by Jack Neely
If you'd polled Knoxvillians a year ago about who had the best job in town, many would have answered "Bo Townsend." In his 10 years as director of Ijams Nature Center, he saw the wooded grounds expand to 80 acres and a staff of 14. Just a couple of years ago, Ijams built a large, handsome new facility that has hosted important political meetings and dramatic shows. Townsend led annual volunteer drives to clean up Knoxville's riverbanks, which had never looked as good as they would during his tenure. Townsend's opinions about conservation and water quality were respected throughout the City County Building, and sometimes feared.
His quiet, sunlit office was lined with animal bones and plants and other artifacts he could readily tell you about. Just outside his office, soft paths led through wildflower fields and woods, down to a boardwalk along one of the prettiest parts of the river, where Townsend kept a wary eye out for otters and could occasionally be persuaded to take a canoe trip. Bo Townsend was Knoxville's closest equivalent to Tarzan.
Today, Townsend wears a tie and an ID badge with his name and photograph on it. He works inside now, four long miles downriver from Ijams in the noisy, fluorescent-lit hallways of UT hospital. We offer to treat him to lunch anywhere in town, but he doesn't have much free time these days. We meet at the hospital cafeteria. Carrying a baked potato on a tray, he stands in line behind nurses' aides in hairnets. "Maybe I should have held out for Chesapeake's," he says.
He carries three books: one is a leather-bound Oxford Bible with the Apocrypha; one is a large paperback, Handy Concordance; and one, in his hip pocket, is the Book of Common Prayer. Bo Townsend's ID badge says CHAPLAIN.
In the Episcopal church, his official designation is "aspirant." At 43, Townsend has begun a four-year regimen that he hopes will result in his ordination as an Episcopal priest.
This isn't Townsend's first radical career shift. Born in Knoxville, he graduated from Webb School and attended the University of the South at Sewanee before transferring to UT, where he studied horticulture and landscape design. He ran his own landscaping business for about three years before he lost interest in it. Then he took a job at the Knoxville Glove Co., the South Knoxville industry founded by his dad, the late Rodman Townsend, Sr. "It was a big change, landscaping to industrial manufacturing. I learned a lot," at the glove factory, he says, "but it wasn't a good fit for me." He remained at the family business for seven years. It ended when the Ijams job opened up.
Along the way, he married an attractive lawyer; he and his wife, Beth, have two children, now in grade school. The Townsends have recently been making improvements to their home in Sequoyah Hills, adding a backyard swimming pool.
If all goes well, they'll be leaving it all behind—along with Beth's successful law practice—to move to Austin, Texas, where Bo hopes to enroll in the seminary next year to begin a three-year course to earn his Masters in Divinity.
For many people, a job as director of an institution like Ijams would have seemed the capstone of a great career. But Townsend's in a different place now. "Looking back, it couldn't have been a better training experience for me," he says. "I feel strongly that that helped prepare me for what I'm about to do. I made a lot of good connections. And running a non-profit is a little like running a church."
His career shift came as a surprise to many of his friends and neighbors, some of whom didn't even know he was a churchgoer. However, it almost happened much earlier.
"I've thought about it most of my life," he says. Back in 1988, Townsend's minister, Rev. Jim Sanders of St. John's Cathedral, called Townsend in for a private conference. "I thought I'd done something really bad," he recalls. Sanders proposed the seminary for Townsend then. "I spent a year praying and studying. I decided at that time it wasn't for me.
"It used to be that I worried about being unworthy," he adds. "I'll never be worthy, but now I'm at least ready. All through my life, things have been leading me to this point."
Four months of hospital work is a requirement of the Episcopal seminary; it's usually done after the first year of school, but Townsend decided to get it out of the way first.
It might seem remarkable, considering he hasn't been wholly accepted yet; the Episcopal bishop, Rev. Charles vonRosenberg, hasn't yet approved Townsend's venture—he'll make his decision in November. It's a long process. If Townsend earns his masters by 2003, he'll return to an East Tennessee church as yet to be assigned by the bishop; possibly, but not necessarily, in Knoxville. "I'm open to anything," he says. Then he'll spend a year as a "deacon."
If all goes well, when Townsend's 48 he'll be a full Episcopal minister.
In the meantime, he's got a tough job few would envy, working with patients under stress of serious illness and injury. "Our purpose is to administer care and concern," he says. "You can administer care in a lot of ways: share your belief, share your experience, help people in their journey." Hospital chaplains do help those with terminal illnesses, but also find themselves helping those who are under emotional duress. "Sometimes it's a son, wife, daughter, or husband of a patient who needs the help," Townsend says. "I'm impressed with people who have a sense of peace with death. They have at times been more comforting to me than I have been to them."
He smiles a lot more than he did at Ijams. He seems, somehow, younger.
"I wasn't free to say what I wanted to say," he says. "I had a responsibility to the park, and it wasn't run by or against anybody or anything."
In some ways he hasn't changed. With a canoeist's chest and shoulders, Townsend still seems like a guy who'd rather be outside.
"I'm a little uncomfortable saying, 'I did this, I did that.' I'm proudest of the fact that the community was supportive of what we do. That's the real success, that the community supports environmental education. The building's great, but I think we took some steps in improving the quality of the environment in East Tennessee. If you fall in the river at Ijams today, you don't worry about disintegrating or contracting some horrible disease. I'm not sure you can say that about farther downstream, though."
It's clear he thinks Ijams' work is not nearly done. Talking about what remains, he seems like his old self. "I do think the rivers and creeks, the environment in general, needs a lot more attention than it's getting. People around here are complacent. They've got it good, in a lot of ways. I guess they don't understand what is, to me, the severity of the situation. I wish there were more of a sense of urgency in the community. I'm ashamed most of our creeks are posted as 'Unfit for human contact.'"
Then there's Turkey Creek, the major West Knoxville commercial development that was perhaps Knoxville's biggest environmental controversy of recent years—and which was, for a time, also to include an Ijams-administrated satellite park. That apparently won't happen, but while negotiations were underway some questioned Townsend's motives.
"I know some people think I was paid off or something," Townsend says. "But our job is education. We are not an activist organization. It would be inappropriate to go out and attack" any given development.
"Of course, I'd rather save the whole 300 acres," he says. "But that would have taken proper planning, which should have been done 20 years ago. It's unfortunate, yes—but it's a complicated issue." He has hopes that the developer will establish an anti-siltation system that will improve Turkey Creek's water quality.
He says Ijams' new director, Diane Madison is "doing a great job. She's just what the Nature Center needs, long term."
Today, Chaplain Townsend's job is no less difficult but perhaps more straightforward. He is assigned the Six East—the oncology floor, where patients are treated for cancer—and the open-heart unit. It's just noon, but, he says, "I'll be on call all night. A lot of it's making the rounds, and I go on my own. We're available to staff, too. Sometimes the staff needs help with something.
"We make our rounds, talk to people. There's no right answer. You will encounter as many different aspects of faith as there are people. It's dangerous to go in with a preconceived notion of how to respond to it."
Townsend calls himself an "Episcopalian Evangelist." He says it with a wry smile, admitting it's a bit of a contradiction in terms. "Episcopalians tend to be known for being more reserved," he says. "As an Episcopalian and as a Christian, I don't think it's necessarily appropriate to walk into a room of someone who's Jewish and say, 'I'm here, and Christ is here to help you.' But if they want to be closer to God, and closer to Christ, I'll do what I can to help.
"Obviously it's a big change in my lifestyle. People are wondering why I would leave Sequoyah Hills, where I've lived most of my life, and how my wife could leave her law practice.
"People say, 'I admire your courage.' But I'm just doing what I'm led to do. It hasn't been, to me, much anxiety. I feel very good."
He'd rather draw attention to his family's sacrifices. "My wife's not just following me—we made this decision together.
"A lot of people will look at me and say, 'What a nut!' But maybe I can be a catalyst. I've gotten people thinking about their own lives."
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