Papers to Pixels: Volunteers beat Bama after 11-year drought — It was the 1980s

Amy McRary
Knoxville

Editor's Note: This year the News Sentinel looked through our digital archives to tell stories of East Tennessee history. Our “Papers to Pixels” series began with the 1920s, using the Knox County Public Library’s historical digital archive of the newspaper. The Knox County Public Library Foundation's "Papers to Pixels" project raised more than $600,000 to pay for newspapers from 1922 to 1990 to be archived. (Newer editions were already available.) The archives are accessible to Knox County Public Library cardholders at the library website.

The project ended by archiving the 1980s. So, with this look at that decade, we end our “Papers to Pixels” series. 

Vol fans tear down the goal posts after beating Alabama in Knoxville in 1982.

First the world, then Michael Jackson, came to town.

Pat Summitt coached her Lady Vols to two national championships, moving to become a legend and leave a legacy.

Then there was football. Tennessee fans celebrated the end of a long series of defeats when their Vols finally beat Alabama.

Not all of the 1980s were jubilant. Thousands of East Tennesseans lost money, some their life savings, when the East Tennessee banks of brothers Jake and C.H. Butcher failed. That Jake Butcher was a force behind the 1982 World’s Fair underscored the contrast between ‘80s accolades and angst. 

And on the day after Christmas in 1980, a 6-year-old girl in Mickey Mouse tennis shoes walked to buy her mother a Coca-Cola. But she never came home.

Here are some of the stories from the 1980s: 

Vols beat Bama!

Eleven years. The University of Tennessee football team hadn’t beaten arch-rival Alabama in 11 long years. 

Then came Oct. 16, 1982, in Knoxville’s Neyland Stadium. Tennessee’s 35-28 win was front-page news. “Alabama’s Domination Finally Shattered,” proclaimed the Sunday, Oct. 17, 1982, headline above the News Sentinel masthead.

“More than 95,300 screaming football fans witnessed the return of Tennessee’s pride at Neyland Stadium,” the newspaper wrote. "‘And there was great rejoicing … dancing in the stands, in the aisles, out on the field… Tears of joy flowed freely.”

Many UT students were in elementary school when Tennessee last won in 1970. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. It’s a shock; it’s just unreal,” one 19-year-old sophomore coed said. 

Fans swarmed the field, ripped down goal posts and paraded sections of the UT campus and Cumberland Avenue. The win began a UT streak; the Volunteers won again in 1983, 1984 and 1985.

“Beating Alabama is the driving force in a Tennessee football player,” News Sentinel sports writer Thomas O’Toole wrote. “That the Vols had not done in 11 years made it sweeter this time.”

More: Papers to Pixels: The 1970s streaked through Knoxville

Papers to Pixels: The '60s were a long, crazy, sometimes scary trip

Papers to Pixels: 1950s in East Tennessee meant rock 'n' roll, champion Vols and desegregation

What fun: A fair for the world

“World Comes to Knoxville” read the May 1, 1982, News Sentinel front-page headline. President Ronald Reagan was in town to open the Knoxville International Energy Exposition, better known as the 1982 World’s Fair. Knoxvillians were happy and proud of what the president – and the world – would see. 

The Sunsphere is seen during the World's Fair in 1982.

When the fair ended Oct. 31, 1982, it had brought more than 11 million visitors to town. Just two years before Knoxville had been called “scruffy” by the Wall Street Journal.

The fair with 67 acres of energy and cultural exhibits, restaurants, attractions and entertainment venues also turned a $57 profit. It'd taken seven years of plans and politics to transform a weedy, aging railroad yard between downtown and the University of Tennessee into a multimillion-dollar international festival.

Twenty-two nations from France to South Korea and 50-plus corporations participated in the fair with its “Energy Turns the World” theme. International pavilions’ cultural attractions, like the Chinese’s terra cotta warriors from an emperor’s tomb, drew the most people.

After the fair closed, its grounds were gradually redeveloped into today’s World’s Fair Park. Its 226-foot Sunsphere remains a Knoxville icon. 

On the 1982 Halloween evening that the fair closed, its leaders and other dignitaries drank celebratory champagne at the Tennessee Amphitheater. Sonya Butcher, wife of fair chairman and East Tennessee banker Jake Butcher, led a singing of “Auld Lang Syne.” 

“This has been an endurance test for all of us,” said Jake Butcher. “We have established Knoxville as one of the world’s great cities.”

In a May 1, 1982, photograph, Dinah Shore, left, Gov. Lamar Alexander, President Ronald Reagan and Jake Butcher take part in the World's Fair opening ceremonies.

By mid-November, fair enthusiasts could get good deals on souvenirs. A Kingston Pike shop’s Nov. 12, 1982, News Sentinel advertisement announced a liquidation sale with 33-cent World's Fair key chains, 99-cent hats and deeply discounted $1.98 T-shirts.

Banks collapse

The World’s Fair high dimmed as the East Tennessee banking empire of fair promoter and former gubernatorial candidate Jake Butcher and his brother C.H. Butcher collapsed. 

Butcher, a charismatic politician, played such a major role in the fair it was sometimes called “Jake’s fair.” On Nov. 1, 1982 – the day after the World’s Fair closed — federal bank regulators raided Butcher’s flagship United American Banks. 

In a Feb. 21, 1984, photograph, bankrupt financier Jake Butcher talks to the press outside the federal courthouse after turning over business records connected to the collapse of the United American Bank chain to a federal grand jury. His attorneys argued that Butcher's right against self-incrimination would be violated by turning over the records. At left is Knoxville Journal, and later News Sentinel, reporter Bob Womack.

On Valentine’s Day, 1983, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced UAB was insolvent and ordered it closed. On May 27, 1983, the Tennessee banking commissioner closed five banks, including C.H. Butcher Jr.'s flagship City & County Bank of Knox County.

What was eventually revealed as a $1.5 billion bank fraud scheme cost some investors their life savings. Jake and C.H. Butcher pleaded guilty to federal bank fraud. Each served slightly less than seven years before being paroled.

Jackson thrills Knoxville

For three August nights in 1984, screaming fans in Neyland Stadium weren’t watching football. Michael Jackson was in town with his brothers for the Jackson Victory Tour.

With his jacket and glove gone, Michael Jackson performs Aug. 10, 1984 in the smallest city of their Jacksons' "Victory Tour" in Knoxville, Tenn.

The 130-city tour stopped in Knoxville Aug. 10-12. More than 148,000 of the $30 tickets were sold for three concerts. But not everyone was a Jackson devotee.

At least 20 protesters, one carrying a sign reading “Choose Hell or Jesus,” stood outside Neyland during at least one concert. They urged Jackson fans not to make him an idol.

But in Neyland fans were “enthralled” by what the News Sentinel called “Jackson magic.”

“They stood, they cheered, they screamed, they danced. And some even cried. But they never sat down during the entire 110-minute show,” The News Sentinel reported about one concert.

Michael Jackson gets his fans in a frenzy by tearing open his shirt during the first night of the Jacksons' "Victory Tour" in Knoxville, Tenn., Aug. 10, 1984.

"Red and green lasers shot through the stadium and fog from 1,000 pounds of dry ice filled the stage,” wrote the newspaper reviewer. “The opening sequence was something between the Muppets and Star Wars but it worked well."

Tragedy marred the event. Lisa Neuenschwander, 9, and her grandfather Dr. Harold Neuenschwander had left the Aug. 10 concert and were standing at a median at Volunteer Boulevard and Circle Park Drive. A man driving a pickup truck jumped the median and fatally struck both Lisa and Dr. Neuenschwander, 68. The driver was charged and later convicted in the deaths. 

Little girl lost

The day after Christmas in 1980, Avery Vernie “Peaches” Shorts walked out of her Montgomery Village residence in South Knoxville. The 6-year-old never returned.

It was around 3:30 p.m. when Peaches pulled her green-checkered coat over blue pants and blue knit shirt with a snowman pictured on the front. She wore a pair of Mickey Mouse tennis shoes.

She headed to a nearby store to buy her mother a Coca-Cola. She stopped to play with friends but got to the store around 5 p.m. But she never made the short walk home. Her frantic mother called police around 5:50.  

More than 100 volunteers began searching nearby woods and knocking on doors. They searched for days. Tracking dogs were brought in; an area psychic consulted. No one found the child whose story captured the hearts of Knoxvillians. 

Morristown psychic Bobby Drinnon, center, is pictured with private detective Raymond Anderson, left, and Knoxville Police Department Detective Jim Winston during the search for missing six-year-old Avery (Peaches) Shorts on Dec. 31, 1980, at Montgomery Village. (Michael Patrick/News Sentinel)

It was January 1982 when a father and son hunting rabbits found a skull near a dump off a Blount County Road. A pair of Mickey Mouse shoes was close by. The remains were identified as those of Peaches. Investigators found a piece of wire around her broken neck. 

Knoxville police had a suspect. While detectives revisited the case more than once through the years, officers never had enough to charge the man they suspected.

The first — and second — of eight

It was March 1987 in Austin, Texas, when Pat Summitt got the monkey off her back.

Pat Summitt leads the cheers after winning the women's NCAA National Championship 67-44 against Louisiana Tech in Austin, Texas in 1987. This was Summitt's first national championship. The Lady Vols coach went on to win seven more.

Summitt’s Lady Vols upset Louisiana Tech 67-44 on March 29, 1987, winning the team's first NCAA national championship.

“The monkey’s off my back,” said Summitt, Tennessee’s coach since 1974. Other Lady Vols had made it to the championship contest but lost. This time, they won.

Coach Pat Summitt speaks as President Ronald Reagan hosts the NCAA champion Lady Vols at the White House on April 2, 1987.  Looking on are, from left, UT President Ed Boling, women's athletic director Joan Cronan, Lady Vol Sheila Frost and Lady Vol Melissa McCray.

In 1989 the Lady Vols won their second national championship as the 1980s brought Summitt and her teams the first two of what would be eight national championships.