Julia Roberts Goad
Staff Writer
AFLEX, Ky. — Current and former residents of Aflex will be reunited next Saturday at the second annual Aflex Reunion.
Denise Reed Chapman, organizer for the event, said the first reunion held last October had over 100 attendees, aged from six months to 93 years old, from as far away as Torrence, California.
Chapman is also a amateur historian for the area. She told the Daily News Aflex was established as a self sustained coal camp community by William Leckie in 1913. Leckie named after one of his sons, Andrew F. Leckie, who overseen the operations of Leckie Collieries.
“A spectacular home was built before the property was owned by Leckie Coal Company,” she said. “It was utilized as the company’s clubhouse for years where such famous known bandleaders as Harry James, Guy Lombardo, and Cab Calloway often performed there at dances hosted by the Leckie family.”
In the community’s heyday, about three hundred miners and their families populated this little Aflex, Chapman said.
“Aflex is no longer bustling…only a skeleton of what it once was…its lifeblood, coal, has been drained from its veins,” former Aflex resident Elaine (Battistello) Davis said. “But to those who still reside here and to those who once lived here, each have many fond memories of friends and neighbors—good times lived at a slower pace.”
The second annual Aflex Reunion will be held Saturday, October 13, at the Aflex Baptist Church from noon until 7 p.m. for all former residents and their relatives, former employees of Leckie Collieries Coal Company and the company store, as well as all current residents. Everyone is requested to bring a dish of food if possible and any old photographs or memorabilia to share.
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