Joe Creason was a sports reporter, feature writer and columnist for the Courier-Journal from 1941 to 1974. He was editor of the Benton Tribune-Democrat and Murray Ledger & Times before joining the Courier-Journal. Creason traveled hundreds of thousands of miles through every county in Kentucky in search of material for feature stories and his popular column, “Joe Creason’s Kentucky,” which were collected into two books and a record album. As an avid historian, Creason coordinated the writing of “The Civil War in Kentucky,” the first newspaper supplement to win the National Civil War Centennial Commission’s award of Distinction in 1960. He was president of the University of Kentucky Alumni Association and the Kentucky Tennis Patrons Foundation. Creason was hailed by Jesse Stuart as a “goodwill ambassador” for his newspaper and for Kentucky. Joe Creason died on August 14, 1974.