For 365 days — and then some — it was her baby.
Those daily stories on the Trigg County bicentennial Facebook page — stories about people, places and things from Cadiz and its surrounding communities — weren’t just conjured out of thin air through some quick index.
That index had to be built mostly from extensive research and scratch, with the main architect — John L. Street technical librarian Kim Fortner — sometimes piecing together photos and 300-word stories mere hours before release.
Her efforts weren’t solo, of course. There was the bicentennial committee, comprised of Paul Fourshee, Kenneth Oakley, Bob Brame and Bill Stevens. And countless voices chimed in on the daily anecdotes.
But, again, it was her baby — and the main reason the Trigg County Chamber of Commerce named her the 2021 “Citizen of the Year” on June 22.
Fortner has now had about a month to reflect on the award and its meaning. How an exhaustive year thwarted by COVID-19 turned into a massive undertaking to remember Trigg County’s past and produce it for the present and future. And how an early notion blossomed into a beloved artifact.
When Fortner and Fourshee finally signed off from the project on January 1, 2021, hundreds clamored for more. The radio reads from Cindy Allen-Lax and Alan Watts of WKDZ had suddenly become a part of people’s day, and Fortner noted she’s been approached to keep looking back in time.
Luckily, there’s so much extra material that Fortner and several associates are in the middle of creating a hardback book — one filled with colored photos, full-length stories — and a few surprise passages that haven’t been released to the public.
Fortner and Fourshee have already produced one book together — “Mrs. Randolph: a small town portrait” — in what was a deep look into well-known photographer Mamie Randolph and her time in Trigg County at the turn of the 19th century.
The hope is for this bound edition of the bicentennial biography to be a similar product, with high-quality photographs and other small details serving as the final pieces before the project comes to completion.
