Sara Meigs

Meigs, Sara Willis,

One of the founders of the historic preservation movement in Kentucky and a national leader in the Episcopal Church, died on Tuesday evening after a short illness. She was 95. Mrs. Meigs, known to all as "Sally," was the widow of Franklin Circuit Judge Henry Meigs II, who died in 2014. Longtime residents of Frankfort, Judge and Mrs. Meigs spent the last 30 years of their lives in Louisville. She was born in Ashland, Kentucky, to Simeon and Ida Lee Willis, and was educated in public and private schools in Ashland and Frankfort, where her father was a judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, then the court of last resort in the commonwealth. In 1943, her father became the 46th Governor of Kentucky. Sally attended Episcopal Convent Margaret Hall, followed by the National Cathedral School in Washington, where she was graduated in 1940. She then attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. In 1944, Sally was married to Army Air Force Captain Henry Meigs II, becoming the only governor's daughter to be wed in the Governor's Mansion in Frankfort. The Meigses lived in Frankfort, where Henry practiced law and served as circuit judge for a quarter century. They had one son, Simeon Willis Meigs, born in 1947. In 1957, they took Henry's sister's sons, William and John, ages 4 and 6, and brought them up as sons. "Sally Meigs was a pillar in what we think of as the 'Old Guard' of organized preservation in Kentucky," said Stephen L. Collins, son of Gov. Martha Lane Collins and chairman of the Kentucky Heritage Council. "She gave financial support, moral support and wholehearted encouragement to preservation work all over the state and beyond.

"Since 1979, the Ida Lee Willis Awards ceremony has recognized individuals and groups throughout the Commonwealth for their outstanding achievements in historic preservation. Mrs. Meigs provided leadership in a quiet, dignified, yet direct and effective manner, and she had a refining influence on all of the endeavors and projects in which she was involved. She was a great preservationist and a grand lady and she will be missed beyond measure."

Meme Sweets Runyon, preservationist and executive director of River Fields, Inc., a recipient of the Ida Lee Willis award, called her a "gracious, prescient preservationist. I was blessed to have met her at an early age. She was the embodiment of a positive preservation ethic and a model for many of us who continue this work."

According to David Morgan, Kentucky's immediate past State Historic Preservation Officer, "Mrs. Meigs was very quiet and genteel, yet she had a will of iron that made it difficult to refuse her once she made up her mind that she was going to do something.

"Given her legacy for preserving Kentucky's heritage, it is very sad and yet somehow meaningful that we have lost her in 2016, when Kentucky is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act and the founding of the Kentucky Heritage Council as the state historic preservation office."

Sally served as vice-chairman of the Kentucky Heritage Council, and as a board member of the Kentucky Historic Sites Commission. She served on the former Kentucky Historic Preservation Board, which sought to establish historic preservation as a curriculum offering in the University of Kentucky College of Architecture.

Mrs. Meigs was a board member of Fons Vitae Press in Louisville. She worked with Kentucky Educational Television in several television programs about historic preservation, wrote articles for Antiques magazine and in 1951 published a short story, "Another Song, Another Spring," in Collier's (using the pseudonym "Lesley Merrill"). She served on the boards of the Louisville Ballet and Charter Collectors for the Speed Art Museum.