BRADY FLANIGANStaff Writer

Feb. 24. A fifteen-page presentation, printed on top-shelf paper, slick as a country club dinner menu, laid out the blueprint for a $12.5 million, 24,000-square-foot edifice to innovation, progress, and whatever other words could be packed into a PowerPoint.

The Arnold Heritage and Innovation Center, they called it. A monument to aerospace, a gateway to economic growth, a bright new future for Tullahoma—or at least, that was the pitch. Col. Beverly Lee USAF (retired) and chair of the Tullahoma Area Economic Development Corporation, stood at the helm of the presentation. This was her vision, one backed by business interests, city planners, and even the leadership at Arnold Air Force Base itself. It was, she argued, a way to honor Tullahoma’s long-standing connection to aviation while planting seeds for future prosperity.

The problem? It wasn’t going to be built on Arnold land or even an empty plot somewhere in town. No, for reasons no one had quite been able to explain, it would need to bulldoze Waggoner Park and break ground there—baseball fields, football fields, the very heart of youth sports in town, dead. The same park where, in just the last few years, the city had spent over a million dollars upgrading the lights and improving the fields. The place where generations of kids had played ball while their parents stood on the sidelines with concession stand Cokes, where high schoolers mentored middle schoolers, where Friday nights weren’t just about games but about a town coming together under stadium lights. And now? Now, it was being offered up as a sacrifice to economic development, without so much as a plan to relocate the kids who play there.

For two weeks, the project hung in the air like a tornado gathering pressure and waiting to touch down. Then came March 10, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting. And like any storm worth its salt, it started with a crack of lightning. 

The First Strike

Greer Stevenson. Twenty-four years in the Air Force. Five kids. Frank Mullins football and cheerleading board member. He stepped to the mic like a man who knew he had the gun loaded.

“I’ve been a part of the United States Air Force since 1993. I have no qualms or distains against the Air Force, the military, or this country. I just personally feel that relocating the Cal Ripken baseball, Frank Mullins youth football and cheerleading fields to an alternate location would be a detriment to the children who participate in this program.”

And there it was—this wasn’t some anti-military hipster shaking his fist at progress. Stevenson works at Arnold. And just two weeks earlier, during the initial pitch, his boss—Col. Grant Mizell, commander of Arnold—stood at the same podium, endorsing the Innovation Center. For Stevenson to stand here, in open defiance of the official stance of his employer, wasn’t just a disagreement. It was a calculated risk, a testimony to his passion for Waggoner Park and its culture.

“For years, Waggoner Field has been more than just a patch of grass,” Stevenson said. “It’s been the cornerstone of youth football, youth baseball, and community. A place where children have learned teamwork, sportsmanship, built friendships, and discovered the thrill of competition.”

Then came the numbers. Over $1 million spent in the last few years alone on new sports lighting, field upgrades. $10,000 from Cal Ripken baseball toward field improvements. All of it, gone in a heartbeat, with nothing but fog further down the road.

“Moving these cherished fields to an alternate location,” he said, “sends a message—however unintended—that these memories, these experiences, are disposable.” 

The Fire Spreads

Then came Marc Moran. A 25-year veteran of the Frank R. Mullins Youth Football League, eight years with Tullahoma Little League, 30 in wrestling. A man who spent some time in the trenches, making sure kids had somewhere to play, somewhere to learn, somewhere to grow.

“I think it is extremely important in the development of these young people into the adults who will become you fellas,” he said, nodding toward the board. “Our leaders.”

That was the thing about Waggoner Park. It wasn’t just a place where kids went to run around before dinner. It was where they learned how to be coached, how to win, how to lose, how to get back up.

“It hurts me to think we’d even consider displacing children,” he said. “I’m not opposed to the Innovation Center. I just think there’s probably better places it could be located without disrupting long-established programs in town.” 

Tough Questions

Then came Lisa Mullins-Beasley.

Daughter of Frank Mullins himself, the man who started the league in 1967, when Tullahoma was still a town where a man could build something from scratch without a committee and a PowerPoint. She wasn’t just speaking for herself. She was speaking for her father, for the coaches and volunteers who had kept the league alive for over 50 years, for the parents who had spent the last two weeks trying to figure out why their city was so eager to bulldoze one of the best things it had going for it.

“The league currently provides football and cheerleading opportunities for more than 500 boys and girls from Tullahoma—not just from Tullahoma but also from the surrounding communities,” she told the board. Manchester, Winchester, Lynchburg. People came from all over to play in Tullahoma. This wasn’t just a local park. It was a regional institution.

And then lightning struck again.

“If the Arnold team wants this land so badly that it is willing to fight state and federal legal battles to get around the protections on Waggoner Park, why not use Arnold property? Why here, when Arnold Air Force Base had thousands of undeveloped acres? Why tear out existing infrastructure, displace kids, bulldoze history, when there were other options?”

“This facility will cost the city between three and four million dollars just to replace the fields you’re tearing out. And that’s before the $300,000 to $400,000 annual shortfall it’s projected to run. So tell me—what is the financial benefit to the city?”

“Where’s the plan for the kids who play here now?”

“Why Waggoner Park?”

And then a stillness in the room.

The moment when the people running this project should have had an answer. But they didn’t. They had numbers. They had projections. They had words like “progress” and “economic growth.”

But they did not have an answer.

The project is not dead. Not yet. But it is no longer inevitable. And that, in itself, is a victory for opponents. The people behind this project still want it built. They still think they can push it through. But after that night, they will have to do it in full view of a town that has decided to pay attention. And for the first time, the people who packed City Hall Monday night left knowing one thing: the fight wasn’t over. If the goal had been to push this project through quietly, to frame it as a natural next step in Tullahoma’s progress, that notion had been shattered. This wasn’t going to be a rubber-stamped vision of the future. It was going to be a fight. And now, both sides knew it.