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Thursday, February 23, 2012

Fugates of Kentucky: Skin Bluer than Lake Louise

Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy so frightened maternity doctors with the color of his skin -- "as Blue as Lake Louise" -- that he was rushed just hours after his birth in 1975 to University of Kentucky Medical Center.

As a transfusion was being readied, the baby's grandmother suggested to doctors that he looked like the "blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek." Relatives described the boy's great-grandmother Luna Fugate as "blue all over," and "the bluest woman I ever saw."

In an unusual story that involves both genetics and geography, an entire family from isolated Appalachia was tinged blue. Their ancestral line began six generations earlier with a French orphan, Martin Fugate, who settled in Eastern Kentucky.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like the families here on Delmarva!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Blues Country!

Anonymous said...

4:04 "families here on Delmarva!" Including yours?