Category: People
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Of Vols & Gators
The University of Tennessee Volunteers & University of Florida Gators are bitter enemies in the Southeastern Conference. Many know that legendary Gator coach Steve Spurrier hails from Johnson City, Tennessee, but did you know that Gainesville, Florida–home of the Gators–is named after General Edmund Pendleton Gaines of Kingsport, Tennessee? The name “Volunteers” stems from the…
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Sobel, Valk, and the American Dream.
By Jeff Fleming, KingsportSpirit.comas published in the Kingsport Times-NewsMarch 26, 2023 Kingsport lost two iconic names last month–Norman Sobel and Sarah Valk. With so many trying to divide us these days, it’s important to remember that Kingsport was founded as a melting pot of people from around the region and around the globe. It was…
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Local Swimmer Holds 16 National Records
I had an opportunity to catch-up with my fellow city retiree, Dave Taylor, the other day. Generations of residents would recognize Dave as one of the iconic ‘faces’ of Bays Mountain Park. As we were talking, I asked what he’d been up to in retirement. He told me that he’s an avid swimmer these days…
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The little girl of Rotherwood Mansion
Virgelia “Jill” Ellis was a Kingsport treasure. I was blessed to be asked to deliver her eulogy in 2021. She freely shared her life stories of growing up in times that are hard for us to imagine and uncomfortable to discuss. A time of segregation and the struggle for civil rights. She was kind, optimistic,…
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Sullivan County, North Carolina
I took a trip down memory lane this weekend to my grandmother’s birthplace, McPheeter’s Bend, just across the Holston River from Church Hill in Hawkins County, Tennessee. We used to call it ‘the country’ when I was growing up, but it’s literally 10 minutes from Allandale Mansion on the western border of Kingsport. I saw…
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Embracing the Douglass legacy long after segregation
I was researching a project for Downtown Kingsport and came across an article on segregation in schools. Down a rabbit hole I went. Isn’t that how the internet works anyway? My search hit on “Downtown Kingsport churches”, noting they had donated a film to the public library. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a…
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John B. Dennis more than a highway
Kingsporters are familiar with the ‘by-pass’ or highway. Some abbreviate it as the ‘John B’. In fact, another iconic Kingsport name, Pal’s, just opened its newest location at 1345 South John B. Dennis Highway near I-26. He was the brains behind Kingsport. He’s buried here. But he had many other interests across the country which…
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Black History Month: Kingsport tried.
It was 1917. The fledgling city of Kingsport had been incorporated for two months. “Separate but equal” was the prevailing law, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896. The NY-based developers were trying to build a Model City in the rural South. They were heavily influenced by the overcrowded tenements,…
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Of Dentists, Indian Highland, & Silver Lake
My daughter is about to complete her periodontics residency. She recently asked if she should buy a starter property, then keep it as a rental once she grows out of it. My first thought (perhaps unfairly) was that “dentists don’t do that.” They’re more conservative, predictable, compliant, and to some degree risk averse. Then I…
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First Cousins
On the eve of Black History Month, here’s a glimpse inside the mind of J. Fred Johnson, the father of Kingsport who coined the term “Kingsport Spirit”. This quote is from his memorial service in 1944—twenty years before the Civil Rights Act was passed. He was an early champion of equity and inclusion in gender,…
Kingsport Spirit 