All through 2020, local historians Kim Fortner and Paul Fourshee pushed fact after fact about Trigg County’s deep, rich, 200-year history — celebrating a proud bicentennial for the community.
It was a welcome reprieve from global COVID-19 news, and people began to look forward to new radio and online stories, urging later for the efforts be collected in a book format.
The duo acquiesced, and now one year after releasing a 450-plus page hardcover color tome titled “On This Date,” the Kentucky Historical Society has given it a noteworthy annual “Special Projects” honor.
Both Fortner and Fourshee said it was an “amazing, pleasant surprise” to receive the recognition. It was submitted by an interested third party, placed against special competition and a number of really good historians across the Commonwealth.
However, a book was never really part of the early plan.
Fourshee said it was the epitome of a “snowball effect,” and he gives Fortner a lot of the credit for the book’s beginning.
Furthermore, both of them went from “let’s see” to “let’s do it” about halfway through 2020, and as such, needed a common language in order to build these robust glossy pages.
They didn’t hire a desktop publisher, nor did they drop for any major world-class software. Instead, Fortner said they took turns creating PDF packets in Microsoft Word — building a book one blank cursor, one blank page at a time.
Fourshee said there were moments in which they nearly wiped the book clean and looked to restart in Microsoft Publisher. Details and pictures, however, kept coming together, the stories kept building, the research kept growing, and as time passed, Microsoft Word as a medium made the most sense.
To this day, Fourshee and Fortner use DropBox and the Internet to continually update documents for potential new projects.
Fortner said there only continues to be joy in the work.
And for both of them, there was a will, there was a way, and there was a win.
Still working out logistics, Fortner and Fourshee said they’d almost certainly be in attendance for the KHS celebration slated for June 3 in Frankfort.
