In 1927, Kentucky Utilities finished a huge dam on the Dix River southwest of Lexington, for flood control and to generate electricity. The dam created Herrington Lake, and the serpentine reservoir became a very popular resort.
Norman Smith bought a cabin on the man-made body of water. In March of 1938, the adventurous entrepreneur was expecting company from Chicago: five visitors. Leading the Midwest entourage was Roy Fitzgerald, president of National City Lines. NCL was a front company General Motors and other companies had invested in over the previous two years. Its purpose was to muddle the corporate hand behind so many tram systems going poof!
The five Fitzgerald brothers of Minnesota and two Smith brothers of Kentucky were very much kindred spirits. All had worked like devils to build up their trucking/taxi/bus businesses.
The Fitzgerald brothers made their start busing iron mine workers to their jobs in the Mesabi iron range of Minnesota. The quintet had vast backing; today it would be like Jeff Bezos standing behind you. By 1938, the Fitzgeralds were tycoons, and they’d get lots richer.
At Smith’s cabin, everybody was snuggled in at five AM, March 13, 1938. Likely they’d enjoyed some boating or fishing the day before. Then, disaster: FIRE! Not a little fire, a conflagration that could easily have killed all six people. Smith was lucky. The only one asleep on the first floor, he got out uninjured. Roy Fitzgerald and Sue Youngblood, though, suffered serious burns. The other three hurt themselves leaping for their lives from the flaming second floor. Everybody except Smith was treated at Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington.
Later in 1938, the Lexington streetcar system was history. The bus conversion in Louisville was held up by WWII (Norm enlisted in the Coast Guard) but the trams were in the past tense by ’48.
The crucial question: if not for the fire, would are the chances this little get-together would ever have ever come to light? Maybe 0.0001%, something like that. Next question, how many other secret meetings just like this were there, which just weren’t smoked out?
After the war, Norm Smith went on to work for National City Lines in Tampa. Where better for a sailor? Sadly, he died, age 42, at his home in Newtown, Scott County KY in Nov. 1947. Between 1941 and 1945, he and brother Leroy ran the bus system in Tampa.
Above, the last day of Louisville’s trams in 1948, reported in the Courier-Journal.
Above L, Roy Fitzgerald was one of the small businessmen recruited by General Motors to pillage electric railway systems. His company, National City Lines, was run by Roy and his brothers, and was by far the biggest of the GM front companies. Norman Smith (above R, and his brother Leroy, below) were recruited to vaporize tram systems in Lexington and Louisville KY.
