FHS past
With Grand Reunion soon, Old Schooler looks back
Before there was the Town of Farragut, before there was Turkey Creek shopping and a Parkside Drive, before there were businesses side by side lining Kingston Pike from Dixie Lee Junction to West Hills, there was a rural tight-knit farming community with a single redlight and a school in Concord, Tennessee, on the banks of the Tennessee River.
Made up of multi-generational families who mostly farmed to survive by growing crops, raising livestock for meat, eggs, milk and wool, they were supportive of each other.
Many of them had roots here prior to the Civil War and they raised their families in brick colonial homes, near creeks and springs. There was a small township, with a post office, church, several businesses, an undertaker and the railroad depot marking Concord. At the corner of Concord Road and Kingston Pike back in 1909, a school was established by the High School Board of Knox County.
A dedication quote from the fifth graduation class’s Farragut Yearbook of 1912 attests to the vision for the school: “who by their business sagacity, their devotion to the cause of education and their prophetic vision of future education needs of rural communities, have made it possible to present attainments of this school.”
The school, which was named after Admiral David G. Farragut, was established at the corner of Concord Road and Kingston Pike in 1908. The members of said board were: SL Baker, Dr WS Ogle, JH Burkhart, WB Cooper, MW Wilson, Dr JD Collier and WT McFee.
My grandfather Fred and grandmother Ellen Belle Russell were in Class of 1912 and were instrumental in the growth of Concord’s community. My father (Alfred McFee, Class of ’49) and his four siblings all had attended Farragut High — and some years back during the ’70s gathered at the cafeteria on the first Saturday of May for decades.
They, along with many of their classmates, would gather there all morning over coffee and doughnuts to reminisce about their glory days attending Farragut High while
growing up in the Concord community.
(Part two next week)
