How the coming solar eclipse has brought hope to my struggling Kentucky home town
THE MOST respected businesswoman in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, Peg Hays is almost always right.
Hays, daughter of the town’s first Republican mayor, was right when she said her party would one day out-number Democrats in Kentucky. She was right when she said that building the town’s Trail of Tears Commemorative Park would make Hopkinsville a hub for Native American tourism. And she was right when she said this, too: “The young people are coming back,” Hays told me. “Your generation didn’t come back.”
I grew up outside Hopkinsville and in high school had three very close friends. Only one lives there today. Another friend and I live in New York; the fourth is in Louisville.
Hopkinsville is the seat of Christian County, a farm community hit hard by President Bill Clinton’s restrictions on raising its cash crop: Tobacco. Somehow the billions of dollars awarded in the federal tobacco settlement, intended to help farmers find alternative crops, missed us. Tobacco demand went down.
Stores began to close. Then the local blue-jean factory moved production to Mexico. In an 18month span, unemployment tripled. So my generation, Generation X, got out of Dodge.
But now Hopkinsville’s mayor, Carter Hendricks, tells me things are looking up. From 2005 to 2015, Hopkinsville’s per- capita income increased by 50 per cent to US$ 20,834 ( RM93,753), poverty has dropped, and there’s a robust new transit system. Why the turnaround? Hendricks credits much of it to the moment a decade ago when the town discovered it was about to play host to a once-ina-lifetime natural event. This much is certainly true: On Aug 21, for a full two minutes and 40 seconds - about the longest eclipse duration in the country - Hopkinsville will be the centre of the world.
The total solar eclipse will be the first solely visible in the United States. Eighty per cent of Americans live within 600 miles of its path spanning Oregon to South Carolina. The point of greatest eclipse: A tobacco farm near Hopkinsville.
Eclipses are known to draw a crowd. In Mexico, a 1991 eclipse brought so many tourists, the Mexican government closed the border. At dead centre, Hopkinsville expects 250,000. At least, that’s the number Christian County Judge/Executive Steve Tribble has heard. Hopkinsville’s solar eclipse marketing and event coordinator, Brooke Jung, has a more conservative figure: 100,000. “We’re asking restaurants to order extra food,” she said, explaining why her projections are lower. “We want to be realistic. We don’t want them buying too much in case fewer people come.” The city has invited out- of-town food trucks; McDonald’s got a refrigeration truck for storing patties out back.
Considering eclipsechasers once overwhelmed an international border, the residents of Hopkinsville are taking everything in stride. One local said the biggest change he’ll have to make is remembering to lock his house door: “I usually keep it undone.”
Another man sees my family in Cracker Barrel while I’m home visiting my parents for Christmas and - knowing our farm is at the epicentre - yells “Y’all ready for that eclipse?” across four tables.
Ask Jung who’s most excited, and she points to the digital countdown on her wall showing time left between now and totality. “I can’t wait.” The fact that her job was even created shows everyone knows this is Hopkinsville’s chance to shine.
Ten years ago, Cheryl Cook, executive director of the Hopkinsville Convention and Visitors Bureau, received an email from an eclipse- chaser asking about area hotels. She thought it was a prank. But NASA has mapped eclipse paths through the year 3000, so Aug 21 was easy to confirm. With that confirmation came something Hopkinsville had been missing since tobacco crashed: Hope.
Hendricks said: “There began to become a real attitudinal shift in the leadership of the community that just said, look, enough’s enough. . . . We’re going to deal with it, and we started dealing with it.
And then that same attitude shifted into, well, wait a second: We’ve been talking about this abandoned rail spur. We tried to convert it into a greenway; we’ve been defeated. Why don’t we try again?” So a former L& N line was converted into green space. Then a water park was built.
“There’s been those improvements over the last 10 years to 12 years that have actually been occurring to allow this current batch of recent college graduates to feel more pride and the desire to want to come back,” he said.
Sarah Whitaker is one of “the young people” who decided to return to Hopkinsville. “The last two or three years, there’s this momentum,” said Whitaker, who chairs Hopkinsville Young Professionals Engage, an under45 networking group.
“It’s just really taken off just with the things that are opening. All the chains and sort of big box stores have announced that they’re coming. . . . Hopkinsville is booming like crazy. . . . I think when one positive thing happens, it’s kind of a domino effect.” — WP-Bloomberg