So, when (the University of Tennessee) asked (to paint the mural), I thought it was something we definitely wanted to be a part of to help promote UT and UT Martin.”Ĭarver describes the Fowler family as synonymous with UT and UT Martin. “UTM means a lot to me and my family, and it plays a vital role in our community. “My father is a UT graduate in agriculture, and my mother worked at the UTM bookstore for 33 years, so UTM has always felt like home to me,” Keith Fowler says.
Linda and her husband, Keith Fowler, both graduated in 1985, and two of their three children also have UT Martin degrees-Chris in 2012 and Rachel in 2015. married Dianne Palmer (Martin ’71) and later sent his own daughter, Linda, to school there years later. (Martin ’61), and his daughter, Betty (Martin ’72), to what is now UT Martin. The towering bins hold 5.4 million bushels of corn, soybeans and wheat that are grown across the region and then shipped throughout the country and around the world.īob Robinson understood the value of education and sent his son, R.D. Robinson, built in Sharon is the busiest grain elevator in West Tennessee outside of Memphis. Today, the business he and his brother-in-law, A.L. Robinson may have started with a wagonload of unwanted strawberries, but his quick thinking and savvy investments grew to include sweet potato slips, coal, hogs, mill-ground corn and a variety of cash crops over the years. The Robinson family had never had so much money in their lives. He then used the payment to buy a neighbor’s strawberry field and do the same thing. So Robinson rounded up every pair of hands he could find and capped a whole wagon of strawberries before hurrying to the factory and selling his load. Rumor said a canning factory some distance away was still buying berries but only if they were capped. But, when he reached the station, they had stopped buying for the night. While Robinson & Belew was officially founded in 1950, Robinson’s serious business endeavors began many years before, in 1937, with a wagonload of strawberries.Īfter a long day in his strawberry field, the then 28-year-old Robinson loaded his wagon and headed for the buying station near Sharon. Established by Bob Robinson and now operated by his grandson-in-law, Keith Fowler, the business has deep roots in both the Sharon community and at UT Martin. Locating the second mural at Robinson & Belew was more than an advertisement opportunity-it was a chance for a long-established legacy family to share its UT pride with the region. The Robinson and Fowler families gather for a photo in front of the mural. “Everywhere you look, there’s UT,” he says. They’re the access point to higher education, to a better job and a better life for thousands and thousands of people in rural West Tennessee (who) wouldn’t have that opportunity otherwise.”īoyd mentioned further impact through the UT Space Institute UT Chattanooga in Southeast Tennessee UT Knoxville along with the UT Extension offices in all 95 counties. “You go to the University of Tennessee at Martin with five satellite campuses throughout rural West Tennessee. “Seventy percent of all the doctors and dentists in the state of Tennessee come from the Health Science Center in Memphis,” Boyd says. 45E just how close the UT System is to their daily lives. At 46 feet high and 66 feet wide, the Sharon mural reminds thousands of travelers on U.S. The second was installed in June on the side of a grain bin owned by Robinson & Belew in Sharon-just seven miles south of UT Martin. The first can be seen on a water tower, owned by UT Interim President Randy Boyd, near the Knox Rail Salvage building just east of the Old City in Knoxville. So far, two murals have been painted-one at each end of the state. So I think the mural project is just a visual reminder that UT is everywhere,” UT Martin Chancellor Keith Carver says. It’s in our farms it’s helping transportation. But having (a UT mural) in a rural area, in an agrarian community, on the side of a huge barn-it’s just a reminder that UT is not just on a campus, but it’s in the communities.
“I think, oftentimes, when we think about higher education, we think about a campus or we think about a building. The University of Tennessee System has a presence and an impact in all 95 counties across the state, and now a new campaign is making that presence visible to passersby through the “Everywhere You Look, UT” mural project.
0 kommentar(er)
