Metro Pulse/Cover/Coal Mining (part 1)

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Cover Story

The Coal Creek War
Anderson County was home to Tennessee's first mine uprising

B. Ray Thompson made a lot of money in the mines. Some of it is still around.

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

The classic indictment of coal mining companies is that little of the money they make stays in the community or even the state that produces the coal. Even the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, one of the dominant forces in early Tennessee mining, was based in New York.

But there are exceptions. Knoxville's biggest coal magnate was a native East Tennessean, and you can find his legacy all over town.

B. Ray Thompson was born in Scott County just after the turn of the century, the son of a sawmill operator in Elgin (a place that Thompson liked to say was so deep in the hills, "sunlight had to be piped in"). After finishing school, he worked briefly for his father before joining the Garland Coal Company as a salesman. He worked his way up to president of that firm, and then left to form his own companies, which eventually coalesced under the name Elk River Resources. Thompson owned mines and timber operations in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, at one time employing 10,000 people and producing as much as 4.5 million tons of coal a year.

Throughout, he lived in Knoxville. Although he hadn't attended the University of Tennessee, he became one of its biggest benefactors. Among his donations was $5 million toward the sports complex that bears his name: Thompson-Boling Arena. (The fanfare over the arena's construction didn't anticipate that it would eventually be considered one of the ugliest buildings in Knoxville.) His other major bequest was the Thompson Cancer Survival Unit. It was dedicated to his second wife, Mary Louise Moore, who died of cancer in 1953. Subsequently caught up in controversy about its management and billing practices, the center is part of the Covenant Health consortium.

Thompson sold Elk River in the late 1970s to the Sun corporation for $300 million; the Knoxville branch is now known as Sun Coke Company. Not all of his business dealings were so successful. When United American Bank failed in the early 1980s, Thompson was the firm's largest shareholder. He lost a reported $40 million in the collapse. He was still solvent enough, however, to make Forbes' 1984 list of the 400 wealthiest Americans. The magazine estimated his net worth at $160 million.

Thompson died of cancer in October 1987 at the age of 81. Some of his fortune went into the Thompson Charitable Foundation, which has provided money for health care and other services in rural Appalachia. His widow Lucille, who died shortly afterward, also established a foundation, which funds local educational and cultural organizations.