Hometown Heroes
The Greater Louisville Pride Foundation, Inc. (GLPF) has announced the Hometown Heroes 2.0 Class of 2025. Since the Hometown Heroes 2.0 relaunch in June 2022, the Louisville community continues to respond by submitting outstanding nominations to the official louheroes.org website. “The ongoing nominations once again underscore the community’s desire to show pride in Louisville by recognizing the city’s most famous sons and daughters,” said Mike Sheehy, GLPF’s President and founding member. “As with all of our hometown heroes, Class of 2025 honorees possess the grit, resilience, talent, determination and ‘can do spirit’ our city is known for,” he added. In addition to their nationally recognized achievements, the Hometown Heroes 2.0 Class of 2025 has made a lasting positive impact on the Louisville community through generous donations of time, talent and treasure.
GLPF is proud to announce the Class of 2025:
- Will Smith – Two-time MLB World Series Champion catcher with the LA Dodgers. Will is a graduate of Kentucky Country Day School, graduate of the University of Louisville, father of two, a founder of the Catching Hope Foundation -- a family foundation focused on providing better opportunities for kids in the Los Angeles and Louisville communities. In addition, he was recently a member of Team USA. During Covid, Smith made a huge positive impact as a mentor and coach with local youth baseball players.
- Oksana Masters – A 32-year-old Paralympic medalist in rowing and many other sports. She was adopted from a Ukraine orphanage at a young age after being discarded by her birth parents for being born with serious birth defects after her mother was exposed to Chernobyl nuclear meltdown radiation. She has lived in Louisville with her single adoptive mother and has thrived after both legs were amputated. Internationally recognized for her inspiring and competitive spirit, she competes in a number of sports and has won medals in many. In 2024, Masters won her 9th Paralympic gold medal and 19th Paralympic medal across different sports.
- Teddy Abrams - Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra since 2014, Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, and 2024 Grammy Winner for The American Project. He is an
internationally recognized American conductor, composer. pianist and clarinetist. His work has been profiled by CBS Sunday Morning, the New Yorker, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and PBS Newshour. In 2019, Abrams brought national recognition to the Louisville Orchestra as he conducted their performance at the Kennedy Center Honors. Among Abrams’s
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- manifold achievements in Kentucky are the Louisville Orchestra Creators Corps; a trailblazing initiative that provides a fully funded residency for three composers. He spearheaded the “In Harmony” tour; a multi-season community-building project on a giant scale funded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky that takes the orchestra to every corner of the state for concerts and special community events. Deemed by the New York Times as a “Maestro of the People,” Abrams “has embedded himself in his community, breaking the mold of modern conductors.”
- Dr. Kevin Cosby - Dr. Cosby was born and raised in Louisville’s West End where he has lived his entire 65 years. He has been pastor of St. Stephen Church for 45 years and President of Simmons College of Kentucky which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2025. His life has been dedicated to uplifting the West End which has positively impacted the entire city of Louisville. His work at Simmons College - the only private HBCU in Louisville founded in 1878 - has been monumental in creating economic growth in Louisville. Simmons College attracts students from 28 states and is a significant part of the fabric of the Louisville community.
- Jimmy Ellis – (1940 – 2014) Louisville native and graduate of Central High School, Ellis was a middleweight amateur boxer who became a successful professional heavyweight boxer. After watching a friend box a fellow Louisville youngster, Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) on a local amateur boxing television show, Ellis believed he had found his calling. He went on to win 59 of 66 amateur bouts and was a Golden Gloves champion. He boxed Ali twice as an amateur, with Ali winning the first bout and Ellis winning the second. Ellis wrote a letter to an initially skeptical Angelo Dundee, Ali’s trainer, and asked him to handle his career. Dundee agreed to be both his manager and trainer. Ellis became a sparring partner for Ali and fought on several of Ali's early pre-world championship undercards. By the mid-1960s, Ellis was fighting heavyweights, with his development from middleweight to heavyweight cited as one of the most dramatic transformations in boxing history. Jimmy achieved a remarkable record of 40-12-
1, which included 24 wins via knockout. Celebrated as one of the lightest heavyweight
champions in history, he was inducted into the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989 and
inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame in 2004. After retiring from boxing, Ellis worked for the Louisville Metro Parks Department where he helped organize and officiate senior athletic programs, as well as train aspiring amateur boxers. Jimmy’s faith was central to his life and his love for singing gospel music led to him being a member of the Riverview Spiritual Singers who released a CD titled, “Jimmy Ellis – A Gospel with a Punch.” In 2004, Ellis told the Washington Times, “All I ever wanted to be was a good fighter and good man.”
- Ken Clay - Founder of the Corner of Jazz, Louisville's first cultural cooperative; Legacies
Unlimited, Inc. and the Renaissance Development Corporation in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Clay is a formidable arts pioneer, business entrepreneur and cultural arts activist who has spearheaded relevant arts-related programming to support and create opportunities for African American artists and beyond. Ken has provided leadership in the arts that has impacted Louisville neighborhoods from every direction, particularly for youth living in underserved communities. He has used and utilized transformative arts programming and practices to catapult social change via his 21-year tenure (1983-2004) as the first Vice President of [Diversity] Programming at the Kentucky Center for the Arts (now Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts). Clay has received numerous distinctions and awards, including, Notable African Americans in Kentucky,
Who’s Who in Black Louisville, Chicago Kuumba Theatre’s Liberation Award for Presenting
African American Artists, the Governor’s Community Arts Award, and the Greater Louisville Fund for the Arts’ prestigious, Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also been lauded nationally and internationally, as an important and well-respected arts producer, presenter and administrator.
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- Nicole Scherzinger - Raised in Louisville and a 1996 graduate of the Youth Performing Arts
School (YPAS) at duPont Manual High School, Scherzinger is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, actress, and television personality. She was a member of the R&B pop group and dance ensemble, the Pussycat Dolls, between 2003 and 2010. With only two albums and over 55 million records sold worldwide, the Pussycat Dolls became one of the world's best-selling female groups of all time. At the age of 14, she joined Actors Theatre of Louisville, where she was cast in her first professional play, La Bête. While at YPAS, she participated in many plays. In 2007, she was inducted into duPont Manual Alumni's Hall of Fame as one of the youngest inductees. Since 2013, Scherzinger has endowed YPAS with a yearly $2,000 namesake scholarship. Since 2019, she has been a panelist on the popular show, Masked Singer. She is also the voice of Sina, Moana’s mother, Tui’s wife and Chieftess of Motunui in both the original Moana and Moana 2. Scherzinger played the role of Norma Desmond in the 2023 revival of Sunset Boulevard at the Savoy Theatre. Her performance garnered widespread critical acclaim and received the 2023 Evening Standard
Theatre Award for Best Musical Performance and the 2024 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical. In 2024, she made her Broadway debut in the same role in the transfer of the production to the St. James Theatre. She has also served as an ambassador for the Special Olympics.
All qualified submitted nominations remain in a pool for consideration for future classes. In addition to honoring the Class of 2025, GLPF will continue pursuing funding and placement for the previously approved and announced banners from the original program, as well as ongoing work with sponsors to secure funding and placement for the remaining “Class of 2023 and Class of 2024” honorees, including John Asher, Lionel Hampton, Wes Unseld, Dr. Alan Lansing, and the Hill Sisters.
According to Sheehy, “Hometown Heroes 2.0 continues to develop strategies and pursue funding to refresh the original banner program by replacing, as needed and when possible, Louisville’s most iconic banners like, Pee Wee Reese, Judge Louis Brandeis, Bud Hillerich and others.” Hometown Heroes 2.0 continues exploring new, engaging, more sustainable and efficient ways to recognize all of Louisville’s heroes, while ensuring they’re also educational and visually vibrant. According to Sheehy, “anyone who has earned the distinction of being named a “Hometown Hero” will forever be part of the program. Some banners may be retired to make room for another, but the heroes we honor today will always be part of any new and future creative expression of the program.”
For more information, go to: www.louheroes.org
Submit nominations to: contact@louheroes.org
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