‘He was the giant.’ Lexington banker who spearheaded Rupp Arena, legalized hemp dies at 92.

Jake Graves, a longtime Lexington bank executive who helped get Rupp Arena built as the first chairman of the Lexington Civic Center board and later helped legitimize the Kentucky hemp industry, died Friday night. He was 92.

Graves spent more than half a century heavily involved in Lexington groups, ranging from the Lexington Chamber of Commerce to the Kentucky Horse Park organizational committee to the Bluegrass Foundation. As chairman of the Lexington Civic Center board, he helped bring the Rupp Arena complex to Lexington, shaping downtown as it is known today.

Most recently, he played an important role in the resurgence of Kentucky’s hemp industry.

“He was a larger-than-life figure,” said Dan Graves, one of Graves’ four sons. “Not only in the community ... he had quite a large family.”

That family included nine children and 22 grandchildren. He was married 70 years to Glenna Ritchie Graves, who died two years ago.

Graves, a sixth generation hemp farmer, also served as the patriarch of the movement to legalize hemp in Kentucky and the United States throughout the 90s and 2000s. He grew hemp on his family farm before the federal government made it illegal to do so and helped legitimize the industry by going to schools and the Kentucky legislature to talk about the role hemp used to play in Kentucky’s agricultural economy.

“He was a pioneer,” said Joe Hickey, the former executive director of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Co-op. “He was the giant. Everybody stood on his shoulders.”

Kentucky eventually made limited hemp farming legal in 2014, and earlier this year, Congress passed a bill that legalizes industrial hemp production.

“Jake had a keen sense for business and a remarkable sense for people,” said Lexington mayor Jim Gray.

In 1983 when Gray Construction moved into Graves’ bank offices, Jake and his brothers were there to welcome them with a homemade apple pie.

“That’s the sort of man he was,” Gray said. “A leader, welcoming, unique, one of a kind, original and a patriarch to a wonderfully extended family.”

In the 1970s, Graves was the chairman of the Lexington Civic Center Board when the city and the University of Kentucky agreed to build a $46 million civic center. Part of the space would eventually become the home court for four championship-winning Kentucky men’s basketball teams.

“He was very loud,” Dan Graves said. “He had a voice that would carry and a laugh that would light up the room. When he spoke, people would listen.”

This story was originally published October 6, 2018 at 6:08 PM.