Country Connections by James and Ellen Perry
On Friday, November 21, 1952, East Tennessee awakened to a gray, overcast day like many early winter mornings in the hills of East Tennessee.
Some people went to work at the few mills and factories in and around Knoxville, others to school and the University of Tennessee. Travel was normal on this Friday morning with no idea that their lives would change in a few short hours.
Charles Thurmer got up early and prepared to drive to the Central Peninsula Wildlife Management Area located in Sharps Chapel, Tennessee. Charles had applied for and had been approved for a two-day deer hunt for November 21 and 22, 1952. He only had hours to live.
At around 10 a.m. light snow began falling from a darkening, forbidding sky. As evening approached the snowflakes grew larger and their intensity increased. This was the beginning of the storm of November 21, 1952.
As a boy of seven, I was sitting in Rose Hill Grammar School five miles north of Maynardville watching the snow begin to fall. By 1 p.m. the school buses could not run as the snow was too deep on the dirt roads and highways in Union County. Soon teachers in the small grammar schools closed the schools around noon or 1 p.m.
Mrs. Wanda Woods Cox Byerley told me in an interview for this article that she had 31 students at Pine Grove Elementary School and told them to walk home at 1 p.m. All her students lived within sight distance of the school. She watched every kid ’til they got to their homes.
Remember, in East Tennessee in 1952 most mothers did not publicly work and were home during the day. Wanda’s husband, Everett Cox, was serving in the army at the time at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
David Farmer told me that his elementary school let out early and he walked three miles home through knee deep snow. Some of his neighbors worked at the Clinton Hosiery Mill and walked three miles every morning and three miles home every evening during the storm.
David’s family had to carry water from a spring a quarter-mile down the railroad track which ran in front of their rural home. People today have no idea how hard life was into the late 1950s for rural East Tennessee families.
David grew up and was Lefty Frizzell’s opener and entertained over most of the south. David was also a close friend of Charlie Pride and Charlie’s righthand man Danny Hutchins.
Its early afternoon on November 21, 1952. Charles Thurmer has been at the Central Peninsula Wildlife Management Area for a few hours. He did not check in at the check station, but proceeded on to his area to hunt and left his car parked beside the road, walked into the woods to begin his hunt. The snow is getting deeper, and the temperature is also dropping.
Robert Wyrick is a sophomore at Horace Maynard High School. School lets out early. Robert gets home, which was located in a field off Hickory Valley Road near Cave Springs. Electric power was going off for those living in areas that had it.
Robert’s family is lucky as they had an oil heating stove with plenty of oil, plus a two-burner Coleman camp cook stove which they used for two weeks to cook on as the electric power was off for that time.
People in the rural areas faired better than their city counterparts because they did not depend solely on electricity but mostly on wood or coal for heat and cooking. The country or rural folks canned and prepared food from gardens, fish and wild game for meat, and wild vegetables and fruit, also berries.
It is now late evening and Charles Thurmer is one-and-a-half miles from his car. The snow is very deep, darkness is near, and he has been walking in circles trying to find his car. Charles is walking toward what was Norris Lake in the summer, but the lake has been drawn down for winter and spring watershed to help control flooding south of Knoxville on the Tennessee River.
He steps into a recess, trips and falls, hitting his head on a large rock which puts a big hole two inches deep in his head. This is where his body will lie for the next eight days.
For the next seven days the sheriff’s departments of Union, Knox, Anderson and Claiborne Counties with hundreds of volunteers and state wildlife officers searched the Central Peninsula.
Wildlife Management Area’s thousands of acres include wells, cisterns, caves and drop-offs for Charles Thurmer’s remains.
My personal memories from that day was that my dad, Jesse Perry, came to Rose Hill School early that afternoon driving his 1949 Willys Jeep. I think it was the first jeep in Union County.
He had driven jeeps in Germany after Germany had surrendered. Dad and two of his brothers served under General George Patton in the 3rd Army.
Dad took all the kids and staff home from Rose Hill School in his jeep. He then went to other schools in Union County and carried kids and teachers home as school buses and cars could not travel because the snow at midafternoon was too deep. He came home at 2 a.m. the next morning.
The only thanks he got was from those that he took home. Dad did not do this for praise but to get those kids and teachers home and out of the storm. He remembered sleeping and eating rations in the snow with freezing conditions in the winter of 1944 in France and Germany before the final defeat of Germany.
The snowfall for the storm was an average of 16 inches.
During the last week of the search for Charles Thurman, Willard Sharp, who hunted as a boy in what became the Central Peninsula Wildlife Management Area, had a dream for three nights about Charles Thurmer, whom he did not know, and finding his body.
On Sunday morning, November 30, Willard Sharp got dressed and told his wife he was going to find Charles Thurmer.
Willard drove north from Knoxville to almost the location where Charles Thurmer’s Chevrolet was found, parked and was told the area that he planned to search had been searched thoroughly.
Willard decided to check the area for himself from what he saw in his dream the nights before. After a one-and-a-half-mile trek through the dense woods, he saw a red cap and there he found the frozen body of Charles Thurmer.
His determination to find Charles Thurmer stopped the anguish, sleepless nights and worry for Charles Thurmer’s wife, three-year-old daughter, and parents of his and his wife’s. This information and idea for this article which did happen was given to me by Larry Severs who did a lot of research and record preservation for this tragic happening.
Testimony of Willard Sharp as told to Larry Severs on January 29th, 1998:
Willard Sharp told me this date of finding Charles Thurmer on Sunday November 30, 1952. When he found his body the first thing he saw was his red cap. As he approached closer, he said that it looked like a pile of old rags. He went back to the road to a highway patrolman and about 500 other people looking for the body. Someone fires three shots from a shotgun. That was the signal that the body had been found.
Willard says that when he found the body, Charles Thurmer appeared to have been running or plunged and tripped over a root that his toe had snagged, or he staggered into a big rock and hit his head. When they turned his body over, there was a big hole in his head about two inches deep.
At one time Willard said, “I’m in trouble now,” because when he went back to find the body the second time, he didn’t know if he could find it. I asked Willard Sharp if the Lord directed him to find the body, and he told me that he believed that the Lord did. ― Larry Severs
Time for some 1946-1949 Eddy Arnold music.