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On
May 30, 2009, the Bowling Green Rose Society presented their
48th
rose show. The first show was held on September 30, 1961. Mr. and
Mrs. Paris Pillion won Queen of the Show with Kaserine Auguste
Victoria.
Alina Lane, Society Editor of the Park City Daily News, wrote a
sterling article about the show. She reported that: “Twenty-four
exhibitors placed 178 entries in the rose show Saturday which local
and out-of-town judges termed ‘one of the loveliest shows they had
ever seen.’ The guest register listed 175 guests from Bowling Green
and surrounding areas who called between the hours of 1:00 and 8:00
p.m. at the First Christian Church.” This event, which was the first
major effort by the newly formed Bowling Green Rose Society, remains
to this day the largest annual event on the society’s calendar.
The effort to form a rose society in Bowling Green had begun at 7:30
p.m. on November 28, 1960, when a group of approximately 25 men and
women met at Snell Hall on the Western Kentucky University Campus.
These interested rose growers heard a talk on roses given by Mr.
Charles Dawson of Louisville. (Ed. Note: Mr. Dawson was the author
of “Uncle Charlie’s Corner,” a regular feature in The American Rose
for a number of years.) Mr. Haywood Brown was chosen as temporary
Chairman.
The first regular meeting of the new local society was convened on
January 9, 1961, again in Snell Hall. Mr. Brown was elected the
group’s first president. The treasury began with a balance of
$29. As noted above, it was less than a year later that the first
rose show was presented.
The original ten members enrolled at this first meeting were: Dr. T.
O. Hall; Mrs. Earl Rabold; Mr. Claude Rose; Mr. Paris Pillion; Mrs.
Richard Peete; Mrs. J. C. McCubbin; Mrs. Edith Kolair; Mrs. Opal
Kirk; Mrs. Tena Borders; and Mrs. John Collet.
Some of this information came from a program presented to the
Bowling Green Rose Society on September 10, 1994, by Jim Bennett and
some from Paris Pillion, the only living charter member of the BGRS. |
