On a recent Sunday afternoon two families along with others gathered at 601 South Gay Street to unveil a piece of art, a window into Tennessee History, and a mystery all in one sculpture. Is it possible the mystery might still be resolved?
The sculpture in question, Gen. John Sevier, 1745-1815, by East Tennessee sculptor Edgar W. Bowlin, received its first unveiling on January 2, 1960. One of only three life-size sculptures by Hancock County born Bowlin, it is considered his masterwork. Commissioned by Home Federal, it assumed its position in the lobby of the Kingsport branch, where it stood, uneventfully for thirty-six years.
The statue was then gifted to Donald Ault whose family, along with those of the sculptor are pictured here at the unveiling. Ault had big plans for the statue and for downtown Knoxville. Perhaps it was the first of many such plans floated over the next four decades to staunch the flow of businesses and residents from downtown Knoxville or to reverse the trend. As the founder of the Governor John Sevier Bicentennial Association, he planned to oversee construction a replica of the state’s first capitol in downtown Knoxville and place the statue, appropriately, there.
Leaders of the era opted, instead, to build James White Parkway, effectively ending the vision. Poor Governor Sevier was relegated to storage “near The Foundry on the World’s Fair Site,” where he resided peacefully (so we presume) for six years. On the morning of August 14, 2002, he lost his head. The precise circumstances remain unclear.
Suicide might be an explanation — after so many years of neglect, he simply ended it all by tipping over and beheading himself. Make sense, except for a couple of tiny details missing from the scene: His head and left hand. Clearly his demise came at the hands of others. Had they lost their heads in a moment of revelry and accidentally beheaded the governor taking the spoils as they were offered. Was it, in fact, murder, a premeditated decapitation (and de-handitation)? No one knows.
And thus, no one knows the location of the missing body parts. Do they remain a guarded secret on someone’s shelf? Have they been lost forever? No one has come forward in the last two decades with information leading to the recovery of the head and hand. Perhaps this new unveiling will prod someone with information to step forward.
The folks at the History Center would love to hear from you if you have information and certainly they would love for Governor Sevier to regain his senses. They made clear they will not press charges and simply want to solve the mystery so the statue can come together and be reunited, because that would feel so good. Let them know what information you might have by calling 865-215-8830 shooting an email to curator@knoxlib.org.
In the meantime, Tennessee has joined other cultures around the world in displaying an incomplete sculpture, though ours isn’t nearly so old as the others. As reported in Metro Pulse in 2010, Jim Cortese, “a local arborist who helped protect the sculpture, reflected: “It doesn’t bother me that it doesn’t have a head. I’ve been to Europe many times, and in Europe there are thousands of headless, legless, and armless statues. It’s about time America had a few headless statues.”
And so we do. You can check it out directly across from the Tennessee Theatre. Head over there and pose for a selfie. Maybe if enough people do that and the word spreads, those body parts will be brought together once more.