KNOX April 13.Indd

UT FOOTBALL REAL ESTATE Quieter workout Hire a Realtor under Pruitt and accountant Free! New Vols coach says his team Looking to purchase a house can get more work done this year? e new tax law has Please without DJ’s thumping bass. muddied the water a bit. P16 P30 take one. April 13 – 19, 2018 Vol. 44 | Issue 15 KNOXVILLE EDITION www.TNLedger.com/Knoxville The power of information. KNOX • ANDERSON • JEFFERSON • CAMPBELL • CUMBERLAND CLAIBORNE COCKE • GRAINGER • HAMBLEN • BLOUNT • LOUDON • MONROE • MORGAN • ROANE • SCOTT • SEVIER • UNION Ledger FORMERLY WESTVIEW SINCE 1978 Addiction more than a cause for Davis Father’s suicide helps Knoxvillian aid others dealing with crisis Story by Nancy Henderson begins on page 2 Adam Taylor Gash | The Ledger Public Notices ........................6-13, 20–29 More inside: Newsmakers ..........................................15 Find Public Notices Career Corner ..........................................3 Guerrilla Marketing .............................19 inside & online: Community Calendar ............................4 Crossword...............................................19 www.TNLedger.com News Briefs ..............................................5 Behind the Wheel .................................32 Page 2 www.TNLedger.com/Knoxville APRIL 13 – 19, 2018 Davis draws lessons from family of addicts allowed her to be home with Davis and Mother ‘gave up her little sister. “I respect her so much because there were many, many times everything’ to when my dad would stand us up, or was late, and she never talked bad about him, help break cycle never put this image in my head that my dad was a bad man, because he wasn’t,” By Nancy Henderson | Correspondent Davis recounts. “He didn’t make great decisions, our years ago, Caty Davis was on but I respect her for not speaking ill of summer break after her freshman him, ever, and loving him even though year of college when two police they weren’t married. She just gave up o cers showed up at the door to everything for us to see a di erent kind of deliver the news that her dad had F life.” committed suicide. Davis was a sophomore in high school “I hadn’t talked to my father in a few when she announced to her mom that she months and hadn’t heard from him,” wanted to compete in a beauty pageant. Davis says. “I know that they had had “She looked at me and said, ‘You want nancial struggles, he and his wife, and to do what?’ I mean, she was shocked,” they lost their house, so I knew things Davis remembers. were not looking well. But I’d seen so “I wanted a place where I could sing on many times where my dad would hit stage. My dad, when he was younger, was rock bottom and come back up and go on Star Search with his band. I wanted to to recovery centers or whatever. He’d get kind of do the same thing.” better, and this time he didn’t.” In 2013, on her second attempt, the In late June, the 23-year-old beauty high school junior won Miss America’s queen will step down from her year-long Outstanding Teen for Knoxville. e reign as Miss Tennessee and her relentless program not only gave her a public outlet quest to share her family’s story of for her soulful voice, but scholarship addiction with students across the state. money for college. “It just kind of became In the past year, she has raised something I loved to do, just a hobby,” $40,000 for substance abuse prevention she says. organizations and traveled more than In her senior year, she won the title of 80,000 miles speaking to 50,000 Miss Northwest Tennessee, then went schoolchildren as the o cial spokesperson on to become Miss Knoxville, Miss for Governor Bill Haslam’s Character Chattanooga and Miss Lexington. It took Education program. her four tries to land the Miss Tennessee She also serves as Goodwill Ambassador crown, which she did last June at the for the state’s ve Children’s Miracle Carl Perkins Civic Center in Jackson, Network hospitals, as well as a national one month after graduating magna cum ambassador for the non-pro t Facing laude from the University of Tennessee- Addiction, Inc., and raises money for Adam Taylor Gash | The Ledger Knoxville with a psychology degree and a Count It! Lock It! Drop It!, sponsored by minor in business administration. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, which Davis plans to become a clinical child educates parents about the dangers inside psychologist, partly because her own their medicine cabinets and helps them therapy made such a di erence. “I feel like pay for prescription lockboxes. I’m a counselor every time I walk into a “I was at the Tennessee State Capitol school,” she says. “I’m vulnerable with the yesterday speaking with legislators, I was at the Tennessee state capitol yesterday speaking with kids and I share my story and how even with [House] Speaker Beth Harwell, legislators, with [House] Speaker Beth Harwell, and discussing Miss Tennessee, a real-life princess, didn’t and discussing how we need to take grow up with a fairy tale life. inventory of our medications, lock up “how we need to take inventory of our medications, lock up your “ at is an eye-opening statement, your prescriptions and dispose of them prescriptions and dispose of them properly, get them out of your I guess, for a lot of kids. ey’re like, properly, get them out of your house ‘Wow, my parents are getting divorced,’ when you’re not using that 30-day supply house when you’re not using that 30-day supply of hydrocodone or ‘My dad died in a car wreck.’ I can of hydrocodone after your surgery,” she after your surgery. A large portion of the people who are relate to these kids on many, many levels. explains. “A large portion of the people I think a lot of people get into psychology who are misusing prescription pills and misusing prescription pills and opioids got their start from a because they want to understand their opioids got their start from a family family medicine cabinet.” own traumas.” medicine cabinet.” Caty Davis Still, it wasn’t until her win as Miss Outgoing, creative and curious, Knoxville in 2014, a few months after Davis grew up in a blended family of started using again. alcoholism. her dad’s death, that she chose “Attacking ve kids in the small, unincorporated Neither his job as a car salesman, his “ at was kind of normal in his family, Addiction: Prevention, Recovery and community of Kerns in northwest Knox position as music and worship leader at because [my father] had seen brothers Restoring Families” as her pageant County. An overachiever, she craved an the family’s church, nor his good looks and sisters and aunts and uncles and platform. Before that, she focused on academic challenge and dove into “any and charismatic personality could ease grandparents all do the same thing,” Davis education and literacy, she explains, extracurricular [activities] I could get his self-doubt and keep him from self- adds. because setting personal goals in these my hands on,” including cheerleading, medicating, Davis says. “Everyone loved him, but he never saw areas had helped her cope with her father’s singing and performing in high school She later learned he wasn’t the only himself like that. It just kind of developed illness and erratic behavior. musicals. one. into an addiction really, really early on.” “ en after my dad passed away, I She was 4 when her parents divorced, Twelve family members, including Two years before her dad hanged realized that I had a platform that I never too young to know much about her dad’s cousins, uncles and aunts, were struggling himself, her 23-year-old half-brother did really knew I had,” Davis says. “Addiction dependence on prescription pills and with addiction. Her father had started the same thing. was something no one was talking about. alcohol. At rst, she and her biological drinking at the age of 14, the same To support the family after she and her sister would visit him twice a week, but year her paternal grandfather died in husband divorced, Davis’s mom earned MISS TENNESSEE >> PAGE 18 that arrangement dwindled when he a car accident as the result of his own her real estate license; the exible schedule APRIL 13 – 19, 2018 www.TNLedger.com/Knoxville Page 3 Hot topics cool SXSW trip a success Lots of noise but few Go for the music, results in Legislature movies, food, stay Just when you of lot for parents. think the Tennessee Bipartisan legislation by Sen. Mark for the connections Legislature is going o Green and a host of House members I recently had the opportunity to the deep end, someone would pay o -duty o cers to work school attend South by Southwest (sxsw.com) will throw them a days and extracurricular events. Initially, in Austin, Texas, for the rst time. bungee cord. Maybe a a House version of the legislation was If you’ve never been, SXSW is a View from rope made out of hemp going to tap a civil asset forfeiture fund giant festival in downtown Austin the Hill would work better and pay them $50 a day, about enough to that draws in thousands of people. because a bungee cord cover the cost of their bullets, gun and a Career By SAM Founded in 1987, SXSW has boasted STOCKARD leaves people bouncing, hamburger. Corner an economic impact to Austin of more never quite reeling Green, a Clarksville Republican By ANGELA Ledger than $300 million in past years.

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