Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s
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j22...@gmail.com
Jun 8, 2009, 4:57:02 AM6/8/09
to NORTH AMERICAN FORTEAN SOCIETY
Six generations after a French orphan named Martin Fugate settled on
the banks of eastern Kentucky's Troublesome Creek with his redheaded
American bride, his great-great-great great grandson was born in a
modern hospital not far from where the creek still runs.
Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s
Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s
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The boy inherited his father's lankiness and his mother's slightly
nasal way of speaking.
What he got from Martin Fugate was dark blue skin. "It was almost
purple," his father recalls.
Doctors were so astonished by the color of Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy's
skin that they raced him by ambulance from the maternity ward in the
hospital near Hazard to a medical clinic in Lexington.
Two days of tests produced no explanation for skin the color of a
bruised plum.
A transfusion was being prepared when Benjamin's grandmother spoke up.
"Have you ever heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek?" she
asked the doctors.
"My grandmother Luna on my dad's side was a blue Fugate. It was real
bad in her," Alva Stacy, the boy's father, explained. "The doctors
finally came to the conclusion that Benjamin's color was due to blood
inherited from generations back."
Benjamin lost his blue tint within a few weeks, and now he is about as
normal looking a seven-year-old boy as you could hope to find. His
lips and fingernails still turn a shade of purple-blue when he gets
cold or angry a quirk that so intrigued medical students after
Benjamin's birth that they would crowd around the baby and try to make
him cry. "Benjamin was a pretty big item in the hospital," his mother
says with a grin.
Dark blue lips and fingernails are the only traces of Martin Fugate's
legacy left in the boy; that, and the recessive gene that has shaded
many of the Fugates and their kin blue for the past 162 years.
They're known simply as the "blue people" in the hills and hollows
around Troublesome and Ball Creeks. Most lived to their 80s and 90s
without serious illness associated with the skin discoloration. For
some, though, there was a pain not seen in lab tests. That was the
pain of being blue in a world that is mostly shades of white to
black.
http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/15-06-2007/93410-blue_people-0
the banks of eastern Kentucky's Troublesome Creek with his redheaded
American bride, his great-great-great great grandson was born in a
modern hospital not far from where the creek still runs.
Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s
Blue people inhabited Kentucky in 1950s
BREAKING NEWS
Union between Russia and Belarus may never occur
Adriana Lima, Brazilian beauty
More...
The boy inherited his father's lankiness and his mother's slightly
nasal way of speaking.
What he got from Martin Fugate was dark blue skin. "It was almost
purple," his father recalls.
Doctors were so astonished by the color of Benjamin "Benjy" Stacy's
skin that they raced him by ambulance from the maternity ward in the
hospital near Hazard to a medical clinic in Lexington.
Two days of tests produced no explanation for skin the color of a
bruised plum.
A transfusion was being prepared when Benjamin's grandmother spoke up.
"Have you ever heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek?" she
asked the doctors.
"My grandmother Luna on my dad's side was a blue Fugate. It was real
bad in her," Alva Stacy, the boy's father, explained. "The doctors
finally came to the conclusion that Benjamin's color was due to blood
inherited from generations back."
Benjamin lost his blue tint within a few weeks, and now he is about as
normal looking a seven-year-old boy as you could hope to find. His
lips and fingernails still turn a shade of purple-blue when he gets
cold or angry a quirk that so intrigued medical students after
Benjamin's birth that they would crowd around the baby and try to make
him cry. "Benjamin was a pretty big item in the hospital," his mother
says with a grin.
Dark blue lips and fingernails are the only traces of Martin Fugate's
legacy left in the boy; that, and the recessive gene that has shaded
many of the Fugates and their kin blue for the past 162 years.
They're known simply as the "blue people" in the hills and hollows
around Troublesome and Ball Creeks. Most lived to their 80s and 90s
without serious illness associated with the skin discoloration. For
some, though, there was a pain not seen in lab tests. That was the
pain of being blue in a world that is mostly shades of white to
black.
http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/15-06-2007/93410-blue_people-0
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