Mr. Ward Oates

Mr. Ward Oates. . Ward Oates was born in Mortons Gap in Hopkins County, Kentucky on March 19, 1906. He died in Frankfort on July 13, 2009, and he lived most of his long life here. A real estate developer, Mr. Oates was a president of the Frankfort Chamber of Commerce. He also owned the Ward Oates Gulf Service Station and the Ward Oates Coal and Supply Company. In Kentucky state government, he was revenue commissioner under Governor Keen Johnson and both deputy commissioner of agriculture and commissioner of highways under Governor A.B. Happy Chandler. Mr. Oates was especially proud of the work he did on the construction of the modern version of highway US 60 between Frankfort and Versailles and construction of the Thornhill Bypass in Frankfort. A major in the U.S. Army during World War Two, he was responsible at the end of the war for escorting the wife and daughter of Heinrich Himmler head of the Nazi SS to the Nuremburg war crimes trials. In 1945, he also escorted 789 Jewish refugees from all across Europe to Palestine. He wrote an autobiography entitled Letters to Hilda. Hilda Rae Rice Oates was his wife, who died in 1993. Mr. Oates loved the theater and often expressed his wish that Frankfort had an amphitheater. In his will, he left a generous bequest aimed at fulfilling that wish and that funded most of the construction costs of this amphitheater. . This historical marker is in Frankfort in Franklin County Kentucky