Of Pittsburgh, Burlington, Kefauver, and the fabulous centaur
by Jack Neely
I have to polish off a little old business getting back to older business.
A lot of people wrote in about my Pittsburgh essay, in which I pointed out that in several respects, these towns aren't that much different.
One reader pointed out that my observation that Pittsburgh, after some years of shrinking, is less than twice the size of Knoxville, was a little misleading. Knoxville has a notably suburb-heavy metro area, now with a population of about three-quarters of a million. I didn't think many cities could outdo us in the metro-city ratio. But it turns out that Pittsburgh is even more about the suburbs than Knoxville is. Pittsburgh proper may be less than twice the size of Knoxville, but its metro area is over three times the size of Knoxville's. I'm sure that does play a part in the relative busy-ness of the downtown area—and in its much-higher parking rates.
* I received several responses to my Burlington column, including a report that Burlington's obscure nomenclature was the topic of discussion at the annual July meeting of a committee of long-time neighbors known as the "Burlington Gang." But they didn't know where the name came from either. One reader wrote that an elderly relative or hers once knew the neighborhood as "Sycamore Station," a term new to me.
* I continue to get quite a lot of response to the columns commemorating Estes Kefauver's 100th birthday, most of it supporting the idea that Knoxville, his hometown of Madisonville, and his alma mater of UT, could do more to remember the bold and influential senator who bucked the tides of segregationism and red-baiting and was considered a potential presidential candidate before his death in 1963.
I heard from the venerable Nick Chase, who as a lawyer in the Washington area, knew Kefauver and his campaign manager. "Kefauver had the firmest handshake of any man I ever met," he says.
I also heard from Lindsay Kefauver, one of his daughters, who lives in San Francisco. She visits Knoxville occasionally, but said her dad never took her to Harold's Deli; she'd like to come back and visit the Kefauver shrine there.
In the first column I mentioned that during his undergraduate years at UT in the 1920s, Kefauver lived in a fraternity house known as the "Melrose mansion." There was a Melrose mansion adjacent to UT's campus when Kefauver was a student, but he didn't live there. He lived, as anyone who bothered to read my May cover story about Maplehurst knows, in the Maplehurst mansion, which was two hills toward town from Melrose.
In all fairness to me, they're easy to get mixed up. Both the Maplehurst and Melrose mansions were impressive Victorian Italianate houses famous beyond Knoxville's city limits. The Melrose house once appeared in a Nashville-heavy book of notable Tennessee architecture. Us being Knoxvillians, of course—we cain't hep it—we tore it down to build a plain-looking dormitory.
Also, I got some elucidation about the state of Kefauver houses in the senator's hometown of Madisonville. There are, or were, three. Kefauver's birthplace and childhood home were destroyed in a fire in the 1980s.
An antebellum house downtown known as the Kefauver House was, until recently, the residence of his sister Nora, who died last year. A wooden early-Victorian house, and the only existing Madisonville house Kefauver actually lived in, it's owned by a niece in Knoxville. Reportedly in poor condition, it has no historic-registry status, though it would be a shoo-in for it.
A third Kefauver home, once the home of the senator's aunt and known as "Miss Lottie's Farm," is occupied by the senator's son, David, does have historic-registry status. The senator never lived there, but was a frequent visitor.
I had gathered that one had been torn down for a Wal-Mart, but the fact is that Wal-Mart just built its store in front of the house, across a big part of what was once the Kefauver farm. A less-profitable part of the property still holds the Kefauver family plot, and the senator's gravesite.
In spite of the fact that many Madisonvillians, especially those under 50, have never heard of Kefauver, a small group there—Mary Hendershot was the representative I heard from—is pushing to found a Kefauver Museum.
A few remarked on the fact that UT's Alumni Academic Hall of Fame doesn't yet include Kefauver. Some suspect it's a Republican conspiracy, as UT's board of trustees is widely suspected to be a nest of Republicanism. But I'm not sure that's the problem. Howard Baker isn't in the Hall, either.
I tried to mention that the Hall of Fame is near the UT library's equally famous centaur skeleton, but I didn't. I said it was near the a minotaur skeleton. We could only wish. A minotaur, of course, is much rarer than a centaur. For all I know, there may have been only one, the one Theseus killed in the labyrinth.
A minotaur would be a real claim to fame for UT, much-needed in these troubled times of wacky profligate presidents and killer sports heroes.
August 21, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 34
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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