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Calling all Knox County principals, teachers, students, supervisors and superintendents: Do you have a miracle maker at your school? Know somebody in the system whose good work deserves to be highlighted? Nominate them as a candidate for our ongoing Miracle Maker series by sending an email to news@ ShopperNewsNow.com.
IN THIS ISSUE
Coffee Break
These days, J-Adam Smith spends most of his time teaching people to spot the spirits that make themselves at home in Knoxville. But before he started Haunted Knoxville’s Ghost Tours in 2010, he was a violin teacher. Smith was running a violin school in Leesburg, Fla., when he realized he’d bought a haunted house. The lights turned themselves on and off, dogs barked for no reason and there were cold spots. He’s now a certified paranormal investigator.
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See page A-2
Haunted house? Lori Tucker led the way into the employee break rooms on the third floor of Greystone, the stately Victorian mansion that houses WATE-TV. It was designed and built in 1885 by Civil War veteran/ U.S. Attorney/coal baron/ landholder Major Eldad Cicero Camp, who for a time used the upper floor as Camp’s Home for Friendless Women. “This is where most of us who work at night don’t come,” Tucker said. “It gives us the heebie-jeebies.”
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See Betty Bean’s story on page A-6
Basketball time! Cuonzo Martin and Marvin West and several players and possibly you anticipate solid improvement in Tennessee basketball this winter. Those who do national polls and predictions are not convinced.
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See Marvin’s story on page A-6
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October 29,, 2012
A ghost on every block By Wendy Smith If you’re craving tales of serial killers, ghostly pipe organs and the dead brought back to life, feel free to skip the multiplex. Just take a stroll through downtown Knoxville. This is the 18th year that Robert McGinnis, curator of James White’s Fort, has told real-life ghost stories at the fort’s Hearth Scares event. Each year, he leads one of three tours – downtown, UT and the Old City. He has a repertoire of 32 stories pulled from Knoxville newspapers and other written accounts. The first stop on this year’s tour is the Central parking lot below Riverview Tower. That’s where Swinging Sally met her end in the early 1900s, McGinnis says. It’s also the former location of Bell Home School, built in 1895. The school was the first in the area to have a playground. Sally loved to play on the swing set, and the boys loved to push her while her long, blonde hair floated in the wind. According to the tale, and her tombstone at Old Gray Cemetery, Sally died when her hair got caught in the chain and she fell, breaking her neck. The school closed in the 1940s, but people have reported hearing the sound of chains clanking together in the depths of the parking garage, McGinnis says. One block north on State Street is where Knoxville’s first serial killer, John Roberts, lived. He was a young man when his family moved to Clarksville, leaving him to manage the family’s business. “John liked figures. But it wasn’t the ones on paper that he liked,” McGinnis says. He preferred the figures of the young students at the nearby East
“William Blount’s grave was one of Knoxville’s first illegal liquor stores.” He tells the tale of a downtown church that ordered a new pipe organ to replace one that burned in a 1919 fire. The new organ was installed by the owner of a New York manufacturing company who was scheduled to retire after the job. The organ required tuning, and the process took several months. During the tuning process, the organ-builder played only one piece: “Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death.” After tuning was completed, the organ was to be dedicated. The organ builder requested that the recitalist play “Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death” during the service, but was refused. The night before the service, the old man died. The next day, as the recitalist prepared to play, the organ began to play the hymn on its own. The congregation ran out in fear. The music continued until the following morning, and when it stopped, a few brave souls entered Robert McGinnis, curator of James the church to turn off the White’s Fort, talks about the hislights. They heard matory of the First Presbyterian Church niacal laughter before the cemetery during the fort’s annual music started again. Hearth Scares tour. Photo by Wendy Smith A few years later, two boys confessed to playing the song during the dedication as a prank. But they weren’t Tennessee Female Institute, and of the house is now a parking lot, in the church the next morning, spent his free time loitering around and young women, dressed in 19th they said. “Who laughed? Who played? the campus. In 1841, one of the century attire, have been seen begWe do not know,” says McGinnis. students, Sarah, disappeared. The ging in the area, says McGinnis. Other spooky downtown tales First Presbyterian Church and next year, a young woman named Julia vanished. Over the next two its famous cemetery are located include the falling death of iron years, two more girls went missing. another block north. During Pro- man Lewis Johnson, Knoxville’s In 1850, neighbors found John hibition, whiskey was stashed in own Frankenstein, and the hangin his home, dead from a heart at- William Blount’s grave, and those ing of Abner Baker. Tours are at 7 tack. When the house was razed, who sampled the hooch were ex- p.m. on Oct. 29 and 30, beginning four small skeletons were found pected to drop money in a nearby at James White’s Fort. Info: www. jameswhitesfort.org under the basement floor. The site jar, McGinnis says.
Surgery boss Minefield makes OR hum By Betty Bean Sitting down for a midday chat with Charlene Minefield is tricky. Her cellphone rings incessantly and the incoming calls trigger brief, rapid-fire outgoing messages alerting her staff that Dr. X is going to be 30 minutes late or that patient Y needs to be brought down to be prepped. Then she picks up her face-toface conversation exactly where she left off. Charlene Minefield (pronounced Minny-field) is a model of efficiency. By noon, she’s been on the job nearly seven hours. “On a typical day, I get here about 5:15 or 5:20. That’s my qui-
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et time, when I read my emails. Around 6, I’ll go to the front desk, look at my add-ons and start calling my doctors, telling them what time I expect them to be here. The staff starts rolling through around 6:30. “These guys will allow me to look at their cases and I arrange them – we try to do the more complex cases early,” Minefield said. “Usually when doctors first come here, they say ‘Don’t mess with my schedule.’ Then, when they see how smoothly it goes, they say ‘Let her do it.’ I just have to make a believer of them. And if I give you a 7:30 start, I expect you go be here, ready to go.” Her title is Clinical Leader of Surgery at Tennova’s Physicians Regional Medical Center (the
Charlene Minefield and “Uncle” Richard Briggs Photo by Betty Bean one most of us persist in calling St. Mary’s), but people who work with her call her Big Mamma. She has her own pet names for many of them – nobody is spared, not even the surgeons. Her office is nicknamed the
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“Love Shack” because, Minefield says, “Any time someone has to be talked to, they go to the love shack. Sometimes the physicians have to take me to the Love To page A-3
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