotgun houses. Dudley Street, Boston Strength in neighbors In Boston���s Roxbury district, a community-led effort in the mid-1980s created an urban village and town common, putting in parks and playgrounds, rehabbing and building hundreds of homes. Ivanhoe-Paseo, Kansas City, Mo. Food and pro��t The city council adopted an ���urban agriculture��� ordinance that eased zoning laws to allow residents to grow and sell food from their homes, putting food on tables and money in pockets. Community gardens provide a gardening area for those without yards. Columbia City, Seattle Perception becomes reality The historic character of this neighborhood prompted revitalization through the 1990s. But one strip remained vacant, so artists painted murals of could-be businesses (think ice cream parlors, bookstores) on boarded-up storefronts, which actually attracted businesses. Oklahoma City A penny���s plenty Since ���93, Oklahoma City has used a local-option penny sales tax to pay for downtown projects such as a basketball arena (hello, Thunder!), minorleague ballpark, library and the Bricktown Canal, which converted the Oklahoma River into an entertainment district. Each penny tax went for specimc projects and each had a sunset clause, so voters knew what they were buying and how long they were paying for it. ���Mary Chellis Austin 3.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 5 7

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