Charles P. Farnsley; Former Mayor of Louisville

Charles P. Farnsley, 83, colorful former mayor of Louisville who swaggered through 20th-Century Kentucky politics in the swallowtail coat, planter’s hat and string tie of a Kentucky colonel. An also-ran for Congress in the 1930s, the corporate lawyer finally won election as mayor of Kentucky’s largest city in 1948. During his five years in office, he modernized municipal government, improved civic and cultural services and eased the city into racial desegregation. He was elected in 1964 to a single term in the House of Representatives. On Tuesday in Louisville after a long illness.