Senior Living October 2015

SENIOR LIVING October 2015

Going for the Gold

Mercadante encourages others to stay active Page 2

Preserving Our Past Guardians keep history alive in community Page 4

A special publication of

CROSSVILLE CHRONICLE

2 Crossville Chronicle • Senior Living October 2015

Just keep swimming!

Mercadante encourages others while in pursuit for gold

By Rebekah K. Bohannon Beeler Chronicle correspondent

Swimmer Arlene Mercadante competed in the Upper Cumberland Senior Olympics to qualify for state and placed, winning six gold medals in the process. She will proceed to the State Senior Olympic competition in Franklin next year to try and qualify for the National Senior Olympics in 2017.

Mercadante has an unusual, annual tradition.

Every year she swims a twomile distance swim in Lake Tansi. This year, the distance swim was particularly special and very important to her to complete since it was her 10th anniversary since she first began.

It was getting late in the year, and she needed to do it before it was too cold. Mercadante decided it was now or never and swam the twomiles in Lake Tansi Sept.

24. Usually, a friend in a boat accompanied her for support in case of an emergency. But this year, she didn’t have anyone to go with her, so she took a different route to swim the two miles between Fisherman’s Point and the bridge. The distance swim took her two hours to complete.

“It was getting too late in the year and I told [my husband], ‘I’m just going to have to do it,’” said Arlene Mercadante, who just turned 78 years old. She felt the cooler nights pressing

her to hurry and pick a day to complete her swim.

“I’ve been doing sports since I was seven. I really have a history with them,” said Mercadante, who signed up for every sport she could in school, except football.

She was very athletic and played everything from softball and cross-country skiing to tetherball and volleyball. She won medals and trophies for speed skating and figure skating.

Besides school athletics, Mercadante joined a women’s soccer league in her 40s in Syracuse, NY. “I had had six children and I worked part-time, so I didn’t do a lot [of athletics]. But, I always loved the water. I didn’t start swimming seriously until I moved here 20 years ago this October. I entered my first swim meet for the Senior Olympics the following April after we moved here. So, I have only been swimming for 20 years here. I didn’t start until my late 50s,” she said.

Two days before she decided to do her annual distance swim in Lake Tansi, Mercadante went to Cookeville to compete in the Senior Games to qualify for Senior Olympics to be eligible in the six swimming events she’d entered: the 50, 100, 200, and the 400 free, and then the 50 and 100 back.

“Normally, I pace myself so I don’t get tired and I don’t run out of steam,” said

ON THE COVER: Arlene Mercadante dons just a handful of her 173 medals she has won over the last 20 years of competitive swimming. Photos by Rebekah K. Bohannon Beeler/Chronicle

Mercadante, “and I just take my time over the two hours.

But when I got [to Cookeville] I was the only woman in my age group and I said to the timers, ‘I want to get this over with so will you please let me go and I’ll do all six events that I’ve entered?’”

“Little did I think, I got up there and I swam for an hour-and-a-half. I was exhausted,” she laughed.

“I just wish more people would get out. There’s a couple of people who swim, but I am the only one who swims in the lake and swims seriously,” said Mercadante. “Last week I swam [the lake] Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and

Sunday because I know that I’m not going to be in that water much longer and it breaks my heart to go inside [to swim]. But, I’m going to go to the pool. I have to keep it up. If I take any time off it takes me a while to get my energy back so I’ve got to continue to work hard at it for the next couple of years.”

Mercadante trains herself.

“I just get out there and work out every day,” she said. “I’m going to the gym this morning and I’ll swim this afternoon. I try to go to the gym or swim five out of six days, usually six.

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“If you let any time elapse,” she continued, “you’ve got to start all over again. At our ages, it’s very difficult to keep up a work-

out every day or every other day.”

Her husband, Joseph Mercadante, is a golfer in the Senior Olympics and placed third this year at Fairfield Glade. She and

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Joseph both played golf and they also played tennis in the Senior Olympics the first few years after they started competing.

“I don’t think many people realize this, but there are anywhere from 10 to 12,000 athletes from all over the United States that come and compete. And they have exactly the same sports that they have in the regular Olympics,” said Mercadante.

“We have men in their 60s and 70s that do the triathlete; they run and they bike and swim. They are amazing.”

“There are 90-year-olds that are in the Olympics which is amazing,” Mercadante added. “It is awesome to see. It’s unbelievable when you see the competition out there. When you get to the big events in the National [Senior] Olympics, that’s where I meet my strongest competition. It’s great to see how fit women can be.” Senior Olympic swimmer Arlene Mercadante braves Mercadante — the the cool waters at Lake Tansi one last time before hav78-year-old mother of six ing to move her swim training indoors. children, grandmother of 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren — will proceed to the Senior Olympic state competition to be held in Franklin next year.

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4 Crossville Chronicle • Senior Living October 2015

Past celebrated thanks to guardians of history

By Rebekah K. Bohannon Beeler

Rebekah K. Bohannon Beeler/Chronicle

Loreda Davis, championed county historian, is always a friendly face willing to help visitors to the Cumberland County Archives and Family Heritage Center with their projects.

Chronicle contributor

Cumberland County has an illustrious and unique history. It is one of the most wonderful things that sets this special place apart from all the others, and something no one can take away.

The resilient people who all played a part in the local history, combined with the circumstances of the times, fashions, culture, movements and incredible feats, are worth divulging. This indelible history is guarded by our seniors. Day in and day out, our seniors are the ones who procure the means, recruit, volunteer and steadily keep our history alive allowing locals and visitors the opportunity to learn and grow from the experiences of this community’s past. For how else will one ever know where he is going, if he doesn’t know where he has been?

The preservation and presentation of the community’s history and the resources in this area are second to none. With all the historic landmarks, buildings and plaques in the area telling our stories, it is no wonder why the history of Cumberland County is celebrated, as it should be. It is fortunate that Cumberland County seniors are zealous about protecting and preserving the history. With the Cumberland County Archives, the Military Museum, Pioneer Hall Museum, Homesteads Tower Museum and Homesteads House Museum, it is undeniable that there is a general attitude of local patriotism and pride.

Cumberland County Archives and Family Heritage Center Loreda Davis works tire-

lessly as assistant archivist at the Cumberland County Archives and Family Heritage Center, preserving records and bolstering the amount of research materials available. Having been born and raised in the Bethel community here, Davis is championed as the “county historian.” She is immovable in her passion for preserving the county’s history and sharing it with others. For her, working at the Archives is second nature as she has always had a penchant for genealogical studies.

“We have some wonderful volunteers here,” said Davis, “and we have a lot. It is an interest to a lot of people — genealogy and history — and it is growing.

We are really proud of the way everybody has come together.”

Davis became a part of the guardians of history starting 25 years ago, when she and some of her friends formed the Upper Cumberland Genealogical Group.

Paul Drake, a historian and genealogist, was teaching classes on genealogy in his home where the group initially met.

“I was doing some genealogy, but I’d always been interested in it. Our group grew out of one of [Paul’s] classes. We got so much out of being together and

brainstorming we decided just to meet,” said Davis.

“When they started building the new library, they didn’t plan to have the genealogy and historical section at the library. There wasn’t a huge amount of [material]. The county bought [the original First Baptist Church] building with the possibility that it be used later. It didn’t come to pass until the

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library was actually built that they put the [genealogy and history] department here and started asking for volunteers.”

When it got closer to time for it to open and appoint an archivist, Davis got involved with it. Davis had worked as a legal secretary all of her working years and secretarial work had always been second nature to her. Joyce Rorabough was a registered nurse by profession but had had some training, worked in a small archive and done a lot of genealogy.

“With our knowledge and with these other volunteers

and their knowledge, we started getting everything arranged,” stated Davis.

Officially opening in 2010, the Cumberland County Archives and Family Heritage Center is now approaching its fifth anniversary. The archivist position was given to Ivan Hawn, but it wasn’t a job on which he could raise his family so he regrettably stepped down. The position was then offered to Joyce Rorabough, who had been volunteering at the time but had the experience in this type of work they needed to manage it. She immediate-

Senior Living October 2015 • Crossville Chronicle

ly asked Davis if she would stay on as a volunteer.

“She asked if I would help her. I told her I would.

As time went on, I just saw things that needed to be done and I just pitched in to help,” said Davis.

A little over a year ago, the state required that a staff member be on duty at all times. Rorabough couldn’t be there all the time and asked Davis if they could make her a staff member and she became the assistant archivist.

“With my legal training, I was able to archive all the court documents and direct that project. Mike Boniol worked for years with the [Cumberland County] Playhouse, so when we got the big Playhouse collection, we had Mike oversee that.

But, when somebody has a strong point, we let them do it and train them on the project. We have people that do indexing, others that are cleaning and handling [the documents],” said Davis.

The budget doesn’t allow for the Archives to purchase a lot of books and equipment, but the Archives has been blessed with many

Steve Lanigan welcomes a family and shows them around on their first visit to the Homestead Tower Museum. donations and collections that make it such an incredible resource in the community for research and history. As more and more people hear about the Archives, their generosity is manifested by the donations that continue to be received. It is further proof positive that

people care about the history of this area and are grateful for the opportunity to have a place filled with experienced seniors who safeguard it for future generations.

“We’ve tripled in material since we opened,” said Davis. “Like I said, we have

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a very wonderful group of volunteers who are interested in the history and preserving it. History is fast get-

ting lost and [the Archives] is preserving the history of the county.”

When asked if she knew that people in the area refer to her as the county historian, Davis laughed heartily and said, “I know. I get a lot of calls from the visitor’s office. The ladies there tell everybody to ask me and that I know everybody but I really don’t. But, I was born and raised here. I am the only one who has lived here all my life.”

Davis made an interesting point that she and Mike Boniol are the only two at the Archives who have direct ties to the county. A vast portion of the volunteers there are retirees from other states interested in helping.

“That’s why we collect for all states. We try to get as much we can for all the states, including military [records],” said Davis.

It seems that the history of the naming of Crossville

still remains as true now as it did back then. Crossville is still the point at which the paths of many cross.

Homesteads House Museum The Homesteads House Museum is a fantastic extension of the Homestead Tower Museum and was purchased by the Cumberland Homestead Tower Association (CHTA) in 1998, from the children of Thomas and Clara Crabtree, to be preserved and protected. Formerly known as “The Crabtree House,” the Homestead House Museum is gloriously outfitted with items commonly used during the 1930s and ‘40s, most of which were donated by the descendants of the original homesteaders and the second generation of homesteaders that followed.

There were about 100 of these homesteading proSee history page 8

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6 Crossville Chronicle • Senior Living October 2015

Senior Living October 2015 • Crossville Chronicle

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8 Crossville Chronicle • Senior Living October 2015

HISTORY

• Continued from 5 grams initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt across the nation to help during the Great Depression. Those who were chosen to be Homesteaders were required to put in the time and the labor building their homes and in turn were able to purchase the home and the property for cost.

Sue Vandever, more or less, grew up in a Homestead house. It was bought after WWII when returning veterans were offered to buy those that had come available.

“They paid about twice what the homesteaders paid but didn’t have to do any of the work,” said Vandever.

Her family moved to Florida, but they continued to own their Homestead house and would summer here. When she moved back, she became involved as a member of the CHTA. Vandever now works at the Homestead House Museum.

“Those who grew up here, love it here,” said Vandever.

“There are people in Crossville that come out here and not realize anything about the [Homestead] program.

I think it’s really important for people to know about this program and the struggles people went through to get on the program and stay on the program. There were thousands of people trying for one of the 250 places.”

The CHTA needed someone who knew about the Homestead program to manage the Homestead House Museum. Vandever has been doing just that for 10 years and has become an authority in Homesteads’ history. All of the Homestead houses look alike, but the architect, William M. Stanton, had about several different design variations of the Homestead houses after which the 252 homes

The Military Memorial Museum is a source of pride in the county, honoring all the veterans who served this nation and housing incredible collections of every war from the Civil War to the present. were built.

“The architect was a genius,” said Vandever, who also noted that what is known as Homestead House 1 over on short Sawmill Rd. was the only one built after that design. It was first used as the Homesteads office building before becoming a home.

“There’s a picture of it at the tower. It’s got a fireplace outside and inside. It was the first one [Stanton] did. He fixed some little birdhouses [right along the outer walls] so birds could live in there.

People weren’t at that frame of mind back then. They were busy surviving, so they couldn’t see the whimsy of having birds live in the house,” said Vandever.

Stanton created some homes to have what seemed to be a mysterious little window located directly in the middle of the chimney on the side of the house. But, inside, there would be a set of chimneys on either side of the wall and the window itself is in the middle of the rock wall that goes up the side of the house shaped like

a single chimney. The clever and the rock solid designs, both literally and figuratively, are what makes them so unique to this area.

The classic Homesteads furnishings were pieces bought from the government. “[The government] wanted everybody to fill their homes with this. They subsidized with the furniture companies. Well, [the Homesteaders] didn’t have that much extra money so they would just buy a piece or two,” said Vandever.

Those who still had some of the Homestead furniture were kind enough to donate it to the Homestead House Museum.

“Just about everybody that lived in a Homestead house for a while loves Homestead and they love their house,” said Vandever. “Those people will come back and start climbing the tower and they’ll say, ‘Oh, this smells just like our house used to.’ You don’t hear anybody that used to live here that says they don’t have happy memories. They

loved their houses and the houses seemed to love you back.”

Homesteads Tower Museum The Homesteads Tower Museum is a culmination of decades of history

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from the Great Depression to the present. The tower building itself has served the community’s needs in many ways. At one point, The Homesteads Tower had also been used as a school.

There are still drip stains on the knotty-pine floor where a chemistry class had conducted experiments that add charm and character to the history of the building.

Steve Lanigan is happy to be a part of the legacy that is the Cumberland Homesteads and especially to be of service at the Homesteads Tower Museum. He has a unique way of putting into perspective the social, economic and political climate that surrounded the project. The Cumberland Homesteads project is said to be the most successful of the all the homesteading projects implemented across the nation. Most of the project’s success was, no doubt, due to the hardy families

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who made it work.

Lanigan’s maternal grandmother was an original Homesteader whose name is on the plaque outside the museum. When asked why it’s important to protect the history, Lanigan responded with the adage, “If you don’t learn the lessons of history, you will repeat them.”

He has beautiful memories of his grandmother getting on to him for cranking the flour sifter on her Hoosier kitchen cabinet when he was a boy. It was the same Hoosier cabinet where the edge of the porcelain was worn off on the righthand side where she often rested her hand after rolling out biscuits.

“Mom could do all sorts of things with a wooden yo-yo,” Lanigan recalled, “string tricks, cat’s cradle, all of that. Real Homestead-

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HISTORY

• Continued from 8 er kid-type stuff. Mom was one of 10 kids.”

Lanigan praised Joyce Rorabough, archivist with the Cumberland County Archives and Family Heritage Center, who had been a tremendous help with her assistance with archiving, classifying and preserving materials received at Homesteads Tower Museum. The Homesteads Tower Museum collection is impressive and visitors certainly get the feel for the times and how resourceful the Homesteaders were.

“One of the board members said about 95 percent of the items in here they didn’t have to get a shopping list and go hunting for,” said Lanigan. Instead, the Homesteaders themselves would offer the pieces they had for the displays. “The Vadens were instrumental in getting this turned into a museum.”

The tower housed the 80-foot water tank that was engineered to provide gravity-fed water to the Homestead houses.

Lanigan said, “They knew when they drilled the wells where the house would be in relation to the kitchen and the kitchen sink. There’s a silver tank on the first landing of the 97-step climb [in the tower] would be pumped electrically to the upstairs closet or the attic [of the houses] to provide gravity-fed water.”

The result was a certain amount of water pressure at the water pumps situated next to the porcelain sinks in the Homestead houses that made it easier to pump. Simply put, it was one of the many technological advancements brought to the area due to the genius in engineering and exceptional implementation.

“There was just a spirit back then. It was so much the spirit of Ameri-

Crossville, but most of it is from all over the world,” stated Boring. “People send us items every week. [It is important] to honor our military and preserve the history to educate our younger generations.”

Pictured is Pleasant Hill’s Pioneer Hall Museum, which has an entertaining and unique history all its own. ca; that can-do spirit,” Lanigan continued in regards to the Homesteads project about why it is so important to protect the history of the Homesteads. “Their backs were up against a wall literally wondering if they could physically survive. One of President Roosevelt’s speeches said something to the effect, ‘We are not aiming for perfect. We are aiming for fast.’ People were starving. We had people willing to work, work hard and had skills already.

They can be proud of that hard work.”

The Military Memorial Museum The Military Memorial Museum is located downtown in the old courthouse building that was built in 1886. It also served as the high school, school administration building, county offices and now a museum. The Military Memorial Museum has extensive collections of our treasured American veterans and present the history and wartime artifacts in permanent exhibits from the Civil War to today, including WWI, WWII and German POW camp in Crossville, Korea,

Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The Military Museum is here because we want to honor our military folks who get so little recognition and show our younger generation the sacrifices that were made to get the freedoms that we enjoy today,” said Robert Boring, curator of the Military Museum.

Boring, who also served as a veteran in the 3rd Marine Division in Korea, has been with the museum since 2002 when it opened.

“Everything here is donated by visitors to the museum. Some of it is from

Pioneer Hall Museum The Pioneer Hall Museum in Pleasant Hill has an entertaining and unique history all its own. Prior to the Civil War, there were no secondary schools in the area. There were only three month schools up to the fifth grade. Amazingly, after the fifth grade, students were given a normal school certificate, which qualified them to teach.

After the Civil War, the schools became eighthgrade schools, but graduates could still only get a normal school certificate in Cumberland County. The American Missionary Association (AMA) out of Boston decided to open 500 schools

in the South. In 1884, [the AMA] sent the Rev. Dodge from Maine to start Pleasant Hill Academy.

“There were no dorms, so the families from out in the country came in and built little cottages so their children could go to school.

When we’re talking about children, we are not talking about kindergarten — although we had up through the eighth grade — but we are talking about 15, 20 and 25-year-olds who wanted an education,” said Jeanne Chappell Kingsbury, president of the Pleasant Hill Historical Society (PHHS).

“So, that’s what we really worked on in the beginning, to get them graduated.”

There were two students who graduated from the first class of Pleasant Hill Academy in 1884. One was Amelia Frye, who graduated with a normal school certificate and taught for a few years before coming back and working in her father’s

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Senior Living October 2015 • Crossville Chronicle

store in Pleasant Hill. The other was Thomas Finley, who graduated and taught school for two years.

In that time, Pleasant Hill Academy had become a fully accredited school that could issue school certificates that qualified students to pursue higher education and attend college without having to take an exam. Finley returned and graduated again in 1891, attended UT and became a lawyer before settling in Cookeville. In 1917, he enlisted in the Army and acted as judge advocate in France. Finley received a distinguished service medal and then was a member of the General Assembly for four years.

“The first two graduates were something else,” said Chappell-Kingsbury.

The second graduating class had a few more than the first, and, as the years progressed, the graduating classes became larger and larger and so many families were touched by the education that the academy provided, changing the trajectory of the lives of those who graced its halls. The second graduating class also produced a man who became a preacher and spent the rest of his life in mission work in China.

“We’re really proud of this place,” she added.

In 1888, a teacher on staff had to stay home because her daughter was sick. Barbara Buchanan from Pieternamstzberg, the capital and second-largest city in the province of KwaZuluNatal, South Africa, was sent by the college to come and teach at Pleasant Hill Academy for three months.

She went on to be very active in the women’s rights movement that began in the early 1900s. She returned to South Africa and worked in the school system there.

Her grandfather had begun the kindergarten system in South Africa.

“We only learned about

this a few weeks ago. It’s amazing,” said ChappellKingsbury. “We are doing all sorts of things, not because of us, but because of people who are emailing us or coming to visit and bringing us things. We are just having a wonderful time getting all these stories together and genealogies made.”

In 1917, a new principal came to the school and brought his wife with him. It was the Rev. Edwin Wharton and Dr. May C. Wharton, the noted “Doctor Woman of the Cumberlands.” She provided doctoring at the academy and the community.

“She was a wonderful pioneer here,” said Chappell-Kingsbury.

By the founding of the two-room Uplands Hospital and Van Dyke Sanatorium in Pleasant Hill, as well as several clinics in the county, she essentially led to the creation of Cumberland Medical Center and was responsible for bringing medical care to the people of the Plateau.

There is a bell that rang at Pleasant Hill Academy that was made by Paul Revere in 1817. It hung in a church in Marblehead, MA, for 70 years. When the church was remodeling, a member of the congregation sent it to Pleasant Hill just in time

to be put up in the academy belfry where it rang to wake everyone, to announce classes and meals, emergencies and fire warnings. In 1921, the bell cracked and later found a home in the bell tower of the community church. In 2012, the church’s bell tower came down, PHHS had the bell placed in a gazebo as a very interesting part of the museum. PHHS has also learned that there was a Civil War skirmish fought in Pleasant Hill between Confederate guerilla fighter Champ Ferguson and Pennsylvania 7th Calvary.

Pioneer Hall itself has served as a dormitory and many other purposes for the academy over the years. In 1975, PHHS formed to preserve Pioneer Hall and in 1981, it was opened as a museum. The first floor recreates the academy, including the craft room, and tells the stories of the Rev. Dodge and Dr. May. On the second floor, there are two dorm rooms to show what the girls and boys’ dorms would have looked like. They also have exhibits of history of the people, a store, a kitchen, farmers, men and women’s duties and a school room.

“When people come to visit, we say we are like a history book. We have many chapters,” said Chappell-Kingsbury, when she

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explained what all was included in the Pioneer Hall Museum.

Currently, PHHS is in the midst of an excavation to unveil what they think might have been a pathway they never knew existed.

“I love history and genealogy. There are whole families that have come through Pleasant Hill,” said Chappell-Kingsbury. “We need to do this to keep the history going.”

Lest We Forget It is imperative that the history of this great county be celebrated and shared.

But, before it can be, the seniors of Cumberland County work selflessly to guard it with their combined efforts and their true volunteer spirits. Because of them, our colorful and dynamic history is readily available to all of us. They maintain the history of the community, and we, in turn, must remember to never forget it.

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12 Crossville Chronicle • Senior Living October 2015