Someone once commented that “History is something that never happened… written by someone who wasn’t there!”  History did, of course, happen.  However, many times the someone who wasn’t there gets it wrong.  For many, many years, the Honorable Order was under the impression that there was never an “official” uniform.  The position was erroneously based, in part, on a 1946 publication titled “Howdy Colonel”.  The book was authored by Marion Porter and Colonel Anna Friedman.  Colonel Anna was the guiding force behind the Honorable Order for several decades.  Chapter 11 of Howdy Colonel begins: “There is no official uniform for Kentucky Colonels unless you count a quart of Bourbon whisky”.  The story does however, reference “a uniform of an earlier day” and features a photo of Colonel Arthur Dwight Martin of Frankfort, Kentucky wearing one.  The photo description says the uniform was given to Colonel Martin in 1912.  That is either a mistake (typo?) OR, the uniform of Colonel Martin just happens to be amazingly similar to the one in the possession of Colonel Jacobson.  We corrected our position on the uniform several years ago with the discovery of the original minutes from the 1931 organizational meeting of THE KENTUCKY COLONELS.  The uniform was confirmed by the photos appearing under another post in this blog.  Our thanks to the Colonels from the Toronto area for reminding us of the Howdy Colonel information and photo. (see their comments under the Honest To Goodness Colonels Uniform post).  Here is the photo from Howdy Colonel. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 11:28 am and is filed under Ambassador Glen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.