Summertime is prime time at theme parks—a vacation to one of these magical destinations might well be in your plans. These UT alumni who work with Disney, Dollywood, and Sea World Orlando would love to welcome you.
Objects from long ago and far away promise a tantalizing museum experience this summer at UT Knoxville. The Frank H. McClung Museum is offering “Ancient Bronzes of the Asian Grasslands,” an exhibit from the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, through August 3.
Like many youngsters who grew up in the 1950s, Michael Lofaro enjoyed watching Fess Parker portray frontiersman Davy Crockett on television. Eventually his interest in Crockett and Daniel Boone led him to a career teaching and researching early American literature and folklore. Lofaro keeps an autographed photo of Parker wearing the famous coonskin cap on a bookcase in his office at UT Knoxville.
A prodigy in many respects, Clarence Leon Brown completed Knoxville High School in 1906 at the age of 15 and received special permission to enter UT. Four years later, he graduated with two degrees in engineering. He learned to fly during World War I and served as an instructor in the U.S. air corps. After he ran his own successful car dealership in the early 1920s, he talked his way into a job in what was then called moving pictures.
I gave my first reading of my children’s novel, Gentle’s Holler, in Sylva, North Carolina, in the spring of 2005. I noticed a woman in the front row, Dot Connor, in her sixties with a shy smile and eyes bright and alive with curiosity. I wondered why she was there, because it was mostly children gathered. I learned she was the daughter of Mary Jane Queen, a mountain ballad singer, and my book reminded her of her own large family.
For months, Molly Erickson has been spending her lunch hours listening to live music at WDVX’s daily “Blue Plate Special” concerts. For Erickson, a trained opera singer and an associate professor in the Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, attending the concerts in downtown Knoxville is more than fun—it’s research.
UT is a leader in the development of alternative fuels, the university is enjoying its best year in recent history in terms of state funding, and Dr. Bill Bass has solved the mystery of “The Big Bopper”—these and other stories in this edition of UTopics.
For years Cormac McCarthy, Knoxville’s most famous living literary son, had something of a cult following. He seemed doomed to labor under the aesthetically fulfilling—if financially problematic—moniker of “writer’s writer,” a serious craftsman whose work remained a secret shared among a few fiercely loyal souls. The secret is now out.
One of the world’s premier musical ensembles will bring its extraordinary talents to the university’s Knoxville campus this fall. The Boston Camerata will perform three concerts as part of the Medieval and Renaissance Semester spearheaded by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
How many people dream of following their passion—doing the work they’ve always longed to do? Tish Lowe (Knoxville ’75, ’78) did just that when she moved to Florence, Italy, in 2003 to study painting. Lowe formerly worked for International Finance Corporation, which has a mandatory retirement age of 62.
WDVX began broadcasting in 1997 from a trailer in a campground in Norris, Tennessee, about 18 miles northeast of Knoxville. In an interview with PBS during the station’s early years, manager Tony Lawson reminisced about the station’s humble start: “We were looking for a place to put the radio station—for a studio. We didn’t have any money.”
Northern Uganda, where children have long been traumatized by a brutal war, there is a group of rescued girls who call themselves “University of Tennessee girls.” For Professor Rosalind Hackett and a group of students, such stories prove that their efforts to raise awareness—and money—are making an impact.
Blair Pancake (Knoxville ’05) won the Miss Tennessee title, UT Chattanooga alumnus Leslie Jordan won an Emmy, and we catch up with two Katrina evacuees who were featured in the Summer 2006 issue—that and more in this installment of UTopics.
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