ORAL HISTORY OF TIM STALLINGS
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
November 23, 2016 MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is November 23, 2016. I'm at my studio here in Oak Ridge. I'm talking with Tim Stallings. Tim, thank you for coming by and talking with us.
MR. STALLINGS: I'm glad to be here.
MR. MCDANIEL: You as you and I discussed earlier, you're on the great list of people that we want to get an oral history on, because one of the reasons, you've obviously been very involved in Oak Ridge life since you've been here. One of the reasons is you're a former city council person. We'll talk about that a little bit later. Let's start at the very beginning. Why don't you tell me where you were born and raised and something about your family.
MR. STALLINGS: All right. I was raised in a small town in West Tennessee called
Bolivar. It's in Hardeman County. It's about 60 miles from Memphis. It's a rural area: farming and lumber is the big thing. My dad was a tractor dealer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really?
MR. STALLINGS: Sold tractor and farm equipment. He was also in politics. He was a state representative for 16 years. That's how I got in politics here, through him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really?
MR. STALLINGS: I was raised there. I was the fourth of five kids. Raised in the church. I grew up at the First Baptist Church and back in sixties and seventies, and had a very conservative upbringing. It's interesting, the politics, my dad was a real strong conservative Democrat. When he was in the legislature, he was part of the
McWherter group that actually got McWherter in the Governor's Mansion. He was also chairman of the House agriculture department. When I came to Oak Ridge I had a
2 political background and aspirations and that's how I got in politics when I was there. I was raised in Bolivar. Played a lot of sports.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have brothers or sisters?
MR. STALLINGS: I've got five, total of four siblings. I got two older sisters, one older brother, and one younger brother. I'm the fourth of five.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. STALLINGS: All of us were first generation college. My parents did not go to college. My dad was a farmer and lumber man. My mom and him farmed. I actually picked cotton as a kid. We used to get out of school for about a month, back in the
Fall, when I was ... They stopped that when I was eight, when I got bigger. We used to go get out of school for three weeks in October, in my town, to pick cotton. I was young.
MR. MCDANIEL: They shut the school down.
MR. STALLINGS: Yeah, they shut the school down, so the teenagers could come out and pick cotton. That was probably in the mid to late sixties.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah. Goodness, goodness gracious. You grew up in Bolivar and then you decided to go to college?
MR. STALLINGS: Yeah I played ... I was really good in a lot of sports, but football was my best sport. I was recruited by Tennessee Tech to play football and went there. I didn't go right out of high school. I skipped a year. I worked for my dad for a year. My parents were going through a divorce. I decided to stay and help my mom out. I worked for my dad and lived with my mom for a year. I started college at Tech in 1977.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right.
3 MR. STALLINGS: I only went there two years. I played football there. First year I got hurt and had surgery and I decided that God wanted me to do something different. The summer of ‘78, I was a missionary in New Hampshire through the Baptist Student
Union at Tech. That was a life changing experience, because while I was in New
Hampshire, I met my wife. Her name is Cher, or Cheryl, she goes by Cher now, but anyway we've been married 35 years this past July.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? Wow.
MR. STALLINGS: She's a New England girl. We started our life together actually in
Houston Texas. When I finished college ... Well, go back a little bit. I was at Tech for two years. Met her. She was in college in Houston. I went to Houston chasing after her. Ran out of money. Came back to Union University, in Jackson near my home and actually that's where I got my undergraduate degree: Bachelor’s degree in accounting from Union University. I finished there in ‘81.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that something that you had planned to get a degree in?
MR. STALLINGS: Yes. I started out at Tech, thinking I wanted to be an engineer. I was pretty good in math. I could have probably handled the classes, but I had been doing bookkeeping at my dad's business since I was about 12. I switched over to accounting before I left Tech. Then when I finished, I was actually working for my dad and I studied accounting at Union University. My younger brother was actually there too. We both graduated together in 1981.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, all right.
MR. STALLINGS: He went on to become a CPA [Certified Public Accountant], but I went into corporate accounting. I started my first job in Houston, Texas, with a pipeline
4 company called Tennessee Gas Pipeline. They had a division office near my home. It was in 1980, ’81. The economy was really bad. There were no jobs. They were hiring in Houston, Texas. I flew down there, and started my job in Houston.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was Cheryl still there?
MR. STALLINGS: She had transferred to Jackson, because we were engaged. As soon as she finished that semester in May, got married in July and she came to
Houston with me. We lived in Houston for about eight months or so. The pipeline company that I worked for, the company actually went from Mexico to Maine. They were looking for volunteers to go to the northeast for the expansion. At the end of ‘81, I took a transfer to Massachusetts. I worked in an office in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which is a suburb of Boston, and it's actually where they start the Boston Marathon.
We lived there for about six years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. STALLINGS: While I was there, I switched positions with the company. I was an accountant, but I became a right-of-way agent and it was mostly dealing with the public with the expansion. I would go out in the ... When we built a new pipeline, I would deal with all the landowners. My personality, my experience was really good with dealing with people. I actually went back to graduate school, got an MBA in New Hampshire.
That gave me a chance to get a promotion. I switched careers and went into the right- of-way department.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, where you go out and deal with homeowners to get the right of way to put the pipeline through.
5 MR. STALLINGS: Yes, that's right. I did that for about four years. My son was born in
‘85 in Massachusetts. I decided that I wanted to raise him in the South. Behind my wife's back, I finagled a transfer back to my hometown. I got a job actually in the environmental field. It was connected to the right-of-way, because that was back when the environmental business was starting to pick up and investigations of contamination and stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Mid to late eighties?
MR. STALLINGS: Yeah. I became an environmental person, mostly from a regulatory side. I wasn't on the technical side, we hired consultants. I was back in West
Tennessee, my hometown. We lived there for about two years. While we were there our daughter was born, Shelby, in ‘87. On a personal level, we started having trouble in our marriage. My wife, being from New England, she was in this redneck town. My town wasn't very nice to her. My company at the same time wanted me to go back to
Houston, Texas. I said, "I've already done Houston. I want to do something else." One of our consultants that helped me in the environmental work had an office here in Oak
Ridge. They were looking for an office, business manager. I came here at the end of
‘89 to work for a company called Ecology and Environment. They're an EPA
[Environmental Protection Agency] contractor out of Buffalo, New York, and I managed
... I came here to manage their office. They had a couple of contracts, one at Y-12 and one what was called FUSRAP [Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program] at the time. I was the business manager. That's what brought me to Oak Ridge. I came early in late ‘89 and my wife was finishing nursing school. She and the kids came in
May of ‘90, after she finished her nursing degree. When we came to town, my son was
6 five. My daughter turned three later that September. He started school in kindergarten at Linden School at age five in 1990. My daughter actually went to the Oak Ridge
Nursery School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right and Cheryl, did she start working?
MR. STALLINGS: She started working right away. She started working at the hospital, mostly in the ER [emergency room]. She did one stint for a little while at Home Health
Care, but most of her career in Oak Ridge has been at the hospital. She worked in the
ER. She worked in the heart area. She used to coordinate the Run for the Roses race.
Part of the Women's Center job, but she's been working for the last 10 or so years in the Family Working Center, where they delivered babies.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, yeah exactly. You got to Oak Ridge right before your kids started school. They went their entire school years in Oak Ridge. You were here working, running this office and Cheryl had gotten a job at the hospital, so you were settled in. What did you all think of Oak Ridge? What did she think of it?
MR. STALLINGS: She was a little nervous at first, because she heard all these rumors about radiation and stuff and being a nurse and stuff. There was jokes about don't drink the water and stuff like that. I told her ... I had been here for about six months by myself. I got real involved with the community. I was in the Chamber of Commerce. I joined the Rotary Club. I was at every function that was happening, just to get to know people.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. STALLINGS: With her and the kids not being here, it gave me the flexibility of just doing... Spending time out in the community. We looked at West Knoxville, we looked
7 at Farragut, but I decided that we're going to be in Oak Ridge. The schools are really good. We started meeting friends and Scott, my son started playing sports. Linden was the school that we decided we wanted him to go to. We actually lived in Burnham
Woods, which is sort of weird. It's in the Linden school district, but it's more in the central part of town. There was some rumor that they were going to switch that to
Woodland. We actually sold our house in Burnham Woods and built a house on the west end of town, to stay at Linden. We've been on the west end of town since we've been here, 26 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow. Talk about, a little bit about you and your career path. I know you made a big change. Talk about ... Go through those things.
MR. STALLINGS: I really had political aspirations. Watching my dad and my dad was in the legislature for 16 years. I would go to Nashville. I just had this aspiration of getting in politics. I met ... He had told me a lot of key people. Buzz Elkins was one of his close friends, state senator, Republican. Even though Dad was a Democrat, they were really good friends. Tom Wheeler at that time was the state representative from
Clinton. He's another good guy. He said go find him. They introduced me to a lot of other people from Oak Ridge. I eventually met Tom Beehan. Tom had moved here about the same time we did. We became friends and his son Michael and Scott, they grew up together from kindergarten all the way through high school. Tom was the mayor of Covington, Kentucky, and just moved here with State Farm and he wasn't really ready to run, but he told people in the community that he would help somebody.
We connected and he decided to be my campaign manager.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, when you decided to run for Oak Ridge City Council.
8 MR. STALLINGS: 1991, the election was up and a group of people said, "Why don't you run?" I ran and Tom was my campaign manager. It was interesting. Walt and
Linda Brown had become friends of mine and Walt was serving on council and he wanted me to also serve. They supported me. He was running and I think there were six candidates and the top three would be elected.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MR. STALLINGS: It was interesting, the night of the election I actually lost by seven votes. When they were certifying the election, they misread a machine and gave me nine more votes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. STALLINGS: I actually won by two votes over Walt Brown.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really?
MR. STALLINGS: Linda and Walt voted for me.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh gosh.
MR. STALLINGS: Two years later, Walt ran again and won and he eventually became mayor. It was just ironic that it was my first time running for office. I'm new in the town.
Tom became mayor too, but he was well connected. He connected me with a lot of people. I remember some of the key people that he brought to some of my campaign meetings were directors of the Lab and stuff like that. I'm like, "Tom, how did you get these people here?" Anyway, that was for the political thing. I served four years from
‘91 to ‘95. The significant things back then, we built the Pavilion. It's still there today.
MR. MCDANIEL: At the Civic Center?
9 MR. STALLINGS: Civic Center. We started the process of building Centennial Golf
Course back then. The mall was still ... That was one of the first years of the mall controversy way back then.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, absolutely.
MR. STALLINGS: That was my political career, but on my ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Let me ask you a question. You served for four years. Was that a four year term or two-two year terms?
MR. STALLINGS: It was a ... City council is a four year term.
MR. MCDANIEL: Four year term, okay.
MR. STALLINGS: They have rotating people. There's three people and then four people on Council and then they rotate, but all are four terms, four year terms. As far as my career, Ecology and Environment had a small presence here. Around the country they had a huge presence. They were one of the first EPA contractors and investigated the big site at the Love Canal and all that kind of stuff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really? Okay.
MR. STALLINGS: Around the country they were really strong. Within Oak Ridge they were smaller.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. STALLINGS: There was a big contract called FUSRAP and we're short listed and
SAIC [Science Applications International Corporation] ended up winning the contract.
My boss was upset about it. He said "We're going to close the office." He said, "We got other places we can transfer you to." I'm like, "I don't think I'm going to do that." I took a short term with remediation call Ferguson Hardware. They were trying to move into
10 Oak Ridge and remediation. They're more of an emergency company. I worked for them for a short period of time. Then I decided to switch careers back in the financial field. Mortgage Investors Group was opening a new office here. I had become friends with Chrissy Rae through the business community and they were big with my financial background, it was a good thing for me to try.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. STALLINGS: At the same time, my wife and I were having issues in our marriage.
We were going to Robertsville Baptist Church. Our marriage got so bad at one point she had actually gone to see an attorney and she was thinking about filing for a divorce. God got a hold of me through Robertsville friends there. We did a study called
Experiencing God. The Lord reminded me of his call on my life. The summer that I met her 1978, when I was 20, God actually had called me to the ministry. My older brother, who was at the time serving as a foreign missionary in the Philippines, I watched him and just convinced myself I couldn't do it. We were part of this little church, but were having trouble. God did a miracle in our life, and saved our marriage. Confirmed my call to the ministry and through about an 18 month process, I finally surrendered to the ministry. I was still working for Mortgage Investors Group. I did a plan to transition out of that. I eventually did quit and went to seminary full time. I commuted from here to near Raleigh, North Carolina, for three years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. STALLINGS: I went to Southeastern Baptist Seminary. It's actually in the community Wake Forest, near Raleigh. I commuted there for three years. I left home
Monday and came back on Friday. We had a strong team of families that helped my
11 wife when I was gone. The kids were home at that time. Shelby was in fourth grade.
Scott was in sixth grade, or seventh grade. When I finished, Scott was going in the ninth grade and Shelby was going in the seventh grade. I finished seminary and we thought that God was going to move us to New England. I'd done a couple of mission trips up there, back to where my wife grew up. The door closed and we decided to stay here. After I finished seminary, we were still at Robertsville, but there was no permanent, full-time position for me. I started a counseling ministry, because my seminary degree is actually in counseling. About six months into it, I met Chris Stevens at Faith Promise Church. They were meeting in the mall at that time. I met him and we became friends. He decided, he said, "I want you to do all my counseling. I don't want to do counseling." He gave me the key to his office and I started doing counseling for them when they were still in the mall.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Wow.
MR. STALLINGS: Shortly after that, they bought the property out where they are now, in between here and Knoxville, on Pellissippi, and they hired me later on in 2000. I finished seminary in ‘99 and started there in 2000. I started out as a [inaudible]. I did finances, which is my original background and I did counseling. As the church grew, I eventually gave the finances up and did full time counseling. I spent nine years at Faith
Promise.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh is that right?
MR. STALLINGS: Yeah and the church exploded.
MR. MCDANIEL: You saw the growth. You were there with the ...
12 MR. STALLINGS: It was interesting when I started seminary, my wife had a really good friend and she was a prayer warrior. She prayed for me and she prayed over me.
She said she saw a vision of me baptizing a long line of people. I'm like, "Maybe I'm going to Africa or something."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MR. STALLINGS: At one service at Faith Promise, I baptized 84 people.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Wow.
MR. STALLINGS: Anyways, I spent 9 years there. It was a great experience. My wife really was involved with the drama ministry. They did a lot of productions there. She had experience, as you and I talked about, at the Playhouse.
MR. MCDANIEL: She had done...
MR. STALLINGS: A lot of plays. Theater was her first passion, even though she became a nurse.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MR. STALLINGS: She still, even to this day ... We're actually doing a Christmas play and she's written it and is directing it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Cheryl is great. We've done several shows together and she's a great singer and great actress, has great stage presence.
MR. STALLINGS: We spent nine years at Faith Promise. The Lord was doing some shifting in my thought process and I had a passion for helping younger guys start churches from scratch. I had met Robert Milton. He grew up here. His dad was a former pastor at Royce Baptist Church. He and his wife both went to high school and
13 they started this church that I'm currently helping, Ridge Point, with four couples, in their house on Louisiana Avenue.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? Okay.
MR. STALLINGS: That was in 2009, 2010. They were meeting at the Y, the YWCA
[Young Women's Christian Association]. He and I started talking and I decided I was going to help him. I was doing my counseling ... I went back to my counseling ministry, just on my own, helping the counseling ministry. But he needed someone to do the administration and stuff like that and setting up his 501c3 and stuff like that. We moved to Tinseltown movie theater and we met there for about four years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay.
MR. STALLINGS: The church really started growing, taking off. Eventually, to this building where we're in now in Solway, what was formerly Fairview Baptist Church, went out of business. That church was originally started by Central Baptist in Oak
Ridge in 1950. The church was vacant. Robert's wife Missy, her uncle was a trustee at
Central and he approached Robert about getting this building.
MR. MCDANIEL: The building was still owned by Central?
MR. STALLINGS: It went out of business basically. It reverted back to the original owner, Central. They controlled the building. Missy Melton, Robert's wife, her uncle was a trustee and I actually knew a couple of other trustees. I think Pete Craven was actually one at that time. We started negotiating. We eventually bought that building and remodeled it and we're there. We've been there for five years. We just recently, about a year and half ago started a new church in Wartburg. It actually is exploding.
We have two churches now. We helped start a church in Kentucky that's now self-
14 existent. We were three campuses, now we're two. The Oak Ridge Solway campus runs about 350 people and the Wartburg campus runs about 200 people.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, wow.
MR. STALLINGS: That's taken off.
MR. MCDANIEL: It has taken off.
MR. STALLINGS: One of the other things that I did after leaving Faith Promise, I went into the prison ministry and I start helping a ministry called Focus Group Prison
Ministry. A guy named Steve Humphries, who worked in Oak Ridge for many years, he started this ministry. What I did for him was help him do counseling for inmates coming out of prison. Actually, we would go in prison and the jails and do counseling, as guys would transition out of jails and prison. We had a transition house and I would meet with them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay.
MR. STALLINGS: We actually started a seminary at Morgan County Prison as well.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. STALLINGS: There is still a seminary extension course available at Morgan
Country Prison, Correctional Facility in Wartburg.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. That's amazing. All this ... You did all the ministry thing. You're involved in the churches and helped them grow. Then you had what? A couple of years ago an opportunity to do something in addition, right?
MR. STALLINGS: Yeah. I had been loosely involved with Choices Resource Center.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me about that.
15 MR. STALLINGS: Choices Resource Center is a crisis pregnancy center. We help young girls who get pregnant, choose life and then we offer parenting classes, to help them with their baby and their choice. We work with the husband, the father of the baby. We have church partners that we partner with, to help us. We also do sex abstinence education in schools through a partnership we have. The ministry has actually been here since ‘92. It was started by Sharon Anderson and a group of people back then, but then I'd been a pastor, counselor. About 18 months ago, the ministry started going through a financial crisis, so to speak. Eventually their director resigned.
One of the office people was a friend of mine. I had been going by there and praying with them about different things. She said, "I think you need to put in for the job." I read the job description, prayed about it, talked to a couple of the board members and applied for the job. July of last year, ’15, I took over the position. We re-instituted ultrasound, which was the key component. Once a girl sees her baby growing inside her and realizes that as early 11 days, there is a heartbeat inside the womb, she will choose to keep the baby. We're basically a pro-life ministry, but we're not a political ministry. We're an education ministry.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. STALLINGS: We teach the moms about their baby and the development of the baby and then parenting classes. We also do STD [sexually transmitted disease] testing on females and males. My role as a director is community relations, fund raising, directing the staff. One of the things that I did, once we got the ultrasound, I got a nurse trained to do the ultrasounds. Then I developed a partnership with the local OB
[obstetrician] office. They help us review our ultrasounds. Our medical director is
16 Doctor Bingham in Oliver Springs. He's been supporting the ministry since it started basically. He helps oversee the medical part of what we do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oak Ridge is a fairly ... To be honest, it can be a fairly liberal town.
How is Choices viewed in this town?
MR. STALLINGS: Most people don't really understand what we do, or even our existence. We're more of an educational ministry, we're not political. Even though this past year, I did a little bit of a test. In January, nationwide, there's a thing called the
Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. It was started by the Pro Life Ministry, but it expanded beyond just the unborn, to all human life. Actually Governor Haslam, about six years ago, passed a resolution in Tennessee selecting this particular day. It's around
January 22nd. I took his proclamation and presented it to a couple of council members that I knew were supportive of what we did and said, "We need to recognize this. We recognize trees and the other things. We should recognize the Sanctity of Human Life, all human life, not just unborn." Our ministry is focused on the unborn, but this thing was ... Anyway, it was a little bit controversial, because they put on the agenda at the last minute, but it ended up passing six to one.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, okay.
MR. STALLINGS: Like I said, we try not to be political, even though it is a political issue. We try to educate people. We believe life begins at conception. The baby's heart beats as early as nine days or 11 days. As early as three weeks, the baby has all his human parts and even DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid].
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
17 MR. STALLINGS: We try to educate people about that. Even though Tennessee is a very conservative state, there are still over 10,000 abortions that take place every year.
The last statistics I read in 2014, there were 12,000 abortions in Tennessee, and
80,000 live births.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. STALLINGS: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. About how many young ladies do you all serve?
MR. STALLINGS: Our clientele is about five to 600 every year. The last two years we've had about 100 positive pregnancy tests. Some of the girls might just come for
STD tests. Some of the guys ... Our client visits ... The five to 600 actual individual clients are in the 200 to 250 range. We serve the whole area. Almost one third of our clients come from Knox County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh really?
MR. STALLINGS: The only other center that's like us is down there at UT [University of Tennessee]. It's called Hope. It's closer from Hardin Valley Farragut to come here, but we serve Roane County, Morgan County, Anderson, Campbell. We have clients all the way from Union County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. STALLINGS: We get the word out through the school, through our churches and through a little bit of advertising, also our website and Facebook page, stuff like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is this service that you provide, does it cost the client?
MR. STALLINGS: It's all free and we're completely funded by individuals, churches, private donations. We're a 501c3 nonprofit.
18 MR. MCDANIEL: That's a big part of your job?
MR. STALLINGS: Raising money and connecting with churches. Interesting thing, we do “Bottles for Babies” in January and also around Mother's day. We basically give bottles to churches and they put coins in them. We raise anywhere from $25 to
$30,000.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. STALLINGS: Then we have our big banquet, usually in April, end of April, first of
May. The last several years, it's been held at Faith Promise. We have held it at the Y-
12, that new facility they built out there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. STALLINGS: This past year, I actually got Tim Tebow's dad, Bob Tebow to be my speaker.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. STALLINGS: He and my brother Sam served in the Philippines together and they've known the Tebows. When Tim's mom was pregnant with him in the Philippines, she was older and she was having complications. They told her to abort him, that he was going to be deformed, he might not live. They're a testimony of trusting God.
Eventually Tim was born. Of course, he went on to win the Heisman Trophy. My brother and his wife were instrumental in helping them get connected to the
Philippines. My brother had been there three years. Bob and his wife didn't know anything about the Philippines. I was talking to Sam, my brother, about it and I said,
"What do you think? Get the Tebows to come?" He said, "Sure." I called. Usually she
19 speaks, but she was booked. I said, "Well what about Bob?" He said, "He does a great job." Last April, Bob Tebow came and spoke and he did a great job telling the story.
MR. MCDANIEL: I guess Faith Promise supports what you do.
MR. STALLINGS: Yes, they're just the host of our event, because they have the facilities. Chris Stevens is still a really strong friend of mine. We still have ties. I probably do ten weddings for people from Faith Promise. I still do a lot of counseling for individuals, couples, and I do weddings. Unfortunately, I do a few funerals in town.
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I understand. Do you ... You work ... Do you do all of your work out of the Choice? I mean like the counseling and everything?
MR. STALLINGS: Most of the time. I occasionally will see people at Ridge Point, my church. If it's an informal counseling environment, I might meet somebody for coffee, etc. My training ... One of the things I've learned in the last 15, 20 years since I've been doing this is, guys really don't like the word “counseling.” When I meet with guys I talk about coaching, particularly if they have ever played sports. The coach is the good guy. The guy that helps you to succeed. When I meet with couples, I always tell the wife, or the lady, I say, "Don't tell your boyfriend or your husband that you're going to counseling."
MR. MCDANIEL: It's life coaching.
MR. STALLINGS: It's “life coaching.” He might be open to that. There's a negative connotation to the word counseling like, "I don't need a shrink to tell me what to do or analyze my life." What I've learned over the years is to use the terminology. That's been a very rewarding thing. I've probably counseled 500 couples. Over the last 15, 20
20 years I've probably done probably 100, 150 weddings. It's been a very rewarding thing.
Watching my kids grow up was another great thing and...
MR. MCDANIEL: That's what I was going to get to. I know your kids are ... Especially your son is in the public eye. Talk a little about them.
MR. STALLINGS: My son played all sports. He was really good at a lot of them. When he was 12, is when Tiger Woods won his first Masters, in 1997. Scott played golf since he was able to walk. Anyway he came in one day he said, "Dad, I want to be a pro golfer." I'm like, "Okay, let's do it."
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. STALLINGS: I put him in everything I could think of. Competitions, and he still plays some of the other sports, but golf was his thing. He went on to be All State at
Oak Ridge High School, and set a lot of records.
MR. MCDANIEL: As a golfer?
MR. STALLINGS: As a golfer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MR. STALLINGS: He wanted so hard, so desperately to go to UT. I took him to his first UT game when he was seven. They played Florida and Tennessee ran back the kick off at the second half and he became a big fan.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. STALLINGS: Of course growing up here since he was age five, he was a real die hard Tennessee fan. He wanted to play there, but the coach ... We met with the coach at UT and he had already committed to two guys that Scott always beat. Anyways
21 Scott ended up at Tennessee Tech. That was another God thing. His teammates that recruited him are mostly from Knoxville. They're still part of his life.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. STALLINGS: The current golf coach was his best man at his wedding.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. STALLINGS: His junior year was his most successful year. He became an All
American. In Orlando at the NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association] Regional, he beat all the Tennessee players. He was there as an individual and they were there as a team, and he beat them all. The UT coach shook his hand and said, "I made a big mistake."
MR. MCDANIEL: At least he's man enough to admit it.
MR. STALLINGS: He went on to become professional. He struggled in the mini tours and in 2010, 2011 got a breakthrough. End up winning his first tournament at the
Green Brier Classic in West Virginia. He went on to win two more times. One in
Mississippi and he won the Torrey Pines in San Diego. He got to play in the Masters twice. First time in 2012. He finished 27th. Second time 2014. He had his little boy with them and his boy was ... He became the big story, because on Wednesday, at the Par
Three tournament, they dressed the kids up in those white outfits. He actually ended up on the USA Today newspaper.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. STALLINGS: Yeah. His son Finn: if you Google Finn Bradley Stallings, it will show you his picture from 2014 at the Masters. He's wearing a white caddy uniform with a green hat and he's holding the flags and he's putting. That's my son. He has a
22 new daughter born last March. Finn will be four in February. He's got a new little girl
Millie that was born in March. He met his wife in kindergarten, Jennifer White.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. STALLINGS: Her parents have been here ... Peter and Nancy White Bay have been here for most of their careers. Nancy grew up in Kingston. She just retired from
Ridgeview and Peter has worked at all the plants. I think his last position was Watch
Weld. I think he still consults.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. STALLINGS: Jennifer and Scott have been married nine years.
MR. MCDANIEL: He's still playing?
MR. STALLINGS: He's still playing. He's on the tour. They have a home in West
Knoxville. He's enjoying his dream.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. STALLINGS: My daughter, she's my singer and my runner. She and her husband met in ninth grade. He just moved here from Georgia. His mom's family grew up in
Dutch Valley. His dad was from Knoxville, but they had been in Georgia. They moved back to Dutch Valley where they built their home out there. His name is Kirk Patterson.
His parents are Nelson and Wendy Patterson. Wendy was a Vowel and she grew up in the Dutch Valley area. She still lives, basically on the same property where she grew up as a kid. Kirk and Shelby sang together in the chorus in high school. They also led the band at youth group at Faith Promise. They didn't start dating until their senior year. Shelby had another boyfriend, which was one of Kirk's best friends. In the middle of senior year, they broke up and Kirk started dating her, but they had been singing
23 together. They went on with their singing career. Kirk started out at UT, eventually transferred to Tech where Shelby was. They spent four years there. She got her teaching degree, he got a degree in business. They went on to Boston. He's in the ministry. After college, he went to seminary, Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Boston.
They spent six months studying in Scotland and then they came back and they're at a church just outside of Boston called Trinity Evangelical Church, North Reading.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. STALLINGS: They have two girls. Micah who's three and half and Hadley will be two on Sunday. They're expecting a little boy that will be born in February. I'll have my fifth grandchild. That's my new thing, is my grandchildren.
MR. MCDANIEL: My goodness, you're too young to have that many grandchildren.
MR. STALLINGS: Not really.
MR. MCDANIEL: Like you said you started early.
MR. STALLINGS: Not really.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's interesting. You had an opportunity through the story you're talking about. There was a point where you could've left Oak Ridge.
MR. STALLINGS: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: You decided to stay. Was it because your kids were settled and this was really their home, or your family?
MR. STALLINGS: The initial time when we were going to move after I finished seminary, the family was all on board. In fact, Scott ... It was in the Spring of his eighth grade year. They sent the kids over to the high school to start registration for high school.
24 MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. STALLINGS: He actually ... The kids agreed, we're going to move to New
England. The ministry that I was working for, we went to Atlanta to talk to one of the directors of it. For a lot of different reasons it didn't work out.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. STALLINGS: I was in shock. I didn't really know, because I had spent ... This was in ‘98 and ‘99, I spent the whole summer of ‘98 up there, and I'm thinking we're going to move to Boston. I'm going to go up there ahead myself and then they're going to come behind me. When it closed it was ... I went into shock. The Lord opened the door for me to start this counseling ministry, eventually led me to Chris Steven at Faith
Promise and I started doing counseling with them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. STALLINGS: The other thing is, we've been here ... My wife had a good job at the hospital. She enjoyed what she did.
MR. MCDANIEL: She was settled in.
MR. STALLINGS: We enjoyed Robertsville Baptist Church, but we felt the Lord was moving us to a new place and eventually led us to Faith Promise. She enjoyed the church and she was ... We grew a lot as a family. The other thing, by staying here, the kids met their future spouses and have ties here. The schools have been a significant thing, but we've been involved with the kids and everyone of their teachers their whole lives. We've been involved with their activities. My daughter with her singing and she also ran track and crosscountry.
25 MR. MCDANIEL: Why did you not ... After your city council term, you decided not to run again, is that correct?
MR. STALLINGS: That was about the same time that we were going through our marriage difficulties and God was dealing with my calling.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. STALLINGS: I'm a very spiritual guy. I suppressed that, because I had these aspirations of making a lot of money, pursuing a political career and all this kind of thing. I would be doing similar to what my dad had done. It was a lot of pride involved. I had to be humble, mostly by being obedient to God. It's been very rewarding and I don't regret doing what I've done. I know I'm doing what God wants me to do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. When you were on city council, I guess you had ...
Like you said before, Tom Beehan helped you and you met a lot of people and you'd already gotten to know a lot of people in Oak Ridge. What were some of the ... You said a couple of the significant issues was the Pavilion at the Civic Center and also the golf courses and the mall was just starting. What were some of the other issues you had to deal with at that time?
MR. STALLINGS: It was always property tax increases. Getting money from DOE.
Their sales and U Stacks things. We had ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Which is still an issue.
MR. STALLINGS: We had city manager issues. I actually got along with the city manager, we worked out very well, but he eventually left, which they do sometimes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah they do.
26 MR. STALLINGS: Just certain issues. Even things that still come up today. The whole thing about when Target was trying to come here and people tried to fight ... There were certain things like that that were going on back them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, exactly.
MR. STALLINGS: The mall was actually okay, but it wasn't fully functional. That was the demise ...
MR. MCDANIEL: That was the demise of the mall.
MR. STALLINGS: Eventually it led to where we are now. Eventually now we got a new contract and they bulldozed the whole thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly. There are big holes out there and there's nothing there now, which I guess a good place to be.
MR. STALLINGS: I'm excited about it. I think things are turning around. I've been impressed with this manager, this new guy, the mall manager and his credentials.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, sure. Is there anything that I have not asked you about or that you'd like to talk about?
MR. STALLINGS: I'm just ... I'm happy to be here. We plan to stay. God may move me. We've been here 26 years. My wife and I, this is our home now. We raised our kids here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. STALLINGS: We've been in the same home now for 15 years, 16 years, we actually moved in to our current house in 2000.
MR. MCDANIEL: Up that steep driveway, up that hill.
MR. STALLINGS: That was the old house.
27 MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, that was the old one.
MR. STALLINGS: We sold that one when I was in seminary. I live off Newport Drive now. A few blocks over from there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay.
MR. STALLINGS: I bought a friend's house, Dan Cuban. Dan and Jan Cuban, one of
Scott's friends. His parents, they actually passed away a few years ago. He was a really good friend of mine. We've been in that same house. We have friends here.
We're involved with things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. STALLINGS: The golf course, the country club is a big significant thing with my son and ... The church community is another significant thing. Now my new job, just meeting churches and we're ... The good thing about Choices is we're very Eco medical. I have a wide variety from very conservative churches to charismatic churches, that anybody that's pro-life, they want to help us and that's been a good partnership for us.
MR. MCDANIEL: Which is good for them, because there's a resource that will function for what they believe in, that they don't have to do themselves.
MR. STALLINGS: Yeah that's right. One of the most ... I didn't mention this, but we have a walk for life in the Fall. I know the people that come, because they register in the churches. We moved it from the Civic Center down to the water front the last two years. That to me is the most beautiful thing, because all these people, they don't even know what church they're from, but I know. To me, it's the body of Christ which is the church from all denominations coming together. The other fun thing is when the sisters
28 come from Saint Mary to walk. That's another ... It's my spa day when they show up and walk with us.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. STALLINGS: Saint Mary’s has been very supportive of what we've been doing at
Choices. They're a significant part of what we do too.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure they are. Well Tim, thank you so much for sharing your story about your life and being open and honest with me and about your family and your career and your passion here in Oak Ridge. Thank you.
MR. STALLINGS: Thank you, I'm glad to be here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
[End of Interview]
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