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My Kentucky

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By SAM TERRY
Managing Editor
Jobe Publishing Inc.

June 18, 1945 – Munfordville native Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., was killed at Okinawa. He was the highest ranking U.S. military figure killed by enemy fire in World War II. He was posthumously made a four-star general. The son of Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner who was also Governor of Kentucky, Buckner received an appointment to West Point in 1908 and he later became commandant of West Point. In 1935, President Franklin D.

Sam Terry, Managing Editor

Roosevelt visited West Point and Buckner decided to show off his Kentucky hospitality by serving mint juleps. The juleps were such a hit with the dignitaries that Maj. Gen. William D. Connor wrote to Buckner and asked for the recipe so he could serve mint juleps at the 40th reunion of his own West Point class.

Buckner wrote back to clarify that, “A mint julep is not the product of a FORMULA. It is a CEREMONY and must be performed by a gentleman possessing a true sense of the artistic, a deep reverence for the ingredients and a proper appreciation of the occasion. It is a rite that must not be entrusted to a novice, a statistician, nor a Yankee. It is a heritage of the old South, an emblem of hospitality and a vehicle in which noble minds can travel together upon the flower-strewn paths of happy and congenial thought.” Buckner continued, “Go to a spring where cool, crystal-clear water bubbles from under a bank of dew-washed ferns. In a consecrated vessel, dip up a little water at the source.

Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.

Follow the stream through its banks of green moss and wildflowers until it broadens and trickles through beds of mint growing in aromatic profusion and waving softly in the summer breezes. Gather the sweetest and tenderest shoots and gently carry them home. Go to the sideboard and select a decanter of Kentucky Bourbon, distilled by a master hand, mellowed with age yet still vigorous and inspiring. An ancestral sugar bowl, a row of silver goblets, some spoons and some ice and you are ready to start.” Buckner concluded: “When all is ready, assemble your guests on the porch or in the garden, where the aroma of the juleps will rise Heavenward and make the birds sing. Propose a worthy toast, raise the goblet to your lips, bury your nose in the mint, inhale a deep breath of its fragrance and sip the nectar of the gods.

“Being overcome by thirst, I can write no further.
“Sincerely,
“S.B. Buckner, Jr.”

“Glen Lily,” the home of Kentucky Governor and Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr., near Munfordville in Hart County, Kentucky. S.B. Buckner Jr., was born here.

The last photograph was Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. was captured on film (standing on the far right) moments before he he was killed at Okinawa on June 18, 1945.

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