commong threads 2010
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The Mountain Press Common Threads Edition for February 14 and 21, 2010TRANSCRIPT
Common ThreadsOutdoors/Business
Inside
A supplement focusing on the people of Sevier County n Sunday, February 14, 2010
A working relationship Couple works hard making drug store a success
Page 2
Service with style Spencer a guy who works hard, with pizzazz
Page 4
Ober or bust Diriwachter finds skiing a way of life
Page 6
Jason Davis/The Mountain Press
Danny Longmire’s life is fishing, and he does it for fun and to make a living on Douglas Lake.
By JaSON DaVISSports Editor
“What are they hittin’?” the 59-year-old angler asked his Douglas Lake fishing pals as he arrived at the Nina Creek inlet.
“They’re really hitting chartreuse flies with white (skirts),” a fellow fisherman said.
Casting a glance around
the crowd of boats where no one seemed to be landing any fish, a slow smile began to surface on Danny Longmire’s face.
Reaching into his tackle box, he extracted a brown and white lure, bucking the suggestion he’d been offered.
Keeping his voice low, he gave the reasoning behind his selection.
“If everyone’s throwing the
same thing, I like to give the fish a choice,” Longmire said.
Sure enough, within sec-onds of his fly hitting the frigid water, Longmire had the first keeper crappie in his livewell.
A backwoods Renaissance man of sorts, Longmire — a former truck driver and father of four boys — is a huge fan of the outdoors.
Whether he’s deer hunt-
ing, on a search for long-lost arrowheads on the banks of Douglas Lake or fishing off the bow of his trusty 1987 Bullet, Longmire is enjoying every moment he’s soak-ing in the sights and sounds Sevier County’s boundless natural resources.
“Looking at these moun-tains, out here on the water
When it comes to fishing,Longmire head of the cast
See LOngmire, Page 2
The Mountain Press ◆ Sunday, February 14, 20102 ◆ Common Threads
2 Common Threads
— it just doesn’t get any bet-ter,” Longmire said, casting a glance at the Great Smoky Mountains while puttering along at low throttle moving to another fishing site.
A longtime admirer of Sevier County and Douglas Lake, the south Knoxville native took advantage of the influx of people brought into the region by the 1981 World’s Fair. Selling his Knoxville home and land, Longmire bought a home in Sevier County and has attacked the Douglas Lake fish population ever since.
“I grew up in south Knoxville, and I moved up here in ’81. The World’s Fair came in, and I had a chance to sell my house and move up here.
“I fished it when I was a kid, we came up here and fished, and the last 28 years I’ve been fishing it really regularly.”
Among Longmire’s favor-ite quarry are the lake’s crappie — white, black and hybrid.
He also fishes for sauger and walleye, especially in the colder part of the year.
“I get my meat this time of year,” he said. “And it usu-ally lasts me all the way to the next winter.”
“I pretty much fish every day I can. If it’s real cold and windy, I’ll go down here on the river and just walk up and down the bank and fish. It’s what keeps me going — fishing.”
As talented with the rod and reel as Robert Tino is with a canvas and brush, Longmire paints the shore-line with his effortless casts,
and often hits paydirt with his jigging style, literally coaxing crappie onto his hook.
“Used to I fish two or three bass tournaments a week, but I had a heart attack four years ago,” the angler said. “I just couldn’t take the heat, so I slowed down on all that. I fish three or four a year now.”
Raised in south Knoxville, Longmire honed his craft fishing the French Broad River.
“Sitting on the riverbank with a cane pole in my hand. Back in them days you didn’t have all this modern equip-ment,” he said, casting a quick glance at his dash-mounted fishfinder, which he often calls his television. “We had a old wooden boat down there, and we’d run trot lines.”
But learning to fish with-
out the convenience of today has made Longmire that much more effective. Using his fishfinder and his natural intuitiveness, along with the knowledge of over 50 years of hunting down fish fillets for his dinner, Longmire has an uncanny ability to know where the fish are, and how to catch them.
And once he’s used his Pflueger reel to pull the keepers in, it’s lights out for the fish.
They’ve bought a one-way ticket to the frying pan.
“About every two weeks I eat a mess, and when I fry I’ve got to fry enough for my son that lives next door to me. He can smell ’em, I don’t even have to tell him. He can be at work and call and ask me if I’m frying fish,” Longmire said with a grin.
Those sons — Doug, Kevin,
Chris and Billy — along with Danny and his wife, Debbie, have likely eaten a ton of fish from the Bullet’s livewell between them.
Danny insists he’s the chef at his house, and watching him fillet a crappie is a tes-tament to his skills with a blade.
There’s no electric knife involved. It’s just Longmire, the fish and a well-worn manual filleting knife. He gave away the only electric one he ever had, which he was given as a gift.
“I hadn’t seen anybody fil-let a fish like that in a long time,” a passerby said as Longmire sunk the blade into a 12-and-a-half-inch beauty, “and they were 80 years old.”
With about 12 fish filleted, Longmire dished on how to prepare the fish widely regarded as one of the tasti-
est freshwater delicacies.“You need to soak those in
salt water,” he said. “Regular table salt. Let them soak, and then work them a little bit, get the blood lines out of them. That’s what gives your fish bad taste right there — blood.
“Take a (plastic) grocery bag and put you some corn meal and salt and pepper in there, throw in a few fillets — three or four at a time — and shake it real good to coat them.
“Get your (canola) oil good and hot and put the fillets in and cook them for about three or four minutes on the first side, until its golden brown and turn it over for a few minutes.
“They make a good sand-wich — it’s better than balo-ney.”
LongMire3From Page A1
Jason Davis/The Mountain Press
Longmire knows the ins and outs and hiding places on Douglas Lake as well as anybody.
Jason Davis/The Mountain Press
The 59-year-old Longmire loves to fry up what he catches, and he does the cooking in his house.
By JEFF FARRELLStaff writer
SEVIERVILLE — The path to getting two Georgia Bulldogs to settle in Sevierville and run a neighborhood pharmacy involved a few twists and turns.
Jeff and Emily Pettis always figured on having a community pharmacy, just like they now have in Reams Drug Store on Middle Creek Road. Jeff had a dream of owning an old-fashioned pharmacy with a soda fountain, like Hodgson’s Pharmacy in Athens, Ga., where the two of them grew up.
In fact, they thought they had a plan set for the two of them to go to a drug store like that back near their home.
“A week before that was supposed to happen, the plans fell through,” he explained.
They were already here in Sevier County. Emily, a clinical pharmacist, was completing her residency and Jeff was working at a local pharmacy.
For a while, they didn’t know what they were going to do. Staying in East Tennessee wasn’t part of the original plan for two Peach State lovers.
“We sat down together and we prayed over it,” Jeff said.
Then Emily got a call: The owner of Reams was short-handed at the phar-macy.
Working there, see-ing the type of business it was — and the soda and ice cream dished out at the Dawg House restaurant inside the pharmacy — she knew she’d found the type of place they were talking about. And it turned out the owner was looking to sell.
So they used the money they’d planned to use to buy a pharmacy close to the place where they grew up, and adopted a new home.
It was a big decision for
a couple who’d grown up in the same town. Ironically, they met while in high school, but on a college visit to Furman.
“We happened to park next to each other,” Emily said.
“We realized we had a lot of mutual friends, so we started hanging out,” Jeff added. “A couple of months later, we started dating each other.”
They both wound up going to the University of Georgia, where they were both in premed tracks.
They actually both made the decision to switch majors without talking to each other.
“We didn’t want to influ-ence each other,” Emily
said.Their pursuits are a little
different. Emily is a clinical pharmacist at University of Tennessee Medical Center. She helps doctors decide which medicines would best suit a patient and would interact best with the drugs they’re already taking.
Jeff is a retail pharma-cist. He fills prescriptions, helps explain possible effects of drugs, checks them for interactions with other drugs his customers are taking, and runs the business.
He admits he got a little more than he anticipated when he started it.
“I didn’t envision a res-taurant,” he said. He’s still
learning on the job how to manage the restaurant, but he’s settled in as a pharma-cist, he said.
Reams can also provide vaccinations, something that some folks aren’t accustomed to getting out-side a doctor’s office. And Jeff has just started one more business, along with partner Jim Deanda.
Smoky Mountain Home Infusions provides the supplies for patients who need intravenous applica-tion of medicine, but don’t have to be in a hospital to do it. The service had been available in Morristown and Knoxville, and Deanda approached Jeff about
Couple works hard making drug store a success
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Jeff and Emily Pettis work closely together running Reams Drug Store in Sevierville.
See reaMS, Page 3
Sunday, February 14, 2010 ◆ The Mountain Press Common Threads ◆ 3
3 Common Threads I
Sevier County Emergency Communications District
Emergency
Be Summoned For Police, Medical Or Fire Emergencies.
EMERGENCY
SEVIER COUNTY ENHANCED 911 SYSTEM HINTS REGARDING PROPER USAGE
REMEMBER
WHEN
DO NOT
REMEMBER: PICK UP THE PHONE
Vince Loveday E-911 Coordinator
245 Bruce St. P.O. Box 4572
Sevierville, TN 37864 428-5542 or 428-0310
SEVIER COUNTY ENHANCED 911 SYSTEM
On January 1, 2006 Sevier County Emergency Communications District Consolidated Three (3) of its Five (5) Public Safety Answer-ing Points (PSAP’s). Your Emergency calls for service is now being answered at two (2) primary locations in Sevier County: Pigeon Forge Police Dept. & Sevier County Sheriff. At this time the county has over 49,310 landline telephone subscribers that it serves. Sevier County 911 calls were up to 55,081 in 2009.
offering it here, he said.“It’s cheaper for them, it’s
cheaper for the insurance, and it’s just better to be at home,” he said.
Every second and fourth Friday, they also offer bingo in the morning — something that’s become a hit with many of their customers.
When they aren’t busy with all that … well, they’re still busy.
They attend First Baptist Church of Sevierville, where Jeff plays the saxophone in their orchestra.
He serves on the Board of Directors for the Boys & Girls Club and Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic. He completed the Leadership Tomorrow pro-gram, and Emily is in this year’s class.
And then there’s a daugh-ter. Morgan will be 2 years old this April.
With all that they have on their schedules, she said, they know how important it is to make time for each other.
“We know family is important, so we try to spend time together when-ever we can. When I get off, a lot of times I bring Morgan here for that extra time with us.
“It all seems to fall into place.”
When Emily is there, though, she’s often helping out behind the counter.
So, it also helps that the two of them still get along like newlyweds.
“We do,” Emily said. “We really get along. We’re best friends.”
One of their biggest com-mon interests remains Georgia football. They try to get home often, but espe-cially during football season.
Morgan already knows how to cheer for the Dogs — especially when their friends try to get her to sing “Rocky Top.”
But while they still have many ties back in their native Georgia, they’ve also obviously built a lot of them over the years up here.
“The people here have been great,” Jeff said. “It does feel a lot like home now.”
They’ve managed to bal-ance their schedules pretty well to make sure the little girl always has her mommy or daddy around. When Emily gets off work, for example, she picks her up and they often go to the pharmacy.
“She loves going to Daddy’s work,” Emily explained. “Well, she loves getting sodas and ice cream.”
reaMS3From Page 2
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Jeff Pettis usually handles the pharmacy, but also spends time running the restaurant end of the business.
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Emily Pettis is a clinical pharmacist at UT Medical Center in addition to her duties at Reams.
The Mountain Press ◆ Sunday, February 14, 2010
By GAIL CRUTCHFIELDCommunity Editor
GATLINBURG — Hard work isn’t something Bob Spencer backs away from. As the oldest of five boys born to an Iowa business entrepreneur and home-maker, he was never one to rest on his laurels.
As a popular, local hair stylist, downtime isn’t all that easy to come by when most of the working day is spent on your feet. But because it’s some-thing he loves to do, and because of how he was raised, it’s no hardship for Spencer.
Spencer, owner of @272 in Gatlinburg, was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and raised just north of there in Algona.
“My dad was kind of a business entrepreneur,” he said. “We had livestock auctions. We had Dairy Queens. We had hotels, you name it.”
While they were entre-preneurs, Spencer said his father and uncles also liked to help people. “Him and his brothers would help people who might have been in finan-cial trouble as a family-owned business,” Spencer said. “They’d kind of go in and buy it and rebuild it and then sell it back to them.”
The Spencer children would normally work in most of the businesses rather than participate in extracurricular activities at their school.
“We were never told no, it’s just that you always were busy,” he said. So there was no competing in sports or drama club or anything like that. The family worked together as a family.”
A hair salon was never one of the businesses his father bought or one in which Spencer found a job on his own. That came about as an act of rebellion.
“We had a supper club and one of the girls that worked for us was going to go to beauty school,” Spencer said. “And I thought, well, that will be kind of fun. I had a scholarship to attend a commercial design (school) for interior design, and I don’t know, that just seemed like a 9 to 5 job and I didn’t want to do that. So I just jok-ingly said I think I’ll go to beauty school with the waitress that was quit-ting. My dad just hit the roof.”
Spencer said his dad told him “Absolutely not.”
“So I did it,” he said.Did his dad finally get
used to the idea of his son being a hair stylist?
“Oh yeah, when he saw the money coming in. He sure did,” Spencer said.
“He used to come in to the shop back in Missouri and visit with the ladies and joke. He was kind of the shop mascot.”
The family moved from Iowa to Missouri shortly after Spencer got his cos-metology license.
Spencer continued his work as a cosmetolo-gist, enjoying it as an art form and even competing against other stylists.
“It was still a way to be creative, but you had to be quick about it,” he said. “You had a certain amount of time that you had to do it. You had to be fast on your feet with it. Plus, I’m a people per-son. I don’t think we’ve ever had a business where the people that came into the building were a client. You establish relation-ships.”
The competitions he participated in gave him even more freedom for his creativity and tested his ability to create an elaborate style in limited amount of time.
“I was big into com-petitions on state and regional levels,” he said. “You had models you worked with. You did things in front of judges, on stages — daytime looks, makeup. You were allowed so many minutes to complete it.”
His favorite competi-tion was his first, when he made the model resemble a peacock, taking second place.
The clothing his model wore represented the bird’s tail feathers, and he folded the hair into the shape of birds’ wings.
“You had 30 minutes from top to bottom,” to complete the hair style, he said. The model could be dressed in her outfit and her hair in rollers, but nothing else.
The winner of that particular event, Spencer said, was another styl-ist at the salon where he worked.
“She entered at the last minute and I helped her do her costume and stuff,” he said. “I can’t believe she won. I still laugh about that.”
However, he might have had the last laugh when years later he became the hair stylist for Dolly Parton.
Spencer made his way from Missouri to Tennessee with plans to give his father the oppor-tunity to live out the rest of his days in the Smoky
Mountains.“We had family in
South Carolina, so we visited here up until I was about age 12 or 14,” Spencer said. “We came through once a year. My dad loved the moun-tains.”
When his father was dying, Spencer decided to try and help his father’s dream of living in the Smokies come true. He signed a contract on a house, closed out his business and prepared to move his parents to Sevier County.
Life, as it so often does, had other plans.
“One of my broth-ers found out they were expecting their first child and he couldn’t leave the grandkids,” Spencer said. “By then I had already signed on the dotted line and committed. At least he had a place to come to off and on until he died.”
When Spencer got to Tennessee, he didn’t have a job lined up.
“We opened a little place on Roaring Fork Road,” he said of himself and business partner Fred Amans. “It was hard to get started, so I worked odd jobs. I worked for overnight rental com-panies, waited tables.” When Amans’ parents got sick and as his own father’s health declined, they decided to head back to Missouri to be closer to them.
“So we closed up the house and went back to Missouri, and I actually did real estate for a few months,” Spencer said. “My dad said this is not where you’re supposed to be. You need to go back. So we came back and started over.”
It was while they were operating a day spa in Pigeon Forge that the opportunity to work for Parton came up.
“Somebody at Dollywood asked me if I would take on a new customer that was with Randy Parton in his clos-ing show at the end of the night at the park,” Spencer said. “And it just so happened to be Dolly’s baby sister Rachel.”
Through that asso-ciation, Spencer said he became friends with the Parton family.
“We went up to Nashville a lot and spent time with them and henceforth met Dolly,” he said. “We went to family functions and family din-ners and stuff, and just kind of became part of the family.”
It was at one of those family functions where
Spencer met the super-star, but he said wasn’t intimidated.
“I think the reason we got along so good is because she does what she does because she’s so phenomenal at it, and I do what I do because I enjoy it and I hope I’m good at it,” he said. “It’s kind of a joke, you do what you do and I do what I do. I don’t want to sing and you want to do hair.”
In general, Spencer said, he’s not a person who is star-struck, which probably served him well when he was asked step in while Parton’s regular hairdresser took a break.
“She has a great hair-dresser who still works for her, but she kind of needed a break,” Spencer said. Needing a change himself, Spencer commit-ted to doing Parton’s hair for a year.
Doing her hair, how-ever, didn’t mean fixing a wig, it meant fixing at least three.
He would learn ahead of time what event Parton would be attending and would be given a descrip-tion of the outfits she could be wearing.
“There were always three choices, always three hairstyles for one event,” Spencer said. “And then it was basically a try-on session.”
Some of the work he would do out of his home, shipping the wigs to Parton. The rest of the time was spent on the road.
“Sometimes I would go to Nashville. We spent a lot of time out on the road. We spent some time in California, spent some time in England.”
After “a strong year” as Parton’s hair styl-ist, Spencer said he was ready to get back to the salon atmosphere.
“As much as I enjoy her and her family, it probably wasn’t really my forte,” he said. “I like to be around a lot of people and it was such a limited amount of people that you could be around. And you were always in question about does this person want to know something about her.”
Coming back to Sevier County, however, wasn’t something he felt right about at that time, and he decided to go back to Missouri.
“I figured after I’d been gone for a year, I didn’t have the right to come back and recall people that I had left,” he said. “So I want
back to Missouri, where the family was, and that didn’t work. I was there for four months and set up a salon and everything, and that just wasn’t home any-more. This had become home. This is where all my relationships were. So I just put the house back up for sale … and returned back here and started over right here in this building.”
That was eight to nine years ago and his clients were ready to sit in his chair.
“I never advertised,” he said. “I ran into a few people going into the grocery store and stuff like that and they’d say, ‘Are you back?’ and I’d say ‘Yeah.’ Word just spread by mouth.”
He said it felt good that his former custom-ers were willing to come back.
“Not so much as maybe what I did for them was a really good thing, but we had a con-nection. We had obvi-ously built a relationship that was important both ways.”
Trust is a big part of that relationship. Trust that Spencer knows what will make them look good and will not share any secrets spilled in the process.
“That chair is like truth serum, I’ll tell you,” he said. “All you can do is listen. Listen and forget. My dad taught me well in that category.”
As for giving his cli-ents a look that’s best for them, Spencer likes to be the one in charge instead of someone giving point by point instructions on what should be done to their hair.
“Oh no, that don’t work for me,” he said. “Unless the idea that they have I think is a good one and then we’ll talk about it and where we might be
able to change it to make it work. I pretty much know off hand, quickly, where we need to head with it, and I’m just kind of factual and straight up about why.”
He also likes to change their looks every so often.
“Nobody gets to wear the same thing much more than six months. Color, cut, it doesn’t hap-pen in my chair. We cut it off and we grow it out, or we whittle if off and we keep working our way up and we go through all kinds of different changes before we get to the ulti-mate in short, then we work our way back.”
His clients, he said, seem to appreciate it.
“They find it kind of fun,” he said. “I don’t really think we have anybody that comes in here that’s stuck with the same thing, they’ve pretty much been real open about change.”
Change, he said, is something he enjoys as well.
“I like to change and move things. At home I like to tear walls out and put them in a differ-ent place. I like constant change.”
One thing he doesn’t like, he said, is comput-ers. So you won’t find his profile on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.
“Oh I am so anti com-puter it’s not funny” he said. “I think that com-puter thing is the ruin-ation of the world. People don’t know how to com-municate with each other anymore. You know you can’t text somebody and know what their emotion is, versus if you were sit-ting across from them and asking them ques-tions, talking to them, finding out what kind of day they had, what’s going on in their life.”
That’s what he does every day from his salon chair.
4 ◆ Common Threads
4 Common Threads
Sevierville726 Parkway
(865) 428-3777
Gatlinburg1007 E. Parkway(865) 436-7463
AUTO PARTS
Spencer a guy who works hard, with style
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Bob Spencer once did hair styles for Dolly Parton, but found he missed the interaction with peo-ple in a salon setting. He owns @272 in Gatlinburg.
Sunday, February 14, 2010 ◆ The Mountain Press
By COBEY HITCHCOCKSports Writer
SEVIERVILLE — He doesn’t have a lot of experience, but what he does have comes from quality sources.
Sevier County High School coach Jonathan Brewer will be entering just his third year at the helm of the Smoky Bears track team this spring, but he’s been a major part in the development of a now successful pro-gram.
“Obviously, this is just my fourth year of coach-ing, so I’ve still got a lot to learn,” said Brewer, who spent his first season as an assistant track coach under Todd Loveday, current SCHS athletic director and former head track coach, before taking charge of the program. “But I’ve got a lot of great exam-ples here in front of me at Sevier County. A lot of these coaches have all been around for a very long time, and it’s easy to learn from guys like that. I feel privileged to be in this situation.”
Brewer credits Loveday for starting the foundation of the track team that’s now blos-somed into a state con-tender.
“Before Todd took over, kids just weren’t that interested in track,” said Brewer. “But when he took over, he got them interested and got the numbers up, and that’s when we first started to see some improvement with the track team.
“And since we’ve really started taking our train-ing seriously, we’ve just seen more and more suc-cess. We compete with and beat the teams now that used to blow us out of the water. And every year, we have more kids make it to the state championships.”
Last track season was the most successful the school has ever seen, with Jeremiah Foster finishing second at state in the 300-meter hur-dles and fourth in the 110-meter hurdles. The boys’ relay teams were also well represented at state, as they have been for the past five years. Matt Spangler and Aaron Pippin made state in the 100- and 200-me-ter events, Caleb Yates qualified for discuss and Alexis Conner for the long jump.
The entire SCHS boys team finished 12th in the state and narrowly missed a team trip to Murfreesboro with an upset bid that fell just short at sectionals — a three-point loss to Maryville.
“That would have been a huge upset (against Maryville), because Sevier County tradition-ally hasn’t been very dominant in track,” said Brewer. “But the past few years we’ve turned it around, and people are starting to look out for us now.”
And if not for a dropped baton at region-als, the girls relay team could have advanced to state last season too.
“So, we’re just start-ing to see a lot of suc-cess from a whole lot of people,” said Brewer.
After such a success-ful season, Brewer said he isn’t worried about a dropoff this year. In fact, he expects even more success.
“I think we have a real chance to compete for a state championship this year as a boys team,” said Brewer. “I think we have a real chance
at state, and a real good shot to win the region and sectional.
“And I believe our girls team is going to be much, much stronger this year.”
Besides track, Brewer is also an assistant with the football team coached by his father, Steve Brewer. Some may think that coach-ing under a successful and long-tenured father may be difficult, but to Jonathan Brewer, it’s been a blessing.
“I don’t look at it as being in (his dad’s) shadow,” said Brewer. “I don’t feel that at all. But if I had to be in a shad-ow, that’s a shadow I wouldn’t mind being in.
“I’m enjoying this time coaching with my dad, and not many people get a chance to do that. Dad has been a head coach since 1982, so he’s been around the block and he knows what he’s doing. He’s been a great men-tor. I mean, just take the father part out of it, and who better is there to learn from? He’s been successful, he’s had down years and he’s had to learn how to bounce back from those years. I’ve learned a lot from him.”
Brewer, who is still a newlywed after marrying his college sweetheart Jessica last June, is a 2001 graduate of SCHS. He went on to play football at Tusculum College for four seasons and stayed on with the school as a graduate assistant coach for a sea-son before coming back home to coach at Sevier County in 2006.
Although he is still young and admittedly has a lot to learn, he’s already found a coaching philosophy that has pro-duced positive results.
“What I have learned, even from my playing days, is that all kids are different,” said Brewer. “You can’t coach every-body the same. You’ve got to coach each kid individually, because what motivates one kid does nothing for another kid. You’ve got to take time to get to know your athletes and let them know you care about them. And you’ve got to learn what moti-vates each one of them, because that’s the only way you’re going to get things done.”
As an assistant on the football team, Brewer said he’s witnessed first-hand the benefits ath-letes gain from the SCHS track program, which is now an established speed training program.
“It all started about seven years ago when Dad went to a clinic and heard a speaker say, ‘you’re not serious about your football pro-gram unless one of your
coaches is also the track coach,’” said Brewer. “We want our football guys to be as fast as pos-sible, and I think it was very evident this year (with the school’s first-
ever 10-0 regular season mark) that we were just faster than everybody we played in our confer-ence.
“I think a lot of that goes back to track, because when a football player is in track, they start working on their speed in February as opposed to most kids who start working on their speed in July.
That’s about a six-month head start, and that’s a great advantage.”
But SCHS track isn’t just for football players.
“We have kids whose No. 1 sport is track, and they take it very seri-ously and take a lot of pride in it,” said Brewer. “We do too, and we owe the kids that ... to take it serious and give them our best too.”
Although he’s in an ideal situation at the moment, Brewer said he would like to follow in his father’s footsteps and be a head football coach someday, whether that be in Sevier County or someplace else.
“You never know what the Lord is going to do in your life, or where he is going to lead you,” said Brewer. “I love it here. This is where I went to school and this is where I played. My family is here, and I wouldn’t mind at all staying here.
“But you never know what opportunities are going to open, or where you will feel led to go. I’m enjoying where I’m at right now, that’s for sure. But I would absolutely love to be a head football coach somewhere, some day. I’ve got a lot to learn before that happens, but if the right opportunity opens up in the future, I would definitely love to explore it.”
Common Threads ◆ 5
5 Common Threads
Brewer findshis career’son right track
Cobey Hitchcock/The Mountain Press
Jonathan Brewer is short on experience, but long on desire and hardwork, as track coach at Sevier County High.
File
Jonathan played for his dad at SCHS, and now coaches with him at the same school.
File
Jonathan Brewer says he enjoys coaching alongside his dad, football coach Steve Brewer.
The Mountain Press ◆ Sunday, February 14, 2010
By COBEY HITCHCOCKSports Writer
GATLINBURG — For most people, skiing is a hobby or a passion. For a few others, it’s a way of life.
Thomas Diriwachter of Sasenwil, Switzerland, is one of those few. In fact, he was practically born with skis already attached to his feet.
“I grew up on a farm, and the only way to move around in Switzerland a lot of times was by skis,” said Diriwachter, the direc-tor of snow sports and a ski instructor for Ober Gatlinburg. “We went to school with skis on, and skiing was our main hobby.”
Diriwachter’s ski training and background is as old-school as it gets. In Switzerland, there is snow all year and much of the terrain is mountainous.
“In our youth, we would walk up one hill for about 10 minutes and then ski down another for about 10 sec-onds,” he said. “That’s how we went to school, and that’s how we got trained. There were no ski lifts, but it was a good time. Everyone met on the slopes, and it was fun even though it was a lot of physical work. It was all part of the game, and we taught ourselves.
“I didn’t even see my first ski lift until I was 15 years old.”
But from those rus-tic days on the farm, Diriwachter spent decades traveling the earth and pursuing his lifetime love of the snow sport.
“I’ve been out West (in the United States) ..., and I’ve skied pretty much all over the world, all over Europe, in China and even in Israel,” said Diriwachter, who first
spent a ski season as an instructor at Ober Gatlinburg in 1967-68. “And my big passion has always been powder ski-ing.”
Diriwachter origi-nally became a certi-fied ski instructor in Switzerland, but his season spent at Ober Gatlinburg in the 1960s led to his return to the local ski attraction 12 years ago to assume his present duties.
These days, Diriwachter — along with his wife of 40 years, Ellen, of New York — splits each year between Gatlinburg and Switzerland, but both places are known as home to the couple.
“People always ask me which place I like better, and I can’t ever really answer that question,” said Diriwachter. “I like both places.
“The Smoky Mountains are a beauti-ful place to live. People are very friendly, we have a lot of friends here and we feel very much at home. My wife and I like it (in Gatlinburg) very much.”
Ski season ends in March at Ober, and that’s when Diriwachter returns to his Swiss home. But he always returns to the Smoky Mountains between June and August to prepare the slopes and make improvements for the next ski season at Ober.
But even though he returns for work, Diriwachter leaves plenty of time to play in the summer and fall months.
“It’s great for rid-ing bicycles in the Smoky Mountains,” said Diriwachter. “The scenery is just so beautiful. You can go along creeks, through the forests and over the hills. The hills are different here than the rocky moun-
tains in Switzerland. Here, there are a lot of very gentle hills.
“I tell everyone look-ing to make a bike trip to come to East Tennessee first. It’s just ideal here. I’ve had many friends from Switzerland come here and just be
so amazed how much is offered here.”
Diriwachter, whose name translates to “Door watcher” because his ancestors from the middle ages used to guard the castle gates, said the current ski sea-son at Ober is the best
he’s ever seen due to cold temperatures and high amounts of pre-cipitation, allowing for a variety of skiing pos-sibilities.
“This winter we’ve had a little bit of every-
thing,” he said. “We’ve had many days of pow-der skiing because of all the natural snow, and snow conditions have been terrific this season with all eight slopes open all the time.”
6 ◆ Common Threads
6 Common Threads I
ree Internet Banking
Diriwachterfinds skiinga way of life
Cobey Hitchcock/The Mountain Press
Mercedes Green, a student at G-P, is a former pupil of Diriwachter who now is among the best skiers in the state.
Cobey Hitchcock/The Mountain Press
Thomas Diriwachter is at home on a set of skis, whether teaching at Ober Gatlinburg or participating in the sport just for fun.
Common ThreadsHealth/Community
Inside
A supplement focusing on the people of Sevier County n Sunday, February 21, 2010
A prescription for excellence Doctor finds rewards in volunteer work at Mountain Hope
Page 2
Dollywood’s right hand man Ex-reporter Owens enjoys working with news media
Page 3
Hail to the Chief McMahan puts own stamp on county’s jails
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By DeReK HODgeSStaff Writer
PIGEON FORGE — You might say Eric Brackins’ life has been all about circles. It was a big circle that brought him back to his home county to work and raise his chil-dren. Another circle put him in an office in the same building where he attended fifth grade. The final circle comes in the form of a ring
— a national championship ring, that is.
Though he doesn’t wear it often and there are probably plenty of folks who deal with the assistant city manager of Pigeon Forge who never realize he has it, Brackins is one of the small club of people who can claim to own an NCAA football ring.
“I don’t like to wear it around a lot,” Brackins says. “I don’t want to be ‘that guy’
whose just living off the football glory.”
While he may be humble about it, Brackins was actu-ally a member of the 1997 Michigan Wolverines foot-ball team that won the Rose Bowl.
“That was an unbelievable experience,” says Brackins. “I was redshirted that sea-son because I hurt my ankle before our first game, but I still got to dress out and
practice with everybody else and everything.”
The Rose Bowl is a long way from the local youth football leagues where Brackins got his start, serv-ing as something of a team mascot at the age of 4 for a team of older boys coached by father Randy Brackins, the chief of the Gatlinburg Police Department. As he got
His football days behind him,Brackins finds new career here
See brACkinS, Page 2
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Brackins wanted to work in municipal government, and he’s getting that chance with his job in Pigeon Forge.
The Mountain Press ◆ Sunday, February 21, 2010
By STAN VOITEditor
SEVIERVILLE — There was a time not too long ago when Max Bayard was making his living teaching math and science to high school students in a Christian school. But after five years of that, and absent the kind of fulfillment he wanted, he switched careers.
Bayard headed off to medical school at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. The people at Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic in Sevierville are awfully glad he made a career switch.
Almost every Friday, Bayard travels to the clinic on Prince Street, accompanied by resi-dents or medical stu-dents. Patients get to see mostly the residents or students, but Bayard is always there for consul-tation and advice.
Bayard suggested the partnership with Mountain Hope to the dean of the ETSU medi-cal school and volun-teered to make the trip down to ensure the pro-gram works.
“It’s extremely impor-tant,” Mountain Hope Director Mary Vance said. “It gives our patients increased access at no cost. Dr. Bayard is so wonderful.”
Bayard has a family practice in Johnson City and also teaches family medicine at the medical school. He has been a doctor since 1991.
ETSU is benefiting from the partnership with Mountain Hope. Six months ago when the vis-its to Sevierville began, Bayard and the students or residents found it rewarding, educational and another way to pro-vide outreach to the com-munities served by the university.
ETSU wants its medi-cal school graduates turned residents to see how things are in local communities. Mountain Hope serves working people of Sevier County who are uninsured mostly because they can’t afford it. Meeting and assisting those people is a way of outreach for the ETSU medical school.
There are six to 12 eligible students or residents on the list to accompany Bayard. He never has trouble finding volunteers. Like Connie Stoots, a third-year resi-dent and, like Bayard, a former teacher.
“I look forward to it,” she said of her trips to Sevier County, indicating it’s the kind of medicine she’d like to practice once she’s on her own. “Coming to Mountain Hope makes me feel bet-ter about what I want to do.”
Stoots taught special education and honors biology for 11 years before entering medical school at ETSU.
On a typical Friday, Bayard stays in a con-ference room and gets directly involved in only about half of the cases seen that day. The residents will seek his counsel or tell him their diagnosis or drug ther-apy. Bayard also makes any decision to admit a patient to the hospital.
The patients at Mountain Hope tend to be those who have waited a long time before decid-ing to see a doctor or get medical treatment. By the time they arrive at the clinic, they need intervention.
They pay what they can for the services. Vance recalled one regular patient who often brings lunch or vegetables to the staff and visitors to show his gratitude.
Stoots and Bayard say the attitudes of the patients they see at Mountain Hope are bet-ter than what they see in traditional medical prac-tices from patients who have insurance.
“Here we see a lot of working people who are not insured. There are no preconceived expecta-tions from the patients. Anything I do they are thankful for. Sometimes a patient who is insured has a preconceived expectation,” Stoots said.
Bayard says he can see the growing matu-rity of the residents and students who come with him to Mountain Hope. The experience lets them get involved in a commu-
nity and appreciate the impact medical care can have on average people.
Bayard, who was mar-ried with three children when he decided to quit teaching and go to medi-cal school, recalled years of being a Domino’s Pizza delivery guy to pay for college. His wife, who left teaching to become a nurse at the same time, worked at Domino’s on the days he didn’t, so his children would be cared for. It all became worth it with the fulfillment he now has in what he has chosen to do, and the outreach to Sevierville that he says is a highlight of his week.
Now there are six Bayard children.
older, Eric Brackins started playing ball, though not before getting over a very real fear he had of the game.
“There was a time when I didn’t know if I wanted to play football because of the physical contact,” Brackins admits with a laugh. “It wasn’t that I was afraid of it, I just didn’t think I’d like it.”
He got over that fear, though, and played in community leagues until he was old enough to play in school. That meant sticking with Gatlinburg teams, even after his fam-ily moved to Pigeon Forge. It was in that move that he attended a year in the old Pigeon Forge school in what is now City Hall.
“It’s kind of funny that I went to school here and now I have an office here,” Brackins says. “I can still remember where things were and what classes I had where.”
It was in school that Brackins got his first intro-duction to the Wolverines, through a friend who had a strange love of the distant team. Little did he know, Michigan would be among his final three options for college, having been recruited for his abilities on the football field by a number of schools.
After that redshirt cham-pionship season, Brackins played four years, often serving as a defensive starter. Two of those years he played with brother Phillip, who also came to wear the jersey of navy and maize.
“It was really cool to have both of us out on the field playing at that level,” Brackins says.
Brackins secured a degree on a course to be a teacher and was set to fin-ish his final year of work toward certification when fate stepped in. He got a call from the Carolina Panthers letting him know they had picked him up as a free agent.
Of course, as it often does, fate took another turn before Brackins hit the field as a pro. One of the previous year’s top draft picks had been cut loose from St. Louis after having some issues there. The Panthers signed the other guy and let Brackins know he wouldn’t be needed in the linebacker’s position.
“I was kind of in limbo then,” Brackins says. “Benny Hammonds invit-ed me to come back and help coach some at my alma mater, Gatlinburg-Pittman. That was fun because it gave me a chance to be back in the camaraderie of football.”
Still, it wasn’t exactly a career. Brackins real-ized the time might be right for him to explore a lifelong desire to get into municipal management.
“I had always had a desire to get into city government,” he explains. “That comes from my dad. He would come home at night and tell us all about what had gone
on and that just sounded so interesting to me. That interest just continued to grow.”
It also seemed the time was probably right to fig-ure out what his future was with Stacy Streibig, the Sevier County girl he dated in high school, then off-and-on in college.
“We figured we had made it this far, so we should probably stick together,” Brackins says with a smile. “If we sur-vived a long-distance rela-tionship, we figured we could make it.”
Brackins decided to make the distance shorter, moving to Louisville, Ky., to be near the woman he would soon propose to and get what to him is a more important ring: a wedding band. He took a job with the Kentuckiana Regional Planning and Development Agency that gave him his first real taste of what working for the public is like.
At the same time, he attended classes at the University of Louisville, eventually securing his master’s degree in public administration.
Soon, the couple had their first son, Samuel. As he grew, his parents knew they wanted him to be near the people and places that nurtured them as children.
“We started thinking we needed to get closer to home; closer to the grandparents and family,” Brackins says. “I started watching the newsletters
and things for jobs in the area.”
That eventually led him to a job as city manager for Norris, a post he held for two years.
“That was an enjoy-able job, but it was tough, too,” Brackins says. “After two years, I just kind of decided it was probably not the right place for me. I decided to move on.”
That’s when he got the offer for a job with the Tennessee Municipal League, a group that handles insurance issues for cities across the state. He had decided to take the position when he found out about an opening for an assistant city manager in Pigeon Forge.
“That was sort of a dream come true because it meant we would be back in Sevier County, so I couldn’t pass that up,” Brackins says.
Since taking the post just about a year and a month ago, Brackins says he’s settled in well. A second son — Tate — came along since they moved here, and Brackins says he’s learned a lot about city administra-tion since moving here.
“I really like being here,” he says. “I’ve been learn-ing from (City Manager) Earlene Teaster. It’s good to be able to learn from her because she has such great experience. She under-stands a good community approach for city manage-ment.”
brackinS3From Page 1
2 ◆ common Threads
2 Common Threads 2
Your Hometown Pharmacy (Locally Owned and Operated)
We Accept Most Insurance Plans Including TNCARE
Three Locations To Serve You:“We Specialize In Your Good Health”Location #1
Eric D Lee PharmD
Eddie Lewis PharmD
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Brackins proudly wears the 1997 national championship ring he earned while playing at the University of Michigan.
Doctor finds rewards involunteer work at clinic
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Dr. Max Bayard travels from Johnson City to Sevierville every Friday to assist at Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic.
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Dr. Bayard goes over a patient’s records with Connie Stoots, a resident physician who often accompanies Bayard on the trips to Sevierville.
Sunday, February 21, 2010 ◆ The Mountain Press
By DEREK HODGESStaff Writer
PIGEON FORGE — If you’re read a newspa-per article, seen a local television report or even glanced at a magazine spread about Dollywood in the last 11 years, chances are you’ve seen some of Pete Owens’ handiwork.
Owens is media rela-tions manager for the Dollywood Company, which means that while likely millions of folks have admired his cre-ations from television commercials to press releases, few know the behind-the-scenes staffer is responsible for much of what they know about the park.
While he spends his days now in the envi-able job of working at a theme park and hanging out with Dolly Parton, Owens came to the busi-ness from somewhat less glamorous beginnings.
A midwestern boy, Owens got his first taste of the news business in high school when he worked in his high school’s television pro-duction studio.
“That was a fairly rare thing at the time for a high school to have a facility like that,” Owens says. “I got some great experience and I really fell in love with that stuff.”
Owens simultane-ously served as the stu-dent host for the local Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon. It was between those two experiences that he decided on a career path: movie producer. Unfortunately, as it turns out, most of the Hollywood movies are shot, well, not in Kansas.
“My initial intention when I went to college was to go into film, but it became obvious there wasn’t a lot of film pro-duction going on in the area,” Owens jokes. “I ended up going into tele-vision news production more out of necessity than anything else. It became apparent that if I wanted to remain living in the Midwest and get a steady paycheck, the newsroom was my only option at the time.”
That career of chance took Owens through 15 years in newsrooms in Nebraska, Missouri and South Carolina before he ended up at WATE-TV in Knoxville. It was while he was working there that Owens’ fate took another turn.
“It was kind of ser-endipitous when I heard about the job at Dollywood,” Owens explains. “My contract was up at (WATE) and I was trying to figure out what to do.”
That’s when a friend of Owens’ who had been the publicist at the theme park let him know she had moved on to take a job at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. She urged Owens to apply for the job, but he balked.
It took several months of the seat’s staying open for her to finally convince him to talk to a Dollywood official – the current state Tourism Commissioner Susan Whitaker, who has a reputation for being fairly persuasive. Still, it took even her some time and a couple maneuvers before Owens was certain he could make a smooth transition from the news studio to theme park promotion.
“I had just attended (journalism institution) the Pointer Institute and I was all jazzed up about TV. Coming from that world, it seemed like a completely different thing to do media rela-tions,” Owens says. “As it turns out, it’s really not. We probably do more actual production here than I ever did at (WATE).”
After he took the gig, Owens says he still had to learn “an entirely new discipline,” moving from the role of reporter to source.
“What’s been a really neat opportunity for me is learning the theme park industry,” Owens says. “I had always liked theme parks, but I was not an aficionado or any-thing like that. I spent every minute I could on the Internet for the first few months just learn-ing everything I could about theme parks.
Now, I sit on the board of the National Roller Coaster Museum and the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attrations.”
In his personal life, Owens also fills a seat with another group of directors – those who help lead the East Tennessee Down Syndrome Awareness Group. It’s an organiza-tion Owens and his wife Cheryl got involved in after the birth of their second child, Rebekah.
Bekah, 8, as her
parents and big sister Farryn, 11, call her, was born just days after Owens took the job with Dollywood. In fact, it was during the first event with Dolly Parton that Owens staffed – the opening of Splash Country – that the fam-ily got the news Bekah might face some strug-gles in life.
“I didn’t believe it when they first told me she had Down syndrome. They did some testing and I got the phone call with the results dur-
ing the Splash Country event, so that’s always been kind of an interest-ing memory for me,” Owens says. “The only thing I knew about it at the time was the impres-sions I had from when I was a kid.”
Now, both the Owenses dedicate much of their time to educating parents whose children have also been given the diagnose on what to expect, some-thing they didn’t get from doctors and nurses they dealt with at the
time. They’re also push-ing both their girls to be everything they can be, no matter what handicaps others might see in them.
“We’re not putting up a ceiling for either of them. We push Bekah just as hard as Farryn and we’re amazed at what she’s done. She’s really taught us a lot,” Owens says. “We’re blessed to have both of them and I’m so proud of them.”
Common Threads ◆ 3
3 Common Treads 2
Sevier County Emergency Communications District
Emergency
Be Summoned For Police, Medical Or Fire Emergencies.
EMERGENCY
SEVIER COUNTY ENHANCED 911 SYSTEM HINTS REGARDING PROPER USAGE
REMEMBER
WHEN
DO NOT
REMEMBER: PICK UP THE PHONE
Vince Loveday E-911 Coordinator
245 Bruce St. P.O. Box 4572
Sevierville, TN 37864 428-5542 or 428-0310
SEVIER COUNTY ENHANCED 911 SYSTEM
On January 1, 2006 Sevier County Emergency Communications District Consolidated Three (3) of its Five (5) Public Safety Answer-ing Points (PSAP’s). Your Emergency calls for service is now being answered at two (2) primary locations in Sevier County: Pigeon Forge Police Dept. & Sevier County Sheriff. At this time the county has over 49,310 landline telephone subscribers that it serves. Sevier County 911 calls were up to 55,081 in 2009.
Ex-reporter Owens enjoys working with media
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
A former news reporter, Pete Owens now feeds the media in his role at Dollywood.
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Owens and his wife Cheryl are active in a Down syndrome awareness group. Their daughter Bekah, now 8, has Down syndrome.
The Mountain Press ◆ Sunday, February 21, 20104 ◆ Common Threads
4 Common Threads 2
By ELLEN BROWNStaff writer
Jana Chambers, direc-tor of Sevier and Cocke County health depart-ments, knows she has a lot of people counting on her — but she’s up for the challenge.
“It’s essential that we see the program continue to provide services — and in order to do that, sometimes we have to change how those ser-vices are provided,” said Chambers, who has been director for three years.
Chambers has her master’s degree in public health nutrition and has worked as chief clinical dietician at St. Mary’s Hospital in Knoxville. She has also served as Cocke County School Nutrition Program director and consultant for the state’s nutrition program.
“It’s a variety of
things,” she says of her current responsibilities. “There’s always the bud-get and personnel. I think the most challenging is personnel; it’s easy for people to get settled in on their specific area of discipline, and they don’t always see the big picture. But we have a great staff here — they have always risen to the occasion.
“The biggest chal-lenge for me personally has been learning all of the aspects of the health department. The Women, Infant and Children Supplemental Feeding Program is one of our biggest programs. There’s early screenings and diagnostic immuniza-tions, family programs, home visiting programs and STD programs done through the Centers for Disease Control. We also track any communicable diseases. A lot of people
don’t know that TB (tuberculosis) is still out there.”
Chambers and her staff are health educators who are involved in the com-munity, such as on health councils.
“As recently as H1N1, we’ve been doing public health emergency plan-ning. A lot of people have been surprised at the short time they had to wait for their H1N1 shots because there was so much talk in other states about long lines. It’s been rewarding to see to see the positive community response.”
Chambers is from the Newport area — or to be exact, Parrottsville, the third oldest city in Tennessee. She has a son who lives in Durham, N.C., who is a digital media artist, as well as a daughter in Atlanta who works in the educa-
tion field. She enjoys refinishing furniture and cross-stitching, and she is expecting her first grand-
child any day now.“Being able to provide
services to young children is probably one of the
most rewarding things about this job. So many people are thankful for that.”
Running 2 health departmentsa challenge for Jana Chambers
Curt Habraken/The Mountan Press
Jana Chambers has her hands full running health departments in Cocke and Sevier counties.
By BOB MAYESManaging Editor
PIGEON FORGE — During the second half of a recent performance at The Comedy Barn, Ron Jeffries sang a hand-clapping, foot-stopping rendition of “I’ve Been Everywhere.”
The Johnny Cash classic, at least in title, could have been describing 48-year-old Greg Franklin who, for the last three years, has been magician/comedian in resi-dence at the Fee-Hedrick theater, portraying the goofy “Farmer Klemm.”
A native of Kannapolis, N.C., Franklin has been per-forming professionally since 16 when he landed a part in the Paul Osborne Merlin Rainbow Mystery Cavern Show just down the road at the site of what is now Lost Treasure Miniature Golf.
Since then, he starred in his own magic show produced by Dallas-based Osborne at amusement parks all over America. He has owned his own magic store near Orlando, created a villainous professional wrestling character named “The Fabulous Mister Franklin,” and was appear-ing at the Carolina Nights Dinner Theater in Maggie Valley before coming here.
Hold on a second, you say. Before we go any fur-ther, you say, what’s this about a villainous profes-sional wrestling character?
Mister Franklin, who shares a hometown with the Dale Earnhardt clan — “my grandmother married into that family, so I guess I’m related to him 14 times removed,” he said with a laugh — prefers to talk about his present gig. But he will, if pressed, talk about his days in pro rasslin’.
“I was a big fan growing up,” Franklin said backstage after a recent performance. “I was living in Orlando and owned a magic shop with some other magicians. When that started to dry up, I invented Mister Franklin.
“I dressed the part, in tuxedo and tails. When my guy got into trouble, he would distract the referee, then I would get into the ring, produce a cane and hit our opponent over the head. Then, when the referee came around, my guy would have knocked the other guy out.”
His wrestling persona complemented his real job as a magician, never reaching the high-paying, jet-setting Vince McMahon-level. Rather, for 14 years, Franklin played venues that were normally within a three-hour drive of Kannapolis, which had again become his home base.
“I got to work with a lot of famous people, although, with the exception of Dusty Rhodes, they weren’t famous at that point,” Franklin said, mentioning the Hardy Boys, Hurricane
Harris and the Nasty Boys. “I worked for a lot of inde-pendent organizations, where the wrestlers were still learning.”
Asked if he ever felt threatened, Franklin said, “Oh, yeah. Many, many times. There were times when I feared for my life. When you do something (the fans) don’t like, they really get upset.”
That doesn’t seem to be the case in his present pro-fessional life.
Franklin, aka Farmer Klemm, is definitely a crowd favorite among fans of all ages. He works “the barn” before the evening shows, carrying a pet skunk (don’t worry, it’s not real), kibitiz-ing with kids and adults, posing for pictures, sign-ing autographs, recruiting children to help him with his act.
On this particular night, shortly after intermis-sion, Farmer Klemm was introduced by emcee Clyde
Foley Cummins. Farmer Klemm rolled his “Wiz Kote Machine” machine onto stage and beckoned seven children from the audience to help him demonstrate amidst hi-jinx that had the entire audience howling.
Borrowing a shoe in desperate need of cleaning from one of his helpers, he put it into the Wiz Kote Machine, which promptly exploded. A few minutes later, after more comedy and a few magic words, the
youngster who had lost his shoe reached into a bag and — voila! — there it was, bet-ter than ever.
Farmer Klemm’s per-sonna has characteristics of the late Jim Varney of “Ernest P. Worrell” fame.
“I admired him — and Minnie Pearl was another big favorite of mine,” Franklin, not Farmer Klemm, said. “My charac-ter is a goof.”
Is Farmer Klemm a comedian? Or is he a
magician?“He’s an entertainer,”
Franklin said.Franklin waxed philo-
sophical as he reflected on his career. He became interested in magic when he grandparents gave him a basic kit on his eighth birthday. His fam-ily moved to Greeneville when he was in middle school and he used to visit magic stores in Pigeon Forge before get-ting his driver’s license and winning a part in the show here at 16.
It was while working in that show that he met his present bosses, David Fee and Jim Hedrick, who were at the time fel-low performers. That was 1978. Fast forward through countless dozens of venues to the Carolina Nights Theater in 2006.
In early 2007, Franklin heard The Comedy Barn needed a magician tem-porarily. He came to work here for a month or so, went back to Maggie Valley, then was called back, tailoring his act for what the show needed.
“That’s when I came up with Farmer Klemm,” said Franklin, who now lives in Gatlinburg and co-owns a magic shop there with ventriloquist Stephen Knowles. “I fig-ured every ‘barn’ needs a good ‘farmer’ and every ‘farmer’ needs a good ‘barn.’
“I feel like I’ve come full circle. I’m working just down the street from where I got my start in the business. I certainly feel like I’m at home, but in the entertain-ment business, you never know.”
Farmer Klemm, The Fabulous Mister Franklin and Greg Franklin “have been everywhere.”
Or maybe it just seems that way.
Franklin’s ‘Farmer Klemm’ keeps ’em laughing
Staff
Franklin as Farmer Klemm really enjoys mixing it up with school children, as he gets to do from time to time.
Staff
Magician/comedian Greg Franklin’s career has come full circle. His role as Farmer Klemm at The Comedy Barn is a delight to audiences.
If you’re looking for Gene Spear, you can usually find him at Fort Sanders Sevier Nursing Home. He is there four or five days a week, visiting patients, reading the Bible to anyone who wants to listen and generally mak-ing life a little more pleasant and less lonely to the people who live there.
He points to a day 1992 when his life changed and he became more focused on help-ing others. That’s the day his beloved wife and best friend “went to heaven. I felt like I had to do something.”
It’s not as if he hadn’t been a godsend before. Childless, he and his wife often took in troubled children when they lived in Florida, and the Spear home became a refuge to kids who needed love and spiritual nourishment.
After his wife died and he moved to Sevierville to be closer to relatives, Spear became involved in the food bank, but found it too taxing on his body. Then he discovered a need for volunteers at the nursing home.
“He always has a smile on his face and gives without expecting anything in return,” said Pastor Don Grady, who leads a weekly Bible class at the nursing home. Grady says Spear will gather up residents from their rooms and help them to the Bible study class if they have expressed an interest in attending.
Nursing home staff member Stephanie Carr says Spear enjoys “spreading God’s word and visiting and praying with the residents. He has been a wonderful volunteer and a great friend to everyone in our facility and we feel blessed to have him in our lives.”
Spear says his efforts at the nursing home are a reward. When he sees patients in far worse shape than he’s in, he realizes his own problems are small in comparison.
Gene Spear is a true Unsung Hero.
Suzy Campbell’s first experience with the Sevier County Baseball Association, when her daughter was in T-ball, was not a good one. She took the little girl out of the program, but a couple of years went by and she wanted to play again. That’s when Campbell agreed to serve on the board.
These days she is vice president for softball. As part of her volunteer duties she handles scheduling, registration, uniforms — and a lot more. She also has helped implement rules she felt were needed, such as background checks on coaches and a requirement that all coaches be certified by attending classes on how to lead youth teams.
From December through July, Campbell is doing something related to the program. She pulls together everything for more than 70 teams, including ordering supplies and tro-phies for the teams.
When the season begins she is at the ball fields four nights a week, sometimes on Saturdays for tournaments and makeup games.
“For so many of these kids, this is the place they go after school. We have great coaches who care about them. It’s important to keep kids busy and involved in team sports,” she said.
“Suzy has handled and put together fundrais-ers, schedules, picnics and anything needed by around 900 kids and just as many par-ents,” said Melissa Messick, who nominated Campbell for the award.
This year Campbell’s daughter is on the Pigeon Forge High softball team. It means Campbell has no child in the youth program, yet has remained involved, with added duties of assisting the high school team raise money for a tournament trip to Florida.
By the way, Campbell is one of the owners of Mountain Breeze Motel in Pigeon Forge.
Campbell sees her role as giving back to a community that has been good to her and her family. She epitomizes the spirit of an Unsung Hero.
Donnie Day has a family and a job, but he also has a deep sense of civic responsibil-ity and commitment. Beyond caring for other people, he also wants to do his part to help the east side of Sevier County.
Day is a member of the Chestnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department, the closest one to his home at English Mountain. He is among the most active firefighters, especially when the department has its annual horse show. The department has 13 members, but thanks to generous commu-nity members it has eight trucks and a Cub Cadet for rescues.
Day is in the process of creating a motor-cycle club, and he has made a Web site to honor firefighters who have lost their lives in service to their communities. Unsungheroesmc.com will be the outgrowth of his motorcycle club. He has designed a patch, featuring a dalmatian dog with a Maltese cross, which he hopes will be worn by members of the club as it grows.
Day is the go-to guy in his community. For one elderly neighbor, he prepares a garden each year for her, tilling the soil and helping her have fresh vegetables to eat while she’s on a fixed income.
Day volunteered to drive a bus for students at Sevierville Primary to attend a benefit show at Smith Family Theater to help a family whose home burned down. The school offered to pay him for his time, but he refused.
The Days recently took in a young boy who was in a bad home situation and gained cus-tody of him.
“He has no idea we think of him the way he thinks of others, and this is why we think he is a true Unsung Hero to us and many, many people he comes in contact with every day,” said his daughters, Kayla and Peyton, who nominated their dad.
They’re right.
Common Threads ◆5Sunday, February 21, 2010 ◆ The Mountain Press
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Unsung HeroesDon Lundstrom’s volunteering goes back to
1992 when he helped out at Celebrate Freedom in Pigeon Forge. He served on the commit-tee that helped develop the senior center on Chapman Highway, and was named to the Board of Directors.
Lundstrom thought the senior center have a woodworking shop. He thought the shop had been promised when the center was being built, but it was not included.
So Lundstrom went to work to bring that shop to fruition.
“I went out and started begging money,” said Lundstrom. “I took whatever anyone would give me. One woman gave me a quarter.”
It took a year, but he collected close to $50,000, and the wood-working shop was built behind the center. There is a plaque on the wall honoring the man chief-ly responsible for it.
Twice a week Lundstrom drives over the center to open the shop and supervise it, offering assis-tance when needed to anyone who asks for it.
“Don realized the need for such a facility and spearheaded its establishment,” said John Patrick, who nominated his friend for the award. “The result is a carpenter shop available to all with every tool and piece of equipment necessary to build any wood object.”
Lundstrom served in World War II and then joined the Illinois National Guard. He and his wife moved to Sevier County in 1982.
In addition to his efforts at the senior center, Lundstrom has served on om the board of the Dr. Robert Thomas Foundation, chairing the Evening of Elegance one year.
“Don is proud of his military background and never misses a local military service,” Patrick said. “He is always present in uniform, still proudly saluting.”
Now 91, Lundstrom still gets a kick out of the woodworking shop and building his own cre-ations. That plaque on the wall signifies his con-tributions and his spot as an Unsung Hero.
Pam Wyatt’s best friend was Linda (she asked we not use her last name). Seven years ago Linda moved back to Kentucky. The two remained close.
Last May, Linda called Pam with bad news. They found a spot in her lung. Linda, divorced, came back to Sevierville to seek treatment.
“Basically at one point she said no to any more treatments,” Pam said. “There was already a spot on her brain and it was in her lymph node system. She said she’d rather spend quality tine with her children.” She has four kids, two of them ages 10 and 12.
Linda asked if Pam might be willing to come back to Kentucky to help her.
“My wife looked at me and said, ‘I can’t let her go through this alone,’” Pam’s husband Ron Wyatt said in nominating her.
On June 10, Pam and Linda went back to Kentucky, and Pam stayed at the home. She knew about cancer and its effects. She had watched her own parents die from the disease. Except for an occasional trip back home, Pam stayed with Linda for seven months. Pam was granted leave from her job as head of house-keeping at American Patriot Getaways.
At the same time Pam’s own brother was diagnosed with cancer back in Tennessee.
Linda died Jan. 7, with Pam at her side. The night before, she had said goodbye to her chil-dren.
“I told her not to be scared. Now is your time. It was time to let go.”
“She has sat at the bedside of other rela-tives and family friends who have passed away, and she will always be the one people turn to because she has been gifted by God with the ability to keep her wits about her, even when everyone around her is losing theirs,” Ron Wyatt said.
Pam Wyatt is a deserving Unsung Hero.
To be a scoutmaster means investing time in meetings, planning camping trips and encour-aging boys to be their best and have pride in achievement. Mark Walbolt believes in the Boy Scouts and has invested almost two decades in helping it be strong.
Walbolt is scoutmaster of Troop 111 in Gatlinburg. His father was his scoutmaster. He’s carrying on a family tradition, since his own son Alan is a troop member who just earned his Eagle rank.
“If you love your city or town or wherever you are, you should participate in some-thing,” he said. “I love Gatlinburg and all of its people.”
Walbolt also vol-unteers to assist in city activities. He has helped with the Gatlinburg Fourth of July and Christmas parades and assisted on chores with the Dolly Parton parade to kick off Dollywood’s season in Pigeon Forge. He’ll handle balloons, control parking, “whatever they need me to do,” he said. “All they have to do is give me an assignment.”
Walbolt is a big supporter of Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic. Each year he helps organize Clips for the Cure, a fundraiser for the clinic held at Shear Envy.
Jan Lapides, who nominated Walbolt, said in the eight years she has known him, he “has volun-teered countless hours for the betterment of our community.”
She noted all the campouts he organizes for the Boy Scouts each year, teaching the boys about conservation and recycling while instill-ing a sense of pride in their community and accomplishments,
“If he is asked, he gives 110 percent,” Lapides said. “He is someone who builds people up. He encourages all that he comes in contact with to be grateful.”
Walbolt has four children. His two girls are scouts as well, as were his own brothers.
Mark Walbolt believes in giving back, and that’s a key ingredient in an Unsung Hero.
Mark Walbolt Pam Wyatt Don Lundstrom
Gene Spear Suzy Campbell Donnie Day
How they were selectedAll Unsung Heroes were nominated by readers of The Mountain Press, who sent in information
about their nominees and why they should be chosen, Fron among those nominations, the newspaper selected the recipients of the award. Each Unsung Hero will receive a framed certificate as well as the gratitude of the community for what they do.
The Mountain Press ◆ Sunday, February 21, 2010
By JEFF FARRELLStaff writer
Deputy Chief Larry McMahan has worn about every hat you can in local law enforcement.
He’s been a patrol offi-cer, a detective, a shift supervisor, and now he’s serving as the supervisor of the county jail.
“(Then Sheriff) Carmen Townsend was the first one to pin a badge on me in 1980,” McMahan recalled.
After a few months, he moved from the sheriff’s department to Gatlinburg Police Department, where he was a patrol officer from 1980 until 1990. He came back to the sheriff’s department, where he’s remained since, in 1990. He was a patrol captain, then a detective captain.
He also helped start the county’s sex offender registry when the state-wide database started.
When current Sheriff Ron Seals took over after the death of Bruce Montgomery, he asked McMahan to take over his old role as deputy chief.
That was a major change for McMahan. In Sevier County, patrol officers rarely start out working in the jail. He went through certifica-tion as a corrections officer after getting the promotion.
It was, he said, a whole new mindset.
“I didn’t know any-thing about corrections,” he said. “I brought (sus-
pects) in, dropped ’em off, and left.
“It was a lot to learn.”So he took his time
learning about the responsibilities, from what his personnel are trained to do by taking the certification course himself, to talking to the experienced super-visors already working there.
After a while, he began putting his own stamp on the department. He changed the uniforms, something he said the jailers had been asking for.
He privatized their medical program, con-tracting it out instead of having a doctor on staff.
He’s also had to learn how to manage a budget for a major facility — two facilities, since the new minimum security facility on Old Knoxville Highway opened after he took over.
The county is already finishing up an expan-sion at the new facility, as the jail population continues to grow.
Growth overall has been a theme throughout his time in the depart-ment. When he started, the total staff at the department was 25 peo-ple. Now, he manages 79 just at the jail, and he’ll soon add a few more for the expansion.
Managing the jail, of course, isn’t just about keeping up with his personnel. He’s also got to oversee the inmates. It’s a fine line for his officers to walk, he said,
between seeing to it that a building full of accused or convicted criminals stays in line and seeing to it their rights aren’t violated.
“I don’t want my peo-ple to mistreat anybody, but they won’t be run over, either,” he said.
In some ways, he said, it’s like being principal of a school – but the people he disciplines are
adults, and some of them are in there because of violent tendencies.
“Consistency is the key,” he said. ‘Consistency and accountability.”
Working at the jail overall, he said, can be an unappreciated job even among people in law enforcement. As he said himself, officers’ knowledge ends when
they drop a suspect off at booking.
He’s worked to get the sheriff’s department to start looking more at corrections officers as potential patrol officers when there’s an opening.
He’s also invited some deputies who seemed too unappreciative to work a shift at the jail.
“I really appreciate the corrections staff,” he said. “I think they do a really thankless job.”
6 ◆ Common Threads
6 Common Threads 2
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AUTO PARTS
McMahan putsown stamp oncounty’s jails
Curt Habraken/The Mountain Press
Larry McMahan has made some changes at the county jails since he took over management of them four years ago.