EAST TENNESSEE FOUNDATION RECEIVES STATE GRANTS FOR SPECIAL PROJECTS

Monday September 22, 2008
Senators Tim Burchett and Jamie Woodson have helped to secure funds for James Agee Park

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. --- On Thursday, September 18th at 1:30 p.m. at the East Tennessee Foundation (ETF) offices, 625 Market Street - 15th floor, State Senator Tim Burchett and State Senator Jamie Woodson presented Community Enhancement awards to two East Tennessee Foundation special projects: James Agee Park and Tennessee Women's Suffrage Memorial. Randall DeFord represented the James Agee Park project and Wanda Sobieski represented the Tennessee Women's Suffrage Memorial. Senators Burchett and Woodson were instrumental in obtaining these two competitive grant awards for the Foundation.

James Agee Park was created in 2003 to serve as a city park for the Fort Sanders neighborhood and to celebrate the role that the Fort Sanders neighborhood played in the life and work of Pulitzer-Prize-winning author James Agee. The park is a special project of East Tennessee Foundation in partnership with The Historic Fort Sanders Association, The University of Tennessee, and the City of Knoxville. It has also been funded, developed, and maintained by many volunteers from the community.

The Tennessee Women's Suffrage Memorial, with its life-size bronze figures, has been an East Tennessee Foundation special project for more than a decade and is the first in Knoxville to commemorate women. Persistence is the common thread that ran through the coats of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Wanda Sobieski - For over one hundred years, Stanton and others campaigned for women's right to vote in the United States. For over ten years, local Knoxville attorney Sobieski and other dedicated East Tennesseans campaigned for a statue to commemorate these efforts. Over the course of ten years, gifts - ranging from $5 to $5,000 - were incremental reminders of the small steps that are often necessary to make big things happen.

See News Sentinel story:http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/sep/18/grants-to-benefit-park-suffrage-recognition/

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