KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

For this month’s Lunch and Learn, former Tullahoma mayor Lane Curlee presented the “20 Decisions, Events and Personalities that Helped Shape the History of Tullahoma” at DW Wilson Community Center.

Curlee was the second presenter for the return of the Tullahoma Parks and Recreation’s popular educational program, which returned in October after a brief hiatus with the department’s Deputy Director/City Forester Lyle Russell being the first presenter.

For his presentation, Curlee highlighted some of the decisions, events and personalities that shaped Tullahoma to what it is today. After being introduced by Russell, Curlee told attendees that he is not a historian, and he was presented with the idea eight years prior when the former director of the Tullahoma Area Chamber of Commerce Diane Bryant contacted him and asked to if he could put together the city’s history, and present it to other groups. After spending hours putting it together Curlee called Bryant to let her know it was ready to go.

“I said ‘I got it down to four hours and 10 minutes,’” Curlee said which was met with laughter from attendees. “She said ‘No, you can’t do that.”

He said the point of sharing the story was because he had to cut it down based on information he gathered from other historians. 

He then began his presentation and took residents back to the beginning of Tullahoma’s story 180 years ago in the 1840s where there wasn’t a wide place in the road and the town didn’t even had a name. The first major moment in Tullahoma’s history that Curlee highlighted was when the village of Tullahoma was selected as the location for the construction of a railroad to run between Nashville and Chattanooga in 1848. By 1851, Tullahoma had its first commercial business, the store of James Grizzard, the “Lincoln Hotel”, a private school and a Methodist Church, as well as talking about the contributions of residents Dr. T.A. Anderson and Col. Pierce B. Anderson.

Curlee also shared the origin of Tullahoma’s name. He said while it had never been doubted that the name has a Native American origin, Tullahoma did not get its name for golden flowers or a maiden. Per Curlee, in the 1830s there was a Tullahoma, Miss., which merged with an adjoining village to form Grenada, Miss.  One of the founders of Tullahoma, Mississippi was John McLemore of Memphis. In the early 1850s, John McLemore, who was one of the founders of the Tullahoma village in Mississippi, visited Dr. T.A. Anderson, one of the founders of what residents now call Tullahoma, when he proposed the Indian words “Tulla Home”, meaning red rock, as a name for the village.

Curlee then continued his presentation where he talked about Tullahoma during the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Spoke Factory, Hurricane Hall, the rise of downtown, Couch’s, Camp Forrest, the formation of AEDC, President Harry S. Truman’s visit, the Queen City Infirmary, Harton Hospital, King Hotel, John W. Harton and his career in Tullahoma, Dr. Jack Farrar and his career, Northgate Mall, the construction of new schools, UTSI, the airports, TUA LightTube and notable Tullahoma residents like country music star Dustin Lynch, 2012 Miss Tennessee and Top 10 Miss America finalist Chandler Lawson, the 2011 Distinguished Young Woman of America Katye Brock, as well as fourteen professional baseball players who call Tullahoma home.

“Our 170 years of history have prepared us for these moments,” Curlee said. “We live in a blessed community and have so much to look forward to as we work together to design and build a world-class community. So who will write the next chapters of Tullahoma’s history?”

Next month’s Lunch and Learn will feature the director of the Beechcraft Heritage Museum, Sherry Roepke who will talk about the museum’s 50 year history on Wed, Dec. 13, at 11:45 a.m. at D.W. Wilson Community Center, located at 501 N. Collins St. Reservations are required and can be made by calling 455-1121 or www.tullahomaparks.com. Seating is limited. Lunch is provided and costs $10.