Return The Historic Window To Leslie County Kentucky

 In recent weeks, the board of directors of what is now the Frontier Nursing University which was originally, and for nearly a century, known as The Frontier Nursing Service, have removed a historic 15th century stained glass window from the original chapel of the Frontier Nursing Service campus in Leslie County Kentucky and stated their intentions to install in the new campus of the Frontier Nursing University in Versailles Kentucky more than a hundred and thirty miles from the spot which Mary Breckinridge had placed it and stated her intentions for it to remain in perpetuity.  The citizens of Leslie County are deeply troubled by this theft of a priceless artifact of the county's history and are fighting the board of directors to force the return of the window.  I fully support their efforts and so should you.  Please go to the link I have provided below and sign the petition.  Also please consider calling the offices of the Frontier  Nursing University and state your support for the citizens of Leslie County.  That telephone number is (859) 251-4700.  Also please share the petition in all forms of your social media and by e-mail.  Please support the citizens of Leslie County.  

Mary Breckinridge, Founder of The Frontier Nursing Service.

Here is an edited link to the peitition by the citizens of Leslie County Kentucky demanding that Frontier Nursing University return a historic 15th century stained glass window to the chapel on the original campus of the Frontier Nursing Service which was started by Mary Breckinridge as an agency dedicated to direct health care services to the citizens of the area. The current board of directors have abandoned the mission along with Leslie County, all of Eastern Kentucky, and Appalachia in order to become a lower tier nursing school in Versailles Kentucky the heart of the Bluegrass and well outside Appalachia. Please consider signing the petition and demanding that this historic window be returned to Leslie County where it was intended to stay for all eternity by Mary Breckinridge herself.

Mary Breckinridge began the Frontier Nursing Service in 1925 in order to work with mothers and young children primarily to lower the rates of infant mortality, still births, and the deaths of mothers in child birth.  In the 1920's, Leslie County was one of the most remote and isolated areas in all of Appalachia and health care was minimal at best.  The nurses of the Frontier Nursing Service road on horse back in rain, sleet, snow, hail, lighting, thunder, and dark of night to provide health care to natives of Central Appalachia.  The Frontier Nursing Service School of Midwifery and Family Nursing was established in 1939 in order to train nurses and midwives and eventually became the longest continually operating nurse-midwife educational program in the country.  Leslie County was in the heart of the Kentucky coal fields and as coal companies came to the area and coal camps proliferated, the Frontier Nursing Service provided care in all the gaps which the coal companies refused to operate.  They were the first line of defense against death, disease, and epidemics in the area around Hyden and Leslie County.  They fought the polio epidemic of the early twentieth century along with providing basic health care to anyone who asked.  

But over the course of time, the area acquired roads such as the Daniel Boone Parkway, more doctors and hospitals arrived, and the mission of the Frontier Nursing Service became much more focused on educating nurses and midwives.  In recent years, the board has changed hands and become dominated by individuals who have little or interest in serving or being loyal to Leslie County and its citizens. Hence the crisis of the stained glass window has arisen in the wake of the board having decided to abandon Leslie County for the rolling fields of the Bluegrass in Woodford County.  They moved their headquarters and decided to cart the historic and priceless window off with them.  Without notifying the community, essentially in the dead of night, they removed the window from the original chapel of the Frontier Nursing Service Campus and now want to mollify the residents of Leslie County by giving them a "facsimile" or "replica" of the priceless window which was actually a gift from Mary Breckinridge to the county.  This has just become one more chapter in the rape and rapine of Appalachia.  I beg of each of you who reads this to join the fight with the citizens of Leslie County and never give up until that window is back where it belongs.