ran for governor in 2003, Louie supported him. After Steve Nunn ran third in a four-way primary, the elder Nunn supported the Republican nominee, Ernie Fletcher, hosting a fundraiser for him. Nunn also became an advocate of legalizing industrial hemp in Kentucky, writing, "Frankly, I was opposed to the legalization of hemp for years because I had been of the opinion hemp was marijuana. I was short-sighted in my thinking, and I was wrong." In 2000, Nunn secured an acquittal for the actor Woody Harrelson, who came to Lee County, Kentucky, and planted hemp seeds in open defiance of Kentucky's law forbidding the cultivation of hemp. Later, he traveled to South Dakota where, at the base of Mount Rushmore, he publicly presented an Oglala Lakota leader with bales of hemp after the tribe's crop was confiscated by officers from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. Louie B. Nunn died of a heart attack at his home just outside Versailles, Kentucky, on January 29, 2004, hours after hosting a luncheon with labor leaders seeking help in dealing with the newly elected Fletcher administration. He was buried at the Cosby Methodist Church cemetery in Hart County, Kentucky. The Cumberland Parkway was renamed the Louie B. Nunn Cumberland Parkway in 2000, and the main lodge at the Barren River Lake State Resort Park is also named in Nunn's honor. See also Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History References Bibliography |- |- |- |- 1924 births 2004 deaths 20th-century American politicians American Disciples of Christ Methodists from Kentucky United States Army personnel of World War II Candidates in the 1972 United States elections County judges in Kentucky Republican Party governors of Kentucky Kentucky lawyers People from Barren County, Kentucky United States Army non-commissioned officers University of Louisville School of Law alumni