Tue, Feb 09 2010
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Published November 12, 2009 12:12 pm - The Norman Rockwell print titled “The Problem We All Must Live With” features a small, black girl walking between four very tall men. Glasgow native returns as a hero By GINA KINSLOW Glasgow Daily Times GLASGOW — The Norman Rockwell print titled “The Problem We All Must Live With” features a small, black girl walking between four very tall men.
The little girl was Ruby Nell Bridges, the first black student to attend a white school, in New Orleans in 1960. The legs of the man on the far right side walking behind Bridges belong to Jesse Grider, one of four U.S. Marshals ordered to escort the kindergartner and her family the five blocks from their home to the William Frantz School. Grider is originally from Glasgow and on Wednesday he was honored for his service as a U.S. Marshal and with the Kentucky National Guard’s 623rd FA Unit during the Korean War in a special ceremony at the South Central Kentucky Cultural Center. “It’s quite an honor. I think I told someone I’ve been recognized by about three attorney generals in the United States and the president of the United States, but this means as much to me as any of them. This is my hometown and always will be,” he said. Since that day in New Orleans, Grider has been back to visit with Bridges twice. “I went back to see her maybe 15 years ago. A U.S. attorney in New Orleans called me and wanted to know if I would come back and meet with her and I did,” he said. Grider recalled what Bridges said to him upon seeing him for the first time after all those years. “The first thing she said was, ‘You looked a lot taller than you are.’ I said, ‘Well, when you were six years old I looked pretty tall to you.’” Grider spent some time during that visit talking to Bridges’ mother, Lucille. “I always said all along that her mother had more guts than all of us for putting her kids in that kind of program. She knew it was the right thing to do, but she had a lot of guts to do it because you won’t believe how upset those people were in New Orleans. It was tough,” he said. Grider was one of 10 U.S. Marshals selected to take Bridges to school. “We had about 600 marshals in town,” he said. The second time he saw Bridges was about nine years ago when he went back to New Orleans for Black History Week. Glasgow City Councilman Doug Isenberg hoped to reunite the two again this week, but attempts to contact Bridges were unsuccessful. 
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