Silas House Inspires Crowd at Owensboro Rooster Booster Breakfast

"Build bigger tables, not walls."- Silas House

The Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce held its monthly Rooster Booster breakfast this morning at the Owensboro Convention Center and the program featured a very special featured speaker. GRAMMY nominee, New York Times best-selling author, and current Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House inspired the crowd with a powerful message titled "Knowledge Builds Community."

House's literary credentials are impressive. A month ago, when the Chamber revealed that Silas would be the guest speaker for May's program, his impressive career was celebrated in this video announcement.

This morning at breakfast, Silas lived up to the billing and shared his incredibly personal story about how books and libraries changed his life and shaped the person, the artist he is today.

Owensboro resident Jennifer Vogel was thrilled with the opportunity to hear from Silas House. She was at the Owensboro Convention Center at 7am "like an absolute psychopath." Her dedication paid off. Like many fans in the crowd, she got the chance to meet Silas and get a photo with him.

Jen Vogel

Silas specifically discussed life as a 7th grader growing up in eastern Kentucky. At the age of 12, he knew he "was different from the other 12-year-old boys." They all loved basketball. He loved books. It was that love of books and learning that initially led him to buy books from various yard sales around his community. He read The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, books by Stephen King, and The Exorcist (which remains an inspiration for his writings today because of its intense exploration of faith and doubt). Silas quickly found out, however, that those yard sales all seemed to have the same books and he was craving to read and learn more. So, he eventually found a whole new world of wonder in the school library.

There, he discovered one book in particular- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. It was in the pages of that book that Silas, in many ways, found himself. In his 'fundamentalist' small town, he was an outsider. He was different and related to Hinton's characters, who were also trying to find their own way into a community of belonging.

Jennifer Francis-Gehring, who laid claim to a front row seat at today's breakfast, shared this.

In real life, his soft southern drawl and his ability to capture the people with his words, presence and beauty was just breathtaking. In person, he’s stellar. This morning I heard him speak about knowledge and the power knowledge has to transform our world. He spoke of the power of libraries and how they are safe spaces for ALL.

Melissa Ashby

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That was indeed the message and Silas is living proof of the power of the page. He's who he is today because of the worlds he traveled and absorbed simply by opening the covers of books. Today, he's paying it forward, with beautifully crafted stories he's been inspired to write and share. There's no doubt that Silas House is tearing down walls and making room at the table.

Whitney McFarland