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Seven Days

Wednesday, Sept. 12
"When I heard about it, I went to my church to pray, and then I came over here to give blood. I'd been standing around for a while and realized the staff needed help because so many other people had showed up, too."
—Knoxville lawyer Herb Moncier, volunteering at Medic Regional Blood Center

Thursday, Sept. 13
"It really created a domino effect. We still feel strongly that football games can help in the healing of our nation and get some sense of normalcy back, but it just was the overwhelming consensus of the other sports organizations. For us to be the only conference out there playing, it would have sent a message that we didn't want to communicate."
—SEC spokesman Charles Bloom

Friday, Sept. 14
"Some flights are still canceled. Others may be arriving or leaving at a different time than they would under normal circumstances."
—Becky Huckaby, spokeswoman for McGhee Tyson Airport

Sunday, Sept. 16
"This past week has been a time when a lot of us are searching, a lot of us are asking, 'Where is God in this time of terrible disaster?' We're looking for a God that is far, far away. And our God is right here. He's here grieving with the people who suffer."
—Rev. Ragan Schriver, All Saints Catholic Church on Cedar Bluff

Monday, Sept. 17
"We will punish our enemies. We're going to have to make some sacrifices."
—Sen. Fred Thompson, visiting Knoxville

Tuesday, Sept. 18
"We've given [U.S. intelligence services] at least half a trillion dollars over the last 10 years and we find out more from CNN and the media than we find out from them."
—Congressman Jimmy Duncan, speaking in Maryville

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
Racheff Gardens in Lonsdale is one of Knoxville's best-kept secrets—and the kind of place anyone seeking a little serenity over the past week would have been happy to find. If they did, one of the things they'd have seen is this bell, part of the gardens laid out by iron works executive Ivan Racheff in the 1940s. The first correct identification came from Joan Western of Kingston, who notes, "The garden is open only weekdays, so it's difficult to visit. But anyway, it's a lovely place." Yes, it is. And for her response, Joan gets something that might help with her own gardening: a copy of the 2002 Southern edition of The Old Farmer's Almanac. May it help in all seasons.

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
Monday, Sept. 24
2 p.m.
City County Bldg.
400 Main St.
Regular monthly meeting

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL PRIMARY ELECTION
Tuesday, Sept. 25
8 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Citywide polling places
If you're registered, vote! You can be informed of your polling place by calling 215-2480 before election day. Vote! Got that?

UT PRESIDENTIAL SEARCH FORUM
Tuesday, Sept. 25
9:30 a.m.
University Center Ballroom
Cumberland Avenue
Head consultant Bill Funk and the UT search team will make presentations and take public comment.

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Thursday Sept. 28
7 p.m.
Cokesbury Center, Room 400
9900 Kingston Pike
Commission will discuss land use and development along the Fox Road corridor.

An Angel Among Us

Fireman who won now is lost

The big jar marked "Engine #3, Ladder 12," on the counter of the Vol Market #3 on Western Avenue is filling up with money. Behind the counter, a broken-hearted Alan Frye is talking about going to get a new tattoo.

Frye won $40,000 as runner-up in the Fox TV reality-based series Murder in Small Town X. He survived until the final episode, which came down to a contest between two likable young men—the easy-going blond Tennessean and a New York fireman of Puerto Rican descent with an incandescent smile.

The two became fast friends—Angel Juarbe nicknamed Frye "Country" and taught him to dance the salsa; Frye told Juarbe stories about his homies, and invited him for a long weekend in Knoxville, much of which Juarbe spent sitting on an upturned milk crate (which he said was a New York tradition) out front of the Vol Market, sipping sweet tea, signing autographs and talking to folks.

One of the people Juarbe came to town to see was Porter Jones, a 60-year-old Vol Market regular who had been disabled by a stroke, and whose vocabulary was limited to what Frye describes as a few choice words. "Angel told me he wanted to come to Knoxville and meet Porter," Frye said. Porter and Juarbe had their pictures taken together.

Two weeks ago, Juarbe collected his prizes—$250,000 and a Jeep Liberty. He gave the Jeep to his dad. He told everyone that he had no intention of quitting his job, which he loved.

On Sept. 11, Juarbe was on duty at the Chelsea Fire Station in lower Manhattan, just blocks from the World Trade Center. A Fox TV producer gives this account on the Fox web site:

"Angel was helping to evacuate people from the twin towers when the tower he was in—the first of the two towers to fall—collapsed. He was—according to reports—anywhere from the first floor to the fifth floor."

Juarbe's company had been ordered out of the unstable building, but he went back to retrieve rappelling equipment, and he stayed to help some injured people who were trapped inside.

The producer says his lasting image of Angel is from an episode of the show when he scooped up a fellow cast member who had become hysterical after a stressful scene and carried her to safety.

"As she sobs, he soothes her panic by simply saying over and over, 'It's Angel. It's Angel,' and he carries her off to safety. In his career, how many times had Angel given comfort to strangers with those simple words?"

Back in Knoxville, as Bloody Tuesday wore on, Angel's friends became more and more anxious as they heard reports of lost fire fighters. Porter Jones, watching the TV coverage, suffered an aneurysm and died. It was that kind of terrible day.

"If I had to lose to anybody, it was an honor to lose to Angel Juarbe," Frye said. "We built a real friendship." Frye took his friend to Meadowview Baptist Church, where Juarbe left a visitor's card asking for continued prayers "...for firemen across the country who risk their lives every day to help others."

There is to be a memorial service for the rescue workers this weekend in New York City. The cast and crew from Murder in Small Town X will be there. Alan Frye will be sporting a new tattoo.

A halo encircling the numbers 911.

—Betty Bean

Moving Slowly

Neighborhoods struggle to put the brakes on traffic

Despite the South's reputation as enjoying a leisurely daily pace, Southerners are actually more likely to drive at high speeds through residential neighborhoods, according to national studies conducted by traffic engineers. Here in the Knoxville area, we are no exception. A combination of '60s-style urban planning that still doesn't require developers to put in sidewalks, wide subdivision streets, and lax anti-speeding enforcement have meant that in many area neighborhoods, residents are afraid to walk to their own mailboxes for fear of being mowed down by a car or truck racing past their homes.

In a few Knoxville neighborhoods, however, frustrated residents have finally demanded and received some assistance in attempting to slow local drivers down via new "traffic calming" initiatives by both city and county engineering departments.

According to Cindy Pionke, Knox County's Director of Planning and Development, she's been hearing from various individuals and neighborhood groups that they wanted something done about speeding in residential areas since her days with the Metropolitan Planning Commission in the early '90s. "The Sheriff's Department has tried to be responsive to this issue," Pionke says, "but many times they just didn't have the manpower."

Knoxville city traffic engineer Bill Cole agrees, noting that in his 12 years with the engineering department, he has heard from "around 50" of Knoxville's homeowners' associations requesting help in combating excessive speeding and traffic volume through their neighborhoods.

Like most up-to-date municipal engineers and urban planners, local officials have long been aware of the "traffic calming movement" that began in U.S. cities such as Seattle and Berkeley, Cal., in the '70s. Through the use of measures such as narrower residential road design, traffic roundabouts, median barriers, and speed humps in the past two decades, concerned citizens in other areas of the country have been able to significantly improve the quality and safety of their neighborhoods. (Traffic calming advocates even have their own website at www.trafficcalming.org.) However, neither the Knox County or Knoxville City budgets contain any allocation for neighborhood traffic calming, making it difficult for either engineering department to undertake these sorts of initiatives, despite constituent demand.

In the past year, however, at the urging of determined activist neighborhood associations such as Wedgewood Hills, Deane Hill, and Chilhowee Park, city and county traffic engineers have begun attempting to work around the lack of funding in a number of neighborhoods. The county's first official traffic calming measures—consisting of a series of speed humps on several neighborhood streets requiring motorists to slow down to approximately 20 miles per hour—were recently put into place in the Crestwood Hills subdivision by Knox County's engineering department. According to Pionke, the speed humps, costing approximately $1,000 each in materials, were actually paid for by diverting funds allocated for road maintenance.

Within the city limits, the Westwood neighborhood has become the first to complete the planning process for traffic calming in cooperation with the city's engineering department.

"There are no funds currently available to implement the traffic calming plan we and the Westwood residents have designed together," explains Bill Cole. "However, the traffic study and the neighborhood surveys are all completed so that we can move forward immediately if the budget allows for this in the future."

Both the city and the county have come up with a similar process by which concerned individuals and neighborhood organizations can request traffic calming assistance. In each case, representatives from the appropriate engineering department will meet with residents to hear their concerns face-to-face. After these initial meetings, the neighborhood's traffic patterns, volume, and speed will be studied to determine if the residents' concerns are valid. In some cases, local engineers have been surprised by what these studies have revealed.

"In West Hills, for example," says Cole, "we discovered that not only were the main roads through the neighborhood being used as through-routes by drivers, but every available neighborhood street, no matter how small, was being utilized as a through-route."

When Pionke's staff studied traffic patterns in Crestwood Hills, they found that some drivers were traveling at speeds up to 40 miles per hour as neighborhood-dwellers attempted to walk their dogs or pull out of their driveways without being run down. However, Pionke says that they also came to the conclusion that many of the speeders were actually neighborhood residents rather than those drivers simply passing through to get elsewhere.

City or county residents who are interested in learning more about available traffic calming services should contact their municipal engineering department for more information. County residents will be mailed a packet of information detailing the planning process. According to Cole, city residents can download traffic calming information directly from the city's website (www.ci.knoxville.tn.us). Both city and county officials stress that the traffic calming planning process must be a neighborhood-wide effort, with a majority of affected residents explicitly expressing their support for any proposed measures before engineers can proceed with physical changes to neighborhood streets. The county has even invested in a 5,000-pound portable rubber speed hump that can be placed in interested neighborhoods for a trial run before residents commit to permanent changes.

Currently, 20 county neighborhoods and 10 city neighborhoods have requested information on traffic calming, with different neighborhoods at various stages in the planning process. According to Pionke, at least one county homeowners' association, Gulf Park, has overwhelmingly voted down the traffic calming process, fearing that the measures would lower their property values.

Cole believes that more local citizens will become interested in traffic calming as they see the positive impact in other neighborhoods.

"But people should know that this process belongs to them. We are simply acting as their consultants. Traffic calming isn't about government coming in and telling neighborhoods what needs to be done. It's about neighborhoods telling us what they need."

—Katie Allison Granju