The first of THESE opened on this date 90 years ago…
LaRue County Schools is looking within as the district announces its new superintendent.
Adryanne Warren will take over as head of the school district beginning July 1. Warren is currently the principal at LaRue County Middle School after previously serving as a fifth grade teacher and a curriculum specialist for the district. Warren, herself a LaRue County Schools grad, says serving her local district is exciting.
“I just feel extremely honored and humbled,” Warren said. “I am excited to serve the community where I live and spend all my time and invest all my energy already, so it just feels like a great accomplishment.”
When considering the job, Warren said she considered how she could help the district make the most impact.
“I started my position here as principal and loved that impact with the relationships that I was building with the kids and the community and the teachers here, and I just wanted to expand on that, and hopefully my leadership skills will better the work life for the teachers and staff, and then the education experience for the students, and then also help bridge that connection between the schools and the local community,” Warren said.
Warren says LaRue County Schools has been making great progress, and she is excited to see that continue.
“I’m most excited to keep the schools moving forward with the momentum they already have,” Warren said. “I feel like we have great momentum with keeping up with all the educational trends and just staying on top of making the educational experience for our students better.”
Warren and her husband Cody are parents to four daughters, and they grow hay and raise cattle on their farm in southern LaRue County.
The schedule is set for the 2024 Summer Movie Series at the Historic State Theater.
“The Summer Movie Series is my personal favorite event that we do throughout the year at the State Theater,” said Elizabethtown Events Manager Beth Pyles. “We’re excited for our 2024 series. It’s a family-friendly movie series offering showings at noon and 7 p.m. each Tuesday this summer beginning June 4 and running through July 31.”
Tickets to each showing are $2 and offer affordable family fun.
June will feature four Disney/Pixar favorites.
“We have Cars, The Incredibles, Toy Story, and Monsters Inc., so those are the first movies in the series, and those movies are loved by, I think, young and old, so we hope people come out and see those,” Pyles said.
July’s movies were selected to follow a theme.
“We are showing movies that are based upon books,” Pyles said. “So July 2 we’ve got Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which was one of my child’s favorite books when he was growing up.”
The other July movies are Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, How to Eat Fried Worms, Charlotte’s Web, and Mary Poppins.
Doors open one hour prior to each showtime, and concessions will be served.
“A lot of times people tell us this is the first time they’ve brought their child to the movies because it’s movies that they can enjoy,” Pyles said. “We have young and old, so it’s open to everybody. We hope that everybody comes out and sees us.”
Visit www.thestate270.org for a full schedule of events at the theater.
Area youth are invited to participate in the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park’s Junior Ranger Day.
Junior Ranger Day kicks off National Park Week at the historical park. Children and families can drop by the park, located at 2995 Lincoln Farm Road in Hodgenville, anytime from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 20.
Participants can take part in the fun at the drop-in activity tent, learn more about the Year Without a Summer, and participate in limited time activities and earn their Junior Ranger badge. Junior Ranger Day items will only be available at Saturday’s event.
Junior Ranger Day activities are open to all children, free of charge. Visit the Lincoln Birthplace website or Facebook page for more information.
Drivers in Hart County should be aware of an upcoming road closure.
Kentucky Route 88 will be closed at U.S. 31-W between Hart County Bank and Trust Company and the South Central Rural Telephone and Farmers Rural Electric Cooperative building in Munfordville from 6 p.m. Friday through 6 a.m. Monday.
The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet says the closure is for a concrete inlay as part of the overall project designed to improve the roadway to withstand torque and twisting produced as heavy vehicles pull into and out of the intersection. The concrete provides a long-term solution after crews have been called to the area several times to make temporary fixes. The concrete work was planned for a weekend in order to minimize traffic disruption.
Signs will be posted to detour traffic via Back Street in Munfordville. The overall improvement project is scheduled to be completed by June 30. Work is weather-permitting.
Beth Dugas says the best word to describe her daughter Madison is “sassy.”
“Even people that haven’t met her that just know her story and follow her Facebook page or, you know, if you’ve ever met Madison in person, she’s very unforgettable,” Dugas said. “You won’t forget Madison.”
Madison’s spunky personality has been prevalent in her health battles, which began at an early age with two open heart surgeries in her first ten weeks and a heart transplant at seven months. Most recently, lung issues have resulted in a hospital stay that has now gone past seven weeks.
“They finally did a biopsy on her lungs and found out something that they weren’t expecting,” Dugas said. “She has, they call it pulmonary hemosiderosis, and there’s no cure per se. There are a couple potential treatment options like high-dose steroids and she’s gotten an IVIG treatment, but otherwise there’s really no cure. Just kind of have to maintain.”
Doctors have ruled out a lung transplant at this time, but more surgeries are likely on the horizon in order to address other issues.
“The pulmonary vein is another issue that she’s going to need to have resolved somehow, some way in the future because that pulmonary vein is just going to continue to narrow, and they can go in and open it up through a cast but she needs to have an open heart surgery to fix that,” Dugas said.
As the family navigates Madison’s battle, Dugas says they have felt the support of family, friends, and community, including a GoFundMe titled Miracles for Madison and a tote bag fundraiser.
“Both of our moms are very, very involved, and they help a lot with our son because he’s seven and we try to keep his routine as much as possible through all of it, and then just more friends than we could ever imagine,” Dugas said. “I said ‘I think that like all of Hardin County has been praying for Madison.’”
Updates on Madison’s journey, along with links to the GoFundMe and info on the tote bags, can be found on the Miracles for Madison Facebook page.
The Historic Downtown Elizabethtown Business Association invites all to attend their monthly Third Thursday event, which for this month takes place April 18.
The association says that as with any Third Thursday, downtown shops will extend their business hours to 8 p.m. and will offer specials and discounts, but Association President Dana Garrett says the fun doesn’t stop there.
“Each month on the third Thursday of the month we like to have a theme to kind of celebrate downtown and encourage people to come downtown, and our April theme is Earth Day,” Garrett said. “We thought it was fitting since Earth Day falls in April.”
The Earth Day theme means a chance to celebrate green thumbs and green living.
“We have a mini farmers market we’re going to have set up on Walker Square with some local farmer vendors,” Garrett said. “We also have some representatives from our local conservation district and the Hardin County stormwater agency that’ll have some giveaways for kids.”
Dr. Paul Gerard will be showing off his reptiles from 6 to 7 p.m., and interactive displays will be set up.
Garrett says if you’re looking for plans for this Thursday night, look no further.
“The weather looks to be phenomenal, so it’ll be a great night to come out and shop at our local stores, have some dinner with your friends and family, and then of course for the kids there’s lots of cool activities for them to see too.”
Visit the Historic Downtown Elizabethtown Facebook page for more information.
Elizabethtown Community and Technical College’s Toy Box Theatre will present Silly Tales From the Toy Box, a story of silly people and animals, this Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at ECTC’s Science Auditorium.
“This one’s called Silly Tales From the Toy Box, and I always adapt and write most of the plays, and so this one is one I did too,” said ECTC Communications and Theatre Professor Katrina Eicher, who founded Toy Box Theatre in 1998. “I adapted it from several different sources, and we usually run about 45 minutes so that young children’s attention spans aren’t, you know, taxed too much, and it’s very silly and it’s very funny.”
The cast is entirely composed of college students, many of whom are earning credits for ECTC classes.
“It’s a theater that uses common household props and very slight sets in order to encourage children to use their imagination, and we do a show every spring at ECTC and then we bring schools in from all around that we invite,” Eicher said.
Toy Box Theatre has performed for more than 11,000 people, and you can catch their 24th production this Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $2 at the door and free for children 3 and under.
“This is a bargain,” Eicher said. “It is so much fun. This is, as I say, only 45 minutes long. Children love it. Adults will love it in the ways that maybe the children won’t, and you can’t really go see a show for $2 or less.”
Tickets for this family-friendly show are cash only.