Some called it the end of an era, while others simply called it a sad day.
Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary served the state of Tennessee for 113 years, but on Thursday, officials, friends and former employees said goodbye.
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Brushy Mountain was the state’s first prison and served as an inmate reception center for East Tennessee and as a maximum-security prison.
“Brushy opened on Jan. 2, 1896, and was well-known throughout the world as a secure prison,” said Warden Jim Worthington. “Now we must look at the past, maintain our history and move on.”
As guests sat inside the prison’s gymnasium during the closing ceremony, thunder boomed and rain pounded outside.
“Maybe you’re thinking that God is angry because of the closing,” Corrections Commissioner George Little told the crowd. “For those of you who want to shed tears, the skies are already crying for you.”
“Today is a celebration of what’s gone on here,” Little said.
Little called Brushy Mountain the Alcatraz of the East and said most criminals knew Brushy as “the end of the road.”
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The commissioner said that more than 90 percent of the inmates now housed at the new facility, Morgan County Correctional Complex, will be “going home” at some point.
“We have to do more than punish,” he said. “One day he may be sitting in a pew in church next to you. Brushy didn’t represent the new possibilities.”
Morgan County Executive Becky Ruppe asked a simple question – “Should I be sad?”
She called Brushy an “eerie place that sits back in the mountain,” but said it had provided meals for generations of workers.
“Yes, I should be sad,” she said. “Do we have to shut the doors and forget? No.”
Ruppe said the stories should be told and never fade away.
“The history is here forever,” she said.
Correction Officer Debbie Williams paid tribute to retired workers, and to the staff still working or moving to the new facility.
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She described the closing of the prison as being “like burying an old friend.”
Using the old phrase, “if these walls could talk,” Williams said they would tell plenty of stories.
“They’d tell us about the days when men worked with their hands and not with machines,” she said.
Williams said the walls would tell endless secrets of the “unimaginable evil that dwells in a man’s heart.” But, she continued, they would also talk of joy and hope, and the camaraderie among officers and among inmates.
“Every part of humanity has played out inside these walls,” the officer said.
In closing, Williams said the old whistle would sound for one last time.
In the past, the whistle would sound – one long blast – when an inmate escaped. It was tested each day at noon. Williams said many people who lived in the shadow of the prison set their watches by the whistle.
Oak Ridger writer Beverly Majors can be contacted at (865) 220-5514.
Source: https://t-tees.com
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