GOVERNMENT/POLITICS A4-5 | OUR COLUMNISTS A6-7 | BUSINESS A8 | HEALTH & LIFESTYLES SECTION B
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VOL. 5, NO. 52
DECEMBER 26, 2011
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Knox Heritage has ‘many irons in fire’ By Wendy Smith
Great grads Sandra Clark says each grad from the Kelley Academy has a story to tell. See page A-5
Ol’ Vols rally for Bud Ford Marvin West says former Vols are battling to keep Bud Ford as UT’s athletic historian. See page A-8
FEATURED COLUMNIST JAKE MABE
Winter getaway Turns out December is a great time to head to Townsend and Cades Cove. See page A-6
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It’s been another busy year for Knox Heritage. The preservation organization’s 10th Vintage Homes project, the Green House in the Fort Sanders neighborhood, was completed; the first grants from the Save Our Signs initiative were awarded; and the community was informed of at-risk properties as well as buildings that have been saved for future generations to enjoy. Knox Heritage Executive Director Kim Trent hesitates briefly when asked what the nonprofit hopes to accomplish in 2012. There are so many irons in the fire, she explains. But she’s grateful to begin the year with a new mayor and new City Council representatives who are supporters of historic preservation. After 12 buildings owned by UT showed up on Knox Heritage’s Fragile 15 list, which was announced in May, there have been both gains and losses on campus. Trent says it’s “unfortunate” that construction on a new student center is moving forward, given that historic buildings will be lost. But the university has backed off on plans to further encroach upon the Fort Sanders neighborhood, and UT was recognized during Knox Heritage’s preservation awards last month for renovations at Ayres Hall and the UT Conference Center. Trent is also pleased that Hopecote, a historic home on Melrose Avenue, will be the first university-owned property to be added to the National Register of Historic Places.
“Both sides are open to working cooperatively,” says Trent of Knox Heritage’s relationship with UT. While she’s not quite optimistic about it, Trent hopes that the Walker-Sherrill home, which is currently owned by the developers of Sherrill Hill in West Knoxville, will soon be sold. There is a historic overlay on the house, located at 9320 Kingston Pike, and Andrews Properties has committed to securing the home and removing later additions. But there has been no evidence of work, she says, and Knox Heritage will bring the matter before the Historic Zoning Commission next year if no action is taken. Another property she’d like to see on the market is the McClung warehouse site on Jackson Avenue. Now that the property’s former owner, Mark Saroff, is bankrupt, trustee John Newton is in charge of liquidating it. Even though there have been weekly fires at the site, he’s made no effort to sell, says Trent. “If I was giving a lump of coal this year, he’d get it.” On a positive note, Knox Heritage is currently working with St. John’s Cathedral to save two 1920s buildKim Trent, executive director of Knox Heritage Photo by Wendy Smith ings on Walnut Street. The church had planned to demolish the buildings in order to leave room for future expansion, but is now looking There are also “further conversa- stipulation that it can’t be subdividtions” with UT regarding the Euge- ed or sold, but Knox Heritage has at new ways to use the property. “I hate to see buildings lost when nia Williams house on Lyons View offered to provide legal assistance Pike. Williams left the property to that could make the home available there’s no plan to build something on the space,” Trent says. UT at her death in 1998 with the for purchase.
Former Lakeshore chaplain witness to changes By Betty Bean “When the news came out that they wanted to close it, somebody asked me what I thought, and I said they really closed Lakeshore 15 years ago,” said the Rev. George Doebler, who came to Tennessee in 1972 to become chaplain at Eastern State Hospital and stayed there for 13 tumultuous years. He’s still in Knoxville, and although he formally retired in 2007, the ordained Lutheran minister is still spending three days a week in his office at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Next to his door, there’s a photograph of a priest blessing the hounds at a foxhunt, unaware of the dog that has sneaked up behind him to lift a leg against the cleric’s vestments. Doebler doesn’t take himself too seriously. But he has lived through serious times. For example, before he started his clinical training program at St. Elizabeth’s, a huge, federally funded psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., he took a detour through the Dallas County, Ala., jail. It happened like this: “Dr. Martin Luther King had been down in Selma (Alabama) registering voters. We’re sitting in an ethics class (in Dubuque, Iowa) saying ‘What do you do with this?’ One guy said,
‘We’ve got to go down there.’ So we decided to go for three days to show our support for King. We got down there and got thrown in jail.” Doebler and his friends ran into King on the street, and he asked them why they had come. “We told him it was because of his speech. And George Doebler Photo by Betty Bean he said ‘What I said caused you to come coming, dictated by the here?’ Community Mental Health “He thanked us for being Care Act, championed by there. He was just a little John F. Kennedy, which had guy, not very tall. We slept in passed in 1963. the bell tower of the church Doebler and psychiatrist and listened to him preach John Marshall, who later every night. He could really became the superintendent preach. Very well trained. of Eastern State Hospital in Some people look at you, Knoxville, pioneered comand they look straight munity mental health at St. through your head. That’s Elizabeth’s. Doebler’s wife, how he was. He was one of Nancy, was a psychiatric those people who comes at nurse there, as well. a certain time, and the time Not long before Maris ready. Three weeks later, shall took the helm at EastI was in Washington and ern State, the hospital was missed my first interview at rocked by a devastating exSt. Elizabeth’s.” posé that brought attention Once he got there, Doe- to the deplorable conditions bler found that practices like there. Although funding hydrotherapy – whereby was always an issue, with patients were strapped into the encouragement of rea chair and bombed by a form-minded Commissionwater cannon shooting high er Richard Treadway and velocity streams – were still the help of new medications in use. But changes were and treatment methods,
Marshall started making progress. Doebler was soon training clergy to do after-care and eventually had 20 to 30 pastors working with him. But in 1975, Ray Blanton was elected and everything got hard. “Blanton was using those jobs as political payoff. I told him we couldn’t do it, that we had a job description and strict requirements, and Treadway stuck with us. By 1978, we had a lot of programs to bring community clergy in, working with the mentally ill. It was just a fun thing to be doing, but they asked John Marshall to step down,” Doebler said. “I was chief of chaplains and had brought in some very skilled people, four of them trained in Washington as community clergy. We had a whole network across the state. John did a lot in the community. He was very open and pretty outspoken – he said the community needs to know what’s going on inside. But I’ll bet you can’t find 10 articles from 1990 until now about Lakeshore. Blanton ruined everything.” In 1985, Doebler went to UT Medical Center to start
the chaplaincy program there. He has enjoyed great success. He served as executive director of the association of Mental Health Clergy for 22 years, raised $5 million to endow UTMC’s chaplaincy program and, along with Nancy, received the 2010 Helen Ross McNabb Spirit Award honoring their mental health work. He still sees patients from Lakeshore, including “one lady I’ve been seeing for 18 years, for nothing – these people have no money. She’ll call at 3, 4 in the morning when she hears voices. She’s being treated by Helen Ross McNabb.” He believes Helen Ross McNabb will benefit from the shutdown of Lakeshore. “They’ll do crisis intervention stuff,” he said. “They’ll get the resources to do an even better job of treatment than they do now.” He pulled out a black bound book published in 1984, titled “The Homeless Mentally Ill.” “You could write this today,” he said “The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill was a good idea, but the only way it would have worked was to have the resources in the community. You can do better treatment in the community than what would be done in a large institution, but the money has never stayed with the patient.”
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