Sam K. Cecil

“Maker’s Mark Mentor”

Samuel Kennett “Sam” Cecil was born in Nelson County, Kentucky, on October 26, 1918. His parents, Francis L. and Ellen Cecil ensured that Sam and his seven siblings’ early life unfolded relatively comfortably in Bardstown’s Catholic schools. Bright and taken to learning, as a thirteen-year-old, Cecil placed first runner-up at the U.S. National Spelling Bee and had his picture taken with President Herbert Hoover. He graduated from St. Joe Prep in 1937, and his path into whiskey began that same year when he took an entry-level laboratory chemist position at the T. W. Samuels Distillery in Deatsville, and worked there until World War II threatened to interrupt his life.

With war becoming a certainty, Sam quickly married his sweetheart, Mary “Bernadine” Greenwell in 1940. Sure enough, Sam was soon drafted to active duty with the 38th Infantry Division in January 1941. In all, he served about five years, most of it in the Pacific Theater. After the war he returned immediately to Kentucky and, finding his old position at T. W. Samuels taken, went to work for Heaven Hill Distillery. He set up a laboratory there, where he spent the next seven years.  Sam and Bernadine had two daughters, Mary (“Sissy”), who was born in 1941 when Sam was still in basic training in Mississippi, and Beverly; sons, Sam II, who tragically died as a toddler, followed by Tony, LaVielle (named after Sam’s father),  and Sam III.

With war becoming a certainty, Sam quickly married his sweetheart, Mary “Bernadine” Greenwell in 1940. Sure enough, Sam was soon drafted to active duty with the 38th Infantry Division in January 1941. In all, he served about five years, most of it in the Pacific Theater. After the war he returned immediately to Kentucky and, finding his old position at T. W. Samuels taken, went to work for Heaven Hill Distillery. He set up a laboratory there, where he spent the next seven years.  Sam and Bernadine had two daughters, Mary (“Sissy”), who was born in 1941 when Sam was still in basic training in Mississippi, and Beverly; sons, Sam II, who tragically died as a toddler, followed by Tony, LaVielle (named after Sam’s father),  and Sam III.

The next job for Cecil came in 1952 with distiller J. W. Dant, another venerable Nelson County name, where Sam continued his laboratory and production work. In 1954 he moved on from Dant to join Maker Mark’s Star Hill Farm Distillery in Loretto, where he would spend the longest and most visible stretch of his vocation. For the first time in his career, at Maker’s Mark, Cecil rose from less visible technical roles to plant leadership. During the Star Hill years, Sam had also become involved with the National Guard, serving in that branch for almost a quarter century until he retired from the National Guard as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1978.

After Bernadette died in 1980, Sam, by then 62, retired once and for all from the distillery business that same year, departing Star Hill Farm as Vice President of Production and Plant Manager. Sam married Sara “Jean” Bland the following year (1981); both were relatively young widowers with grown kids.

After retirement, Sam had the time to enjoy what he couldn’t before with any regularity. He was an avid hunter and fisherman and loved the great outdoors. He was a registered Tree Farmer and  eventually planted over fifty-thousand trees on his small farm. Most notably, in 1999, Cecil wrote a book, turning a lifetime in rickhouses and labs into a concise, widely used reference called “The Evolution of the Bourbon Whiskey Industry in Kentucky” (Turner Publishing); the book catalogued Kentucky distilleries county-by-county and condensed decades of ownership and production changes into an accessible reference, becoming a staple that bourbon researchers and enthusiasts still regard as expert on the subject to this day.

Two years before his death, the 84-year-old Cecil’s public standing within the bourbon community culminated in his induction into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame. Friends who posted remembrances when he died specifically recalled hearing his moving Hall of Fame acceptance remarks. Cecil’s whole career, his influence radiated through people. Donna Nally, long-time Maker’s Mark tourism leader and later an inductee herself, indicated that she, “Had the great fortune of learning from one of the best teachers in the bourbon industry, Sam K. Cecil.” That remark captures how much of Cecil’s legacy was pedagogical: a distiller-chemist who taught the craft to colleagues and had the care to preserve its compiled history for outsiders.

Sam Cecil died in Bardstown at the age of 86 on April 7, 2005. He and Jean had enjoyed retired life together for 24 years.

In the lineage of Maker’s Mark, Sam stood between the brand’s founding generation and the late-20th-century audience that came to revere it. In the broader lineage of Kentucky whiskey, he is both practitioner and historian, the person behind the still and the person who wrote down what the still had done. At his death, the tributes from Bardstown and from the country’s whiskey community were exactly what one would expect for a man who had tended mash bills, trained people, and left an esteemed book: respected, remembered, and revered.

Sources:

  1. Kentucky Distillers’ Association, Hall of Fame, 2003 inductees, kybourbon.com

  2. University of Louisville Oral History Center, “Interview with Sam Cecil”, November 30, 1984, ohc.library.louisville.edu

  3. St. Joseph Prep alumni page (Bardstown), bardstown.com/~stjoeprep/bios/SamCecil.htm 

  4. findagrave.com, “LTC Samuel Kennett “Sam” Cecil Jr.”

  5. Barnes and Noble books, “Bourbon: The Evolution of Kentucky Whiskey”, 2010 reissue. barnesandnoble.com/w/bourbon-sam-k-cecil/1111516668

Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee