Well-known Lexington attorney Foster Ockerman dies at 100 years old

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Well-known Lexington attorney Foster Ockerman dies at 100 years old

Karla Ward
·3 min read

Foster Ockerman, 100, a well-known Lexington attorney who served three terms in the state legislature and held a number of other public positions through the years, died Wednesday at his home in Lexington.

Ockerman, a native of Nelson County, practiced law in Lexington for decades and was known for his work on zoning cases.

“All of Hamburg Place is a result of his legal work in rezoning that farmland,” said his elder son, Foster Ockerman Jr., who heads the Lexington History Museum.

“We practiced law together almost 40 years,” he said. “Many father-son combinations don’t work. We actually got along better as law partners than we did as father and son.”

Outside his legal career, Ockerman was active in politics and took on leadership roles in a multitude of civic organizations.

He served terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1954, 1956 and 1958, according to his obituary.

He was corporate counsel for the city of Lexington from 1950 to 1959.

Ockerman served as commissioner of motor transportation under Gov. Bert T. Combs for three years beginning in 1959. He resigned to manage the Gov. Edward T. Breathitt’s gubernatorial campaign, and after Breathitt was elected, Ockerman worked as his executive secretary and legislative liaison.

He was a former chairman of the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees and in the early 2000s was part of a group of prominent Lexington businessmen who wanted local ownership of the water company.

He spent 24 years as the chairman and vice chairman of the Lexington-Fayette Airport Board and 33 years as a trustee for Good Samaritan Hospital. Ockerman helped found the Good Samaritan Foundation. And he served on the board and was a former president of the Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerce.

He also chaired the Kentucky Educational Savings Trust and Kentucky Registry of Election Finance.

And he was a member of the chairman of the board of trustees of the Kentucky United Methodist Church.

“He was just very, very active across the community,” said his elder son.

Ockerman was a World War II veteran who volunteered to serve in the U.S. Navy in 1942 and was commissioned as a lieutenant. During his first tour, he served as a skipper on several PT boats on the Solomon Islands and Ellice Islands in the Pacific, where he met and served with John F. Kennedy.

Later, during Kennedy’s presidential campaign, Ockerman “got the message through that he wanted Kennedy to come to Kentucky,” his son said.

He succeeded. Ockerman Jr. said the family has a photo of Kennedy standing on a flatbed truck in front of the administration building on UK’s campus.

He graduated from Middlesboro High School, the University of Kentucky and the UK College of Law.

He was married for 69 years to the late Joyce Harris Ockerman.

Up until three days before he died, Foster Ockerman Jr. said his father got up every day, got dressed and put on a sport coat.

“People universally say he was the classic Southern gentleman,” he said.

He was an avid tennis player and continued to play until he was 98, his son said, adding, “I never beat him.”

Ockerman is survived by two sons, Foster Ockerman Jr. and his wife Martina of Lexington and Jefferson Harris Ockerman of Nashville, and a daughter, Ann Ockerman Baughn and her husband, Philip, of Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 4 to 6 p.m. May 3 at Milward Funeral Directors’ Broadway location. A private burial will be held at Lexington Cemetery.

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