It’s high time, probably past time, I introduced the people who are helping make this dream of mine possible, because for sure I need their encouragement and reality checks to keep going sometimes.
In the very beginning, I set up a non profit corporation so we’d be able to solicit donations and grants for this project, and that required selecting a board of directors. So without further adieu …
Rhonda Reno
Rhonda is and artist and one of my oldest (longest term, not age wise!) friends on the planet, and many many years ago, I talked her ear off about the things I wanted to do with this 28 acre piece of land and its decrepit looking house. She offered tons of suggestions, was an amazing sounding board, and just generally good friend.
Flash forward to the 21st century, and Rhonda now runs a gardening business called Quiet Gardening, because who needs all those loud, gas-powered machines in your precious, peaceful garden?
Leslie Williams
Leslie’s also a long-term friend. She’s a poet, a musician (she can play banjo!), and is a certified bicycle mechanic. Leslie and I share a love of the earth and the living creatures on it, of which there are quite a few at Hayslope.
Leslie is also an herbalist. She knows more about plants and their uses than I thought humanly possible, and she shares that wisdom through classes and consultations at Ordinary Herbalist.
Megan Gray
Megan is Hayslope’s project manager. I was gonna say she has probably forgotten more about historic preservation than I’ll ever know, but in reality, she’s not forgotten anything at all. I am trying to catch up, but I think I’m too far behind. Megan literally hunted me down a couple years ago when she found Hayslope sitting forlorn and unloved up on the knoll above Warrensburg Road. “This place needs to be preserved,” she said, and I couldn’t agree more.
Megan is documenting her work onsite at Hayslope at her website, where she gets into the weeds about the hows and whys and wheres and whats, digging into mysteries and searching for sometimes elusive answers.
Sabrina Cagle
Sabrina is my first cousin, so it’s safe to say I’ve known her all her life (I am older). Her mom and my dad were brother and sister. There was some familial conflict back in the day (not with her!) so our getting close took a little time, since I ran away from home (sort of) when she was about 5.
These days, Sabrina knows her way around home improvement and especially wood, since she works as a designer at Hardwood Specialties in Morristown. Plus the home where she and husband Johnny live (formerly our grandfather’s home) is my soft space to land when I’m up working on the house.
Dakota Carmichael
What can I say about Dakota? Getting to know this guy has been one of the best parts of beginning the Hayslope project. He shares my love of our region and its history, loves research, and certainly isn’t afraid to get down and dirty.
Y’all may know him from The Old History Project, which documents the history of East Tennessee and its people in video, photos, and podcasts – for which he has won awards, most recently from the East Tennessee Historical Society. He’s also a detectorist, and he’s got some secret projects coming along that he’ll be sharing soon.
Chris Hurley
Chris is another detectorist and historian who is also not afraid to get down and dirty – earlier this year he and Dakota crawled underneath Hayslope with their cameras and detectors to see what they could find. Chris works in construction when he’s not wandering the fields (and under houses) looking for what he can find.
Chris has another notch on his belt – he is the only one of us to ever live at Hayslope. He lived there for nearly a decade and took really good care of the property while he was there. He also found a 1782 Spanish real IN THE HOUSE. He’s using some of the old chestnuts and cedar we’ve taken off the walls for his relic room, keeping his connection to the house solid as they come.
And finally
There’s me. I’m KC Wildmoon, which is a name that came from … well, a lot … and was mostly a stage name when I played rock ‘n’ roll music. It stuck. I’m from the Thomason family in Russellville, and Hayslope has been in the family since 1937.
Along with music and theater, I’ve been a journalist for the better part of 40 years. Now that just keeps me afloat while I pour my heart and soul into Hayslope, something I’ve wanted to do for a very, very long time. I’m so delighted to finally get that chance.
If you’re looking for me, I’ll be the one with some shade of blue hair.
And that’s it
Right now, I’m pretty much in charge – it is my house, after all. For the longest time, it felt like we were never gonna get inside and start doing the actual work, and now that we are, I’ll be leaning on these folks more and more – each of them brings so much more to the project than I could ever muster on my own. And so, here we go – bringing Hayslope back to life!