Justin Duke

jbduke@enquirer.com

This article from Dec. 20, 2012, is reprinted in advance of Wednesday's Frontier League Y'All-Star Game at 7:05 p.m. at UC Health Stadium in Florence. Renaming the event to the "Y'all-Star" game and using Florence's famous water tower is a "way of showing pride in the city," said Florence Freedom general manager Josh Anderson.

FLORENCE — It's not uncommon for anyone who's ever driven Interstate 71/75 through Northern Kentucky to have a story to tell about a giant red and white landmark they saw as they were passing through Florence.

For some, the Florence Y'all water tower is a guidepost and a way to tell how far they are from their destination. For Florence Mayor Diane Whalen, the water tower is a sign of her father's legacy.

"People will say, 'You know why it's like that?' – people who don't know. And they'll go, 'Well I heard...' and they'll go on sort of a path that is the general idea, but misses the reasoning behind all of it," Whalen said.

Many stories point to the tower's connection with the Florence Mall, which is part of the story that goes back to when the tower was built in 1974, Whalen said.

"When they opened up the land (which would become Mall Road) and they had the contract for the mall, obviously they needed additional water capability, and so the tower was built over there by Florence Water and Sewer. They had it all up and striped and painted with 'Florence Mall' in preparation," Whalen said.

The mall was still about a year away and the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 put regulations on advertising done along highways.

"You couldn't advertise a nonexistent entity," Whalen said.

Because the tower stood over the interstate, the advertising wasn't allowed.

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"The highway department threatened 'You're going to be fined if you don't paint it out, take it out or do something with it,'" Whalen said.

This left the mayor at the time, Whalen's father C.M. "Hop" Ewing, in a bind.

"They could throw a tarp over it – which would have been impossible – or they could repaint the entire thing on their shoestring budget, which is what they were operating on at the time," Whalen said.

Since the city didn't have the money to repaint the entire tower, Ewing had to get creative. The result has spun into legend.

"The story's been told as Burn's Brother Truck Stop eating breakfast to Caintuckee Grill, and I'm not really sure anymore. But at one of those breakfast places they would gather, he was scribbling on a napkin. In the course of scribbling on his napkin, he took the legs of his M and scratched them out," Whalen said.

With the legs on the M gone, it started looking like a Y.

"Now that it's been painted a number of times it's much more distinct," Whalen said.

After adding in an apostrophe, "Mall" had become "Y'all" and Ewing had found his solution without spending money the city didn't have.

"There was a guy who was working in the area at the time who offered to go over and paint it for something like $400," Whalen said.

The solution had its naysayers.

"There were some who thought it was hokey and made us look like hillbillies," said Gary Griesser, who was the assistant principal at Ockerman Middle School at the time.

Regardless of the how it made the area look, few denied Ewing had found a great and cheap solution to a big problem, Griesser said.

"We were all patting Hop Ewing on the back," he said.

At the time, no one got particularly excited or upset about it because it was assumed to be a temporary fix, said Pat Raverty, who was Boone County deputy judge-executive at the time.

"I think people weren't losing any sleep over it," Raverty said.

Everyone assumed that once the mall was an existing entity, the red and white billboard would return.

"The intention was, at that point, to return it to Florence Mall once the mall was open and operational," Whalen said.

The trouble was that the mall's owners had given the water tower's parcel of land to the city for the construction of the tower, so it was no longer on mall property.

"Then it became off-premises advertising, so they were no longer in control of the land and what happened off of their premises. So it stayed, and any conversation about doing anything different with it definitely will get a reaction," Whalen said.

While there was never an official decision that the Y'all would remain, the city ultimately embraced it and centered the water tower around Florence Y'all Festival that ran for more than 20 years.

"People who have been in our community for a long time take a great deal of pride in the tower," Whalen said.

The tower is something special for those who live out of the area and are part of the nearly 120,000 cars that drive past it every day.

"I've gotten letters over the years from people who travel from Michigan to Florida for the Sunshine State in the winter. When they're coming back home the water tower means they're almost home. They see it as a very pivotal landmark and something very distinctive for them," Whalen said.

The popularity of the tower led to many tie-ins including the water tower hole at World of Golf's miniature golf course, a slide in the mall's children's play area and Florence Freedom mascot Wally the Water Tower.

"It's unfortunate no one ever thought to copyright that," Whalen said.

In place of giving a ceremonial key to the city, Florence gives honored guests and new business owners a bobblehead version of the water tower Whalen calls the "bobble tower."

"It's one more thing that sets us apart and makes us unique," Whalen said.

With the legacy of the water tower so firmly established, Whalen sees Florence Y'all being a part of Florence for a long time to come.

"I believe that the future of the water tower is that it will remain. I don't see that as something, in my lifetime, will change," she said.

Of course, she won't complain about having one of her father's proudest accomplishments continue to stand tall.

"That was his," Whalen said.