VOL. 52 NO. 42
IN THIS ISSUE
Stressed to the max
Adrian Burnett Elementary School PTSO president Regina Turner isn’t buying ithe company line. Kids, she says, are being tested too much, plain and simple. They’re stressed. So are the teachers. So are the parents.
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See Jake Mabe’s story on page A-5
Miracle Maker Gary Harmon gets around. In his nearly 30 years with Knox County Schools, he taught French and English at Bearden, Austin-East and Halls high schools. He has spent the past 2 1/2 years at Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center, teaching English and history to troubled male teens that have been arrested or placed at the center by the Department of Children’s Services. He loves what he’s doing.
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See Betsy Pickle’s story on A-9
Striking the band Seldom does the University of Tennessee create what has become a food fight between top leaders on campus but that is what has happened with the exchange of comments between Pride of the Southland Marching Band director Gary Sousa (now on paid administrative leave) and UT Chancellor Jimmy Cheek.
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See Victor Ashe’s story on A-4
Sweet home Alabama Dave Hart, valued at $817,250 plus perks per year as vice chancellor and director of athletics at the University of Tennessee, will return to Tuscaloosa this weekend. Marvin West can’t help but wonder what might have happened had Hart stayed in sweet home Alabama.
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October 21, 2013
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Strike up the band! Halls alums reunite for special performance By Jake Mabe You couldn’t knock the grin off Christopher Davis’ face if you had a hammer. Being on the football field under the Thursday night lights. Being able to play in the band again. Beautiful. Davis, a 1997 Halls High graduate and former member of the UT Pride of the Southland Marching Band, was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome in December 2009. Paralyzed from the chest down for a time, he spent four months in the hospital and six months in outpatient therapy. “I’m so happy,” he said. “It was one of those things I wanted to do to prove I could still do it.” Davis and 39 other Halls High band alums performed with the current band during a special alumni event at the home football game against Central last week. In addition to playing the national anthem during the pregame ceremony, the expanded band also performed “Battle Cry” and “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (the theme from “2001: A Space Odyssey”). Some alums performed in the stands with the band during the game. It’s the first of what band director Eric Baumgardner hopes will be an annual event. “Next year, we plan to make it a little more of a production. We tried to keep costs low this year ($5 for a flip folder), but we’d like to add a meal and make it more of an event. We have some folks who may not want to play but would still like to be here.” Lynda Summers, a 1985 graduate, and former band captain Kevin Miller, a 1989 grad, both said it was a night to remember. “There were only three here from the 1980s,” Summers said. “It was neat to get in touch with them. I knew Kevin, for example,
Halls High School graduates and band alums Elizabeth Moore (2013), Lynda Summers (1985, band officer) and Kevin Miller (1989, band captain) are all smiles at the Halls High band’s alumni night at the home football game against Central. Photos by Ruth White but we didn’t sit together in the band.” “But we all have a common thread,” Miller said. “It was great to talk with the generations from the beginning of the band until now.” Millie Bledsoe Vandergriff Norris and Peggy Crippen Beeler were in the first Halls High band. “V.E. Blackwelder came to Halls in 1947,” Norris said, “and asked if anyone was interested in being in the band. He said it would be a good idea if we rented instruments first to see if we liked them. Mother and Daddy rented me a saxophone and it was the ugliest thing I had ever seen!” Back then, the band, all 30 or 40 of them, practiced at Beaver Dam Baptist Church. Blackwelder would take the group to CarsonNewman each year to see a famous composer. Beeler says she owes her instrument to her late uncle Elmer
Crippen, who ran a produce store. “He said, ‘Are you going to be in the band?’ I said, ‘Well, I haven’t asked.’ I lived with my grandparents and he said, ‘You tell your granny to take you to town and get you an instrument and I’ll pay for it.’” When Beeler perfected the clarinet, Uncle El1997 Halls High graduate mer paid for the best one and former HHS band and money could buy. Beeler earned UT Pride of the Southland a medal for making the All East Band member Christopher Tennessee Band in 1955. She was Davis overcame health isthe only one from Halls High to sues to play with the band be selected and, as far as anyone last Thursday night. knows, the first. Mindy Faddis Corum, a 1998 grad who was a majorette in high school and at Middle Tennessee “You don’t realize how great it is State, said the event brought her back to Dink Adams Field for the until you’re gone awhile.” Just ask Christopher Davis. first time in 15 years.
See Marvin’s story on page A-6
NEIGHBORHOOD BUZZ
Halls High to honor fallen vets Halls High School and the Halls High Alumni Association will dedicate a monument to former students killed during military service 4:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4, at the school. The Association is looking for anyone who can represent the late Jack Copeland, killed during World War II. Info: David Wayland, 9227615.
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Booker promises ‘dazzle’ at Beck By Sandra Clark Robert Booker is back at the Beck Cultural Exchange Center and he promises to “dazzle.” Booker has been involved with the center since its founding in 1975 in the home of the late James and Ethel Beck. A student leader at Knoxville College and later a 3-term state representative, Booker is a historian and general man about town. Booker calls going back as executive director at Beck “a labor of love.” The center is a repository of African-American history and lore, much of it compiled by Booker himself. “We can compete with anybody (in the African-American Museum Association). I want Knoxville to be proud of that,” Booker said. The Becks were fierce competitors, he said. Mr. Beck was a Republican; she was a Democrat who often bragged of canceling his
votes. He was a fee-grabber (sort of an adjunct law enforcement job) and a baseball player; she was state president for the Colored PTA. Both worked hard and had rental property and a working farm. Get him started and Booker will talk about Ethel Beck and Evelyn Hazen, a white woman who lived just up the street (and once sued a lover who jilted her for breach of promise. She won.) “They were from two different worlds, but were a lot alike,” says Booker. After serving in the Legislature from 1966 to 1971, Booker came home to work as administrative assistant to then-Mayor Kyle Testerman, a job he remembers as entailing “everything he didn’t want to do.” Booker was executive director of the Beck Center for 16 years, leaving in 1998. He filled in for 10 months as a member of City Council when Mark Brown be-
Feel the crunch.
$ enrollment this month.
came a magistrate and before Daniel Brown was elected. The Beck Center has had some recent negative publicity, and Mayor Tim Burchett cut its counBooker ty funding. Booker says that’s in the past. He’s looking to fulfill Beck’s mission to research and exhibit local black history. He wants 5,000 members generating $75,000 annually. He wants to join with Visit Knoxville to drive tourism, and he plans publicity in national magazines. The current exhibit features pictures from James and Ethel Beck. An upcoming exhibit will highlight the life and times of former U.S. District Judge William H. Hastie, who was born in Knoxville and became the first Afri-
can-American federal judge, appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Judge Hastie earned his law degree from Harvard University. He later was assistant solicitor of the Department of the Interior and a professor at Howard University Law School. Booker will invite his children to Knoxville to launch the exhibit. “The Beck Center is in a beautiful and spacious new building with its valuable collections in boxes and hidden away from visitors and researchers alike,” Booker said. “People who visit here should be dazzled by what the center has to offer. That includes those who come for a reception, a dance or a meeting of any kind. The Beck mission should always be at the forefront of any activity held on these premises.” Beck is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Info: (865) 524-8461 or beckcenter.net.
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