Christy Spurlock, education curator for the Kentucky Library & Museum at WKU Libraries, received the Kentucky Historical Society’s Frank R.
Levstik Award for Professional Service at an awards ceremony at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in Frankfort earlier this month.
Spurlock taught language arts at LCHS from 1998-2005. She is the daughter of Lewisburg graduate Sue Williams Spurlock and her husband, Dr. John
Spurlock, who is a retired teacher at Western Kentucky University. As a little girl, she told her mom that she considered library books “my friends.”
The annual Kentucky History Awards ceremony recognizes outstanding achievements by individuals, business and civic leaders, communities, museums
and history organizations throughout the commonwealth in the field of history.
The judging panel noted Spurlock’s impact on the community which the museum serves and her contributions to the field. They wrote, “In addition to
bringing innovative approaches to the work, Christy has increased the outreach of the museum’s educational programs. Her work serves as a model for
Kentucky’s museum education community.”
In her three-plus-year tenure at WKU, Spurlock has created and enhanced a wide variety of popular online and in-house resources for educators
including the museum’s popular traveling trunks, which are used by close to 5,000 students per year. In a team effort, Spurlock created and organized
the Southern Kentucky Educational Attractions Association to increase awareness of community-wide attractions. In addition, Spurlock has orchestrated
three “Christmas in Kentucky” programs at the Kentucky Library & Museum, drawing in hundreds of visitors from the region annually to enjoy
family-oriented activities and exhibits during the holiday season.
“Christy is a progressive thinker and is constantly moving our education program forward,” said Timothy Mullin, department head for Special
Collections. “She is very deserving of the recognition of this award.”
Sue Spurlock credits her late mother, Bess Williams, for Spurlock’s enthusiasm for library work. “It was my mother who taught Christy to love
books. Before Christy was of school age, when John was in graduate school and we would be at my parents' home for a weekend visit, my mother would
promptly take Christy to the Logan County Library and let her check out all the books she cared to, never mind the fact that Christy, John and I were
only going to visit overnight.”
Spurlock’s mom also credits her own late dad, former Logan County Circuit Clerk Ernest Williams: “And I'll have to give my dad some credit as he
was the lucky one to whom Mother assigned the chore of lugging the sacks of books back to the library on Monday morning. Bless his ever-loving heart, I
never heard him once complain.”
When Christy Spurlock was a freshman at WKU, she took a course in Marksmanship. As a result, she and her mother were sharing an elaborate deer stand
which her parents had built on a friend's farm in Butler County. Once into the stand, Christy loaded her rifle and propped it in a corner, then sat
down in the stand and pulled a book out of her coat pocket.
“As she began to read, she told me to tell her if I saw anything,” Sue Spurlock recalls. “Some time passed before I spied a deer, shook her leg and
nodded toward the deer. Slowly, she stood up and looked at the deer. Then she said out loud, ‘Mother, that deer is no bigger than a dog and I'm not
going to shoot it.’ Needless to say, I didn't then have the heart to shoot it either. Christy went back to reading.”
Christy Spurlock’s love of books has paid off for her and for Western Kentucky University.