By STEVE KAUFMAN

A humorous sign on the wall of the big red barn says: “Friends always welcome. Relatives by appointment only.”

But actually, Diane and Tom Abbott’s Middletown farm house is a true family affair. One son lives right across the cul-de-sac, and an extended family of as many as 25 people often gathers – including Tom’s 98-year-old father.

The two-story Colonial with red brick and white trim was built by the couple in 1993 after Tom’s former father-in-law gifted him 2.75 acres of undeveloped property, with one stipulation: When any of Tom’s sons got married, he would have the opportunity to build his own house on the property. (Oldest son Dave now lives there in the house Tom and his company, Holloway & Son Construction, built for him.)

“It was truly undeveloped,” recalled Diane, “a forest of trees and heavy underbrush. We had family clean-up days for two and a half years, when Tom and I and the four kids would cut down trees and clear and burn the brush just to get the land ready for building.”
But the family of six had been squeezing into two bedrooms, so the chance to build the expansive home of their dreams was worth all those clean-up days.

Diane’s dream included two priorities: a big kitchen and a big family room. She loves to cook and entertain. Tom also had two priorities: a master bedroom suite on the first floor and his classic red barn behind the house that can only be described as “Tom’s playhouse.”

In 2005, Diane had hired Louisville designer Jason Jennings to help her decorate the 3,000-square-foot house. But now she felt a redesign was in order.

“We had talked about relocating, as the kids moved out,” said Diane. “But we loved it here so much. If we stayed, though, it needed a major updating.”

Jennings brightened and lightened the house, reassembling and repainting. But he also respected some traditional pieces, such as marble floor tiles in the entryway that were rescued from the old St. Thomas Seminary on Brownsboro Road. “Embedded in each square were little discs said to contain saints’ ashes,” Diane said.

Around the tiles are the home’s original oak wood floors. But Jennings covered them with colorful new rugs from Francis Lee Jasper, such as a gold-and-cream, raised brocade rug with an organic pattern in the piano room and an Oriental rug in the dining room.
He used light Porter Paint wall colors like First Frost, Summer Sunset, Almond Cream and Peach Surprise, and replaced heavy drapery in both front rooms with lighter silk curtains from Work the Metal, playing off the colors in the new rugs and the sunlight now streaming through the windows.

Haunting places like the Goss Avenue Antique Mall, Crescent Hill Trading Co. and Colonial Designs, Jennings and Abbott looked for lamps and accessories that would bring simplicity and elegance to the house.

“Jason’s shopping style is more daring,” said Diane. “Of course, that’s his job: to know what I want and also to see things I might not even know I want.”

“I’m looking for things I like, but I’m also trying to see them through my clients’ eyes,” said Jennings. “I want to love it for them.”

The house is also filled with family contributions, like various needlepoint pieces done by Diane’s talented mother, Nancy Cowell (who once put together needlepoint ornaments for a White House Christmas tree), and original artwork from Diane’s uncle, local watercolorist Keith Spears. And her sister painted the handles, drawer pulls and cabinet knobs in the kitchen.

The sprawling, open kitchen and breakfast room Diane had wanted is also home to a collection of cows – ceramic and plastic statuettes, wall plaques and one cow’s-head tree ornament attached to a brass railroad bell by a chain.

“It comes from my maiden name, Cowell,” said Diane. “My four grandchildren call me Moo-Moo.”

The barn in the back, Tom’s aforementioned “playhouse,” contains his toys: two Corvettes, some John Deere farm equipment (the couple owns a small farm in Shelbyville) and what the family calls “the beer garden,” a convivial gathering corner of the barn for ballgames on a big-screen TV.

A sign over the barn door says: “Harley parking only. [Foreign-made] bikes will be crushed.”

Tom’s various loves dominate the motif: sports (especially University of Louisville), bourbon, beer, cigars, New Orleans, movies (especially “The Sting”) and politics. There’s a campaign poster from his run as Middletown mayor. (He lost.)

There’s also a wall plaque that says: “I feel a sin coming on.”

Contact the writer at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com

“I just felt there would be a time when I’d need the elevator to get around in here,” said the still-spry octogenarian. “So it was kind of a long-term investment.”

Kelley Abell’s favorite description of what happened next is inscribed on a napkin: “The trouble with trouble is, it starts out as fun.”

When she went into the condo after her mother had left for West Palm Beach, she was struck by how dark it was. Widowed only five years since the death of her husband Bill, whom everyone still lovingly refers to as “Scoopy” (a boyhood nickname), “my mother needed brightness, fun and happiness in here.”

Kelley decided a drab couch in the living room needed to be reupholstered, and brought in her friend – decorator Mary Alexander (of Alexander Interiors on Frankfort Avenue) – to do the job.

“When we started poking around, we took down some heavy drapes and saw how the paint on the walls had darkened,” recalled Alexander. “The walls needed a repainting, as well.”

“We decided on a new, overall design theme,” said Kelley. “Bright and happy.”

Like pulling on a thread, the reupholstered couch that led to the repainted walls led to a wholesale redecoration of the condo’s main floor until the entire place was unrecognizable. They even re-landscaped the charming front patio behind the iron gates. (Barbie Tafel Thomas Exterior & Landscape Design on Starmont Road planted a magnolia, boxwoods and a climbing vine.)

The living room was painted a light and inviting white, with a soft aqua textured linen wallpaper in key areas.

The couch – now a bright, textured woven coral with a whimsical bubble pattern – led to the need for other furniture. Two new club chairs with colorful floral patterns joined the room, along with a blue and white polka dot ottoman and a black and tan diamond-patterned rug.

Alexander had trim and moldings added to a wall of built-ins (by Sutton’s Classic Renovation on Glen Rose Road) and plantation shutters where those heavy drapes had been. But mostly, Alexander decorated not with new acquisitions but by relocating and repurposing items that had long existed in Chris’s possession.

The pièce de résistance was her collection of family photos – her late husband, four children, three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren – taken from the shelves or elsewhere in the house, reframed and assembled in a presentation that now occupies an entire wall of the living room. (Art Emporium on Wilmington Avenue in St. Matthews did the framing.)

“I love taking clients’ possessions, looking at them proportionally and rearranging them by shapes and styles,” said Alexander.

For example, Alexander found in Chris’s basement the inside top of an old steamer trunk, once owned by and painted by Mary Alice Hadley, that now hangs as a piece of art over the doorway to the kitchen.

The kitchen itself was repainted Candlelit Beige (from Porter Paints) with all new cabinetry as a perch for Chris’s collection of roosters – ceramic, wood, metal, etc.

The vaulted living room is now a dramatic cranberry color (from the old yellowy-beige), with Chris’s existing furniture rearranged into comfortable conversation areas and clear, open sightlines. A mirror over the fireplace had once been owned by actress Helen Hayes.

And a little-used sun room in the back, with three walls of windows, was made inviting and functional by bringing in a whimsical coral-red couch with a monkeys-and-trees pattern that Alexander found in the home’s lower level.

All this went on while Chris passed a happy Florida winter with her other longtime companion, 17-year-old rescue dog Sandy, unaware that her home was being transformed. In fact, Alexander’s challenge was making decisions while the actual client was a thousand miles away.

The moment of truth arrived last weekend, when Kelley assembled a surprise “Extreme Home Makeover” party of 40 – family, friends and the various subcontractors – to greet her mother’s return.

“I didn’t know what all these people were doing in my house,” said Chris. “Then I saw that wall of pictures. That’s when I realized – and I cried. And when everyone went home and I was by myself, I cried again. Because it was beautiful, I loved every detail, and it was done with love.”

The only fly in the ointment: In all that time, the elevator has not yet been completed.

And that’s the trouble with trouble. It started out as a reupholstered couch. But this time, it will end up fine.

Contact the writer at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.

Photos By CHRIS HUMPHREYS | The Voice-Tribune

Along with the cheers of the throngs of spectators, military music trumpeted the marching orders for troops of veterans filled the airs.

The reason for the pomp and circumstance was easy. For the first time in at least a half century, Louisville hosted its first Veterans Day parade in.

“This truly is a unique opportunity to pay tribute to American veterans and active duty members of the Armed Services,” said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Carl Black, chairman of the planning committee that brought all the elements together. “11:11 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year won’t happen again for a long time.”

But this was more than a numerical gimmick. “It’s past time that we say to our veterans, ‘Thank you for your service,’ ” said Mayor Greg Fischer. “But though a parade and a service are nice, they do not fulfill our responsibility.”

So, from sea to shining sea, we take pause to remember our Veterans. No matter where they served, we owe our freedoms and security to a veteran. During the parade, we spoke with a few veterans, to tell their stories before they’re lost to history.

His was supposed to be a secret operation, but the enemy knew he and his comrades were coming.

“We were under fire immediately,” the Louisvillian recalled while watching Louisville’s Veterans Day parade. Weary, his platoon soldiered on toward Germany.

As a veteran of the famous “Battle Of The Bulge,” Brundage remembers the brutal winter.

“I spent Christmas Eve of 1944 dug in and sleeping on a riverbank,” Brundage recalled. “It was cold, lonely and frightening.”

After repatriating, the holidays took on special meaning for the elder Brundage. According to his son Bill, Christmas was always an emotional day for his father.

During those winter months, the Allies sustained heavy losses. Brundage was one of the lucky ones. He survived World War II, and remained in the service, serving in Korea and earning a Purple Heart for being wounded in combat. After retiring from the service in 1963, he found work at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant until his retirement.

Sitting in the bleachers, watching the parade on a warm November day, he stood as stiffly and proudly as the day he graduated boot camp saluting the colors as they were presented.

“I’m proud to be a part of this,” he said sitting with his son, Bill and daughter-in-law Cindy.

At 86, his son told us he wept with joy on the way home. Tears of joy for a veteran remembered for his service and sacrifice on a national holiday.

Instead of being sent to more common boot camps at Parris Island or San Diego, African-American recruits from 1942-1949 were sent instead to Montford Point, a facility at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

It was here the segregation still happened, regardless of Presidential order.

Cork is a member of the Montford Point Marines Association, and is among more than 20,000 Marines who were trained at the facility, which was separated by a railroad track from the main training camp.

In 1950, the 18-year-old Cork waded off an LST landing craft onto the beach at Pusan, South Korea – the only black Marine on the boat.

“I was in the thirteenth wave,” Cork recalled on Veterans Day. “By the time I hit the beach, dead Marines were stacked up like cords of wood.”

Surviving the onslaught, Cork charged on, continuing a tour of duty that took him to Chosin, as one of the regarded “Chosin Few”.

The Battle of Chosin Reservoir was a decisive battle of the Korean War. During the epic 17-day battle, troops battled not only each other, but also an unforgiving winter.

With temperatures dropping as low as -35 degrees Fahrenheit, 30,000 troops under the United Nations flag were encircled by 60,000 Chinese troops. Although the Chinese troops far outnumbered the UN forces, the UN troops broke free and delivered crippling losses to the Chinese.

Among those who helped turn the tide was Cork, a seasoned machine gunner.

However, Mother Nature’s brutality shown through, because after the battle while being examined, a medical officer asked how he was feeling.

“Fine,” he said, “no pain.”

“They knew that wasn’t a good answer,” he said. And they were right. Cork suffered severe frostbite, which resulted in part of his foot being amputated.

But, it didn’t stop him. After he was discharged, he returned to Louisville where he worked as a postal carrier for the next 31 years. He retired in 1984 after a distinguished career.

Now 82-years-old, standing ramrod straight and firm, Cork knows that segregation is no longer an issue with the military, but he’s pleased that ceremonies such as this keep the Montford Point story alive.

“It’s not just something symbolic or part of the past,” he said. “I don’t want this story to disappear. I don’t want anyone to forget where we came from.”

“We were outnumbered four-to-one,” he recalled during Louisville’s Veterans Day parade. “We won only because the Marines were better-trained. I’m proud of that.”

Gaylord was trained for jungle warfare with air support, not urban combat.

During the 28 days that was the Battle of Hué, Gaylord and his buddies saw combat in and around the city of Hué.

“We were looking for the North Vietnamese in the buildings,” he said. “Actually, they were dug into holes in the ground and kept coming up and attacking us.”

As the battle raged, so did the casualties. Allied forces lost 663 in that battle, and suffered 3707 wounded.

Gaylord was one of those wounded.

Losing both feet during a rocket ambush, he still considers himself luckier than one of his Marine buddies.

“We were sitting next to one another on a stoop, just talking,” he said sadly. “He got shot, right in the head, by a sniper a block away.”

After his tour, he was discharged and returned to Kentuckiana to study business at Indiana University. After college, he took a job as a claims adjudicator for the Veterans Administration. Along the way, he also wrote a book, “America’s UNFORTUNATE Sons and Daughters,” which chronicles his military experience.

Today, he’s glad Louisville is honoring veterans with a parade and fanfare. He said he is happy vets from the modern era are being remembered and taken care of.

“The country didn’t do much for us,” he said. “The Vietnam vets are trying to make sure these guys are taken care of, so they don’t have our experience.”

Stonecote Estate

It might be difficult to improve on the natural glamour of the 90-year-old Stonecote Estate. But 25 area designers were given the opportunity to try, as part of this month’s 38th annual Bellarmine University Women’s Council Designers’ Show House.

Each designer has a space somewhere in, out or around the 7,000-square-foot house. Some have a sprawling living room or bedroom, some have a hallway or powder room, and some have patios, porches and pool houses along the exterior. The task, of course, was to make visitors mutter “wow!”

They’re competing with the first “wow!” that goes to the long drive in off of Alta Vista Way approaching the house, which sits on five acres in the Lexington Road Preservation Area. It’s a classic fieldstone Scottish Tudor, with charming roof lines, long tall windows and all kinds of intriguing architectural angles.

Tassels

The next “wow!” is the huge, long living room just inside the front door, designed by Tassels. A big wood parsons table right in the front is adorned with a large pot of tall, orange foxtail lilies surrounded by a thick arrangement of hydrangeas, providing an immediate taste of eye candy.

The room itself is a comfortable array of colorful furniture positioned in easy conversation sets under a painted beam ceiling, designed for sitting and listening to the baby grand piano in the corner and looking at the big stone fireplace.

“We wanted a clean and natural look and feel,” said Tassels designer Kevin Coleman, “with a neutral canvas and pops of color.”

Tassels’ big room, dramatic and eye-catching though it is, is only a portal into the rest of the house, which offers designers lots of interesting corners and areas in which to work.

Two double French doors at the rear of the living room lead into the conservatory, an outdoorsy space with vaulted beadboard ceilings, stone walls and a red tile floor. Cherry House used soft upholstery, Oriental rugs and drapery panels to “create a warm and inviting area that sweeps you into another world.”

Cherry House

That other world is a gracious rear terrace and outdoor patio furnished by Digs Home & Garden that’s both cutting-edge and trendy – sleek, with its teak furniture, and traditional, with its garden bench.

To the left of the living room and conservatory is the kitchen-and-dining-room suite, a bright and fun assortment of patterns and props (like a single set of antlers on one wall, a mounted gazelle head on another). Dwellings created a country farm house feel in the kitchen and butler’s pantry. The mud room was turned into a personal rear-entry foyer by Thomas Kute Ltd. (including a signed basketball from last year’s Bellarmine Division II men’s national championship team). And the elegant formal dining room by Colonial Designs features a painted chinoiserie mural on the wall by artist Sandy Kimura and two round, intimate dining tables festooned with sprays of casablanca lilies.

Off the other side of the living room is the master suite: a tranquil, park-like bedroom from Leslie Lewis & Associates; a huge bathroom by Kimura Design, featuring the artist’s work on a hand-painted wall mural and folding floor screen; and a personal, modern study by Virginia Court Interiors full of cherished photos and family items. “You are no longer keeping up with the Joneses,” said designer Jason Beck about this concept. “You have become the Joneses.”

Leslie Lewis & Assoc.

There are three stairways up to the second floor, with its four bedrooms, three baths and a sitting room. All take full advantage of the architecture and dramatic window views. In one of the bedrooms, Gary Stewart Interiors created a calming, restful retreat because, Stewart asked, “What should a bedroom be but restful?”

It’s a neutral palette punched with the natural colors borrowed from right outside the windows, such as green lamps; antique Majolica plates; a vintage loveseat procured from consignment and refinished by A-1 Upholsterers; and striped wallpaper with the feel of French brush color washing, from Hikes Point Paint & Wallpaper.

The adjoining bathroom, produced by Decorating Den Interiors, is equally warm and welcoming, with Carrera marble surfaces and cabinetry painted Stormy Gray (from Porter Paints) playing off beadboard walls; linen shower curtains with crystal detailing; and an upholstered cheetah bench.

“It’s vintage meets modern glam,” said designer Kristen Pawlak.

Design excitement doesn’t end at the walls of the house. Outside in the back, along a stone path past Digs’ comfortable and functional patio, is an inviting swimming pool full of spitting fountains. Summer Classics furnished a comfortable porch. And the pool house itself, by Details Design & Cabinetry, is a long and comfortable apartment all its own. Designers used “a trio of timeless colors – shades of blue, red and green” to achieve the effortless, breezy feel they were after.

Details Design & Cabinetry

“Grounding the project,” said Details’ Lesa Buckler, “was a daring shade of palm frond green for the kitchen cabinets and sleek Carrera marble countertops.” Also worth mentioning was a gold-spattered animal skin rug in the bedroom.

Other participating designers include: Carriage House Interiors, The Curtain Exchange, Domain Fabric & Interiors, Eclectic Living, Habitation, Hubbuch & Co., The French Pleat, Interiors by Carrie, Jason Jennings Interior Fashion, Maximum Design & Décor, Southern Inspirations by Linda Gale, Steinbock Interior Design and Sullivan College of Technology & Design.

The event will run Sept. 10-25, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday; and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Designers will be in their rooms on Tuesdays and Thursdays (from 5 to 7) to discuss their work. And some of the designers will also conduct special workshops during the event, on topics such as “The Psychology of Color” and “Decorative Trends.”

There will also be a separate preview party, a seminar by homeowner Christina West, a café catered by Gracious Plenty and a merchandise boutique.

General admission tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Schedules, maps, ticket availability and information on special events are available by calling 502.272.8105 or visiting www.bellarmine.edu/womenscouncil.

photos by CHRIS HUMPHREYS | Voice-Tribune

Early “Sopranos” watchers well remember Tony Soprano imploring his mother to move to Green Groves by telling her, over and over, that “it’s not a nursing home, it’s a retirement community!”

Livia Soprano was convinced her son was condemning her to a place that would be confining, institutional and regimented. It’s the image too many people, in real life, have of nursing homes – whether they’re called senior care, nursing residences or Tony Soprano’s “retirement community.”

It’s an image the Masonic Homes of Kentucky pledged to eradicate for its growing constituency of Louisvillians with special needs, nursing and medical requirements, and age-related difficulties they can no longer deal with on their own. And the new $40 million Sam Swope Care Center, which will be ready for full operations in early 2011, is walking the talk.

The comfortable, light, airy, modern 196,000-square-foot facility was truly designed with the resident in mind. Hallways are wide and accessible. Residences are bright and comfortable. The grounds are filled with landscaping and fountains, and views of the grounds are spacious and attractive. All the public facilities – lobbies, lounges, dining rooms, even retail – have been designed to be inviting not only to the residents but also to visiting families and guests.

“If families and guests aren’t visiting, we’re already failing to fulfill our mission,” said C.J. Parrish, senior vice president and chief communications officer.

Individual pharmaceutical needs are placed in each resident’s apartment so there are no longer medicine carts prowling the hallways. A system of elevators was designed to get the meals to each floor without the old, institutional tray wagons in the halls.

“After all,” said Lori Hess, executive director and administrator of Masonic Home of Louisville, “you don’t have medical carts and cafeteria wagons in your home.”

Hess said the old facility design was meant to be efficient for staff and operations. “We’ve put the needs of the residents first, where they ought to be,” she said.

Some of the changes – which Hess referred to as “cultural shifts” – are subtle. For example, guests first come into an entry lobby. A long corridor, called “Main Street,” separates the residences from the lobby, so residents feel their privacy is being protected. The brightly lit Main Street has cobblestone-themed carpeting to differentiate it, with an illuminated sky blue ceiling to emulate the outdoors, and there are various public areas along the way, such as lounges, libraries, a gift shop and a counter selling Graeter’s ice cream. There’s even a children’s play area on the landscaped grounds so families are happy to visit their loved ones and residents are more likely to walk outside and take in the fresh air.

However, nobody is required to do anything other than what doctors order.

“If residents are accustomed to sleeping until 11 in the morning at home and then having a bowl of ice cream, we allow them to do that here,” Hess said. “They’re living here, they’re not confined here.”

Cafeterias are stocked with each resident’s favorite kind of cereal or jelly or ice cream or anything else they want – just like at home.
The wood furniture in each residence was carefully selected for comfort, durability and warmth. Institutional soap and towel dispensers were replaced with the kinds people have in their own homes. Hess even took the bed linens and towels home with her to test, launder and feel.
The center is designed to provide care for 136 adults. Entry is provided anyone with a physician’s referral and most insurance plans are accepted. Each of the wings accommodates specific medical conditions, so memory care residents are all together, as are short-stay rehabilitation and recovery residents and long-term care residents. The wings were named after significant donors: Nancy and Jim Judy, Rita and Gary Marsh, Stephanie and Martin Walters.

There is also an inpatient and outpatient kidney dialysis service operated by Fresenius Medical Care, and hospice and palliative care.
The facility was named for Louisville automobile tycoon Sam Swope, a member of the Masonic fraternity for 50 years who became honorary chairman of the capital campaign committee when the new center was being envisioned.

“He was our tireless cheerleader,” Parrish said. “He also gave us our largest individual cash gift in 143 years.”

The Masonic Widows and Orphans Home was established in 1867, on Second and Avery streets, to accommodate the survivors of Freemasons killed during the Civil War. About 100 years ago, it purchased 120 acres at its current location on Frankfort Avenue where St. Matthews and Crescent Hill intersect.

The spacious grounds are filled with residences and care centers, and some of the older facilities reflect the way care centers used to be designed and constructed – for institutional efficiency. But, as Hess said, the culture is changing and the residents’ emotional needs and physical comforts now come first.

courtesy photos