Volunteers inspire community
Those who have passed on could have been proud, but the event was also bittersweet.
One by one, citizens of the community showed up at Riverside Cemetery Saturday for fund-raising events designed to benefit the domestic violence shelter Families in Crisis.
In a mixing of local history, Southern culture and community spirit, organizers presented a series of tours throughout the cemetery. Called “Riverside Retrospection,” complete with volunteers in costumes, scripts and other visual aids, the event was designed to educate those in attendance about the past.
And as organizers said they’d like to spotlight history as a good thing, shelter volunteers and employees often see negative history repeating itself as a cycle of violence today.
“These are some things in history that would be nice to be repeated, but if this generation doesn’t repeat it, it’s going to be lost,” shelter Director Julia Boyd said of historical figures who contributed significantly to the city’s early history.
“In terms of domestic violence, we don’t want to see it repeated, but these were positive things that we want to see repeated,” she added.
Visitors had mixed reasons for attending.
Nancy Wallace, who showed up for the second round of Saturday’s tours, along with a total of between 75 and 100 other people, said she heard about the event through word of mouth. Although initially interested in learning about local history, she said she was glad to help out.
“I think it’s a great cause. I think there’s a definite need. I think there are a lot of people – male, female and children – who need a place to go when they have nowhere else to go and feel like they can’t leave the situation they’re in,” she said just before starting the tour with friend Patty Cantrell, who brought her relocated-from-Warren County sister along for the event.
The pair moved through the cemetery to find people like Ron Martin, Marvin Campen, Ginger Latham and others portraying past citizens Samuel Lusk Colville, William Magness and Lucy Virginia French. The cemetery contains prominent figures from the area who are buried there due to their stature, local history expert Jimmy Haley told visitors.
Martin, dressed as Colville, said he was glad to help out.
“As a county, we all have to work together to help all of our citizens and we have a need in this county to help our families, especially those who are in crisis situations,” he said from his post.
Sitting at a nearby station, believed to be the place where outlawed booze was hidden in a hollow metal headstone during Prohibition, was college student Joseph Reynolds.
“It’s hard to believe this city was once a thriving city. A lot of people don’t know that. A lot of people think it’s always been the way it is now. The city has a lot of history and I’m glad to portray just one character in our city’s history,” Reynolds said.
Retired Col. Thomas Vaughn is on the shelter’s board of directors, but enjoyed the history as much as the fund-raiser.
“History is a living thing. I’m a student of history and I’ve taught history before and I just thought this would be a good thing to do,” he said of portraying statesman and legendary veteran Col. John Savage.
Shelter statistics note about 95 percent of domestic violence victims are women, between 3 percent and 5 percent are men and with regard to children who witness the violence, 60 percent of those boys become batterers and 50 percent of girls become victims.
“I know it’s very present and I know a lot of cases don’t get recorded,” Reynolds added of his understanding of the shelter’s mission, “and the real work of the organization is to raise awareness that it happens and it just doesn’t go unrecorded.”
Shelter employees said the organization is dedicated to empowering victims and eliminating both domestic violence and sexual assault, and Boyd added events like this help spread the word. She said people are beginning to get the message.
“I feel like they’re beginning to do more. There are a lot of people in town who have supported it from day one, but we have people who have no idea we exist,” she said, adding that shelter employees answered 2,400 calls for help in the last nine months alone.
“We still need to continue to make our presence known,” she added.