News - Friday, September 4, 2015

To trace the career of attorney J. Wayne Cropp is to, in a sense, tell the story of Chattanooga’s transformation from a besmogged industrial city to a vibrant metropolis. For with each step forward Chattanooga took, Cropp was there, in the midst of things, walking in tandem with the place he’d chosen to call home not long after the federal government had called it the dirtiest city in America, and long before the people here banded together to lift the blanket of smog, and indignity, from their heads.

The annual Home and Remodeling Show attracted a multitude of visitors to the Chattanooga Convention Center Saturday and Sunday.

Presented by the Home Builders Association of Greater Chattanooga and EPB Fiber Optics, the event featured over 175 booths where home owners and those aspiring to homeownership could see, touch, and experience home products and services available in the area.

Firefighters Against Hunger

The Chattanooga Fire Department is hosting its annual Firefighters Against Hunger food drive. The effort benefits the Chattanooga Area Food Bank. Collection barrels will be at all 19 Chattanooga fire stations through Sunday, Sept. 6.

Paula Palmer has a simple message for Realtors in 2015: Get political.

With tax reform and credit availability at the top of every Realtor’s list of concerns, it’s a good time to get involved. And Palmer has the perfect way: give to RPAC.

Most potential homebuyers are not only looking for the perfect home, they’re also looking for the perfect neighborhood. According to the National Association of Realtors 2015 National Community and Transportation Preference Survey, when Americans think of their dream neighborhood, they often think of a mixed-used, walkable community.

In recent months, stocks have fallen sharply from their record highs, with one-day drops that can rightfully be called “dizzying.” As an investor, what are you to make of this volatility?

For one thing, you’ll find it useful to know the probable causes of the market gyrations. Most experts cite global fears about China’s economic slowdown, falling oil prices and anticipation of a move by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates as the key factors behind the stock market’s decline.  

Retired Judge Walter F. Williams has been placed on disability inactive status with the Tennessee Supreme Court. Judge Williams is a partner at Chattanooga-based law firm McKoon, Williams & Hegeman.

Judge Williams suffered a stroke on Christmas Day in 2014, and has been undergoing extensive rehabilitative therapy. He has also had torn rotator cuff repair. Although he’s doing well, the use of his predominant hand for writing and his speech remain in recovery; therefore, Judge Williams has made the decision to transfer to disability inactive status. Should his recovery permit him to once again practice law, he will request reinstatement by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

The American Lung Association in Tennessee is asking the Chattanooga community to nominate outstanding women in the area for a 2016 Women of Distinction award.

The 31th Annual Women of Distinction Awards Luncheon will be held on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 from 11:15 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Chattanooga Convention Center Ballroom. The event, which benefits the American Lung Association of Tennessee, honors one Tennessee Woman of Distinction and ten of the Chattanooga area’s most accomplished women, who have distinguished themselves within their family, career, and community.

Peter Lundberg’s 65-foot tall sculpture, made largely of concrete he’d poured into a shape he’d cut into the earth of Sculpture Fields at Montague Park, was raised Tuesday, Sept. 1.

Titled “Anchors,” the sculpture also contains the remains of five anchors honoring the five service members who laid down their lives in service to their community and their country in the attack on July 16.

My hand surgeon and my chiropractor should be paying attention to a certain case being tried in the New York Supreme Court. The finger-pointing alone is bound to result in injuries that would require an adjustment, if not an operation.

A headline in a recent “Am Law Daily” (americanlawyer.com) by Nell Gluckman, “Dewey Witness Says She Never Intended to Defraud,” says a lot. Another recent headline, “A Crash Course in Law Firm Disaster,” may say it all.

^“No Escape” is the name of the ironically titled action thriller starring Owen Wilson as a family man who unwittingly moves his wife and kids to a Third World Asian country on the eve of a revolution. I say “ironically titled” because Wilson’s character, Jack Dwyer, and his family do nothing but escape, improbably, and over and over again, throughout the film’s 103 minutes.

This column was originally published in the Hamilton County Herald on Sept. 6, 2013.

“Galveston, oh Galveston, I still hear your sea winds blowin’”… 

Don and I decided to take a few days away over the Labor Day weekend and traveled down to Galveston, Texas. Both of us had been there during our younger days, but I’m talking “much” younger and neither one of us really remembered much about the area. Boy has it changed!

Some golf news first. My dream of playing on the senior tour will not be realized any time soon after shooting 12 over par on that beautiful piece of real estate that overlooks a city skyline, and the river that runs through it. Three putting was a big part of the problem, but when you add a four-putt to the mix, well, dreams do die hard, as some other hacker with a Scottish accent probably said long ago.

Saturday, Sept. 4, 1965

The expansive Volunteer Ordnance Works at Tyner will be reactivated at a cost of $10.3-million and will bring production of TNT about the first of the year. Initial work at the facility will begin immediately with some 500 employees expected to be on the payroll Jan. 1 and an eventual 2,800 to be hired later.

Saturday, Sept. 4, 1915

Prof. C.H. Winder, Superintendent of the City Schools, made an interesting report about the “Home Gardens” which were the summer project of school children. They cultivated over 12 acres of ground and raised vegetables valued at $2,500.00.