Well, duh. I live just across the river from where this man had his mansion - and folks all around this area lost everything - he did his time, but that didn’t pay back nearly enough of his debt to society.
I love Tennessee, specifically the Smokies. Been through Knoxville many, many times. Knoxville is a great city, but I’m not sure it has the potential to be a great rival to other cities. I think the Butcher’s set the bar too high.
Oh you mean Whirlwind how fitting a name. Gone with the Wind would work also. LOL. I worked for the fair itself as a maintenance mechanic. The daily attendance as I understood just to break even would have had to have been near 100,000 or close to it. There were only about three or four such days and the daily totals were more closer to 25,000 to 50,000. I also saw quite a few 15,000 days especially when the site flooded. Nothing like wearing chest waders standing next to the creek fixing to throw the power off due to rising water near the Canadian Pavilion. Ah the good old days LOL.
It had major issues even before it opened including the air conditioning system in the European Pavilion. This is no lie. The chiller shut down one afternoon and I went in to restart it. The Chill Water circ pump tripped on overload. I opened up the access plate on the motor and not one piece of tape was on the wires. The company that installed the system went under. It was so bad we had to contract out a service company full time to keep the European and Japan air conditioning systems up and running.
Greed sank the Worlds Fair a lot of it the Butcher's and their friends. Remember such things as the AirStream Trailer Parks? One was in Powell at Emory Road plus several more around the area. All were empty even on opening day. A lot of bad planning and a lot of pre-fair bad publicity had people scared to come thinking that rooms were going to be up to $500 a night for someones garage. Remember also many UT students in the Fort Sanders area were forced to leave apartments. Those too remained empty every night.
Toward August rumors were going around the fair that things was fixing to get bad for some big investors. A guy I worked with told me the Banks were fixing to be raided. He or rather a member of his family was in a position to know is all I can say.
Some people in the area still think of the Butchers as saints. This despite the fact many lost life savings in the Southern Industrial S&L that CH junior ran. The ones who had money in United American faired much better due to federal insurance. But even their money was tied up for days. BTW this also traced back to Harold Ford SR IIRC he was the only major player not convicted.
Not even old Cas Walker in all his dealings could match the damage done by Expo 82. Perhaps the next fiasco coming close was the city backing Whittle Communications which Lamar Alexander had strong ties to.