The Henry Ward Highway runs through Paducah’s Southside.
Thousands that drive the road every day may not realize that the thoroughfare’s namesake was, in his time, one of Kentucky’s biggest movers and shakers. The Paducah native, a newspaper editor by trade and later a state legislator, played a key role in bringing electricity to rural parts of the Commonwealth and pushing its state park and highway system forward.
Author and historian Sharon Roggenkamp recently published a book – “The Life and Times of Hammerin’ Hank Ward” – detailing Ward’s life and his contributions to the state of Kentucky.
The author said Ward’s relative historical anonymity inspired her to write his biography, she told WKMS in a recent interview.
“He was a very significant political figure, but nobody knows about him,” said Roggenkamp. “His family gave me all of his personal papers. He had written two unpublished manuscripts. I conducted an oral history on him. Spent lots of time researching Governor Clements’ and [A.B. “Happy”] Chandler's files, and it was just a very rich, colorful history of progress that many Kentuckians just don't know about.”
Ward started out as a cub reporter for the Paducah News Democrat in 1928 – later the Paducah Sun Democrat and eventually The Paducah Sun. Over the years, he’d head the paper’s city desk and serve as an associate editor.
Roggenkamp said that Ward was “very outspoken” about corruption, nepotism and cronyism in state government and publicly advocated against candidates who operated in that way.
“He hated the system. He was very vocal about it, and he did not vote for Earl C. Clements in the primary in 1948 because Clements was an advocate of the private power companies, and Ward had been a very fierce advocate for public power,” she said.
For more than a decade of his time spent at the paper, Ward was also working in the state legislature. He was first elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1934, serving in the chamber until 1942. At the time, he was the youngest person ever elected to the Commonwealth’s state House. He then made a successful run for the Kentucky State Senate, where he served from 1946 to 1948.
The New Dealer
Often thought of as a New Deal-style lawmaker, Roggenkamp said the Democrat championed federal programs of the time including the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) mission of rural electrification and modernization of the region through things like the Kentucky and Barkley Dam sites.
Roggenkamp said he worked with state and federal officials, including Kentucky First District Congressman Noble Gregory, to bring TVA to western Kentucky, notably the Kentucky and Barkley Dam sites.
“He went to the state legislature in 1934 as one of the youngest legislators and had some bills of interest he wanted to pass. He was the sponsor of bills that brought the Rural Electrification Act (REA) and TVA public power to the state of Kentucky,” said Roggenkamp. “His life really follows the arc of the New Deal.”
Roggenkamp said his influence on state policy ranged from rural electrification to strip mining and civil rights.
Following his time in the Senate, Ward became Kentucky’s Commissioner of Conservation, expanding the state park system and tourism program, and later the state’s Commissioner of Highways.
Ward as a State Administrator
As parks commissioner under Clements – who he was critical of – Roggenkamp said Ward reformed the state system from an underfunded and dilapidated program to what would become a national model.
“An important part of my book was to illustrate this shift from the early park system to the post-World War two system. The parks first started in the early 1920s and there was a very colorful national fight to save Cumberland Falls State Park from being turned into a hydroelectric dam. And that became a real public cause,” she said.
During Ward’s time as commissioner of parks, the state went on a building spree with a budget increase from around $35,000 per year to over $1 million, including new lodges, roads and cabins. Many of those facilities have become staples of Kentucky’s state parks system and are still in use today.
Roggenkamp said the highway department was “in shambles” after a purchasing deal scandal during the Bert T. Combs administration in Kentucky and the governor turned to Ward to take over as highways commissioner, asking him to help to build the interstates to complete the national highway system and connect Kentucky’s cities with those of neighboring states.
“He made the difference because he had worked for former Vice President Alben Barkley and Senator Earl Clements in Washington, D.C. as a policy assistant. So he knew contacts. He knew how the federal government worked. He knew how to access the funding,” she said. “He also said on his first day [that] “nobody buys a pencil around here unless I sign the requisition.’ He made it clear there would be no more deals, no more corruption.”
Ward hired young engineers from the University of Kentucky, seeking what he described as less politics and more engineering in state government. Under his leadership, the state was able to make what Roggenkamp described as rapid progress in completing the interstate system.
He would resign the post only to unsuccessfully run for governor in 1967 against Louie Nunn, the first Republican to win the office in more than two decades at the time. Ward came out the winner of a 10-way Democratic Party primary and would be the only Democrat defeated in their campaign for governor until 2003 when Governor Ernie Fletcher beat out Ben Chandler.
Ward the Technocrat
Roggenkamp described Ward as wanting to make government more efficient by bringing “people with qualified professional skill sets rather than political patronage rewards” into public service, and that his “abrupt” personality could sometimes make him enemies. Ward, she also said, “detested” campaigning and had a hard time taking credit for his accomplishments in government with voters.
“He was also very interested in modernizing the process. People who did work closely with him loved him one on one. He could be a very kind and generous friend and mentor,” she said. “He trained a lot of editors and reporters who later headed major daily papers, but when he was campaigning … Louie Nunn came across as a very strong, forceful, handsome candidate and Ward was a 5 foot 7-inch-tall policy wonk. It just didn't go over with the voters.”
After losing out on a bid for the governor’s seat, Ward returned to the Paducah Sun Democrat to serve as the paper’s publisher in 1968 for two years before moving to Louisville, where he chaired the city’s Waterfront Commission.
Ward died in 2002 at the age of 1993 in Lexington.
More about Ward is available in Roggenkamp’s book, which was published by Braughler Books in November 2024.
