A high-beam smile and the complexion of a 20-something fashion model are the first things you notice about Anne Holt. She reaches out to hug you, and her dark eyes telegraph warmth. This Nashville icon has looked her audience in the eye for 30 years from behind the anchor desk of WKRN news, so she’s quite good at focusing directly on you. You’re powerless to dislike her.

The beautiful exterior is the outer shell of a determined woman. She’s no ingénue TV newsreader fresh out of j-school. She’s worked her way from the cotton fields of West Tennessee, through UT Knoxville, and through the TV news ranks. Her persistence is hidden deep, like a tendon that flexes but holds steadfast.

“As I look back over my journey, my work ethic stemmed from having very little,” she muses.

The daughter of sharecroppers in Lauderdale County, Holt learned important lessons early: hard work, consisting of 2 days a week in the cotton fields, 3 days in school (“My father would build a fire for me to warm my hands when we were picking in ice and snow”); responsibility (she was the oldest girl among 13 children); and resilience (“Our parents never let us feel sorry for ourselves”).

Ready for Anything

“When I got to UT, I was ready for anything!” she laughs.

Holt graduated from segregated Lauderdale County High School in 1969. She still remembers her teachers’ nurturing. “I think they saw potential in me. But most important, they showed faith in us—they made us believe in ourselves.” Holt and one of her sisters came to UT Knoxville; three siblings went to UT Martin. College was her ticket to a better life.

“I knew there was something out there for me, and I was going to get it,” she says. She chose UT Knoxville because it offered the best financial aid package. She enrolled as a speech and theater major, but that lasted only a few months.

“I saw there weren’t any job prospects,” Holt recalls. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to do better than this. I’ve done the poor side of life.’ ” Blessed with a talent for public speaking, she transferred to the broadcasting curriculum. The faculty, particularly her advisor, Darrell Holt, and longtime professor Herb Howard, gave her support and guidance.

“I would ask for help if I needed it because I didn’t have time to repeat courses,” she says. She worked several part-time jobs and began work at Knoxville TV station WATE while she was still in school. She graduated in 1973 and moved to Nashville and to WKRN (then WNGE) in 1976, starting as a reporter and weekend anchor. She and Nashville began to get to know each other, and they both liked what they saw.

“This job has brought me into contact with so many people,” Holt says. She reads to schoolchildren. She serves on boards of nonprofits. She speaks to civic clubs. She raises money for good causes. For 25 years, she has helped in the fight against hunger by working with Second Harvest Food Bank. “What more basic can you give than food?” she asks. Though she grew up poor, Holt says she never knew hunger. “We always had food because we grew our own.” A sorting room at the Nashville Second Harvest is named in her honor.

All the time she spends out and about in Nashville solidifies Holt’s reputation as a trusted news source.

“People can see that I care and have compassion. I think my connection with viewers is because I show them who I am—that I’m believable and caring.”

A Sea Change in News

But all the belief and caring in the world can’t change the fact that local newscasts, once a go-to source for information, are now just one of many outlets audiences can select for news. Holt is well aware of the sea change.

“There’s a whole new generation of viewers and so many other options for news now,” she says. “All we have is what’s in our backyard”—events of strictly local interest.

“The challenge is to embrace change but always be accurate, fair, and relevant and to still inform and educate,” Holt says. She says it’s important for her to be familiar with the news she’s delivering. “I try to research stories on my own and feel comfortable with the information. We live in a time of uncertainty, which makes it really important for viewers to feel like we’re shooting straight with them.”

Apparently Holt gets high marks as a straight shooter; few anchors survive three decades in one market. When she goes out, she’s instantly recognizable.

“Being recognized is a kind of measure of how well you’re doing professionally. I’m used to the stares and whispers.” The public isn’t shy about giving her feedback either. “People will tell me what they think—and it’s not always good!”

Holt and her husband, Kenny Blackburn, are quite a power couple. He is vice-president of external affairs at AT&T and serves on the Nashville Chamber board and in the leadership of many other civic organizations. Holt says each supports the other’s career.

“My husband is so supportive. And the street runs both ways. I think he’s very good at what he does.”

Holt’s son, Kyle, chose television journalism as his career too and also graduated from the College of Communication and Information of UT Knoxville. Now embarked on his first job at a Knoxville station, Kyle picks his mom’s brain by phone and discusses stories he’s covered.

Holt was proud to speak at the spring 2008 College of Communication and Information commencement ceremony when Kyle graduated. Among her many honors is the college’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

Others include four Emmys, the Jerry Thompson Communicator’s “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the National Conference for Community and Justice, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters. She was the first woman, the first African American, and the first news anchor to receive the latter.

Serving the University

A different kind of honor came her way in 2006 when Governor Phil Bredesen appointed her to the UT Board of Trustees.

“It was a huge cramming process” to get up to speed on university background and issues. “But I’m really enjoying it. We face tremendous challenges to provide education and serve the citizens, and I will give my best.”

She’s especially interested in making a UT education accessible and affordable to as many qualified students as possible. “And once we have those students, it’s crucial to provide them quality programs and faculty.”

Holt is no stranger to UT boards. She’s previously served on the Athletic Board, the board of visitors of the College of Communication and Information, and the UT Alumni Association board of governors.

At WKRN, Holt says she’s still working as hard as ever. “I haven’t scaled back on work. I have to wait until my son’s [professional] legs are steady. So I’ll see where the journey leads. I want to write a memoir, but I’m not ready yet.”

If it had not already been on another Vol fan’s vehicle, Marianne Leech’s license plate would read like part of her e-mail address: tnvol. Although she never earned a degree from the University of Tennessee, Leech was born a Vol, a birthright she inherited from her parents Walter Lee and Mary Morris.

As the owner of motion picture theaters in Knoxville and surrounding areas, Walter, who attended UT from 1924 to 1926, took great pride in hauling film equipment to the football field to record the Volunteers’ practices and games, dating back to the General Robert Neyland era.

For Marianne, growing up in Knoxville translated to growing up in Big Orange Country. “My mother and father would get on the train and travel to football games all over the country,” she recalls. “The love for UT and its football program has always been there by osmosis for me because I grew up in it.”

She passed the contagious Vol spirit on to her husband, John Leech, a native of Pittsburgh and alumnus of Robert Morris University and the University of Pittsburgh. His blood now runs orange, so much so that one would never know he did not grow up in Knoxville. The Leeches live in Loudon, Tennessee.

On game days, the couple act as a virtual scoreboard for Marianne’s brother, Lee (Knoxville ’62), and his wife, Peggi (an alumna of East Tennessee State University), who live in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. When the native East Tennessee couple cannot see the game, “We become their eyes and ears,” Marianne says. “We call them every ten minutes if we have to so they know the score. We are a Vol family, no matter where we are.”

Game days account for only part of the passion Marianne and John feel for Tennessee athletics. At the heart of their gifts to athletics are scholarships for student–athletes. “We have a profound desire to give back to a cause that has brought us so much joy over the years,” they say.

“Student–athletes have a golden opportunity to play the sport they love and gain an education. Without the athletic opportunities and scholarships at the University of Tennessee, many of these kids would never have a chance to attend college, let alone one as prestigious as UT.

“Everyone needs to support our university no matter how little or how big the amount. These contributions make a difference in the lives of our kids and ensure that young people have a chance to further their education and promote their success.”

The Leeches say life has been good to them, and it is only right that they give back. “Neither of us have degrees from the University of Tennessee, but we believe in the university, its mission, its students, and their futures.”

Ed Sargent stepped on a tour bus 3 days after finishing finals at UT Martin in 1982 and began a jazz ride that lasted 24 years. Now he is taking a walk on the wild side.

Sargent, Grammy-nominated producer and longtime tour manager for trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, became tour manager for rock guitarist Joan Jett and her band the Blackhearts in 2007.

While the music genre he is now part of differs distinctly from his years in jazz, the road has an attraction that drew him out again after the legendary Ferguson died in 2006.

It was Ferguson, a dear friend besides a mentor and boss, who gave him his start in the business, promoting him to tour manager, later adding personal manager to his title. And it was Ferguson’s final album, completed just weeks before his death and produced by Sargent and drummer Stockton Helbing, that merited a Grammy nomination in 2008.

In addition to his current responsibilities with Joan Jett, Sargent manages Tim Ries, the Rolling Stones’ saxophonist, and Carl Fischer, Billy Joel’s trumpeter. When he’s not touring, Sargent conducts master classes and production-oriented workshops mentoring young musicians on college campuses.

An Early Love of Music

Sargent’s love of music began as a small child. He would sit on the floor of his grandmother’s house tapping out a tune with wooden spoons. “She was my first big influence. She’d make over me and say ‘You’re going to be a great drummer one of these days.’ ”

His interest took a formal turn when he joined the fifth-grade band in Amory, Mississippi, and continued throughout high school after a move to Bolivar, Tennessee. The high-school band director in Bolivar usually got to school early and played his favorite albums before morning rehearsal. “I remember the first day he played an album from a trumpet player named Maynard Ferguson,” Sargent says. “It just blew us all away.” It began Sargent’s lifelong love of Ferguson’s music and with jazz in general.

Sargent joined the UT Martin band program in fall 1977. He majored in percussion but also took business courses. “I loved to play, but I started becoming more involved in the whole business aspect.”

Maynard Ferguson was very popular with the UT Martin jazz and marching band, and the band even did a field show tribute to the jazz great. That led to Sargent’s attempting to get Ferguson to play a UT Martin concert. It didn’t work out that year, but Ferguson’s lead trumpeter, Stan Mark, did appear. “It was a really big hit. I was Stan’s liaison in a tour-manager capacity—a junior in college. He had a really marvelous time.” With Sargent spearheading the project, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the professional music fraternity, brought Mark back to campus the next fall.

Friend, Mentor, and Boss

In spring 1982, Sargent’s senior year, the Maynard Ferguson band finally did appear at UT Martin. Because of Sargent’s connection with Mark, he got to meet Ferguson. “I basically said, ‘I’d love to be out on the road to work for your band in any capacity. You’re my favorite band.’ I put my cards on the table. I told him, ‘School’s out in three weeks.’ That’s the last thing I said to him. He just laughed as I walked out the door.

“I finished finals on a Tuesday and got a call on Friday. His tour manager, Bruce Galloway, asked if I could fly to Indianapolis the next day, and of course I told him I could. That was the first day of twenty-four years.” Sargent accepted the job of valet, or personal assistant. “I was willing to do whatever it took to maintain a position on that tour bus, travel the world, and get to see my favorite band play every night.” Two years later, at the age of 24, Sargent was Maynard Ferguson’s tour manager, touring the world and performing 200 dates a year.

Sargent tells the students in his master classes that it’s OK to fly by the seat of their pants and try to figure it out along the way.

“There’s no handbook for life,” he says, as long as you are honest with yourself and those with whom you’re dealing.

As tour manager, Sargent was responsible for literally every logistical detail and was on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. After an agreement is reached for a concert date, he says, the responsibility falls to the tour manager to “make it happen—the travel, personnel, logistics, equipment—all the components that make the show. Sometimes it’s complete insanity and always a phone call away from disaster at any given point.”

Sargent says the key to his success on the road has been good communication skills and effective advance work that covers everything from the first call to the end of the show, to the doors shutting and the bus pulling out of the parking lot. “Do your advance work so you don’t have to figure out surprises on show day,” he says.

Sargent follows the same formula with the Joan Jett tours. Noting that Jett has been in the business since she was 15, he said she has a strong work ethic. She, too, comes from that old school. “Nothing is more important to Joan on show day than preparing for the show. If a tour manager has done his job effectively, the musicians have nothing but playing to worry about.”

During his career with Ferguson, if the band wasn’t touring or recording, Sargent had the opportunity to work with other legendary musicians—Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Al Hirt, and Billy Eckstein. Charles is one of Sargent’s heroes. “I still think he was probably the most soulful cat that ever lived.

“I was very fortunate being a drummer and having ‘ears’ for music,” he says. Ferguson gave him the opportunity to be involved in all of his projects right through the final album, The One and Only Maynard Ferguson. The recording in Tony Bennett’s studio was completed 30 days before Ferguson died.

The Business of Touring

With the Joan Jett organization, Sargent has been on tour with Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Motorhead, Cyndi Lauper, and Def Leppard. “Tours are run like a business,” he says. “There’s very little trashing of dressing rooms or hotel rooms. That just doesn’t fly anymore in the business we’re in.”

Meshed with Sargent’s years on the road are his memories, especially those of his days with Ferguson. “He took a 22-year-old kid from West Tennessee who was green as a gourd, who was willing to do anything—eyes and ears wide open and good enough sense to keep my mouth shut—and basically gave me the opportunity to see the world. He molded me into what he wanted in a tour manager, and we became best friends in the process.”

Ferguson took Sargent on trips during tour breaks, including a trip to India, one of the jazz legend’s favorite places to relax and recuperate. Sargent also hung out with Ferguson and his wife, Flo, at their home in Ojai, California. “I felt like and was treated like one of his kids.”

Ferguson also wanted his band to have fun and provided sightseeing excursions during days off. “How could you not feel like a blessed person working for your favorite band, traveling all over the world, eating at the best restaurants, hanging with fun people and your best friend?” Sargent says. “How could you not dig that?

“This is what I do in life. I can’t ever see myself stopping.” After a brief hiatus while he worked as president of Johnny Rabb Drumsticks Company in 2000 and 2001, Sargent realized his place was on the road. “If I’m home for two weeks, I get stir-crazy. I love the excitement this business brings.”

Sargent says he broke his parents’ hearts when he left UT Martin a few credit hours shy of graduation. “But it was an opportunity I couldn’t let get away. When the album [The One and Only Maynard Ferguson] received the Grammy nomination last year, I think my mom finally forgave me.”

Now he’s making new memories with Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. “I’ve always been a big fan of Joan’s. Touring with her is great and, I must say, never boring.”

Sargent is happy to have the opportunity to do university master classes like the one he offered earlier this year at UT Martin. It’s a way to give back in honor of a mentor, Nancy Matheson, his UT Martin percussion instructor. “She wasn’t cautious about speaking her mind. That motivated me. She never sugar-coated the truth.” Once she told him he was an OK drummer, but that he was great with people and had a keen sense for musical production. “She wasn’t happy I left [UT Martin before graduating], but she saw the opportunity for me to utilize my strengths in a business I loved. She motivated me to do my best and pursue the dream, which is the best gift a teacher can give a student.”

Sargent took his talents on the road—and what a ride.

Jimmy Cheek had been on the job as chancellor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, barely 20 weeks when Alumnus magazine sat down with him to talk. By then, we’d already seen Jimmy Cheek the chancellor, with his 70-hour work weeks, his administrative skills, and his rapport with trustees, faculty, students, alumni, and donors. Now we wanted to know more about Jimmy Cheek the man. Who’s behind that decisive voice and disarming smile? The conversation began with Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, the reading assignment for freshmen this fall as part of UT Knoxville’s the Life of the Mind program.

Cheek:
I just finished reading The Glass Castle. It’s a true story about Jeannette Wall’s struggle to break out of her dysfunctional family life. Jeanette was the second of four children, growing up in wretched poverty, with a father who couldn’t hold down a job and a self-indulgent mother who ended up homeless after her husband died of alcoholism. The conditions of her home life were horrible, but Jeannette loved her family and remains loyal to them to this day. Jeannette’s father, an addicted gambler, would disappear for days at a time. Several times the family had to pack up and leave in the middle of the night—often with only the clothes on their backs—to dodge creditors. Hunger and poverty are miserable childhood companions, and yet Jeannette overcame them to become a valuable contributor to the world around her.

You ask yourself how people live under such conditions and emerge to go to college, get a degree, and create a successful life for themselves. Jeannette did it through a strong will and self-determination. It’s a remarkable story about a remarkable person. It’s my kind of book.

Alumnus:
The Glass Castle is not only your kind of book, I get the feeling that Jeannette Walls is also your kind of person. Who are your heroes? Who, apart from your wife, Ileen, would you say has had the greatest influence on you?

Cheek:
That would have to be my uncle, Tyrus King. He and his wife had no children, and I was like a son to him. He was an optimist; and he believed in people. He treated everyone as an individual, not as a member of some group or class. My uncle was always encouraging. He helped people get through whatever circumstances in life confronted them. He certainly did that for me. He showed me that if you’re willing to work hard enough, you can fulfill your dreams.

My greatest hero, however, is Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln suffered enormous setbacks throughout his life, but he overcame them to become president. It was the most difficult time in our history. Lincoln led this country in a completely different direction, and he did it so he could save it. He struggled throughout his presidency, even with the greatest personal tragedy of his life, the loss of his son Willie, but he never gave up. He was a tremendous man, and I always wonder what might have happened if he could have continued his vision after the Civil War. I believe we would be a much better country if he had. We are a great country, of course, but I believe we would be even better if Lincoln had been able to serve another term and help put the country back together again.

Alumnus
In William Faulkner’s 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he said that the only stories worth telling are stories about the human heart in conflict with itself. The people who interest you, the stories you tell, seem to capture that spirit. How would you describe your personal philosophy?

Cheek
I believe that life is short and we need to take full advantage of it. Families are very important to me. So is my personal faith. And I believe in helping people along the way. We can make a difference in people’s lives.

Alumnus:
Your public persona clearly embodies that philosophy. As you think back over your life, do you have any regrets? Let me rephrase that—is there anything in your life you’d change if you had it to do over again?

Cheek:
I don’t have any real regrets. There are things that happened to me—or that I made happen—that I didn’t like at the time, but they were the usual setbacks that are a part of life.

If I had it to do over again I would probably have had more fun in my earlier years, especially in college. I was a grind in college. The night I graduated from high school I realized my future was before me and I was not prepared for it. I realized I had a chance to make a difference and I resolved to become a serious student.

In high school I was not focused on what I wanted to be and I could easily have been unsuccessful. Fortunately, I had three teachers—in agriculture, chemistry, and sociology—who taught me to believe in myself, to set hard goals, and to work to achieve them. A few years into college one of my best friends from high school asked me, “What happened to you?” I told her I had decided that becoming a good student was important for me. I wasn’t a bad student in high school—just sort of average—but without a direction, I was just spinning my wheels.

Alumnus:
As a school boy growing up in Texas, you couldn’t have been thinking about becoming a university chancellor in Tennessee. What were you dreaming about?

Cheek:
I wanted to be a high school teacher. When I got to Texas A&M, however, the faculty encouraged me to take a graduate degree and to think about a career in academia. Toward the end of my senior year I had already accepted a fellowship at the University of Missouri to begin work on a Ph.D. I planned to study agricultural economics, with an emphasis in policy. I was student teaching at the time, however, and enjoyed it so much that I canceled my fellowship and took a job teaching high school in Beaumont, Texas.

Ileen and I got married and moved to Beaumont. She entered Lamar University as an undergraduate, and I enrolled in a master’s program at night while teaching during the day. I taught for four years then moved back to Texas A&M to work on a Ph.D. I loved high school teaching but had decided by then that I wanted to teach in college.

Alumnus:
So you fulfilled your dream of being a high school teacher, and got even more than you wished for. What is your greatest wish today?

Cheek:
My greatest wish is that my children will live happy, productive lives. I hope to live a long time to enjoy my family. And I hope to successfully lead the University of Tennessee.

You never know how things will turn out, but I think they are going well so far. I want to make UT an even better university than it already is. That’s why I came here. It’s a challenge—my last frontier. When I retire, I hope people will say this administration has been a good run for the university, that we accomplished some things that otherwise might not have been accomplished, that we dreamed some dreams and saw many of them come true. As Dolly Parton told the graduating seniors this year, dream big dreams, then work as hard as you can to accomplish them.

Alumnus:
You said earlier that your uncle believed in people. It’s clear that you believe in people, too. A few minutes ago I mentioned Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Later in that speech, he said, “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

Cheek:
I believe in that. Let me tell you a story. When I was an assistant dean at the University of Florida, a young man came to my office one day asking to be admitted to our college. He had been in engineering for a long time and had more grades below 2.0 than any student I had ever seen. I looked at his record and told him there was no way I could admit him. He was persistent, though, and convinced me to put him on probation for a trial semester. But he would have to earn at least a 2.5 GPA.

He made the required grade point average and came back to see me the next semester. We agreed on the same deal for another term.

The next time, however, his grades were slightly below the standard. When he came back to see me to plead his case, I told him that we had a deal and he had not held up his end of the bargain. Then he told me a story. His wife had left him during the semester, he said, and had taken his three children to Miami. Each weekend he would drive to Miami, 350 miles away, to try to convince her to come back home. He said, “My wife relented and is home now. She gave me one last chance; you’ve got to give me one too.” I broke down and said, okay. After that, he did well and managed to graduate with a 2.2 average, despite his atrocious grades when he was in engineering.

After graduation, he called me to say he was going to law school. I told him his grades overall were so poor that he couldn’t get into any law school in the country. He told me he had already taken the LSAT and had done very well. He thought he could get in to the University of Miami if I would only write a letter on his behalf. I wrote the letter and he got in.

Three years later, I got a call from the Florida Bar, asking how my young friend had gotten readmitted so many times. They assumed he must have had a drug problem or something similar. They said he had passed the bar but they were reluctant to grant him a license until they found out what was really going on. I told them that his problem was solely his grades and that he was a fine person. He got his license.

My colleagues at other colleges would have thought I was crazy. But I thought the young man had been misadvised. He wasn’t cut out to be an engineer and shouldn’t have been strung along. Maybe I should not have admitted him, but I believed in him, and now he is a lawyer.

I have faith in people. That faith has sustained me. I’ve rarely been disappointed.

“My purpose in this is kind of what you saw the day after 9/11. That day the U.S. parks had the highest attendance in decades. I think that speaks to the need that people have to go be quiet and find the peace that sitting among trees and other plants has to offer,” Hogg says.

“I think people get out of touch with the natural world. I’d like to see adults, children, and the elderly having access to that regularly—to bring them outdoors so that they can know the therapeutic benefits of being outside, which are many.”

The new non-profit organization that she leads is responsible for designating and maintaining specimen trees in parks in Alpharetta, one of Atlanta’s most far-flung suburbs. Although growing in its operations, the Alpharetta Arboretum has already received a prestigious honor: the Georgia Urban Forest Council recognized it as the Outstanding Civic Organization for 2008.

Hogg coordinates the work of a six-member board that includes the president of Alpharetta’s convention and tourism bureau, a city councilman, the chair of the city’s tree commission, a member of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, and its former arborist. At the university, she has been in a student project that is helping to plan a LEED-certified visitor education center for the UT Gardens, an addition that Hogg says would benefit everyone.

For her own future, Hogg sees a continued association with the Alpharetta Arboretum. “I’d really love to see us have our own arboretum and botanical garden one day—to be a real place for people to go. I’d love to establish us to that point.”

With her talent and organization, that seed of an idea seems likely to flourish. – courtesy Tennessee Land Life & Science Magazine

It’s a long and winding road—and hiking trail—from Tennessee to the remote backcountry of California’s Giant Sequoia National Monument, but a couple of UT graduates have successfully negotiated the journey.

From late spring to early fall, Suzanne and Burr Hughes leave behind their home in Memphis for their four-year-old luxury camp in the California wilderness. Sequoia High Sierra Camp, situated at 8,000 feet in the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains, is a destination with unexpected amenities.

Suzanne, who earned a master’s degree in education as a reading specialist at UT Knoxville in 1974, teaches intensive English classes for international students at the University of Memphis. Burr earned a bachelor’s degree in communication (advertising) in 1976, worked at Southern Living magazine, and then followed his father into the insurance and financial services industry.

Tennessee guests at SCHS have a long journey. The route: Fly to Fresno, rent a car for a 60-mile drive into the mountains, gain about 7,000 feet in elevation, negotiate a serpentine one-lane road to the Marvin Pass Trailhead, and then hike a mile to the camp.

Suzanne greets you with an iced tea and an oatmeal cookie made from a Peabody Hotel recipe. It’s an unexpected touch of Southern hospitality.

SHSC offers camping in a style that few experience. When I’m this deep in the backcountry, I don’t expect a 336-square-foot canvas bungalow, a king bed, double-sheeted duvets, Pendleton blankets, hot showers, and, oh yes, a chef. (The hot showers are a few yards down the trail, so there’s at least that element of roughing it.)

SCHC is a 40-acre private enclave in the 49,000-acre Giant Sequoia National Monument, federal land that butts up against Sequoia National Park (America’s second oldest) and Kings Canyon National Park. Suffice it to say that when you finally get to SCHC, you’re seriously in the boondocks, making the concept of a luxury camp both bizarre and appealing.

Burr—who still remembers the mandatory typing test he took to become an advertising major and his courses with professors such as Richard Joel, Kelly Leiter, and Don Hileman—says a more primitive backcountry camp run by a concessionaire in Yosemite National Park inspired them. SCHS is the Hughes’ business on land they own.

“There was a lottery just to get a reservation at Yosemite, so I saw what became Sequoia High Sierra Camp as a great business investment. It’s something we could put money into and have fun with while watching it grow and remaining Memphians,” Burr says.

With SCHC as a base, you can take day hikes (my favorite was to Mitchell Peak’s above-the-tree-line crest of 10,365 feet), fish, or swim in alpine lakes and meander through groves of the largest trees on earth, the giant sequoias. Giant sequoias—don’t dare call them redwoods, which are entirely different—grow only in a relatively small zone on the Sierra Nevada’s western slope.

The camp is eco-friendly (buildings made with sustainable lumber, natural landscaping, low-flow toilets and showers, sustainable menu items, propane lanterns), capitalizing on Burr’s master’s degree in architecture with an emphasis in sustainable design from England’s University of Cambridge.

SCHC has 36 bungalows scattered up a steep hillside. At the center of camp is an open-air dining pavilion modeled on an Etruscan temple. Gentle breezes and golden sunsets accompany dinner.

The scenery is spectacular, but the food also astounds—scallops capriccio, Alaskan halibut, osso bucco, crabcakes, Muscovy duck breast (which you won’t find at the Peabody), tableside Caesar salad, airy Italian cheesecake. The meals are a far cry from backpackers’ trail food.

They’re the handiwork of Ryan Solien, whose credentials include training at the California Culinary Institute, cheffing for Faith Hill and Bruce Springsteen, and running restaurants in the U.S., Bermuda, and Rome. The occasional Italian influence comes from Solien’s dual U.S.-Italy citizenship.

Your dining companions are another unexpected benefit. Suzanne says the camp attracts an engaging and chatty clientele, mostly Californians so far, but some from the East Coast and a few international guests.

During my visit, I spent time with a sailing instructor, a photographer, a gynecologist, a lawyer, an energy consultant, a pastry chef, and a six-year-old who was certain he’d grow up to be a Navy pilot.

Wildlife is abundant, so first-time guests need to be told that the in-room amenity that looks like a small beer keg actually is a bear-proof container for personal food and scented items. My only wildlife visitor was a hummingbird, prompting me to open the windows and prop open the door so it could escape my bungalow.

Winter limits operation of SHSC to mid-June through mid-October. The rest of the year the Hughes are in Memphis, dealing in the insurance industry as part of the Edward Burch Group and helping international students get comfortable with English. Their daughter, Marion, handles reservations and other customer relations activities.

When summer rolls around, however, Suzanne is back in the High Sierra serving cookies, while Burr counsels guests not on insurance, but on which trails they’re likely to enjoy most.

Getting there: The closest major airport to Sequoia High Sierra Camp is Fresno, although Sacramento has more service. Rates are $300 per night per person; information is at sequoiahighsierracamp.com; phone (866) 654-2877.  

Tom Adkinson, who earned a journalism degree at UT Knoxville in 1972, lives in Nashville and has written articles for publications nationwide. His normal camping accommodation is an 8 x 8 Coleman tent.)

When Tony Parker goes home at the end of the work day, he leaves 2,400 men behind. They’ll be there when he arrives the next morning. Parker is warden of the Northwest Correctional Complex near Tiptonville, Tennessee, in Lake County. He has spent almost three decades working in Tennessee corrections, and the faces of some of today’s prisoners are the same faces he saw when his career began. The 45-year-old Parker (Martin ’95) holds the distinction of being the youngest warden in the state’s correctional system.

The Lake County Regional Correctional Facility opened in 1981 to house up to 500 inmates. In 1992, Northwest Corrections Center was opened, and is now called Site 1. The entire facility, the second largest prison in Tennessee has an annual operating budget of about $50 million and houses inmates who range in classification from close-custody to medium security. The American Correctional Association, which conducts an intensive accreditation/inspection every three years, has accredited the complex since it opened.

Parker’s facility and 11 others under the Tennessee Department of Correction have plenty of demand for their services. As of March 2009, the TDOC Web site reported that 19,519 inmates were incarcerated in Tennessee’s adult institutions. About 25 percent were convicted of homicide-related crimes. Almost 1,800 inmates are serving life sentences, 270 of them without possibility of parole. The average cost-per-day to house a TDOC inmate is about $64.

Northwest Correctional Complex sits amid acres of West Tennessee farmland just east of the Mississippi River, surrounded by two sets of fences topped by razor-edged barbed wire. The warden’s office is in the administration building, separated from the prison complex by a single heavily secured gate and walkway. Parker, a calm, friendly guy in a business suit, could be the CEO of any company. He speaks firmly, a plus for someone in his line of work.

“It’s the choices you make in life that determine your future.”

For Parker, the presence of a prison in his native Lake County offered a career opportunity. A member of the 1981 state champion Lake County High School football team, Parker graduated in 1982 and, at the age of 19, started working as a correctional officer at the facility. It was a time when jobs were hard to find in Lake County. He soon realized he needed more education to advance in corrections work, so he began attending Dyersburg State Community College. He worked the 2 to 10 p.m. shift and studied criminal justice, earning an associate degree before enrolling at UT Martin to pursue his bachelor’s. Parker earned an academic scholarship for transfer students, and as with Dyersburg State, the small university campus turned out to be a good choice.

“The instructors took the time to work with you, and they helped me,” he says. “They worked around my schedule a lot of times with my job and all.” He attended classes full time and during the summers and completed his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in criminal justice in four years.

A sergeant when he graduated from UT Martin, Parker was promoted to lieutenant and then to captain about a year later. He was interested in going to work for the Tennessee Highway Patrol and was hired, but bursitis in both knees prevented him from continuing. A few months later, he was promoted to associate warden at the West Tennessee State Penitentiary in Henning. He worked there about three years and transferred back to Northwest as deputy warden, then moved up to warden in 2003.

At the time he graduated from high school, corrections work offered stability and benefits, but Parker had entered a challenging field at a very young age. Today, he sees young men and women entering the profession, and he advises them, “You’re going to be exposed to a lot of unusual situations you haven’t seen before.” When he spoke recently to a leadership class at Lake County High School, he described inmates as “people who’ve made bad decisions and bad mistakes.” Parker’s years in corrections have given him perspective. “I’ve got inmates here that basically I’ve grown up with … they’re still incarcerated here, and I’ve known them for a long time,” he says. “It’s the choices you make in life that determine your future.”

A people-intensive job

To say that Parker has a people-intensive job is an understatement. Besides the inmates for whom he is responsible, Northwest has 691 employees not including contract employees for such critical areas as medical and psychiatric services. He estimates that up to 70 percent of Northwest inmates are there because of drug activity, but even with violent-crime offenders in the prison’s population, this isn’t a maximum-custody facility.

“Maximum custody is for inmates who, because of their behavior, present a significant security risk to the facility or to others,” Parker says. “We have 30 inmates who are on maximum custody who were placed here for assault-type behavior, escape attempts, things like that.”

Maximum custody supervision requires inmates to be in their cells 23 hours a day. They have one hour of recreation, time to shower, and they remain on maximum custody until Parker makes a decision to release them back to a close-custody unit. Interestingly enough, Parker says an inmate’s custody level has very little to do with his criminal offense.

“Their charge when they come to prison does not mandate their custody level like most people believe. You can have someone doing a life sentence that can qualify for minimum custody, provided their behavior remains acceptable and appropriate.

“That doesn’t mean they would be housed outside the grounds of the facility. We do have minimum-custody inmates housed outside, but they’re what we call minimum-direct and trustee inmates. Those inmates are within a certain time limit of their release date, and they meet our criteria by policy to be placed outside.”

A typical day

If there is a typical day inside a prison, it usually begins early for Parker as he arrives before 7 a.m. to check incident reports from the previous night. He then visits different areas in the complex, including the housing units and the food-service areas. His goal is to make daily contact with the staff and inmates. “My job is to see that the policies of the Department of Correction are followed, that we run a facility that is in line with the mission of the department and our mission as a facility.”

Northwest’s focus is on public safety/security, education, and community service, and Parker is proud the prison has “a lot of educational opportunities for inmates.” Basic education, vocational, and even academic classes offered by UT Martin are available.

“We have a couple of vocational classes that are skilled community service groups,” he said. “They go out and build libraries, churches, (and) for non-profit governmental organizations. We do a lot of work in our surrounding communities.”

An academic partnership

As for the academic classes, UT Martin partnered with the Department of Correction to bring college courses to Northwest starting in early 2008. Dr. Leslie LaChance, associate professor of English, became involved when her department was asked to provide someone to teach an English course at the prison. She had previous experience teaching at the former Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville and at Fishkill Correctional Facility in upstate New York.

LaChance taught courses in the first-year composition sequence at Northwest in spring and fall 2008. “The inmate students were very highly engaged and highly motivated,” she says. “They understood they were being given a privilege, so they treated the course and my presence as a privilege.

“I think some of the students in those classes hadn’t ever considered the possibility that they could pursue a college education.” She says she felt the courses “opened a door for many of them that maybe they hadn’t thought could ever be open.” And, while at Northwest, LaChance says she never felt threatened, which is in line with what Parker says about prison security.

“Inside the correctional facility, you know what you’re dealing with. When you go out sometimes in some of our areas among the public, you don’t know what you’re dealing with,” he says. “I feel just as safe inside this facility as I do visiting some of our larger cities in Tennessee – probably safer.”

Consequences not punishment

This isn’t to say Parker hasn’t faced threatening situations. “It’s rare, but it does happen,” he says. “Any time you put 2,400 people [together] who don’t want to be here, you’re going to have problems.” He is confident in the prison staff’s training and ability to deal with potentially violent situations. “Any of them [violent situations] have the potential to be critical, but very seldom does a situation increase to a level where you have a real critical incident,” he says.

Parker never forgets that inmates are people, and an important part of his job is being fair when difficult situations arise. “Inmates are sent to prison as part of their punishment,” he says. “They’re not sent here to be punished, and that’s an important thing that anybody who works in a correctional facility must understand.” His dealings with inmates often result in contact with their families, which adds another level of complexity to tense situations.

Situations arise within inmates’ families and the inmate can’t be there, “but that’s the consequences of the decision that the inmate made at one point in his life that caused him to be incarcerated,” Parker says. “It’s unfortunate for the inmate, but it’s not the family’s fault. We try to go out of our way to accommodate the family members if it’s at all possible, considering the security issues that relate to the situation.”

Deaths of inmates’ family members are especially difficult. “We really go to the extreme to try to provide an escorted visit to the funeral home for an immediate family member, unless there is a security issue that is paramount,” Parker says.

Some Northwest inmates are serving life sentences, but Parker doesn’t make a point of knowing “what every inmate’s charge is or how much time they are serving, unless I’m looking at an issue of transporting that inmate outside the facility or looking at a reduction in his custody level, which reduces the amount of supervision the inmate requires.”

Northwest offers a pre-release program to help inmates prepare for life outside the prison. Those with special needs receive additional support where possible. Twelve to 15 inmates are released every week, and Parker knows inmates who have straightened up their lives. He credits Northwest for playing an important role in their transformation.

“We offer drug and alcohol treatment programs inside the facility, and I think those are some of the best programs we have,” he says. “There are inmates who make a change, who make a decision to really think about their actions. They get away from drugs and alcohol, and they can return to society and be good fathers, get stable jobs, go to work every day, and become productive citizens. We see that happening more and more.”

The door swings both ways

Parker believes he’s making a positive impact. Still, success in corrections work takes a toll. “It’s a very disciplined field of work. It’s not for everyone. It’s a lot of stress,” he says. “Each day, I depend on the grace of God and the support of my family. I am proud to say that neither has ever let me down.”

In this era of reality television, one way to better understand the pressures of corrections work is through the popular prison version of these shows, such as the Lockup series on MSNBC. “I think, depending on the content, they (the reality shows) can be a good information source,” he says. “They can give the public an insight on what it’s really like inside our prisons.” Parker was even the subject of a truTV documentary when he was at the West Tennessee State Penitentiary. “I made sure the story they told was accurate,” he says. “It wasn’t something blown up or glamorous. It was just the facts.”

Reality for Tony Parker is that the prison door swings both ways as he enters and leaves Northwest Correctional Complex. He hopes the door closes behind inmates one last time as they leave for productive lives in society.

Conroy, who logged more than 30 years at the Washington Post, covered presidents and monarchs, braved angry labor union mobs, and survived Hurricane Hattie in Belize.

She cut her journalist teeth in Knoxville. In a 1997 interview, she told Tennessee Alumnus about an assignment early in her career at the Knoxville News Sentinel. She was assigned to interview Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, who was visiting East Tennessee. Tight security kept reporters at bay, but Conroy seized a feminine opportunity.

“I saw her heading down a hallway alone. The male guards couldn’t go into the ladies’ room, but I could. I interviewed her while she was washing her hands.”

In his blog, Matt Schudel of the Post recalled Conroy as both colorful and competent.

“I think Sarah Booth’s politeness and charm sometimes overshadowed her accomplishments and doggedness as a reporter. She was the first woman to graduate from the school of journalism at the University of Tennessee. At the old Washington Daily News, she covered the D.C. government while doubling as an uncredited stringer of news about women in the White House for the New York Times.”

Schudel also recalled the Georgia native’s unrepentant Southern-ness.

“Sarah Booth was a professional Southerner. When I wrote in the obituary that her Southern accent seemed to grow thicker every year, I wasn’t exaggerating. She could identify any Southern accent by state and, in many cases, by county and she always pretended to hold a grudge toward the federal government for seizing the estate of Robert E. Lee across the Potomac and turning it into the burial ground we know as Arlington National Cemetery.”

Late in her tenure at the Post, Conroy wrote a weekly column peppered with history and tidbits gleaned from her Washington rounds. In the ’97 Tennessee Alumnus interview, she confided a social/reportorial tip:

“This week, I’ve been to four parties. I have two rules about Washington parties. Anything that happens in a hotel isn’t worth going to. And if they don’t have valet parking, don’t bother.”

See also: Conroy’s Washington Post obituary

Hard to believe the Lady Vol athletic program is only three decades old. In that short span, the women in orange have given us thrills, chills, and championships. Those women also have gone on to lives of accomplishment, while the program that nurtured them continues to raise the bar for women’s athletics.

Such is the gist of UT Press’s new release In the Footsteps of Champions: The University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers, the First Three Decades. Author is Debby Schriver (Knoxville ’72, ’78).

Schriver says women’s athletic director Joan Cronan granted her unlimited access to Lady Vol teams and coaches. Schriver took full advantage, hanging out in the training room, taking to the water with the rowers, and delving into the everyday business of managing and marketing a top-tier NCAA women’s athletics program. She interviewed former Lady Vols from all sports, capturing not only their recollections of collegiate days but also successes they’ve gone on to realize in their professional and personal lives.

The book serves as one of the first accounts of the effects of Title IX, federal legislation that made gender discrimination in athletics unlawful. Tennessee, Schriver says, was ahead of the pack when it came to giving women equal opportunities. UT established its women’s athletics department and hired Gloria Ray as its first director of women’s intercollegiate athletics in 1976.

“Universities had to be in compliance with Title IX by 1978,” Schriver says. “UT had the structure and commitment already in place. Tennessee was very forward-thinking.”

The results of those early efforts have been nothing short of spectacular. The eight-time national championship Lady Vol basketball team is the best known of UT’s winning women’s sports, but the university’s first women’s national championship actually was in track and field in 1981 under Coach (and UT alumna) Terry Crawford.

The strong leadership of the department has inspired student-athletes for three decades, particularly early on, when opportunities for women were rare. Joetta Clark, a member of the 1981 track and field national championship team, said, “I gained so much from being a Lady Vol. Seeing women in power [Gloria Ray, Pat Summitt, sports information director Debby Jennings, Terry Crawford]—that was the first time I had seen women working in the sports world, outside my mother. The athletic directors and coaches I had known were all men. Now I could envision the different careers you could have in the sport.”

Schriver, a former associate dean at UT Knoxville, wrote the book as a gift to the university. Profits from sales will go to the Lady Vol scholarship fund.

“I wanted to capture the story of the development of the women’s athletic programs before we lose the voices from the early days,” Schriver says. “This is a unique moment in time when we still have the early fans, coaches, and players who can tell their stories.” In the Footsteps of Champions contains the largest collection ever of UT women’s athletics photographs.

Soccer great Mia Hamm wrote the book’s foreword. Schriver says she wanted someone not connected with UT to lend credibility. But Hamm, a University of North Carolina graduate, joins the chorus of praise for Tennessee:

“The University of Tennessee has set the standard for women’s athletics programs. The Lady Volunteer story stirs my sense of pride in our collective history and my belief in a positive future for all young women who strive to find their passions.”

University of Tennessee Press

The pieces fell slowly into place when Steve Ash “discovered” a little-known mission that may have influenced the outcome of the Civil War.

Ash, UT Knoxville professor of history, was searching for a moment of microhistory to serve as the subject of a book. He spent more than a year digging before he found the incident that became Firebrand of Liberty: The Story of Two Black Regiments that Changed the Course of the Civil War.

The incident was an 1863 mission by two black regiments to Jacksonville, Florida, where they freed slaves at plantations along the St. John’s River. The mission was cut short after 3 weeks.

“This was a backwater part of the war, dwarfed by the great campaigns in Virginia, Tennessee, and elsewhere,” Ash (Knoxville ’83) says. “But the deeper I got into it, the more interesting it became.”

The mission, Ash found through research at libraries and archives, was not a traditional military campaign. The organizers were abolitionists who sought to free slaves.

An intriguing footnote to history, no doubt, but Ash discovered a nugget that gave the mission added significance.

“I found a story from a Washington, D.C., newspaper praising the mission. I happened to know that on the very day that story appeared in 1863, [President Abraham] Lincoln gave orders for full-scale recruitment of blacks.” Until that time, very few blacks had been recruited to serve in the war, and public opinion generally opposed their service.

The Jacksonville expedition, though brief, was successful, and the black soldiers comported themselves well. Ash believes that this newspaper story persuaded Lincoln that the Northern public was ready to accept black troops. This, along with other reports of the success of the Florida mission, led the president to approve the massive recruitment of African Americans. Eventually some 180,000 served in the Union army. Thus, Ash says, this little-known incident influenced the outcome of the war.

“The decision to use black troops gave the Union an advantage. The outcome of the war might have been different without them,” he says.

Ash says he was delighted by the characters the mission served up—commander and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson, U.S. Treasury agent and con man Lyman Stickney, and Charlotte Forten, a young black woman involved in an affair with one of the white officers.

The book took about 3 years from start to finish. “It’s all true,” Ash says, “but it’s almost like a novel.”

W.W. Norton & Company

Alumnus Pens Medical Thriller

Write what you know. That sage advice has been passed along to many an aspiring author. In Rupture, first-time novelist Dr. A. Scott Pearson (Knoxville ’87, HSC ’91) takes that advice and runs with it. Pearson has written a medical science-fiction thriller inspired by his chosen profession and set in Memphis, the town where he attended medical school.

The rhythms and undercurrents of Memphis inspired Pearson to use the city as a backdrop for his novel. Rupture is set at the fictitious Gates Memorial Hospital. Scenes in the Memphis medical center will strike a chord of familiarity with Memphians and UTHSC graduates.

“I love writing about Memphis,” says Pearson, a native of the Forked Deer Community in West Tennessee. “The city has a certain edge to it, a sense of angst always simmering and ready to blow. I like to think of Memphis as a main character in my novels.”

Rupture introduces readers to protagonist Dr. Eli Branch. A rising star in the medical community, Branch is living his dream of becoming a successful surgeon and scientist. But during some of his research, he learns that medicine can have a dark side.

While investigating the suspicious death of one of his patients, Branch uncovers a web of lies spun by his late father, a longtime professor of anatomy at Mid-South Medical College in Memphis. As Branch searches for more information, he hits upon even more questions and eventually discovers more victims who died suddenly.

Pearson describes scenes from the operating room and explains medical terminology, such as aortic device failures and stem cell therapy, with clarity. As a physician trained at a major medical research center, he realizes the importance of authenticity in execution of the story.

When he is not writing new works, Pearson specializes in general surgical oncology. He is chair of the Multidisciplinary Solid Tumor Board of the Vanderbilt–Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville.

Oceanview Publishing