As we get ready for the election and for Halloween and wonder whether we will be tricked or treated next Tuesday depending on our political persuasions, some recent local deaths jumped out at me.
The first was former Community Foundation director Pete Cooper, who died on Oct. 12 from complications from pancreatic cancer at age 75. I had an opportunity to interview him in January 2023 when he was getting ready to be presented the prestigious Kiwanis Club of Chattanooga’s Distinguished Service Award.
I had never actually met him before then, but I ended up going to his longtime family home on Lake Chickamauga off Highway 58 and had an enjoyable talk with him.
He traced his life from growing up in a middle-class family in North Chattanooga as the son of a DuPont engineer to his graduation from Chattanooga “City” High in 1966, to attending Ohio State University. He then discussed working for American National Bank and its charitable giving department before becoming the first director of the Community Foundation and expanding it.
He also talked about being inspired working under American National Bank executive Scotty Probasco and his enthusiastic manner, as well as the giving heart he noticed that Chattanooga in general had, and he was not just referring to the prominent families. I was also impressed at how he said he tried to have an extended family dinner every Sunday, and he had a long table set in a big family room to prove his point.
Another Chattanoogan I had always wanted to interview was Charles Morgan, the former Howard High athletic standout who briefly played football at Tennessee and died on Oct. 10 at age 62. But I never did get a chance to talk with him.
He had arrived at UT in the fall of 1980 as a less-heralded-but-still-capable football freshman with the legendary Reggie White. He somewhat surprisingly captured the first big attention of the two when he was named player of the game for his sterling play in an Alabama loss that year.
And then just a few days later, he had quit the team, supposedly after being unexpectedly criticized for some aspect of his play by the hard-driving coaching staff under Johnny Majors as Tennessee football was in a slow rebuilding process.
I never heard the full story, but I always thought the whole situation was unfortunate. I do not know if he regretted his decision or stood by it, but I have always thought most young people eventually regret such decisions, whether it involves leaving a sports team or a challenging college academically. I know I wish I had tried to play one more year of football at Georgia as a walk-on many years ago, as one or two other players who were not doing any better than I was on the freshman team ended up getting to play on the varsity there or at other schools.
But Mr. Morgan apparently did not quit at life, as he went on to an evidently admirable career working with youngsters with the Boys Club.
I also saw where noted art dealer and developer Frank Fowler died. From the Fowler Brothers furniture family, he and I shared the same alma maters of Bright, Baylor and the University of Georgia. Although I never met him, I loved his unique obituary discussing how he enjoyed fraternity life at Georgia and the details of his many accomplishments.
He was also uniquely the dealer for art works of the Wyeth family of painters. As an interesting fact, I this fall am still getting to teach an introductory journalism class at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and I learned one of my students had lived at one point with his family in one of Andrew Wyeth’s familiar homes in Pennsylvania near the scenes of some of his famous paintings.
And I also have another student this semester who went to Columbine High in Colorado, where the 1999 shooting that is a somber part of American history took place.
As I have mentioned before, I consider myself fortunate that I periodically seem to get students with unusual storylines, and just blessed that I get to teach college students.
Sometimes people do a double take when I tell them I have driven twice a week during the fall and winter semesters in recent years to teach a class or two up at UT, not UTC. I feel quite honored and am fully enjoying it after first getting the opportunity when I was living in Knoxville.
The only fact I do not enjoy is that I am always fearful of getting caught in traffic on Interstate 75 and will have to miss my class as a result.
Construction crews are doing some work on the Tennessee River bridge over I-75 up in Loudon County, and it has been down to one lane on the southbound side in recent days, causing a jam. I got delayed for an hour before realizing taking Highway 58 or Highway 27 back might be better.
For whatever reason, the two drive-through lanes at Chick-fil-A seem to merge into single-lane traffic more quickly than they do at an Interstate construction site. And you get a treat at the end, too!
Speaking of UT, I went up on Sunday with friend and UT alumnus Steve Smalling to see the Indiana and Tennessee men’s basketball teams meet in an exhibition basketball game. While I love UT as a university and am thankful for my opportunities there, I still of course pull for Georgia in sports and, when it comes to basketball, North Carolina and Indiana, too.
So, it was quite fun to see the Indiana men just a little over 90 minutes – depending on construction – from home. Although the Hoosiers have only sporadically been at their traditional upper place in basketball history over the last 25 years, their fans still get excited for basketball, and I was impressed at how many Hoosier fans were there.
Although it was just an exhibition, it seemed to have the atmosphere of a regular season game, even though you could tell the players were not quite in mid-season form. Indiana was able to win, 66-62, in front of a road crowd, causing the Vol fans to be disappointed and the Hoosier ones happy or at least hopeful about an elusive return to greatness that Tennessee basketball has been enjoying under Rick Barnes.
However, as soon as everyone began walking out afterward to the sentimental sounds of the UT pep band playing “Tennessee Waltz,” everyone remembered that it was just an exhibition! So, all feelings were tempered except for those of us who had been entertained with the game.
Indiana fans have enjoyed a rare, good season in football, too, as have such other non-recent powers as Vanderbilt, Army, Navy, and Illinois.
For me, it was quite a college-related weekend, as Friday night my wife, Laura, and I went down to spend the night in Athens, Ga., before a Saturday lunchtime reunion related to her mother’s family. We decided to stay Friday night at the Georgia Center on campus and enjoyed it.
We got settled into our room and then went and ate at DePalma’s Italian restaurant in downtown Athens on Broad Street. We walked in and told the person we had two, and he asked if we had reservations.
Oops, we did not even think about that, we told him, but he found a remaining table or two for us, and we enjoyed the meal. Georgia did not have a home game that weekend, but I was amazed how crowded downtown was with activity. And I don’t think it was just college kids going to bars.
It actually rivaled downtown Chattanooga’s activity of going to restaurants or Knoxville’s in the Market Square area on a Friday night. And like in Chattanooga, there does not seem to be a visitor-friendly parking system.
After we got back to our room in the mid-century building designed by the same Atlanta architects-- Toombs, Amisano, and Wells – that I believe also designed the threatened former Doctors Building on McCallie Avenue, I decided to walk a few feet away to the area around my old dorm, Myers Hall. I had happily lived there near the end of my college career in the early 1980s and loved it. Yes, the fact that it was coed was nice for this shy and naïve student after coming from all-boys Baylor.
I was enjoying reminiscing as I walked around the quad that surrounded the dorm. I glanced at the old building that had been added onto on one side and thought of when I was a young student going in and out. The only problem was that I was now in my-mid 60s and I started wondering what it might look like in this time of heightened security for an older guy to be standing around looking nostalgically at the outside of his old dorm. So, I left after a few quick and happy minutes of reminiscing.
After going to bed in the top of the 10th inning of the World Series – and missing the grand slam and winning home run by former beloved Atlanta Brave Freddie Freeman in the Dodgers’ dramatic victory – I got up the next morning and took a jog.
I enjoyed running around the south end of the campus up to Sanford Stadium and past the dorm again and enjoying other sights. As a former geography major, I also passed the Geography and Geology building – also designed by the same firm that also designed the nearby science buildings and the Doctors Building.
I did realize that one road that went past the pharmacy school and Plant Sciences Building is no longer a road but is now a grassy greenway. As someone who loves greenways and grassy areas to jog on to protect my shins and joints, I loved it.
I also walked with my old college friend from Athens, Dave Williams, and got a picture of the window of my old room, this time not worrying if anyone saw me.
All the changes and new construction did make me realize I have been out quite a while!
And speaking of geography and my connection to both Georgia and Tennessee as states, I was driving through the heart of Georgia this summer and saw Peach County, and I started wondering what all counties of the 159 in Georgia are not named for individual people.
With the help of Mr. Wikipedia, I found 11 counties that are either named for places, collective groups of people, or even concepts. They include Chattahoochee, Chattooga, Cherokee, Coweta, Liberty, Muscogee, Oconee, Peach, Rockdale, Seminole, and Union.
Since Tennessee is known for having some towns named after famous cities, I looked those up, too. The ones I found that have the same names as well-known metropolises or even countries in the world past or present include Alexandria, Athens, Bristol, Carthage, Dover, Dresden, Kingston, Lebanon, Manchester, Medina, Memphis, Milan, Moscow, Paris, Petersburg, Sparta, and Winchester.
And Tennessee towns with more famous counterparts in the United States include Charleston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Portland, and Savannah. And then there is Columbia, as in Washington, D.C.
While I know the Volunteer State cities will likely be pulling for Tennessee and the Georgia counties for Georgia when Tennessee and Georgia meet in football on Nov. 16, I also wondered how these communities and counties would be voting in the upcoming election!
Yes, we are in multiple seasons right now – from football to Halloween, to politics, to even saying goodbye to friends and loves ones with All Saints Day around the corner!
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Jcshearer2@comcast.net