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Junior League to the Rescue?
A deal to save the J. Allen Smith house from the wrecking ball is in the works—or, at least, the talking stage. The Junior League of Knoxville and Cherokee Country Club are discussing an arrangement whereby the Junior League would take responsibility for restoring the historic mansion that the club acquired two years ago and has been seeking to demolish to make way for a parking lot.
Specific terms have yet to be worked out, but the general idea is that the Junior League would raise the $1.2 million needed to restore the house and would make the second floor its headquarters. Cherokee would convert the first floor into a new golf pro shop while tearing down its old one to clear the way for the additional golf practice space and parking that club officials say is needed.
The flap over the house's fate has to some extent become a battle of the sexes at Cherokee. Wives of members, and those few women who hold memberships on their own, generally favor preserving the house while many of the men have been petitioning and lobbying City Council to allow demolition to proceed. Junior League officials insist they should in no way be viewed as a Cherokee women's auxiliary but rather as a civic group that supports historic preservation and other worthy causes.
No one will be more pleased, or relieved, to see a deal struck than the nine City Council members who are caught in the middle of the dispute. Amid intense lobbying on both sides, Council postponed action in April on historic overlay zoning for the property that would preclude demolition. But that zoning ordinance is due to be before Council once again on June 25.
Not Whistling Dixie
After looking into problems connected to last Saturday's Confederate Memorial Day event held in East Knoxville's Bethel Cemetery, the board of directors of the Mabry-Hazen House voted Tuesday to issue an apology to its predominantly-African-American neighbors. The board also voted to make clear that the memorial ceremony, which included displaying Confederate flags, firing a 21-gun salute and playing a rousing, amplified version of "Dixie," was not a function of Mabry-Hazen House. Additionally, the board voted to dissociate Mabry-Hazen from the Longstreet-Zollicofer Camp #87 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans until an apology is issued from that group. The Mabry-Hazen officers will probably wait a long time, since participants in the memorial service say they did nothing wrong, and stand on their rights to pay tribute to their ancestors (both Confederate and Union dead are buried at Bethel, which was bequeathed to Mabry-Hazen).
Mabry-Hazen board members say that an elderly neighbor who was trying to save a parking space in front of her home was told to "get back in your project," and that members of the group, when asked not to display their Confederate flags, reportedly said "This cemetery's been here a lot longer than that housing project." (The Sons, for their part, claim they were "harassed" by the husband of a Mabry-Hazen board member.) M-H board member Mark Siegel says he isn't holding his breath waiting for the apology. "That event was about something other than honoring somebody's ancestors."
June 6, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 23
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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