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Southern Hospitality, Bulldog Style
Summer 2003
by Rowan Claypool '80
Rowan Claypool founded Bulldogs in the Bluegrass.
How do you attract talented young people to the heartland? Five years ago, the Yale Club of Kentucky decided to try. We launched Bulldogs in the Bluegrass, an internship program that brings more than 30 Yale students to Louisville every summer for work, learning, mentoring—and fun. Since its inception, the program has grown into a magical, transforming ritual of discovery on the banks of the Ohio River.
The alumni who support the program give without asking for immediate returns. They participate with the anticipation that they will inspire and excite young Yalies, encourage them to follow career paths they might not have considered before, and maybe even settle somewhere new to them—here in Louisville.
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Each event is designed to illuminate the complexity of life as a leader.
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Our 10-week paid internship program offers free housing and individual mentors. Amazingly, it draws more than 100 undergraduate applicants each year to work in up to 35 for- and nonprofit jobs, all with an emphasis on community service. In four summers so far, 145 Bulldogs from 39 states and 8 foreign countries have become Louisville “citizens for life.”
To kick off the program every summer, John Hale '72 brings the Bulldogs to the limestone ledges of the Ohio and gives them some regional history: geological, Native American, and European. In every era except ours, he notes, each society that inhabited this place had a rite of passage in which a community recognized that a young person had become an adult. He encourages the Bulldogs to use the summer to make their own transition into adulthood.
Summer continues with a packed schedule of events. Ballard Morton '54 describes the qualities of a leader one would “willingly follow.” Bill Richardson '69MArch shares the reasons why he invested his entire professional life in helping the impoverished region of eastern Kentucky. U.S. senator Mitch McConnell discusses campaign finance and the thorny issue of tobacco in the Commonwealth. Each event is designed to illuminate the complexity of life as a leader. Throughout the summer, the individual mentors follow up—treating the interns as adults and counseling them on the road ahead, a new experience for most of the Bulldogs.
We fill days with vigorous activity, too. There are cycling tours, hikes, and canoe trips into the wilds of Kentucky. There are golf scrambles and fishing junkets (it’s really all about learning to bait your own hook). We even play a Bulldogs vs. Aging Bulldogs softball game, in which the overweight, balding alums have managed to compile a perfect 4-0 record. Finally, in good southern fashion, every event is lubricated with sweet ripe watermelon.
Community service permeates the summer as Bulldogs organize blood drives, devote Saturdays to cleaning the banks of Beargrass Creek, or spend evenings painting a new nonprofit coffee shop. Everywhere, they demonstrate the value of their education, enthusiasm, and extraordinary personal qualities. They become true ambassadors for Yale.
For Louisville, best of all is the fact that six former interns and seven of their friends have already settled here permanently. So promising are the results that the Yale Club of Cleveland has started its own program, Bulldogs on the Cuyahoga, and will welcome its first 35 interns this summer.
Summer concludes with a dinner at the home of David Jones Jr. '80 and Mary Gwen Wheeler '80. The finale is the interns' presentation of their summer album, filled with pictures and notes. I am moved afresh each year by the Bulldogs' descriptions of their journeys of self-discovery in this exotic land. These four albums, lovingly prepared, constitute an eloquent record of the best summer of my life—four times over. |
