“Stories From the Balcony”
Interviews about the Grand Theatre in Frankfort, Kentucky
Interview on Video with Vinson Parsons
On Location in Asheville, N.C.
Tape 0002JTH_DV
Conducted by Joanna Hay
July 7th, 2006
This project has been supported by the Kentucky Oral History Commission
And Save The Grand Theatre, Inc.
TAYLOR HAY: …brother. Very very quite.
PARSONS: There is 250 acres being developed out here around this particular
section of it.HAY: Yeah, I bet. Happening fast.
TAYLOR HAY: You’ve certainly got a beautiful place here. It’s just amazing.
HAY: I wanted to start this next tape off sort of back at the very beginning
which is I want you to tell me your name [Chuckle], the year you were born…TAYLOR HAY: You didn’t ask him that the first time.
HAY: The year you were born, where you were born, and where we are now.
PARSONS: I am Vinson A.—middle name is Adair—I’ve always kept that a secret.
TAYLOR HAY: Adair?
PARSONS: It’s a family name. I was born in 1932 on Lindsey Street up on the
bluff above Frankfort.TAYLOR HAY: Adair? A-D-A-I-R?
PARSONS: uh hum
HAY: And where are we now?
PARSONS: We are in the Reams Creek Golf Community which is a part of the town of
Weaverville, NC.TAYLOR HAY: What is your birthdate?
PARSONS: 10-22-32
HAY: And what’s today’s date?
PARSONS: 7th of June
HAY: July
PARSONS: July! You’re right. June… [Chuckle]
HAY: 7th of July
PARSONS: You’re going to edit this aren’t you?
HAY: Yes, of course. [Chuckle] 2006
PARSONS: That’s right
HAY: that covers…oh…Tell me your wife’s name and how long you’ve been married.
PARSONS: My wife’s name is Elizabeth and we just celebrated our 50th anniversary.
HAY: Where is Elizabeth from?
PARSONS: Norwich, Connecticut. And she is a graduate of the University of North
Carolina, Asheville. And I’m a Kentucky boy that graduated from University of Connecticut, Stores, just above Norwich.HAY: So you two met in Connecticut?
PARSONS: Yes, we met in Connecticut. She was a hostess in a USO type
organization which catered to the Coast Guard Academy into the submarine base. I met her there and a couple years later, we got married.TAYLOR HAY: What’s her maiden name?
PARSONS: Peltier, P-E-L-T-I-E-R, she’s French and polish
HAY: And it’s her connections to Asheville that is why you retired here?
PARSONS: No, not really. We retired here because our corporate headquarters was
here in Asheville when the company was publicly held. When we took it private, we moved the corporate office to New York where it should have been anyway because of the logistics of running a company out of Asheville, NC were impossible. We had seven airplanes, and you still couldn’t do it effectively.TAYLOR HAY: What was the name of the company?
PARSONS: Akzona--A-K-Z-O-N-A—it’s AKZO North America, in fact. The acronym which
we used. It was publicly held. New York Stock Exchange. But 51% of the company was held by a company called Akzo Nobel, which is a combination of Akzo and the Nobel Prize money people. But, of course, the Nobel Prize is a foundation.TAYLOR HAY: The foundation was allowed to convest ( ).
PARSONS: I’m not sure what their investment restrictions are.
TAYLOR HAY: ( )
PARSONS: No, our company had nothing to do with Nobel. Nobel was a chemical
company in Norway. Out of Nobel was the foundation. The Nobel money that created the foundation which created the Nobel Prize. We had no relationship to…TAYLOR HAY: ( ) built cannons.
PARSONS: and munitions of all kinds.
TAYLOR HAY: Like the Duponts.
PARSONS: uh hum But we had nothing to do with the foundation.
HAY: ( )
PARSONS: I was never home long enough. [Chuckle]
HAY: Does living in the mountains of North Carolina remind you at all of your
Kentucky roots?PARSONS: No, because my Kentucky roots were at an age and my outlook at the time
was such that I would never have dreamed of retiring in Asheville, NC. In fact, at the time we decided to come here to retire, we were living in Chicago and we were trying to find out, “Where are we going to retire to for the second time?” and she said, “Why don’t we go back to Asheville?” So I said, “You put the house on the market, I’ll keep an apartment in Chicago. You move to Asheville and build the house.” So she did.TAYLOR HAY: No wonder you’ve been married 50 years. You get along very well.
That’s amazing!HAY: When was the last time you visited Frankfort, Kentucky?
PARSONS: Oh my gosh. Probably…let’s see today…this is…’06. Probably 2000. I
think it was for a reunion.HAY: High School?
PARSONS: uh hum I think it was the 50th reunion.
TAYLOR HAY: When did you retire? Not retire, but when did you stop working corporately?
PARSONS: Oh, actually I retired in ’86. What was I? Fifty three. I had the
opportunity to become a partner in the buy-out of several of our own companies. Leverage buy-out. And so those we ultimately took public. I stayed on. My only relationship after that was serving on their boards.TAYLOR HAY: Actually, if you retire at fifty five, you live a lot longer than if
you retire at sixty five. Isn’t that right, Joanna?PARSONS: Well, I went back to work.
TAYLOR HAY: Doing what you chose?
PARSONS: I started fooling around with my wife’s pots and pans, and she said,
“Get a job. Get out of the house. Do something!” [Chuckle]TAYLOR HAY: So you went back to work?
PARSONS: I went back to work as a consultant because the investment banking
companies that we were working with, and the leverage buy-outs that we were involved in, were taking this company in Chicago public and these were very very young people. I mean early twenties; software types. They wanted someone who was old…streets in New York to be able to interface with the investment banking community and major institutional share holders. So I did that for three and half years.0:
1:00 -0: 2:00TAYLOR HAY: That’s amazing.HAY: There’s an interesting note you have on this sheet…Erik Hammil.
PARSONS: uh hum
HAY: Can you tell us that story.
PARSONS: Yes. My father was in the Army in World War I, and he met this Erik
Hammil and sponsored him to come to the United States. And at the time of the opening of The New Grand, he was the assistant manager.HAY: What was his background?
PARSONS: I think he had a clothing industry because he ultimately opened his own
habitashury in Louisville and left the theatres. But, I always remember him because of his heavy French Jewish accent and very amiable personality. Always treated me so nicely.TAYLOR HAY: How do you spell his name?
PARSONS: H-A-M-M…I think it’s -I-L—but I’m not sure.
TAYLOR HAY: ( ) ‘80’s the largest sole owner of the largest bug killer…what do
you call these?PARSONS: Aerosol sprays?
TAYLOR HAY: Like Orkin
PARSONS: Oh yes
TAYLOR HAY: Like Orkin. He has a giant of his own…( )…and their name is
Hammil…from the same family in Germany. ( )HAY: I wanted to wrap this interview up with your thoughts on…well, first I’ll
mention that what struck me about your story and how you got started with college which got you out of Frankfort and on your way, was the influence of the arts and the theatre of all places. And I just wondered what role you think a theatre and the arts play in life, or…PARSONS: I think the theatre—the arts—are very important. Especially to me. We
have classical music on in the house almost all the time and if it’s not classical, it’s lite classical. I was president of the Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre for several years because I enjoy the theatre. We called it S.A.R.T. It’s a very good theatre group, by the way. It’s part of the MarsHill College. I think it plays a very important role in this community and it’s clearly a very good tourist attraction, and brings a lot of people to the area. Another one is Flatrock Theatre down in…( ) Rock. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been there but it’s a beautiful theatre group. Excellent. We go quite often. And up until this year, we’ve had season tickets to the theatre up here, but we’re just on individual subscription now.HAY: Do you think The Grand Theatre and The Capitol and your life in those years
has played a role in your love for art and theatre?PARSONS: Oh yes, clearly. I think of Mrs. Bealer who was the band director at
Frankfort High School at the time, and Eudora South. Mrs. Bealer would let me run wild, but Eudora, she was pretty firm with me. [Chuckle] Played a very important role in my life instilling in me the love and appreciation for music. And as you can see from some of the antiques that we’ve got here, it still plays a part in our life. But I don’t play anymore. I haven’t for some time.TAYLOR HAY: If somebody would put a gun at you and say, “You’d better start playing an instrument today” what would it be?PARSONS: I don’t know what I could play to be honest with you. Since they were
all brass instruments, you have to have lips. And if you let your lips go to pot, you’re not going to pick up that instrument and play. And my wife is a violinist, but she has given that up too. Like languages. She was a language major. Spoke several languages in our home. We’ve lost it all. I spoke Dutch. We’ve lost all of our languages because we didn’t use it. But, in the case of the music, while we don’t play the instruments anymore, we still have a great appreciation for music and the arts.HAY: That’s really good.
TAYLOR HAY: How come you spoke Dutch?
PARSONS: Well, because the majority shareholder in our company was a Dutch
company…AKZO headquartered in Arnam. If you remember The Bridge Too Far, the movie, that’s Arnam. And I would go over there probably once every two weeks and while English was the official language for the company, it always helped to be able to speak Dutch because you know they’re going to speak Dutch behind your back and you never know what they’re saying. [Chuckle]TAYLOR HAY: ( )…Dutch?
PARSONS: Oh yes, they knew it. They knew it, yeah.
HAY: It was a self study? You learned that yourself?
PARSONS: Actually, it was self study. It was also just being immersed in Dutch
by virtue of being in the Netherlands so often. But I started by reading the ads in the Dutch newspapers. It’s one of the best ways to learn a language is just start reading the ads.HAY: Simple language with illustrations.
PARSONS: Yes, so you know what they’re trying to say. It helps you learn language.
TAYLOR HAY: You’ve got a visual read.
PARSONS: Yes
HAY: What are the odds of a boy coming out of Frankfort, and having the life
you’ve had?PARSONS: Oh, I think there are a lot of young people in my class that came out
of Frankfort and did very well for themselves. I think of Billy D. McDonall. I think of Jack…Jackie Moore who is president of one of the big underwear manufacturers, I forget, they had a plant in Frankfort for years. Fruit of the Loom. He was president of Fruit of the Loom. Jerry South who has done very well at the Bank of America. And I probably could go on and on. If I looked in the yearbook over here, I could probably pick a bunch of them that I know have done very well.TAYLOR HAY: ( ) class really, because what did you have? Fifty people in your class?
PARSONS: I think we had seventy some. Yeah I know that I graduated next to last. [Chuckle]
TAYLOR HAY: ( )…Zut Denison, he was the manager of the football team, and Zut
walked with a limp and he had ( )PARSONS: I remember him.
TAYLOR HAY: and he had curly hair and he smiled…( ). Loveliest man. You could
kid Zut and have more fun…you know what? Nobody ever denigrated that guy. Everybody was sort of his brother. Anyway, they finally decided to graduate Zut, 23 or 4 at Frankfort High when they finally decided to ( ) In those days, if you had a C average, you were exempt from exams. Now, I had a B minus average, and then they caught me drinking at Junior/Senior picnic and I got my grades cut a letter and I was smoking my pipe…PARSONS: At least it was a pipe, not a pop.
TAYLOR HAY: …in class. Wilkinson walked in and I was smoking a pipe, so that was
another letter. So I went from a B minus to a D minus which meant I had to take my exams. Well, I was a horrible exam taker, and Ruth Cobb, I saw her the other day…I didn’t remind her of this but she just got out of college…HAY: Do you remember that teacher, Ruth Cobb?
PARSONS: uh hum
TAYLOR HAY: she hated my guts ( )
PARSONS: You want my story on her, I’ll tell you later.
HAY: Can we get it on tape?
PARSONS: Oh yes, I don’t care.
HAY: Because we…Taylor, by the way, we can’t hear your voice…
TAYLOR HAY: Good.
HAY: OK
TAYLOR HAY: So Ruth Cobb, its algebra and trigonometry and I had to take her
exam, and here was Zut so happy, and I was sitting there and I wasn’t going to graduate. You should have seen my year book…”Didn’t know you’d make it. Thought you were a goner. Glad you got out.” That’s what it would say. ( ) So that was the end of that, but…I got out of school by the hair on my chinny chin chin. So, ( ), we just had our 50 ( ) military, and out of 234,I was 231st or 2nd.HAY: …go on. I want to hear your Ruth Cobb story.
PARSONS: Well, this was when she was Mrs. Leathers and she was the chemistry
teacher and she gave me a very well deserved failing grade which did not keep me from graduating because I had more than ample credits. But, when I went to college and took college chemistry, I got an A. I aced the final exam, and I’ll never forget, I couldn’t get back to her soon enough. But, it wasn’t her fault. It was my fault. I deserved it, like I said. I deserved many of the grades that I got. [Chuckle]TAYLOR HAY: ( )
PARSONS: When you grow up in a broke home environment, you become somewhat wild.
My sister got married very young. She was certainly very wild. My brother lied about his age and enlisted in the Army in World War II. He didn’t want to stick around. But, I stuck around. I got out of high school, and was so fortunate to be able to go to college. One of my biggest disappointments in Frankfort has been the fact that the Frankfort High School has no alumni association. ( ) what was her name? Rutherford. Rutherford? I think it was her name. Had a beautiful website. The website is still up and running because somebody’s got the server, I don’t know where it is, but it just stopped. The first maybe six months, some very interesting articles…I offered to fund it. I talked to the superintendent of the schools when they remodeled Frankfort High School. That was the 50th anniversary I guess when we went back. And it just fell through, and that’s such a shame because there are so many talented people that stayed in Frankfort or Lexington that could get that website and that association back up and running.TAYLOR HAY: That’s true.
PARSONS: And I’m sure there are students at the high school who are taking
computer science courses that would be more than glad to help them and load all the information into it.TAYLOR HAY: ( ) project
PARSONS: I wrote a rather lengthy memo to the superintendent of the school
trying to get them to do something and then I talked to him personally. And I think that got started, but it just didn’t continue. If you look back in your college and some of your other high schools that have such beautiful programs; alumni programs…My wife’s school I think it had like 2800 students. It’s a private school, but it caters not to private students, but to public students who come from the various towns around where she lived. It has such a wonderful alumni association and website, and there is no reason why Frankfort couldn’t do the same thing.HAY: Maybe that will come. Tell me…can I back track and ask you the names of
your brother and sister.PARSONS: My sister’s name was Patsy. My brother’s name was Richard.
HAY: And what was you sister’s married name?
PARSONS: Parrish
HAY: Did she stay in Frankfort?
PARSONS: Yes she did, in fact, but she died ten years ago.
HAY: Children? Grandchildren?
PARSONS: Oh yes. Bunch of them.
HAY: Parrish’s?
PARSONS: Yes, except that many of them are married now. Her first husband is
still alive. He lives out in ForkCivil Corn…something like that.TAYLOR HAY: What was his name?
PARSONS: Gene Parrish
TAYLOR HAY: ( )
PARSONS: He’s since remarried.
TAYLOR HAY: I was away from Frankfort…it was a tough year…we just got back.
HAY: And then your brother was Richard Parsons.
PARSONS: uh hum Still is.
HAY: Is. He still lives…
PARSONS: He lives in an oasis in the desert called Mirietta, California. It’s in
the southern California wine-growing district.TAYLOR HAY: He’s retired?
PARSONS: Oh yes. Ex military
HAY: And then your parent’s names, and maiden names, and where your parents were
born, and the years they were born?PARSONS: Oh gosh, I couldn’t tell you. My mother’s maiden name was Mefford and
she lived on East Main Street—her mother lived on East Main Street—next door to the original hospital in Frankfort. It’s now an apartment building, I believe.TAYLOR HAY: Kings Daughters?
PARSONS: Yes, Kings Daughters and then he moved over on Second Street and then
now they built one out someplace on the West end someplace.TAYLOR HAY: ( )
HAY: She was born in what year?
PARSONS: Mother? Gee, I don’t remember.
HAY: What about your father? Where was he from?
0:
3:00 -0: 4:00PARSONS: He…not Mt. Sterling, but…somewhere in the Mt. Sterling area.TAYLOR HAY: You are a ( )blend Kentuckian.
PARSONS: A what?
TAYLOR HAY: Kentuckian
PARSONS: Oh yes.
HAY: And their parents were from Kentucky?
PARSONS: Oh yes
HAY: so generation…you’re a 5th…4th generation?
PARSONS: I have an aunt who lives in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. Her husband just
died six months ago. She did a genealogy on the family and I wasn’t much help, but she put it all together.HAY: What’s her name and what was that called?
PARSONS: Virginia Wiard was her name. Her husband ran the distillery at Stamping
Ground, and later it was Brown Foreman, I believe it was. And he later ran the Brown Foreman plants in Louisville.TAYLOR HAY: Wiard was Frankfort name.
HAY: Yes, spell that name.
PARSONS: W-I-A-R-D
TAYLOR HAY: I remember Wiard. ( )
PARSONS: They were married seventy plus years when he died.
TAYLOR HAY: a German name?
PARSONS: I’m not sure.
HAY: That would have been your mother or father’s side?
PARSONS: Virginia Wiard was my mother’s sister.
TAYLOR HAY: You and I have several parallels. I didn’t work as hard as you did.
PARSONS: I’m not sure.
TAYLOR HAY: I couldn’t have possibly worked as hard as you did.
HAY: Is there…we are about to use up just the right amount of tape…is there any
other Frankfort story or Grand Theatre story or anything that you’d like to tell us?PARSONS: mmmmm Not that comes up.
TAYLOR HAY: Did you give out free tickets ever to The Grand?
PARSONS: You mean promotional activities? Oh, my father always had promotional
activities of some kind going on. Whether it was discounted tickets, or the first hundred kids get a Marvel comic book, all those crazy things. Do you remember the carnival glass? The purplish colored glass? They probably weren’t worth two cents a piece, and now you can find them…thousands of dollars for just pieces.TAYLOR HAY: ( ) museum?
PARSONS: Oh yes, they’re museum pieces.
HAY: So as a manager, he would think up those promotions.
PARSONS: uh hum. Oh, they were pretty much commonplace. I don’t think there were
any great imagination required to do that because all theatres did it.HAY: They all did it?
TAYLOR HAY: in ’38 we had free tickets because we’d have a sign on our farm on (
) Road and you would give us free tickets ever month. We’d come down…PARSONS: mmmmm
TAYLOR HAY: That was your payment for that sign.
PARSONS: The only one that I remember that had free tickets was JJ King. I don’t
know if you remember JJ King?TAYLOR HAY: He was an old friend of the family.
PARSONS: He’s an old friend of my fathers…held the hotel next to The Capitol
Theater. And one of the fire escapes from The Capitol Theatre on the right-hand side went into the bar and lobby of the hotel that JJ King owned. And as part of the deal for the right-of-way, so we could get out in case of a fire, was free admission to the theatre. And then the government came along and said, “No, you can’t have free admission to the theatres anymore. You have to pay the tax.” The tax was like twenty-five cents. So every night JJ would come over to The Capitol Theatre and he would put a quarter on the ticket taker’s seat. [Chuckle] On the chair. But, he and my father were drinking buddies.TAYLOR HAY: ( )
PARSONS: Yes he did. Big farm.
TAYLOR HAY: He had a farm, and he had a saddle we owned…( ) bought out of his
estate with all the silver. A Spanish saddle.PARSONS: I wouldn’t be surprised.
TAYLOR HAY: He was a character. He was a movie character. Do you remember him?
PARSONS: Oh yeah
TAYLOR HAY: ( )
PARSONS: Yes. If my father and he weren’t sitting in the rocking chairs of the
hotel, they were sitting in those rocking chairs in front of the Farmers Bank. I don’t know whether they still have those chairs there, but…we had some out on our patio just like them because I so much loved those chairs. I would sit there late at night after I would take the money to the deposit box, the Farmers Bank deposit box, there was a small restaurant up the street that would hand pack ice cream. I’d get myself a pint of hand packed strawberry ice cream and go sit in front of the Farmers Bank and rock in those chairs until one o’clock in the morning. I don’t know whether they still have those chairs there now, but they would have to chain them down if they did.TAYLOR HAY: ( )
PARSONS: I’ve got a lot of those memories. I remember the Frankfort Country
Club. We would sneak out there at night, none of us remembers of course, late at night, and use the swimming pool. We would bribe the night watchman with a six-pack of beer.TAYLOR HAY: Did you know that I poured a great amount of that concrete with a
wheelbarrow on a board that I shoveled rock on a two-bag cement mixer to build that pool.PARSONS: This would be the first one. I think they had moved.
TAYLOR HAY: ( ) funny guy. This was a 19? I forget what it was. I’m telling you
( ) places we went…now I know you enjoyed it. I never got to go swim in that pool.PARSONS: And I’ll bet you never stood on a street corner at Pete’s Restaurant
there on the corner of Second and Bridge and raised dickens at night.TAYLOR HAY: We used to have more fights down at the baseball field.
PARSONS: Oh yeah, right. On the Second Street school field.
TAYLOR HAY: ( )
PARSONS: One of my other fond memories was the Murray Street School had that big
old bell down in the basement that they…TAYLOR HAY: Lucky was the…
PARSONS: custodian. He’d ring that bell at eight o’clock and everybody would go
into class.TAYLOR HAY: And the furnace was right there.
PARSONS: yeah the furnace was right there, such as it was. I was so disappointed
the first year I had to stay at Murray Street because the Second Street School had just opened. And I wanted so badly to go to a new school. I hated that old Murray Street School. [Chuckle] But the second year they did…they transferred me down to the Second Street School.TAYLOR HAY: ( )
PARSONS: Oh the marble player! Earl O’Nan was the marble player. I don’t know if
you ever met Earl O’Nan. He probably took more marbles of anybody in school than anybody else. I can remember he showed me big huge boxes of marbles that he…0:
5:00 -0: 6:00END OF INTERVIEW 7:00