‘Everybody is so mad.’ Historic stained-glass window removed from Kentucky chapel.
Frontier Nursing University has removed a historic stained-glass window from a stone chapel in Leslie County, where the service started nearly a century ago to provide health care for babies and mothers in what was then an isolated part of Appalachia.
To many local people, the window is a piece of the county’s heritage, and they aren’t happy about the decision to move it.
“Everybody here is so mad,” said Hyden Mayor Carol Graham Joseph.
The 15th Century window depicts Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.
A cousin gave it to Mary Breckinridge, who founded what was then called Frontier Nursing Service in the 1920s in the mountainous coal county.
Nurses initially rode horses into the narrow hollows to deliver babies because there were few good roads.
The window was installed in 1960 in the small chapel on Thousandsticks Mountain overlooking Hyden.
Joseph said workers removed the window from the chapel Wednesday afternoon and drove it away in a pickup truck.
Frontier Nursing officials didn’t notify the city of the move. An exterminator saw the work and spread the word, Joseph said.
“They’re just really sneaky,” Joseph said. “The bug man told us.”
Joseph said several people gathered at a closed gate near the chapel as the window was being removed. Some cried, she said, noting that many in the county still feel a deep connection to Mary Breckinridge and her work.
There had been concern in Leslie County about losing the window and buildings connected to Breckinridge. University board members last year discussed moving the two-story, log house overlooking the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River where she lived from the 1920s until her death in 1965.
The house at Wendover has been used as a bed and breakfast and retreat center in recent years.
Responding to those concerns, FNU President Susan E. Stone said last September that while the idea of moving Breckinridge’s house did come up, officials realized they could not envision a plan to move it to Central Kentucky.
Frontier Nursing University said in a statement it would move the window to its new campus in Versailles.
After being based in Leslie County for decades, Frontier Nursing bought the former United Methodist Children’s Home site in Versailles in 2017 and began working to move operations there.
FNU said enrollment was growing and so it needed more space than it had in Hyden, and that traveling to Leslie County had presented challenges.
The new campus is near the Lexington airport.
“Mary Breckinridge’s faith and dedication inspire us to this day, and it is for that reason that we have made the decision to bring this vital symbol of her work with us as we move our operations to Versailles,” Frontier Nursing University said in the statement. “We believe that it will continue to inspire generations of advanced practice nurses and midwives.”
The university trains nurse-midwives and nurse practitioners, with a focus on providing care in rural and underserved areas.
It uses distance learning for many classes, but has orientation sessions and clinical training on campus. It has more than 2,000 students, according to its site.
Frontier Nursing said it will have a replica of the window created using digital photography techniques and install it in the Hyden chapel to “maintain the beauty and history” of the chapel.
Joseph said she had contacted state and federal elected officials to see if the city had any recourse to try to retrieve the window.
“They can keep the replica as far as I’m concerned,” she said.
