Prologue
Ariel Lavery: Hello Austin.
Austin Carter: Hey Ariel.
Ariel Lavery: I hope you’re feeling energized today because we are going to enter into episode two of our series The Story of Tanasi.
Austin Carter: I am on the edge of my seat waiting to see how things shake out. So, in the last episode we learned all about the vast history of human habitation of the Little Tennessee River Valley and specifically about the Cherokee that seemed to rule the valley.
Ariel Lavery: That’s right. And if you, listener, have not yet listened to Part 1 of this series I invite you to pause this episode and go back to listen and get some context for this story.
(pensive guitar music)
Ariel Lavery: Ok, let’s begin… After the Removal Act sent thousands of Cherokees westward, the landscape began to change as white settlers moved in with attempts to conquer the wilderness. Many families who moved into the valley kept their roots there for generations. The valley became a smattering of farming communities, benefitting from the rich stockpile of eons old composted soil.
John Cartwright: Much of our early history was around that area, uh, going back to the Cherokee Indians. They had burial grounds…
Austin Carter: So I remember hearing this voice in our introduction to the series. Who is this?
Ariel Lavery: This is John Cartwright, in an archived interview in the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. He was the last project manager of the Tellico Project.
John Cartwright: And I’m not sure of, all of how it all got started but, but TVA had this opportunity to buy enough land around Tellico Lake to create a new town.
Austin Carter: It’s interesting that he’s talking about this as an “opportunity.” Because from my understanding about how this all happened, the residents of this area weren’t given a lot of choice in the matter.
Ariel Lavery: Yeah, I think many of the people who lived through it would agree with you.
John Cartwright: Kind of a odd thing. TVA bought the land; 38,000 acres, I think is the amount. There were 16,000 underwater and 22,000 for development.
Ariel Lavery: So a lot more land around the reservoir than would actually be covered by the lake.
John Cartwright: Then you've got just the great recreation around it, the TVA lake, so the idea of TVA creating a new town, just had a lot of appeal!
Austin Carter: So they kind of wanted to industrialize this area?
John Cartwright: This was kind of a utopian vision of how East Tennessee would be.
Ariel Lavery: That seems to be one thing they wanted to do, and build a new community, bring jobs, create a recreational area. This was one of the last sort of untouched areas within the purview of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Zyg Plater: But the valley was so good for agriculture, nobody was gonna build a town there. And the Cherokee sites, the great mound at Toqua, it was just sitting there.
(theme music swells)
Ariel Lavery: This is The Story of Tanasi. This is the story about the epic battle to save the Little T. Today we meet some of the last people to live and play in this river valley before it was flooded, people who have been defined by the beauty of the remote landscape and their struggle to save it, in Part Two of our series: The River’s People.
Austin Carter: On Middle of Everywhere, sharing big stories from the small places we call home. I’m Austin Carter.
Ariel Lavery: And I’m Ariel Lavery.
(theme music ends)
Part Two: The River’s People
Scene 1: Our Community, Our Farm
Carolyn Ritchey: Well, we lived in a little community called Jackson community.
Ariel Lavery: I spent a day with one of the people who lived through this saga.
Carolyn Ritchey: I'm Carolyn Ritchey. And I'm a retired schoolteacher, after 30 years in Knox County.
Ariel Lavery: We met under a shelter and sat on picnic tables in Fort Loudon State Historic Park.
Carolyn Ritchey: I was always proud to be from the country and on the farm.
Ariel Lavery: Carolyn’s family was one of many with ties to the land for over a hundred years on her father’s side.
Carolyn Ritchey: Daddy's family had always lived in Loudoun County. So he was born and raised. His ancestors were along the river, the Blankenships were some of the ones that had some of the, the older land. So he was from a family that owned land there for generations and generations. Our farm, the one that mom and daddy bought December of 1950, was about a mile of where daddy grew up.
Ariel Lavery: She told me all about what it was like growing up there.
Carolyn Ritchey: We had such a beautiful view. Back Creek Knobs were the closest that you could see. And then beyond that were the, the ranges of the Chilhowie and then beyond that was the Smokies, and it was just beautiful. And then the seasons would change. It was a good way to be connected to God and creation and, and, and all His wonderful works. There were three churches, one Methodist and two Baptists.
Ariel Lavery: There was an old mill that produced milled flour, corn and grains and they would plane and dry wood and craft furniture. There was a kind of convenience store.
Carolyn Ritchey: There was also a blacksmith shop.
Ariel Lavery: That later turned into a welding shop.
Carlyn Ritchey: Most people farmed, but some had smaller little plots. And they worked in town, town meaning Loudoun. We had a grammar school that went from first grade through eighth grade. And your teacher, lived in the community. She was our Sunday school teacher in the summer when we went to Bible school, to all the local, we took turns going on it didn't matter what denomination you went to all the Bible schools.We had fun night at school once a year and they had pie suppers…
Ariel Lavery: She told me many stories about her memories of living there.
Carolyn Ritchey: … and us kids would just run around like crazy and catch lightning bugs and play tag.
Ariel Lavery: … and the many memorable characters they had…
Carolyn Ritchey: (fades in) … his name was Oscer, but we called him Otch. … he ran a trot line across the river…we googled and oogled that big ‘ol fish, and there it was… then we had another character and his name was Lee Stewksbury…anyway, they played tricks all the time on Otch… Oh Otch was furious and he came and he told Lee that Bigfoot had been in his watermelon patch. And so he just fussed and fumed and Lee never let on… (clips fade out)
Ariel Lavery: One woman in particular who played a big role in the struggle to come: Nellie McCall.
Carolyn Ritchey: And she was a spitfire of a little woman. She didn't care if she hurt her feelings or not. If she thought your yard was a little bit needed to be mowed, she’d just say, “Why, the people that lived here before sure took a whole heap better care of that place than you doing.” It was just all interwoven, everybody knew one another. It was a respectable community.
Ariel Lavery: And of course Carolyn and her family were major figures in the community and in this story. She lived in a four-bedroom farmhouse built in the early 1900s with her parents, two sisters and brother. The entire time I’ve known Carolyn and every time I speak with her, her mother comes into the conversation. She seems to have lived this experience side-by-side with her mother, as Jean Ritchey tried to mediate the impact of the Tellico Project on her family. A glimmer of what was to come happened when Carolyn was 11 and the Jackson community school didn’t have enough children to stay open.
Carolyn Ritchey: It wasn't like all of a sudden you just saw ‘em leave. It just sort of slowly happened, and being a kid yourself, you're not really aware that the school is getting smaller, until mama told me that there wasn't enough kids and I cried and cried and cried. I did not want to leave my school. (Carolyn breaks into tears)
Scene 2: What is the TVA?
Austin Carter: Hearing Carolyn talking about the history of her life and the area she grew up, it’s amazing how present it seems to her. It’s like it happened yesterday. You know, as we dig into this story, it occurs to me that people listening may not have a fully fleshed out understanding of what TVA is and what they do.
Ariel Lavery: How timely you are! From my perspective the TVA is a very proud agency as they’ve provided a ton of resources for residents over the last 88 years. They put out many educational documentaries like this one called “This is TVA.” (documentary music starts)
Documentary narrator: This is the Tennessee Valley. Cradled by the ranges of the Unaka, the Iron, the Blue Ridge, the Great Smoky…
Ariel Lavery: And they employ all kinds of people with varying skills. They even have a corporate historian who I spoke with.
Pat Ezzel: So my name is Pat Ezzel. Basically I’m the agency expert on the history of TVA.
(documentary fades back in)
Documentary narrator: A great depression had descended upon the people of the Tennessee Valley, as it also descended upon the nation.
(documentary music)
Pat Ezzell: This part of the region faced multiple challenges in the 1930s.
Documentary narrator: This valley was a problem area for the nation.
Pat Ezzell: There were long-time flooding issues.
Documentary narrator: The undeveloped river, the undeveloped forest, the undernourished soil…
Pat Ezzell: The Tennessee River was what we call a non-navigable river.
Documentary narrator: But the tools needed to develop these resources were lacking. That was 1933…
(music fades)
Pat Ezzell: and as bad as conditions were elsewhere in the nation, in most cases, they were worse here in the Tennessee Valley. The annual per capita income in the Valley region in 1933 was $168. Levels of literacy were low. The labor force was largely unskilled. Valley residents suffered from malnutrition. Three out of five people in North Alabama suffered from malaria.
It was a rough place to live. People needed help. And help actually came in the form of TVA. A lot of folks don't know that our roots actually go back to World War I. The nation needed nitrates for the manufacture of bombs.
Ariel Lavery: President Woodrow Wilson built two nitrate plans and a dam for hydroelectric power in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Pat Ezzel: But no sooner had the production of these nitrate plants began than the war ended.
Ariel Lavery: So these plants were just sitting there. But a senator from Nebraska, George Norris, who was a big proponent of public power and rural electrification, had a vision.
Pat Ezzel: What he really wanted to do was look at this region holistically. What happened on the water impacted the land and vice versa. And also that things didn't stop at political boundaries that, you know, you needed to look at this region as that whole watershed region that went across state lines.
Ariel Lavery: So he envisioned a way that these facilities could be used to provide power and fertilizer to the people of the valley. In 1933 Franklin Roosevelt becomes president as the depressed nation searches for salvation.
Pat Ezzell: It was almost a perfect storm. You had the facilities at Muscle Shoals, you had the onset of the Great Depression, the election of FDR, and you had the terrible situation in the Valley region. On May 18, 1933, FDR signs the TVA Act.
(trumpet flare begins)
Ariel Lavery: As part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, the TVA would bring the resources of the valley to the people of the valley.
Pat Ezzell: And that, of course, was a huge change in people's lives. In fact there’s this quote, and I love to share it. It's from a Tennessee Valley farmer. And he says, The greatest thing on earth is to have the love of God in your heart. And the next greatest thing is to have electricity in your house.
Ariel Lavery: And thus, the TVA has managed the resources of the Tennessee Valley ever since.
(ending trumpet flair from documentary music)
Pat Ezzell: Our mission has always been the same. Our mission is to serve the people of the Tennessee Valley. It’s to improve the quality of life for the people of the Tennessee Valley and we do this through energy, economic development and environmental stewardship.
Austin Carter: But we know, based on what we’ve heard, that not ALL people in the valley have felt the goodness of TVA.
(thoughtful string music begins)
Ariel Lavery: True. TVA, as an agency, has had a lot of authority to design, implement and oversee projects they deem to be worthy in the entire region. And they aren’t bound by local elections to do this.
Pat Ezzell: It is a federal corporation.
Austin Carter: What is a federal corporation?
Ariel Lavery: It’s a corporation designed by Congress to perform a public service. The U.S. Postal Service is an example of a federal corporation. But there is no other agency in the U.S. quite like TVA.
Pat Ezzell: We’re a very unique critter out there in the world.
(music fades)
Scene 3: Deconstructing a Community
Austin Carter: That was a nice, quick education on TVA.
Ariel Lavery: Thanks. But let’s get back to Tellico Reservoir, and more about what I learned when I was out there.
Alfred Davis: Actually I never fished. We worked. Dad was a worker, yeah, and he was a good farmer.
Ariel Lavery: I met another person who was involved and spent some time with him and his wife.
Alfred Davis: But now my grandfather …he fished every day.
Ariel Lavery: And he ended up being a spokesman for the farmers.
Alfred Davis: OK, I’m Alfred Davis. I'm trying to retire. I'm only 78 years old. But I've been in the farm machinery business for 54 years.
Ariel Lavery: Alfred was another person whose family had owned land around the river for generations.
Alfred Davis: My great-grandfather bought 360 acres on the Little Tennessee River down here in Loudoun County, in the bend of the river. It's called Ware Bend. My grandfather inherited 120 acres of it. And that's where my dad was raised. And we farmed, both it and granddad's farm for years. And as time rolled on, we heard TVA was going to build a Tellico Dam. And we heard they were going to take all of the bend of the river farm, and 60 acres of the homeplace where I was raised.
Ariel Lavery: But Alfred’s reaction to this news was quite different than Carolyn’s.
Alfred Davis: So I went in the machinery business.
Austin Carter: Oh wow! He just switched gears! But if he wasn’t farming the land anymore, why did he become a spokesperson for the farmers?
Virginia Davis: He’d get up and speak.
Alfred Davis: Because I like, I like to talk I'll talk (laughs).
Ariel Lavery: Now, like Alfred said, news of the possible Tellico Project started to reach the community in the early sixties. Carolyn’s family often discussed it around the supper table.
Carolyn Ritchey: And it wasn't anything mom and daddy dwelled on, but they would say well, mama read the paper, like I told you earlier, from front to back. And she would say she saw in the paper TVA said blah, blah. Or daddy would say, well, Lee Stewksbury told me he heard that he saw something something. I knew that, from our conversations from around the table, that it was a possibility that there might be a dam, you know, and there might not be a dam. It was just sort of like, is there an alien behind that tree? Well, I don't know. Surely not. Oh, that would never happen!
Ariel Lavery: TVA submitted nearly a dozen requests to Congress to get the project funded. Finally, after years, Congress authorized 3.5 million dollars toward the Tellico Project.
Alfred Davis: We knew TVA was coming, we just didn't know when.
Carolyn Ritchey: The first one in our community that went was Jackson Chapel Baptist Church. And it was bought in ‘68.
Ariel Lavery: But the methods by which they began to buy up the land they would need for the project were, according to Carolyn, extremely suspicious. She got right into it on the phone with me the first time I talked to her:
Carolyn Ritchey: When they came to our community Ariel, they went to the sick, the old, the ones that had the least property. Somehow or another they found out who in the community or on your road had loose lips, and they would go to them and find out did so and so up the road owe any money? Are they a good farmer? Do you think they'll sell?
Ariel Lavery: Alfred had some surprising things to say about this as well.
Alfred Davis: In fact, when we went in business, I started doing business with people down in, that had lost land Watts Bar and Mount Hill some of those, and they would tell me how TVA did them. And I thought to myself, I didn't tell them. I didn't say to them, I just sympathize with them. But I thought now, you know they've exa… this is this has been so bad and losing their property that they've exaggerated this. Nobody would do anybody like that. I was wrong. They did do people that way. I couldn't believe it. And I don't blame people for not believing it. I really thought the government would not do ‘em that dirty. This is our government and it's the best government in the world!
Ariel Lavery: Carolyn and Alfred described an approach that seemed highly manipulative in order to get landholders to turn over their property.
Carolyn Ritchey: See they took 38,000 acres So they had 38,000 acres to appraise. And they would digidy dodgy. And that was part of their method.
Alfred Davis: They used the divide and conquer. They go over here and buy this guy's farm. Then they go over here and buy one. And then they could say, well, we bought this for $200/acre. And they did. I mean, they just …and they told people well, you can take us to court. It's been done before, we always win.
Carolyn Ritchey: You couldn't organize a fight. It was like each family had to do their own fighting. Until finally Alfred's family and the McCalls that we started finally gathering, some of the ones that were left and uniting and going, okay, they did this here, they did that there.
Ariel Lavery: Early on, before TVA had yet acquired funding, Aubrey Wagner, who was the chairman of TVA at the time, had spoken to 600 residents of the valley at a Little Tennessee River Valley Association meeting about the project. And they opposed the project.
Carolyn Ritchey: I think it was ‘65 when the Association for the Preservation of the Little Tennessee River was formed. And they supported different lawsuits and sent people to Washington to, to help lobby.
Ariel Lavery: And all around the region other groups started popping up in support of saving the river.
Carolyn Ritchey: And then there was the Tennessee endangered species group, and then there was the River Alliance, the Little Tennessee River Alliance group and so they were fighting and there was the Tennessee Trout Fisherman Group, the Sierra Club, and the Audubon Society and I don't know how many groups! And then there was the small band of farmers.
Ariel Lavery: But even with so much support coming from near and far, people who had all different motivations for saving the river, the local residents were still unable to stand up against the influence of TVA.
Alfred Davis: The bad part was when somebody sold out, they never came back to a meeting. Because they were ashamed. They didn't want anybody to say, “Well, how much did you get? “They didn't want to tell anybody what they got. And see, they promised prosperity. They promised all you people ain't got a job. Oh, you're gonna have a big job once we get this dam built. We're gonna just bring in droves of industry. So people that had no involvement oh they’s for it.
Ariel Lavery: The people who might stand to benefit from new industry, a new town, without losing their land, were, of course, siding with the dam.
Carolyn Ritchey: And they put out signs that said, “Building a Better Environment.” We didn't need saving! We liked where we lived. We liked our home.
Ariel Lavery: The publicity they put out, combined with the way TVA approached the community defines Carolyn’s feelings about this time, and the TVA in general.
Carolyn Ritchey: That whole ordeal was insulting, humiliating, downgrading. They looked at you as if you were a peon and walked around you like you stunk.
Ariel Lavery: And almost everyone I spoke to about this story is filled with regret and longing. Regret for what happened to the river, of course, but also longing for what they missed.
Alfred Davis: Truth is we didn't appr… I didn't appreciate the land. I mean we had had it. Those river bottoms were just topsoil. No rock, you know just this ground, beautiful ground. And as Americans, we're all that way. We're living here better than anybody in the world. Least little thing happens, we get upset. So we really didn't appreciate the land as much as we should have.
Scene 4: The Fight Begins
Ariel Lavery: When we left off TVA had started approaching residents, in various ways, to buy up the land.
Pat Ezzel: The actual construction on Tellico did not begin until 1967.
(sounds of construction)
Ariel Lavery: Appraisers were afoot. And it’s amazing how at this point Carolyn and Alfred’s separate stories sound so similar.
Carolyn Ritchey: In 1969, in March, mom and daddy had a visit by their very first face to face encounter with a TVA appraiser.
Alfred Davis: I came home one night, and there sat a big white car. I said, that's the TVA buyer. It was about eight o'clock in the night. So I went in the front door to the house instead of like, always did went in the back door.
Carolyn Ritchey: And he came and said that he was going to be there for the TVA and land was going to be taken for the dam and he was there to appraise.
Alfred Davis: And this big fella was sitting there, he jumped up and introduced himself. I don't remember his name, but he was a TVA buyer. Mother and dad were sitting there,
Carolyn Ritchey: and mom and daddy said “The place isn't for sale.”
Alfred Davis: And he had just told him the amount of money. Dad thought that was for the 60 acres they were taken that was relatively poor ground where we were raised. And dad said, Okay, what are you gonna get for the homeplace at Morganton that lays on the river.
Carolyn Ritchey: And he said, well, that he said you might as well leave. So he left.
Alfred Davis: He said, Mr. Davis, that is the total amount for all of the property we're taking. Dad said “Hell’l freeze before I take that!” (laughing) He said “Don't get excited. Don't get excited. Now. Don't get excited. You can refuse to take this. And you can sign a paper tonight saying you're refusing. And we'll send three independent appraisers to come and they may pay you more.”
Carolyn Ritchey: Well, he came back, oh, less than a week and wanted to appraise again. And daddy said no. Because we're miles from the dam. We're not on the main channel. We're on a plateau. We knew it would not be underwater. So then we weren't approached, Ariel, for five years. But all around us. And our grandpa and grandma were approached and dealt with, daddy's uncle was bought, Miss Nellie, Mrs. Jackson, our teacher, Mrs. Grace Burton, the Carpenter farm which was a big river bottom farm.
Alfred Davis: It was in March, been being pretty weather. And these three guys came and they had a TVA guy with him. And, uh, we walked over and saw the 60 acres there where I was raised. And they said, well, it's getting about eleven o'clock. We'll go to dinner. We'll meet you at Morganton at the home place at one o'clock. Okay. Well in this part of the country, we can have it pretty now and two hours later, it can be blowing cold and rain. We went in and ate dinner and drove on over to Morganton and then it clouded up and the wind started blowing. And these guys were dressed in sport pants and light shirts. And the wind was blowing, it dropped about 15 degrees. And they got out of their vehicles. And they were just shivering, phew, shivering cold. And one of ‘em said I believe we can see it from here, don't you? He said yeah I believe we can too! Less than 10 minutes is back in their car and gone.
Ariel Lavery: Perhaps not the most thorough of appraisals. But the Ritcheys, they were steadfast against any appraisals on their property.
Carolyn Ritchey: That Christmas we were served eviction letters and the condemnation paper.
Alfred Davis: All these local attorneys, if you went to them, they'd say, “Well, we hate it but you can't fight TVA.”
Carolyn Ritchey: Local lawyers wouldn’t touch it!
Alfred Davis: We started researching for an attorney, and we found one in Russellville, Kentucky. We filed suit against them and they went about everybody else and they waited until the very last before they took us to court. We didn't hear nothing from them. They went around buying up everybody else. They didn't contact us at all. They ‘bout had everybody bought up before we got to go to court. And we went before Judge Taylor.
Carolyn Ritchey: There were 50 so many lawyers that participated in a survey in Knoxville of the federal judges. And then we're just like 17 judges, and he was at the rock bottom of the the worst seven. And the other lawyers that were interviewed, said that they would not go before his bench, if there was any way possible.
Alfred Davis: He's known as the TVA judge. And he was nice. He sat there and listened to the case. Then he ruled in TVAs favor that was in a fair price. And for that 180 acres it was $43,550.
Ariel Lavery: About $250 per acre. Alfred told me about an even more appalling event that happened before they’d sold to TVA.
Alfred Davis: We were sittin’ in the living room one night and the phone rung and daddy answered it. And I noticed he started turning white. And I said something’s wrong. He hung the phone and said well…
Ariel Lavery: A local guy had seen something at his grandad’s old house.
Alfred David: He said he just came through there and there was a bunch of TVA trucks at your grandad’s house. And he said “I wonder what they was doing there?” And I said “It wasn’t any good.” It was by then after dark. But we got in the vehicle and took off over here. And when we drove in the driveway and light shined on the house it looked like the shambles. The doors was knocked in. The windows was knocked in. The porch posts were knocked down. There were literally walls knocked all down and the hardwood floors were busted. ‘Course TVA wouldn't admit to doing that. But their tricks was there. Them five or six trucks wasn’t settin’ there doing nothing. They destroyed the house so that nobody could live there.
Austin Carter: Wow. I’m beginning to understand why Carolyn and Alfred have such negative feelings toward the TVA. It sounds like they felt swindled, looked down on, abandoned, and manipulated by the very agency that was supposed to be helping them.
Ariel Lavery: And it pervaded everything in their lives. Even the relationships in their own families became tethered to this.
Carolyn Ritchey:...she was just a little, little bitty thing. And she was one to take charge…
Ariel Lavery: I was particularly moved by the admiration that grew in Carolyn for her mother. She has saved her mother’s letters, newspaper clippings, protest materials, maps, project proposals, anything and everything that went into this fight. She took a small portion of her collection out to the Ft. Loudon park, where we met, to show me, and it was overwhelming to see these stacks of archives on the picnic tables. She read several letters to me, like this one her mother wrote to a neighbor about their hearing.
Carolyn Ritchey: He never wears a hat because he couldn't ever find one large enough to go on his swelled head… As I went back through all this I just giggled and laughed. And it was hilarious even though it wasn't a funny thing.
Ariel Lavery: Jean Ritchey wrote these incredible works of writing out of a fury and immediacy that end up being really poetic records of her emotional state.
Carolyn Ritchey: Once I did get all this stuff put together and I saw momma’s writing. I mean, I knew mama was intelligent but I didn't really know how, how intelligent until I was older.
Ariel Lavery: And it’s unfortunate that Jean’s talent was wasted on the jaded brains of politicians.
Carolyn Ritchey: From your reply to me… I have come to these conclusions. One, you think your hands are tied and you are unwilling to help us. Two, you fallen victim of TVA’s superb methods of Congress brainwashing tactics. Three, you're admitting TVA is greater and has more power than the federal government. Four, you're deaf and blind to a citizen’s plea for help who is in danger of becoming a victim of an organization that considers this area their own private playpen to manipulate as it so desires. As I view the unbridled tactics of the TVA under the strict regimentation and supervision of its chairman, I can very well see a strong resemblance to another strong Chairman, Mao of China. And the money will be flowing to his coffers once he presents his plan to you and to Congress in the name of progress and helping a poor deprived area and its serfs. you and he sure have a warped idea in my judgment about what constitutes a depressed area. This was once a beautiful, thriving area till the TVA moved in with its worthless teleco project. Now this area has fallen buildings (Carolyn breaking down) and grown up farmland. (Carolyn trying to breathe) But the Little Tennessee River flows majestically along concealing its eternal sadness and joy. In East Tennessee forever, Mrs. Jean Ritchie. (pause)
Ariel Lavery: Carolyn told me several times that this experience helped define who she is today.
Carolyn Ritchey: You have all these lifelong connections. It's just like you’re interwoven with whatever they did to your community. Like if you were an abused person. Well, it's mama, it’s daddy. It's not just a story, it's a life. And it's all gonna die if it doesn't get recorded.
(slow music break)
Scene 5: History Made at the Speed of Congress
Ariel Lavery: Now, from TVA’s vantage point, dealing with the farmers may have been one of the easier obstacles for this project.
Pat Ezzell: When I think about that time, I kind of think about it as like the wild wild west because some of those environmental laws were so new.
Austin Carter: Ah yes. This is the part of the story I knew a little bit about.
Pat Ezzell: That's when the first environmental legislation is passed. You get the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966. You get the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act comes along, I believe in 1970.
Ariel Lavery: The Environmental Defense fund in ‘67… The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in ‘68… The National Environmental Policy Act in ‘69… Federal Water Pollution Control Act in ‘72… and a couple of executive orders mandating other environmental protection.
Austin Carter: In short, there was a lot of new…stuff to account for.
Ariel Lavery: (laughs) Yeah. But, as we know, TVA proved to be up to the task, perhaps in large part because of who was leading the agency, the chairman you heard Jean mention.
Pat Ezzel: So Mr. Wagner, he was known as Red Wagner (laughing) I guess he had red hair.
Ariel Lavery: Aubrey “Red” Wagner became chairman of the TVA in 1962 after being part of TVA since, almost its formation, in 1934.
Pat Ezzell: Red Wagner is the only person that I'm aware of that has gone from an entry level, all the way up to being chairman of the board of TVA.
Ariel Lavery: He was hugely influential. Maybe things were different in those days, but he would actually receive phone calls directly from the president of the United States, like this one he had with President Johnson.
President Lyndon Johnson: Mr. Wagner …
Aubrey Wagner: Yes sir?
President Lyndon Johnson:…are there any possibilities about ever getting in the TVA program in the near future steam plant up Eastern Kentucky?
Aubrey Wagner: Well, Mr. President, the one of the problems now is that the we've had this cut back…
Ariel Lavery: He was known as “Mr. TVA” and seen widely as the benefactor of the Tennessee Valley through the TVA. But he was increasingly challenged for his projects, like here, during a discussion of TVA dams and strip mining on a show “Comment on Kentucky.” Al Smith was asked Wagner question after question about various un-environmental projects the TVA was taking on.
Al Smith: Two decades later, many conservationists who once championed the agency are enraged over the effects of stripping. They say that you've changed directions and that you've made TVA, that your policies have helped make TVA into a mammoth corporation…
Ariel Lavery: Smith asked Wagner why the TVA was getting into developing areas for recreation if their primary purpose was to provide power and flood control.
Al Smith: Mr. Wagner…
Aubrey Wagner: I, uh, uh, you uh, at the beginning of that question. Now, you said TVs primary purpose was…
Al Smith: I should have said one of its primary purposes.
Aubrey Wagner: Yeah, uh, its primary purpose is really to help the people, the region, develop their resources, all of them! In ways that will help them to build a better quality of living.
(music break)
Scene 6: A Hero in Earth Shoes
Austin Carter: There are a lot of people, and organizations, and, now we know, laws that were put in the path of this project, it’s amazing it still got done. And that Wagner may have been a big part of why!
Ariel Lavery: And we haven’t even met or talked about nearly all the people who protested. Like this one, very important man, who was kind of at the center of all of this. In our first interview I asked him to start me at the beginning.
Zyg Plater: All right. It starts 200 million years ago, when the Appalachians rose up from the bed of the sea. (laughing)
Ariel Lavery: Zyg.
Zyg Plater: I am Zygmunt Yun Brod Plater. I grew up in the Appalachians up north in Pennsylvania. My father was in the Polish diplomatic corps. So it was 14, I was 14 years old before I realized that I could really be an American.
Ariel Lavery: And just like every other fighter in this story, his constitution and stamina were developed early on.
Zyg Plater: Farming the land gave me a sense. And my father, also the idea of noblesse oblige, he was raised to run a medieval plantation basically, is what it was back in the old country. And here we had no money, but we had 80 acres.
Ariel Lavery: With a built-in appreciation for environmental stewardship, things he witnessed happening to his childhood surroundings forged his future.
Zyg Plater: I was a fly fisherman starting when I was a little boy. The little stream where I fished was poisoned by a landfill of toxics built upstream. I was in a public speaking class, I've never told anybody this. They said well, find something that is dear to your heart that you can speak about. And so I talked about the pollution of that little stream. And I thought to myself, geez, this this really is significant, not just to my little stream, but to the way a society makes decisions, where to put a toxic landfill. And that's what got me into environmental law.
Ariel Lavery: After a Bachelor of Arts at Princeton and a law degree at Yale he was brought into the valley.
Zyg Plater: I went down to Tennessee, as a very junior professor on the law faculty. Those were the days I was wearing earth shoes and a turtle neck. (laughing) I'd read in the magazines that TVA had built 60 or more dams, and was trying to eliminate the last 30 miles of really high quality trout water. 15,000 acres of the very best farmland in the United States in one place. But when I went down there, I wouldn't fish the little T because I didn't want to fall in love with the place that I was going to lose.
Ariel Lavery: Perhaps just by listening to him you can tell that Zyg is a very passionate and kinda eccentric person?
Austin Carter: Yeah a little bit.
Ariel Lavery: He was teaching an environmental law class and decided he didn’t want to be all conventional with the final assignment.
Zyg Plater: I don't believe in doing just an exam. And I don't believe in doing just a paper.
Ariel Lavery: So they did a short exam.
Zyg Plater: And then each of you is going to do an individual paper to get deeply into something. I had this student Hank Hill. And he came and knocked on my door and said, you know, I was at this bar drinking beer with some grad students from fish biology. And they told me that they'd found an endangered species, a little two and a half inch fish that exists nowhere else in the world. And it’s right in the middle of the Tellico Dam Project. “Do you think that's enough for a 10-page paper?” And I said, “Yes, (laughing) I think it's gonna be enough for a 10-page paper.”
So I said to Hank, “I think I want to go fishing now in the Little Tennessee River.
Ariel Lavery: Enter Zyg, the hero wearing earth shoes.
Carolyn Ritchey: The first time that he came was to one of the Association for the Preservation meetings over at the fort. And so he came in, and Hank Hill.
Alfred Davis: And we went to a meeting one night and this kid, I thought he is a kid. He's a college student, and he said, have they cut any of your old riverbanks off? I said, no, they cut right up to us, but they went around this I didn't cut any of ours. And he said, boy, if they had we’d a to put them in court in a minute. I thought who is this guy? Gonna put ‘em in court? Turned out is Zyg! (laughing)
Carolyn Ritchey: He always wore turtlenecks. I don't think I've ever seen him with a collar. And he wore loafers. And he wore sweaters. But he was always pleasant. Always had a good smile. Always slender. Always made you feel welcome.
Alfred Davis: We’d help Zyg anyway, I'd get up the middle of the night tonight if he needed me He’s the greatest fella that’s ever been.
Zyg Plater: That night. When we pulled the farmers together and said you know you've been kicked in the teeth for all these years, your, your farms have been under the gun. Most of your neighbors have been bulldozed or out. But there's one more way that maybe you could save your farms.
Ariel Lavery: That’s next time in the Story of Tanasi.
(string music begins)
Credits
You can find images of Tellico Reservoir, Carolyn and Alfred, and all the people we talked about at middleofeverywherepod.org or on Instagram and Facebook @middleofeverywherepod, @middleofeverywherepod and twitter @rural_stories. If you want to be even more involved in the conversation, sign up for our newsletter so you’ll always be the first to know about new episodes and interesting things going on at WKMS and in our region. The recording of LBJ and Aubrey Wagner was found and acquired in the LBJ Presidential Library. This episode of Middle of Everywhere was produced by me, Ariel Lavery, with editorial help from my cohost, Austin Carter. Our Editor is Naomi Starobin. Our theme music was composed and recorded by Time on the String sound studio in Paducah, Kentucky. Other scoring was from APM music. Marketing and sponsorship support comes from Dixie Lynn. Thank you to our intern Annie Davis who has done much needed fact checking. Middle of Everywhere is a production of WKMS and PRX. This program is made possible, in part, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private organization funded by the American people.