Commissioner Betty Dobson

Betty Dobson of Paducah will represent the First District to replace Anita Simmons of Hopkinsville. Ms. Dobson’s term will expire Sept. 12, 2008. She is listed as the Upper Town Heritage Foundation president and was identified in the Paducah Sun newspaper as “the leader of an effort to renovate and restore the Hotel Metropolitan, a historic hotel built in 1909 for African Americans.  Well-known musicians and traveling performers such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Chick Webb's orchestra, B.B. King, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and Ike and Tina Turner were guests of Maggie Steed's Hotel Metropolitan or the neighboring Jefferson Hotel, the only accommodations for African Americans in the area.”