Burnside bridge named in honor of houseboat pioneer Jim Sharpe, wife Mary Jo

Jul. 25—It's a bridge over traveled waters — traveled, in many cases, by the kind of houseboats that Jim Sharpe helped put on those waters.

A sign was recently placed at the Pitman Creek Bridge on South U.S. 27 in Burnside designating it as the Jim and Mary Jo Sharpe Memorial Bridge, recognizing the legacy of an industrial force that helped make Lake Cumberland what it is today.

"We named the bridge after Jim and Mary Jo Sharpe because they were so big in the houseboat industry," said State Senator Rick Girdler of Somerset, who represents the Lake Cumberland region in District 15. "(Mary Jo) was very instrumental helping him."

The bridge — located just south of the Stonegate commercial complex in Burnside — was chosen because it symbolized Jim Sharpe's impact on the waterways of southern Kentucky and beyond.

"He was the biggest houseboat maker in, I always heard, the world," said Girdler. "... Jim Sharpe was known nationwide. I wrote insurance for (their houseboat deliveries) and they would be in Arizona, they'd been to California, they'd been everywhere delivering these houseboats. ... They sold a ton of these things."

Married for over 58 years, Jim and Mary Jo Sharpe were lifelong residents of Somerset, and together they started and operated numerous successful business ventures, including grocery and food retail, automobile dealerships, marinas, restaurants, runabout boat manufacturing and sales.

Of course, it's the houseboat industry where Jim and Mary Jo are recognized as pioneers. In 1949, around when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began the process of creating Lake Cumberland, Jim founded Sharpe Marine, where he sold boats, motors and trailers. This business was started in his father's hardware store that was located on East Mt Vernon Street in downtown Somerset.

While serving in the United States Navy during the Korean War, Jim took note of the design of the "M-Boats" used for naval beach landings and transport, and felt that a hull design of that nature with a cabin on top would be the perfect combination for folks visiting the newly impounded Lake Cumberland. He brought that idea back to Somerset and in 1953 built the first ever houseboat, a 10-foot-by-24-foot steel hull flat bottom boat with a scow bow.

Jim soon outgrew his space downtown and moved the company to U.S. 27 in 1959, and the business continued to grow and develop a nationwide and worldwide presence. In addition to building boats for people's recreational purposes, Jim and Mary Jo saw the need for a nice place for people to moor their boats and they purchased Burnside Marina in 1974, eventually selling it in the early '80s.

Jim successfully owned and operated Sumerset Houseboats until he sold the company in 1996. He later supported and invested heavily in the founding of Sharpe Houseboats that was managed by his sons, sons-in-law and grandson until it closed in 2012.

Mary Jo Sharpe passed away in July of 2008, and Jim Sharpe passed away in October of 2021.

A bill was put in through to name the bridge after Sharpe in the previous Kentucky legislative session. Rick Girdler is allowed in his role as a State Senator to make the requests, and Jim Sharpe's accomplishments helped make him a strong choice to have a stretch of traveling surface named in his honor.

"We request the bill, then they vote on the bill and approve it," said Rick Girdler. "Me and Senate President Robert Stivers presented this bill for Jim and Mary Jo Sharpe, and knowing the family like I did, I wanted to do it not just for Jim but Mary Jo too because she was Jim's best supporter."

Chris Girdler, a former State Senator himself and current president and CEO of SPEDA, is the grandson of Jim and Mary Jo Sharpe. He expressed appreciation to Rick Girdler, who is Chris Girdler's uncle, for making the effort to honor his "Mim and Pop" with the new signage.

"My grandparents had such a heavy hand in my raising and were like another set of parents for me in so many ways," said Chris Girdler. "I'm honored, I'm humbled, I'm grateful. I know, looking back on it now, they would be so proud to have that.

"It's the perfect location for it, because being in the marina and the boating business all those years, and having lived in Burnside for a large portion of that, that just seemed like a very fitting site for that to be done," added Girdler. "... I personally believe that (Jim and Mary Jo) were one of the most generous entrepreneurial couples that southern Kentucky has ever seen. Through their hard work together, they did start and operate numerous business ventures."

Rick Girdler said he's looking forward to another bridge dedication coming up in honor of the late Rev. C.E. Jacobs, who was Rick Girdler's pastor at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church.

"He was the bridge that built our church up to the world, to bring people to Christ and he was the bridge," said Rick Girdler. "... A lot of people were saved under his ministry, and a lot of people were pastored under his ministry."