Upper Cumberland Camera; #1137

You You Good evening and welcome to the upper Cumberland camera

tonight. Dr. Barbara Reynolds dean of the Tennessee Tech School of Nursing will show you some tips on how you can quit smoking and Norman aquatics director at the Y will tell you about the swimming programs and 111 South is complete. We'll talk to Representative Jerry Hardrow and Harold Moe Sims a visionary of this project, but first this story. Music does country music star Charlie Daniels have in common with actor Danny Glover and songwriter John Berry? They're united together in the fight for literacy. We don't believe and we don't see really understand that there are people there's so many people in this country whose lives are defined and are limited by the fact that they can't read and that's what it is.

It's a limitation. It doesn't allow you to manifest your dreams or to be full or whole. So learning to read is life affirming. I consider to be life affirming. I've been a long time supporter of adult literacy programs and currently serve as chairperson for star that support Tennessee adult readers. When I was asked if I do a song with John Berry about a literacy I jumped at the chance. I'm glad that country music can be used to help adults improve their lives through reading. As a songwriter I'm dependent upon the written word. I can't how empty life would be without words. This cassette which is a partnership between Liberty Records and Coors Literacy Pass It On will raise money nationally for adult literacy programs so that any adult who wants to will have the opportunity to learn to read. This past summer all three were on hand in Nashville at Fanfare to promote the Coors Literacy Campaign Pass It On. But only you could save me. You love

amazes me. I want to tell you something else about John Berry. With all the problems he's had in the last little while he has kindly consented to spend time trying to help people learn how to read with the Coors Literacy Program. It's called Pass It On. If you get a chance to help out with it do it. Ladies and gentlemen Mr. John Berry my heart is on for you. I have a vested interest in this program because I'm dyslexic so the learning to read was a very difficult and challenging often very painful.

I could have been one of the many statistics one of the many men and women who basically are unable to achieve their own self worth and to grow and develop and to pursue their dreams because of their inability to read. In Putnam County Hope Lancaster is the coordinator for adult education. She hopes this record the bottom line will bring new attention to the wonderful programs available for non -readers. We have a pretty comprehensive adult education program here in Putnam County and we offer services for adults who have not graduated from high school. There are several different parts to that program. We have a very large GED program here where students come and prepare for the GED. We have basic skills classes. We have an adult high school where students can come and actually pick up the credits that they missed in high school and get a fully accredited high school diploma. Part of that program

is a part of the adult education program is a new family literacy program where parents and children, preschool children come and learn together. We also have a jobs program where the students learn basic job skills as well as their academic skills. We have sign language classes. We have English as a second language classes and we have a very comprehensive adult reading program for adults who can't read. That's impressive. It's quite a large program. serve about 700 -800 students a year in our program. That's how many you're serving, but how many more are out there that you could serve? There are approximately 40 -something percent that are over the age of 25 that could benefit from our program. Either they don't have their high school diploma or their academic skills. They may be below a 12th grade and even though they have their diploma, they may be eligible to come back and study and upgrade their skills. So we have a pretty large population here. What sort of

needs do you have to try and attract those other students? Just getting the word out and we appreciate this opportunity to be able to let people know, especially for our adult non -readers. It's hard to let them know that we have this program. They're not reading our printed material, but we just need for people to be aware that we have this program that can help them. We need for employers to be aware so that they can tell their employees that might need to go back and upgrade their skills. We need for agencies to know so that their clients could let their clients know and it might make them more employable and help the ones maybe that are on welfare improve their situation by improving their education. And just particularly to let the people themselves know that we have this help that they can come back and learn to read or they can get their GED or get their high school diploma and all of our services are free to them. So it doesn't cost them anything? It does not cost them anything. They just call us here at the Board of Education and we can tell them about the programs that we have

available and send them to the appropriate clients. Since this is a free service and you have all these great different, a variety of the kinds of classes that will meet different needs, what's the biggest drawback for a student not to come? What's the hardest thing for them to decide to make that step to join a class? Well there really are several factors. Sometimes there's an embarrassment factor. People don't realize how many other people are in their same situation and they sometimes feel well I'm the only one that didn't get my diploma or that can't read or whatever. And they hesitate to make that step to come into a program but realizing that we have 700 -800 people that come each year. That's one factor. Time is also a factor. know adults have jobs and they have families and it's really hard. We try to accommodate that by offering classes in different locations throughout the county and at different times. We have daytime, afternoon, evening classes. So we try as much

as we can to accommodate the adult schedules but those are some really major problems that we have. Now there's a new song that's out that is really exciting that addresses the fact of someone not being able to read I think called the bottom line. That's right. Tell us about that. Okay there is a national promotion between Coors and Liberty Records and they just really want to make people aware, raise awareness about the problem of illiteracy and they've published a tape called Bending Together for Literacy. There are several popular country music artists on this tape. I think there are six songs on the tape. The bottom line is one of the songs on that tape and it is a song about illiteracy. It just wants to let people know that yes there is a problem and also helps us to get the word out that we have programs that can help. Okay, two, three, four.

But you're in the middle of the line. He needs help across the bottom line. Cause the bottom line is a crying shame when you can't or write your name. Cause the bottom is a crying can't Cause the line is a write Well, I just want to encourage everybody to let their employees know, let their friends and their

family members know that we're here and that we're a free program and we can help anybody within, you know, that needs any of our services within adult education. All of the counties within this region, I know you serve several regions of Putnam County, every county has an adult education program and they can call their board of education and find out about the adult education program and here in Putnam County, our number is 526 -9777 and we just want everybody to call and refer their friends or family members or call and enroll in our program if they need our help. The banding together in the Fight for Literacy cassette featuring the bottom line can be ordered through the Putnam County Board of Education. Proceeds from the cassette will be used for the adult literacy campaign in Putnam County. To order the tape, call Hope Lancaster at 615 -526 -9777 after January 1st.

The holidays are a great time to visit the YMCA, but did you know that you can be a part of their swimming program in January? To learn more, we spoke with Ann Norman, the Director of Aquatics and Physical Sports for the Cookville YMCA. We have a lot of out -of -town guests during the holidays. We have a lot of senior members that bring in grandchildren and nieces and nephews and other people bring cousins and brothers and sisters and we get to meet a lot of families during the holidays. It's a lot of fun. You've also used this time to do some additional kind of training, haven't you? Right, we've used these two weeks to run a holiday camp and we've also used these two weeks to run a junior lifeguard camp, which is something we've never done before, but we designed this program in an attempt to teach the younger junior -high -aged kids about the responsibilities of being a lifeguard and also to prepare them physically for some of the skills. The endurance skills and the other skills are quite difficult and if they don't have any preparation and then go directly into

lifeguard training, it's really difficult. So this was an attempt to prepare them. It's gone really well. What are some of the things that we saw the young girls do earlier? They did some entries. They did a stride jump entry, which they're supposed to do and keep the victim in sight so their head stays above water and they did a couple of tired swimmer assist and then we saw them doing some of their competitive swimming strokes. Both of the young ladies that were on camera on my swim team. So they were practicing some of their swimming skills as well. Now a lot of folks wouldn't

think that January is the time you could take swimming lessons, but it is, isn't it? That's right. It's never too cold at the Y. Never too cold at the Y. The air temperature here on the pool deck is between 82 and 84. The pools 88 and the locker rooms are between 75 76 degrees. So it's a perfectly safe place to bring your child and let them swim. A lot of people like to drive and change them on the deck and then go home. So it's perfect place to go swim in the wintertime. What kind of classes do you offer in the winter? We offer everything in the winter that we do in the summer. Of course our numbers aren't as great, but we offer everything from the water baby classes which start at six months and they include the parent in the water until the age of three and then we have the preschool program that goes from three to five. Then we have our school age program that goes from six to fourteen and all the preschool classes and all the adult classes are offered morning and evening. course our school age classes are offered only in the evening, but the scheduling the afternoon

goes three thirty to six and scheduling the morning starts at nine and goes to one o 'clock. What's an advantage for a parent to enroll their child in a swim class during the winter? A lot of times from summer to summer of course I have children that I've had for year after and they do progress from year to year but it's amazing what they forget from year to year and especially I've seen it since we've had this indoor pool. We'll have a child in swimming lessons for the summer. They come back to swim with Capshaw's ESP or Sycamore's ESP and they jump in and expect to do what they did in the summer and they can't. Just like basketball or football or softball or any other skill that you don't perform the skill you lose some of it. So continuing through the winter helps the child retain those skills and build on them every year rather than just maintaining a minimal level of proficiency and just trying to regain that every year. We'd love to see more people out. We haven't reached all the beginning swimmers in Putnam County that I'd hope we'd reach. We have a lot of people in here but I know there are a lot of people that do not swim and we'd love to have you. No

one has ever left this Y not learning to swim if they decided they wanted to. So that's a pretty good record and we'd like to reach more people. If you'd like more information about swimming lessons at the YMCA call 528 -1133. If your number one resolution for 1995 is to quit smoking then the contents of this little box could be a good friend to you. The Freedom from Smoking program is sponsored by the Tennessee Tech School of Nursing. It uses education as well as emotional support to help you quit smoking for good. There's no fees, no dues, and no hassles if you don't quit. To find out more about this program we spoke with Dr. Barbara Reynolds, Dean of the Tennessee Tech School of Nursing. The No Smoking program is called the Freedom from Smoking group and we meet every Thursday from six to seven at Cookville

General Hospital. This is a group mark that's sponsored by the School of Nursing and we have been doing this now for about three years. We started when Cookville Community Clinic was going on and the physicians there, particularly Dr. Womack, said that there were so many people that he was discovering that had problems related to smoking that we just had to do something about it. So he asked me if School of Nursing, if our faculty and our students might try to have a program that would be helpful to those people who were interested in stopping smoking. So the physicians were pushing it and that was a big help. And so for the years that the Cookville Community Clinic was going on, we held it right up there in the clinic on Saturday mornings. But then after the clinic folded, and that was because of 10 care and it wasn't needed anymore, we decided to continue it. The School of Nursing decided to continue it. And so

we have been having that now for about a year and a half over in Conference Room B near the cafeteria at Cookville General Hospital. When a person first comes, because we have three facilitators there and sometimes four, then the new people tend to be moved aside to another part of the room and they get the introduction of what this is about and some information taken about their smoking habits. And they fill out a form about how many cigarettes they're smoking and when they started smoking. so we get a little history about them. And then they're asked to write down some of the reasons that they want to stop smoking. And they'll write down things like I'm coughing a lot. doctor said it would be better for my heart if I didn't. I'm having bronchitis every winter. I've been in the hospital. I

get winded when I go upstairs and so forth. And so these are the folks that write down what are the problems. And they may say because my spouse doesn't like me to smoke or my business is cut down. They're the clean air act and they're not letting any smoking in their company anymore. And so we put down all these reasons that people want to stop. I want to smell better. I don't want to have that stinky smell or my teeth are yellow or my hands are yellow and I want to give up some of those things. so we really encourage them to write as many reasons down as we can because we think that's going to help them as they go along. Some of the suggestions that we make are that people keep a record of whenever they smoke and that we aim for a date maybe three weeks later. up to that point, that'll be the quit date in three weeks, up to that point they become very conscious about their cigarette smoking because as I said it's such a habit that people just pull the cigarette out without even thinking.

And so some of things we suggest is they wrap up their packages cigarettes in a piece of paper with a rubber band so that when they want a cigarette they have to unwrap it. And then they have to write down in this piece of paper the time they want the cigarette, what their stress level is, where they are at the time, and then they have to wrap the cigarette back up again and put it back in their pocket. Doing that helps them to be aware of, I am taking a cigarette. Some of the other things we've suggested is that one of my friends found that it was helpful to leave her cigarettes in the basement. So she had to go to the basement and she smoked standing by the laundry. It was a different place and she usually smoked and so she had to go

smoke there and it made it very clear what she was doing. Other things that are helpful I think is to try to avoid people that you've relaxed with over cigarettes or to tell them that you are giving up cigarettes and carry with you a half a straw if that's what you do and suck on the straw while you have a coffee or a drink with someone. Very often coffee and cigarettes or a drink and cigarettes of liquor or wine or beer tend to be associated and so it's helpful to try to reduce those associations as you get into this process of moving toward your quit date. Other things of course are eating celery and crunchy things or popcorn, things that give you the gratification, oral

gratification and those things are sometimes helpful. If it's a cigarette before you get up in the morning, go suggest you go brush your teeth, have a drink of cold water, drink lots of water because you want to flush your system out, have your coffee standing up. There are just a lot of different things that you can suggest to people that change the pattern, that change the habit that they have and each person has to decide what works best but we come in with the suggestions and they take those suggestions. I think one of the things that is helpful and in one of our group sessions we have a husband coming who's trying to help his wife and as he was saying he used to nag her on it. Well I guess if nagging helped we'd have clinic or groups to help people nag better but it doesn't help and so anybody who's listening who has a smoker in the house

who's trying to give up smoking let me suggest to you that you encourage them because if they're trying to give it up and they have a slip they're going to feel guilty enough, they don't need another layer of guilt and so to say to them when they go without a cigarette for a while you're doing real well, you're just doing fine, you can make it, you can do it and that kind of encouragement I think is helpful to the smoker. One of the things I think that's been a saving grace for us has been the nicotine patch. If the person has a personal physician then that physician will prescribe the patch. If they're going, if they're on 10 care they can get the patch prescribed in one of the 10 care settings. Okay the patch looks like this and you pull it off and wear it. Now some people have thought well if they just wear it for 12 hours and then they don't need to sleep with it and they'll put the other half on

well that ruins it. It's got to be kept in one piece. The patches which are fairly new within the last maybe five years generally help the person to get through the first part of their addiction. Addiction is probably only a third of the problem. It not only is an addiction but it's a habit and it also is a psychological emotional release and so we have to deal with both things. If we put, if people go on the nicotine patch they go on a patch of this larger amount 21 milligrams for about four to six weeks and again that's up to the the doctor or the patient who gives in input and says well I think I could go from the 21 down to the 14 and so then they go to a 14 milligram patch which is less than the 21 so they're

decreasing the nicotine and then after another four weeks they go down to a seven milligram patch which is even less nicotine they're getting into their bodies and we think that it's absolutely essential that they go to a support group at the same time that they have a buddy system that they have some people they kind of report to and at that same time they're talking about how they're dealing with stress or how they're dealing with anger what are they doing instead of smoking are they getting more exercise are they eating properly are they getting lots of fluids all of those things help to improve the the person's general life and this is the the 21 milligram and then the the other ones are just a little bit smaller. It's important when a person finishes using the patch that they put it away they don't leave it around where children or animals can get it so they it's a good idea to keep the package it came in

and wrap it up and throw it out. The patch provides a constant blood level nicotine level so that there's not the up and down of the cigarette smoking if a person is on cigarettes then they take the nicotine in and it's it brings the blood level up for a while and then it goes down then they need another one and so you see this kind of blood level occurring with a nicotine patch the blood level nicotine level is pretty much level across the 24 -hour period and that helps the person not have that tremendous drive that craving for the cigarettes. Tend care will pay for drugs for emphysema for bronchitis for all these treatments but not for patches which you know it says a lot about our system which focuses on treatment and not prevention. We have some money left over from the Cookville Clinic that is in a

in account so that we can provide patches to people who don't have insurance to cover it who are on tend care. What can you say that it could really encourage people to stop smoking? I think I would tell them about the patches that the patches really make it easier for people that if they've tried to quit before without the nicotine patch they might want to try the patch that they also need it with a support group and there is a support group and people have been very much helped by having both the support in the patch. It's got to come from those people though I mean nagging doesn't do it as I said earlier everybody knows that smoking is bad for you and and I think the people want to they need the encouragement they need to know where to go and that they will be received even if they have a slipper relapse that they will get some help and that there is a group of people willing to help with that with that. I guess that's what I'd say it's

got to come from them that that first step has got to come from the person him or herself and then we can help them after that. The Freedom from Smoking program is Thursday evenings from 6 until 7 p .m. Cookville General Hospital in conference room B. If you'd like more information you can call 372 -3213 or 528 -5176 for many years the completion of highway 111 or corridor J has been anticipated by the residents of the upper Cumberland. Earlier this month the section of 111 which runs from Dunlap over the mountain into Chattanooga was dedicated. We had the opportunity to talk to State Representative Jerry Hargrove about the dedication when we met him at the city scape ceremony last week and because of the things Mr. Hargrove has to say Donna and Richard Castle traveled to Sparta to

talk with Harold Mose Sims about his vision for the region but first Representative Hargrove. Representative Hargrove I understand that you participated last week in an exciting event the I guess dedication of corridor J. That's right Donna last week we finally opened the last leg of corridor J highway 111 to us. You can now travel over to Assati Daisy without all the winding roads and it makes obviously it's going to cut down on the time but it's also very beautiful drive and we were able to do that last week and is the dream come true for a lot of people and unfortunately a Governor could not be there he was called away at the last minute to a little chat he needed to have with President Clinton that everybody probably knows about but now and he was not there but that's one of the things that he had very dearly wanting to be at was the opening of 111 which was by the way one of the things when he first was elected he said he would do which was to open up 111 all the way across or corridor J all

the way last leg and it's a complete now I understand that one of the reasons that they wanted corridor J and 111 of course we all love not having to go over signal mountain anymore but one of the reasons is to open up economic development like in sparta and McMinnville and some of those areas that's exactly the the reason behind that kind of development the rural area was to bring the infrastructure to the places that were neglected in the past and if you look at the map other than of Chattanooga would benefit a big metropolitan area but the rest of the towns and communities along the way are the more rural areas and what was allows to do it will allow the trucking industry to come right to the door of these smaller factories that are already in the smaller communities and hopefully will encourage others to locate there because they can get their product to virtually about two -thirds of the united states within just a matter of hours by using that that corridor as the first leg on the way to the market now I understand that this was the dream of a spotter resident a long time ago well that's true mose sims who was at

the the ceremony and participated and helped cut the ribbon along with some other people 30 years ago or more had a dream that they could bring a road like this to the upper crumbling area and they sat down around coffee and with different legislative bodies and they traveled to washington and to put it just mildly it was a dream come true for mr sims and and his other compatriots over the years and he was very very proud of it and and of course lord and i want to say his praises today because without thinkers like that back then we wouldn't have this and i might add to mose is still thinking about highways for this region and has an idea about two major interstates coming north and south right through using part of these roads to a completely and further open up the rural areas of this upper crumbling region to commerce and i understand he was at the dedication also he was at the dedication and someone asked him his age and he was willing to tell i won't say because he acts and looks much younger than what he said he was

but yes he was there and i know with a great deal of pride he and the others that really thought this up and dreamed about it a long time ago uh i'm sure they all were very glad to see it happen mr sims i guess last week was the fruition of a dream for you when one eleven was completed from at least all the way through the state of tennessee yes it certainly was we go back to nineteen and sixty three when we organized a group of us a little association here called the upper cumberland development association which later on as you know became the upper cumberland development district which functions today and the whole idea was to pull together as many counters as we could so we could have some sort of influence on the state government as well as the federal government and get as much federal funds state funds as we could to

improve conditions throughout the upper cumberland and uh we went to washington for a trip in nineteen i believe it's 1963 um and we were uh we went down to see the under secretary of commerce at that time was franklin d roosevelt jr and uh at the at that time president kennedy was this was before he of course died was working on the appellation program the program stretching from lower new york down to through tennessee and we were sitting around his desk about 12 of us from the upper cumberland region and as i remember the the group included hubert bennett of cookville uh the judge at that time jimmy mozier bill turneray from

monoray uh elvin lesley from livingston dr ha coward from livingston and um peter one from livingston who became there was a mayor then we had from sparta bill a mitchell jd haston uh hu karmichael uh c ray ward and jimmy tub and others and we were talking about possibility of this appellation program of what it would do to to our area in in the upper cumberland at some point during the conversation mr roosevelt was called out of the office for some reason and we looked over on his desk he would have been an idea and there was a a map of tennessee there was a red line coming right down through it looked like our area but we couldn't tell very much about it but when he came back mr roosevelt came back in the office

i asked him what the map portrayed there what what was the map about and i said is that a new highway and he turned the map over and said no no said this is just somebody's imagination said we're not thinking about highways in the program we left there and we called a governor clement he was governor then we called him immediately to see if he knew anything about a proposed highway and he said no he did not and he called mr pack uh who was commissioner of highways at that time and he knew nothing about it about i guess six months after that or it might have been a year mr roosevelt came down to tennessee to talk about the appellation program at this time president kennedy had agreed to go forward with it and they held a conference over in noxville in the andrew johnson hotel and we took

a delegation over to that meeting and hubert vinnett and i was sitting on the aisle and uh mr pack david pack commissioner of highways came down the aisle with an old friend of mine that i hadn't seen in about two years his name was silvestre ridge and mr ridge was assigned to my office in the tal brazil during world war two he was a road engineer and he was with the bureau of roads at that time in washington and he was sent to brazil to oversee the numerous runways that we were building to ferry airplanes over to europe and to the far east into china and i got to know him quite well and saw him frequently in washington after the war and i they took a seat maybe three or four rows ahead of us and i went down tapped him on the shoulder and i said silvestre what are you doing in the mountains

of tennessee he turned around and he said well i was hoping to see you and he said i've been made vice chairman of highways for the appellation program and i said you're the man we want to talk with immediately and we did set up a meeting he didn't go to the launch that governor clement was holding for mr roosevelt and we had a meeting up in one of the rooms of the hotel and we pointed out to him that this highway should come down through tennessee through pickett county oberton county partom white going to van buren sequachi and hamilton and he said well we haven't decided exactly where we're going to put this highway we call it corridor j and these were corridors that they built from new york down through pennsylvania west virginia virginia kentucky and and

tennessee he said have you got a map can you show me what you're talking about we didn't have a map so i sent um c -ray ward and jimmy tub out to get a roadmap and they got a s o roadmap and came back and he said okay if anybody's got a pen or a pencil draw a line and tell me where where you're taught what you're talking about so jd hasten had a pencil one of these things and had three or four colors in it and we drew a red line from pickett county down to hamilton county and we said you have a highway already a us highway 127 and what we need to do is bring this as centrally located as you can between north swan and nashville we're serve the greatest number of people well he didn't make a decision then he said well we look at it and we give it consideration well that highway we opened as you

know last wednesday and it's a beautiful highway and now we're looking toward hoping to create two alternate interstate highways one would be alternate 665 it would probably come down from louisville to salina to gainsboro to cookville sparta uh spencer dunlap chattanooga the other alternate highway would come off at mount Vernon kentucky and come down through albany into pickett county birdstown livingston cookville sparta mac menville telehoma manchester and telehoma lincoln county go into huntsville

and from huntsville over to decatur and go down to the gulf coast on 65 i 665 if you're leaving chicago or atlanta or florida would reduce the mileage by 100 miles if you're coming down 75 775 coming off at mount Vernon and going to the gulf coast in your lanes you reduce the mileage by 50 miles this would relieve the congestion and the pollution that the other problems that you have now in nashville and noxville and chattanooga we believe that there is great merit in these two proposals exactly what the new congress will do of course is anybody's guess the democrats want to cut and reduce the expenditures of the government they're going to cut the

department of transportation mr clinton says and of course the republicans want to do the same thing but the important thing is the problems that exist in nashville and noxville and chattanooga are not going to go away in fact you're you're going to build more automobiles because you've got more people coming into the world so they're not going to go away you're somebody's going to have to do something about them exactly what that would be is anybody's yes at the moment that's where we are today why do you think highways are important to a region well just to give you one example the the upper cumberland development district which is headquartered in cookville has kept statistics on the job new jobs created in this area and would you believe that 14 ,000 new jobs have been created

since we opened up sections of 111 how have you seen sparta change over the years and in the upper cumberland in general as a result of progress and do you think progress is necessary well as long as you're going to increase the population you've got to have something for those new children to do i think we i don't know exactly what the number of graduates are in our high schools in these 18 these 13 counties but it runs into to several thousand sure you have to have progress what are they going to do for a living you can't stop and say well this is beautiful country here we don't want to disturb it it's it's environmentally valuable but that's not going to give jobs to to these young people coming out of high school or college

you either move forward or i guess you're stopped having children i don't know which i primarily came down today to talk to you about the highway but of course once i arrived i realized what a distinguished career that you've had and i wondered if you know we've had presidents recently that have not really survived over one term and you started your diplomatic career under franklin roosevelt and of course he had bought four terms in office at 12 years think that's possible today for president i don't know it's a very interesting question and you have mr carter serving only one term you had mr bush serving only one term and with the speed with which information travels today by your tv station a radio it could be that we may be in a position today in a situation where it very much

like the british if you have problems with the parliamentary system in britain the president of the the prime minister may serve only six months and he's gone it could be that with the great information and knowledge that comes through the tv programs today we may be in a situation where you're looking at every detail of what the president does and it enlightens the people it furnishes knowledge to him that they've never had before and it could be that we may be in the future in a situation where a man serves only four years and he's out of course this is very common in britain he could serve two years he can serve one year or he could serve six years but if they can't agree

the house of lords and the house of commons outgoers the prime minister i don't know whether we're coming to that or not as i said you you started your diplomatic career under under franklin delano Roosevelt and then you continued through a number of presidents perhaps as a new year's treat for our viewers you might give us a little bit of what you thought about each president well i was in the career service and you take an examination for that and in the career service you're not a political appointee it's your career service just like the military and you serve the president whoever he is regardless of whether he's democrat or or republican your your duty is to him and it makes no difference political wise you have no no interest in the party you may want to vote democratic or republican that's your privilege but you serve whoever is the president

and i served under roosevelt under mr truman under mr eisenhower under mr kennedy and under mr johnson and and mr nixon uh and they are all different people very different people the one president that impressed me with being absolutely conscious of the the importance of what he was doing was mr truman several times i uh went to the white house with problems that we had that only he could make the decision we would run up against the dead wall and we'd have to take it to the president and he would make that decision but he always made it in favor of of the nation of the people he might have he might

be tough he might i remember he made a decision that involved a polka playing friend of his very close friend but he made the decision uh mr nixon i i worked with him when he was vice president and he had i believe the most retentive mind that i've ever seen in any individual you could tell him something and he would remember it weeks later you could give him a document you don't give the president a piece of paper more than two or two and a half paragraphs he doesn't have time to read a whole sheet of papers and you've got to boil it down and get to the very point mr nixon would read a document maybe two or three paragraphs and i've seen him get up and repeat it almost verbatim just like that i i've never seen an individual with a retentiveness

that he had in his head uh mr eisenhower was a not an easygoing person he was an easygoing person yes very friendly very outgoing and i i served as his liaison officer at the heads of state meeting in in the un in new york which involved all the heads of governments around the world you remember that's when a crew chef took his shoe off and beat on the desk to make a point but he handled these people these dignitaries kings princes prime ministers uh with with great ease uh they it was impressive never raised his voice but uh if he had to say something that involved some kind of a

problem that we had with the youtube or someone else he would do so but um he did it in such a way that the other person would accept it um mr roosevelt was um an outgoing person he had a great smile and he gave you a handshake that you would remember and um as you know he couldn't walk but you never saw a photograph mr roosevelt being carried by two secret service people you never saw that but that's how they moved him from one point to another i don't know they were all different people that that i work with each one was different from the other one and the way they did things but it was a great experience and i uh i look back on it with very fond memories you served in many different countries

of the world and of course in this room we can tell that you served in africa for 10 years i think you said yes what do you think about the status in africa and the samayan we went over there and tried to help and evidently really couldn't apparently help much and had to come back do you think that we need to continue in that role or or how has africa changed since you were there well i knew africa when the uh when the colonial powers had control metropolitan powers in europe and that was great britain and france and portugal and spain and belgium and france that's all changed now and all of africa is independent uh the problem in africa today and for the next century perhaps is that 1000 dialects about 1000 dialects are spoken in africa there is no common

language like like in america where we speak english like in britain where they speak speak english and like in france where they speak french there is no common language there is bantu there's swahili there's hausa and there's capelli the thickest dictionary is bantu and it's about that thick swahili is about like that and there's a few pages of hausa and capelli your problem is that the people in cookville don't understand the people who live in crossfield they're tribes and the people in sprotto don't understand the people who live in macminville and because of this it's very difficult to have unity this is why you have the tribal war this is why you have the situation in rwanda it's why you had the problem in samalia

you had it in ethiopia you having it in Liberia and it's going to continue you're going to continue to have this until they themselves the africans can have some sort of a unified language that they can converse with each other they can use in in their politics they can use in commercial economic their economic work we don't have that and i don't know when you're going to have it this is the the main problem of africa they don't understand each other this creates rivalry and rivalry leads into to conflict and that leads into you know fighting each other that's your main problem in africa why should we continue yes we should continue africa contains raw resources that we don't even have in this country you don't grow rubber

in in america we don't have any iron ore left in america we don't have any diamonds in america a few and we don't have much gold left in america africa has all these are you going to turn your back on these countries we're dependent upon them they have oil our oil is depleted except for the offshore it's rapidly becoming depleted so you don't turn your back on africa they have the raw resources that we need i guess we can live without chocolate candy but they grow cocoa we don't so it would be i think somewhat suicidal if we turned our back on africa and said you know forget them sure we're spending money we're trying to help and we're making some progress

but it's slow it's very slow and it'll continue to be that that way but i don't think you can walk away from it what is your prognosis of of the world in general and maybe of america i see the united states continuing in this role hopefully of a leadership role of the world uh we're no threat to the world and they know that the russians now know that and this is why i think you have this relationship very good relationship between uh yeltsin and and uh and our president mr clinton and let's hope that that can continue but still you have people like uh sero dasho i think his name is in russia who is advocating elimination of free democracy he

wants to turn the world back to to the communists you know you had out at off hitler one man you know what he did it's still that possibility out there and the world will never run you know like this it's going to be bumpy you have problems if they're not in africa they're going to be in south america or in the far east but let's hope that there can be stability and that's what we seek and what we try to achieve i guess that sums up my uh philosophy finally i guess one of my questions might be is why the young man from sparta that went off and had the experiences that you had you didn't turn you back on sparta either or the upper cumberland and you came back and and tried to do what you could do for this area yes

um we retired after 35 years in the foreign service and um we had a young family and we wanted to put an anchor down for them and i said to my wife one day we looked at retirement places around the country and they were not exciting and sometimes depressing and i said let's go back to sparta our hometown because she's from sparta also and she said well do we have to do that she lived in washington and london and and and italy and had traveled and i said well you know it's a great place and we've got a lot of deep roots there and um we thought about it and she finally agreed and we came back to sparta and i didn't know what i would do i had no plans i just thought well maybe i can do something uh that would be

progressive or constructive maybe i can do something to help build a better town and a better county and and we did start that we started the upper cumberland development association and that led into the upper cumberland development district which we have now we were a pilot program for the appellation pro program and uh it has been very rewarding we have been very happy and satisfied our children went to school here and uh somehow there i was elected mayor i don't know how but everybody ought to be mayor once then you wouldn't get mad at city hall you see but we've enjoyed it and uh and we're still working and hopefully we can continue to do so

if your new year's resolution is to lose a few pounds you'll want to tune in next week because we'll speak to ymca board member lisa carter as she talks about how you can turn your new year's resolution into a solution