Mike Farrell: A hometown guy’s perspective of community service honored by Hall of Fame

Five community leaders were inducted into the Northern Kentucky Business Hall of Fame this week.These trailblazers and visionaries were honored for the indelible legacies of service and innovation which bettered the Commonwealth.

And, for me, the evening served as a reminder of the contributions of a trusted colleague, mentor and friend who continues to leave her mark on the community I have always called home and love to this day.

The late Jerry Deters virtually invented tourism in Northern Kentucky, building what was first the Rowntowner Motor Inn before he expanded it and called it the Drawbridge Inn and Convention Center. It was the largest meeting place in Northern Kentucky for years and offered two fine restaurants, The Gatehouse Tavern and Josh’s. He helped form the Convention and Visitors Bureau and was involved in so many civic-good efforts as a chief collaborator and convener.

Jerry Carroll built Turfway Ridge Office Park, a development he said a Realtor told him would never attract big companies because it was on the wrong side of the river. Not only did Carroll prove him wrong, but he turned Latonia race track into Turfway Park and then brought NASCAR racing to the track he built in Sparta.

Paul Verst, the CEO of the nearly 50-year-old company his father started, was praised as a man who not only has built on the foundation his father laid but also followed his example of extraordinary community service.

Helen Carroll, who teased she left her hometown of Georgetown reluctantly when Toyota moved her job to Northern Kentucky, helped shape the image of the car company in Kentucky and has been a paragon of community involvement. She became the community’s voice for quality education — and its strongest advocate in NKy.

And then there is my friend, Judy Clabes, former editor of the late Kentucky Post, who broke down barriers and worked to bring the leaders of Northern Kentucky together to address the region’s problems.

The five were inducted Wednesday into the Northern Kentucky Business Hall of Fame, the second class of inductees. The hall was created by NKy Magazine in conjunction with the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce “to recognize the rich tradition of success and civic involvement in the region’s business community. The Northern Kentucky Business Hall of Fame honors men and women who have made a lasting contribution to the community in economic, cultural and civic endeavors.”

It was an evening of stories. Josh Deters accepted the award for his father and recalled being summoned into his father’s office at the Drawbridge. Jerry Deters was rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “Do you know who is on her way here right this minute?” he asked the only son among his six children. When Josh shrugged, he replied, “Judy Clabes is coming here to see me, and she’s the editor of The Post, and she’s the most powerful woman in Northern Kentucky. And I have a couple of stories for her.”

That’s the way the evening went. All the recipients were generous in their praise of each other and the people who helped them accomplish what they set out to achieve. And in one way or another, most of the recipients had worked together in some endeavor.

The result: Northern Kentucky is a better place for those collaborations and collaborators.

For me, the evening was about Judy Clabes, my former editor, mentor and the best friend I could ever ask for. From 1983 until 1995, Judy Clabes, the girl from Henderson, Ky., and the first woman editor of a Scripps Howard newspaper, was the editor of The Kentucky Post. I was the city editor when she arrived and she later promoted me to managing editor. She refers to me on occasion as the newspaper’s institutional memory. I was one of several journalists who not only spent our careers at The Post but also had been born and raised here. Northern Kentucky was more than a beat to us; it was our community.

And no one became part of the heart of that community quicker than Editor Clabes. She went everywhere, and she met everyone. She listened. She quickly had her finger on the pulse of Northern Kentucky, and she employed all her talents and energy into harnessing the momentum that was transforming Northern Kentucky. In virtually the blink of an eye, Judy Clabes was part of the leadership pool of our community and she was pulling the collaborators together to get things done.

She championed women. She championed young writers. She championed teachers. She championed education. She championed the First Amendment, and the newspaper won a National Journalism Award for it. She wrote a column picked up by newspapers all over the country. And while she was raising her family, she was caring for her staff, protecting their jobs from the budget slashers and improving conditions in a very old workplace. She championed a better Northern Kentucky.

Those dozen years seemed to end almost as suddenly as they began. Scripps Howard called, and soon she was president and CEO of the company’s foundation. There she championed journalism, finding new collaborators all over the country and leaving behind a legacy just as she had in Northern Kentucky. She retired in 2007 and soon found the golden years were not beckoning her just yet.

So the Kentucky Philanthropic Initiative was born in 2008 with a goal of creating and supporting community funds across the Commonwealth. The initiative’s website says “KPI continues to implement initiatives related to early childhood, grow a strong vigorous philanthropic network, and support community change through the promotion of community funds.”

In January 2011, Judy told me we “needed” to have lunch. And one day after my classes ended, she told me about her plans for an online news site. When she had finished her salad and telling me her plans, I distinctly remember she asked me what I thought about it. I told her I was excited, but my only disappointment was that KyForward.com would not be focused on Northern Kentucky, which needed its own newspaper again. KyForward launched May, 2011, and Judy has been learning and recreating online journalism ever since.

And then it happened. This past summer, she said we “needed” to have lunch again because we had “a lot to talk about.” A “lot” was a new online news site. We set up a lunch and invited former members of our staff to discuss the idea.

Two months ago, Judy launched nkytribune.com. Former Post reporter Greg Paeth and sports editor Terry Boehmker are back in the news business, informing our community and telling our stories. Bill Straub is writing a weekly column from Washington and another former colleague, Paul Long, is writing a column about running. It has been an auspicious beginning and the harbinger of better journalism to come.

Judy Clabes, editor, philanthropist, collaborator, businesswoman, wife, mother, grandmother, mentor and an amazing friend to many, talks about journalism in almost reverential terms. More than once, I‘ve heard her tell my UK students that journalism is God’s work. She talks about journalism as the tribal fire, where community members come together to tell stories and discuss their lives and figure out how to have the best community possible. She eschews “gotcha” journalism and believes in “informative journalism in the public interest for a place we love.”

NKyTribune is a publication of the non-profit Kentucky Center for Public Journalism. Its mission, according to the Tribune website, is to “provide reliable, honest, unbiased, in-depth, solutions-oriented reporting on issues essential to the engagement of Kentucky citizens in public affairs; to advance quality of life, respectful dialogue, and the public good; to preserve democracy; to matter; to work with Kentucky communities in need of reliable, professional local news media.”

The words are quintessential Judy Clabes, a Hall of Famer in Kentucky Journalism and now in Northern Kentucky Business. Her five grandchildren watched Wednesday as their grandmother was honored for a career they probably have not grasped yet. I imagine she is just grandma to them.

Shortly after her well-deserved retirement (it lasted one day, she told a class this semester) and she was immersed in the philanthropy enterprise, one of her granddaughters asked why she didn’t spend more time at home now that she was retired.

My answer is that she never embraced retirement, and she is not the figurehead who sits back while other people do the work. She is the one leading the work, seeking the collaborators, fine-tuning an entirely new enterprise while making sure KyForward and the Tribune have fresh news every day.

Northern Kentucky’s tribal fire is starting to blaze again. Those of us who have worked with Judy Clabes puffed our chests a little Wednesday because the woman who was our leader was honored again for her contributions to our community.

I thank God all the time that He brought her into my life and into my community. Nothing has been the same since.

And that’s a very good thing.

Mike Farrell is former managing editor of The Kentucky Post, a life-long Northern Kentuckian still living in the Latonia neighborhood in which he grew up. Today, he is Dr. Farrell and director of the First Amendment Center at the University of Kentucky. He is a co-founder of the NKyTribune and its special projects editor.