Karl Lietzenmayer has spent more than three decades digging into Northern Kentucky's past. On Aug. 11, the Fort Mitchell native will share what he's found about the man whose name 160,000 drivers cross every day.

Behringer-Crawford Museum's free virtual NKY History Hour will feature Lietzenmayer's presentation, "Congressman Brent Spence: His Family and His Legacy," at 6:30 p.m. The timing lands as construction crews work on the $4.39 billion Brent Spence Bridge Corridor Project, which broke ground in May.

The talk is free.

Spence, born in Newport in December 1874, served 16 consecutive terms in Congress from 1931 to 1963. He chaired the U.S. House Banking and Currency Committee and was a delegate to the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Closer to home, he used his influence to secure what is now CVG airport, the IRS Center in Covington and floodwalls for Covington, Maysville and Newport.

NKU history professor Paul A. Tenkotte wrote in a July 13 NKyTribune column that Spence "did more for the good of Northern Kentucky than any other politician on record."

Lietzenmayer holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Thomas More University in Crestview Hills and a master's in education from Xavier University. After teaching high school for five years and spending much of his career as a quality control chemist at the Andrew Jergens Company in Cincinnati, he turned his energy toward preserving local history. He joined the Kenton County Historical Society in 1991, became a board member and in 1992 founded Northern Kentucky Heritage, a regional history magazine still published twice a year.

His work earned Behringer-Crawford Museum's Two-Headed Calf Award in 2017 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kentucky Historical Society in 2018.

The museum promoted the event on its Facebook page Aug. 7, asking residents whether they know the story behind the person the bridge is named after.

How to watch

The presentation runs from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Aug. 11. Registration for the Zoom link is available at bcmuseum.org. The event will also be livestreamed on BCM's Facebook page. For questions, call (859) 491-4003.

Coming up

NKY History Hour programs take place every other Tuesday evening. The next installment follows the series' regular schedule. Past episodes are archived at bcmuseum.org.