I've been writing articles on here for a while now and have explored a lot of historic topics. I guess I could be called a historian as I have taught history in this county more than long enough to retire.
But, I'm not a real historian.
My father, Norman Collins, was a real historian of Union County. The source I have drawn from to write about these historic topics is his. Back in the 1980s, the East Tennessee Historical Society called on each county to produce a work of history about their county. This task fell to Gene Tharpe, who enlisted my father to research and write, which he did. I know that my father was proud of this endeavor, but more importantly of his native county.
My dad lived through many similar experiences outlined in “From Hearth and Hoe.” Having been born during the Great Depression, his family, just as many others in Union County, withstood the worst of conditions. As the next-to-last of too many children to enumerate, born to parents in their 40s (born in the 1890s), I'm sure that my father faced even greater hardship. He told stories about the things that older brothers are bound to perpetrate, including stringing him up in the barn. As an impoverished family, they were lucky if they had shoes and even luckier to go to school.
That school no longer exists. Chesney Elementary has long been gone, but my dad showed it to me some time in my teen years in the 1970s. At that point, it was being used as a barn, but in his descriptions, it was a cozy, two-room, wide open world of learning. And he excelled. He excelled so much that by his later years at Chesney, he taught the younger kids.
By the 1950s, completing high school was a large accomplishment, especially in a small, rural and economically disadvantaged county. He did lose a year, however, as the tobacco patches often superseded educational pursuits. But, he did it.
With the encouragement of the Horace Maynard faculty and administration, he also managed to enroll at LMU. As he had admired Mrs. Needham and her classes, he studied Spanish, History and English. His bachelor's degree didn't come easily, since he had to work his way through LMU, mostly at the dairy.
He did meet his lifelong companion in Harrogate as well — woman he would stay married to for 62 years, my mother, Sonja Smith Collins. They started their life together as young teachers in Bell County, Kentucky.
Through these years, jobs would change, graduate degrees would be had, kids would come and life would be lived, culminating in a lifelong teaching career, spent mostly at Gibbs and LMU. He continued to travel and learn until he wasn't physically able to do so. He did, however, continue to learn and travel in his imagination.
My father died this past summer, just shy of his 83rd birthday. He dedicated his life to a pursuit of knowledge — any knowledge: historic, linguistic, musical or political, etc. He represented the best of this county: tough, smart, gentle and kind. He was the real historian.