Rehearsals are under way for a dinner-mystery play to be performed at the Fred Vinson Museum on August 30th and 31st. The play revolves around a woman and her three sisters who are out celebrating her birthday at a place called Café Murder—with an ending impossible to predict.
The cast members and crew consist of the museum staff and local volunteers who have come together in this annual fundraiser to help preserve the museum, the birthplace of the great Fred Vinson of Louisa, Kentucky.
Anyone who has studied this man’s amazing career knows that he did more for this country and the world in the 1940s and 50s than anyone since that time, including Regan or Clinton.
When Vinson died in 1953, President Eisenhower proclaimed a 30-day period of mourning and ordered flags flown at half-mast at all federal buildings in the U. S. and aboard and had him lying in repose at the National Cathedral before being brought home to be buried at Pinehill Cemetery, Louisa.
If you like your Social Security and Workman’s Compensation, then thank Fred Vinson who developed these agencies at the behest of President Roosevelt. Then at the beginning of World War II, to control inflation, Roosevelt brought him into his cabinet as Economic Stabilization Director, then as Federal Loan Administrator and Director of War Mobilization. Given an office in the White House for these duties he became known as the “assistant President.”
After the war President Truman needed someone to oversee the International Conference for War Reconstruction and made Vinson Secretary of State, where he then created the World Bank and set up the International Monetary Fund. Then, shortly afterwards, when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Harlan Stone died, Truman gave that seat to Vinson. At this time school segregation cases were being heard and, knowing that “separate but equal” was the biggest fiction ever perpetrated on the American public, Vinson oversaw a case that eventually ended school segregation (B. vs B. of Ed.).
When Truman decided not to seek a second term, all of Washington expected Vinson to run in his place, as he was ahead of all other candidates in the polls. But wise as he was to the very end, he was too satisfied in his role as “non-partisan” Chief Justice to even consider it.
So, the good people of Louisa need to help preserve the heritage of Fred M. Vinson a truly great man. For reservations to the dinner and play call the museum Wed-Sat, 10 to 3 at 638-0078, or 686-3588, 673-3127 anytime
