City Council To Review Burkle Estate Request A committee of the Memphis City Council is planning to tour the Burkle Estate near downtown to see if it should get $250,000 in taxpayer money for additional renovation. Some council members, however, are already leery about the steep cost. “I can’t speak for all of my council colleagues, but I can speak for several,” says council member John Vergos. “We were pretty surprised at how much money they asked for.” Vergos and council member John Bobango are wondering if Heritage Tours, Inc., the operators of the estate, will be able to supply the council with details on how many tourists actually go through the home. (In other words, is the home worth the investment?) They say Burkle Estate directors haven’t been very helpful with such information in the past. They also note that Burkle Estate received $100,000 from the council last year, after 80 percent of the property had been destroyed by a fire. And undermining everything are unanswered questions about the historical accuracy of the story Heritage Tours sells to tourists – that the property at 826 N. Second St. served as a stop along the Underground Railroad. The “railroad” was the network of people and places before and during the Civil War designed to sneak slaves out of the South to the free North. Government and private historical records seem to contradict each other on the actual age of the home. “We have to be clear on the history of the house and the city of Memphis,” Bobango says. “And I emphasize that the community of the whole has to buy into the significance.” That view is not shared by all members of the council, however. “Right now I have no real reason to question Heritage Tours’ enthusiasm or question the correctness of their studies,” says Jerome Rubin. – Phil Campbell County Investigation Results in One Termination An investigation by the Shelby County government into allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at the county fire department has resulted so far in the termination of one employee and the suspension of two others. Mary Clayton, the department’s only female dispatch supervisor, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in late July against her bosses, whom she alleges conspired against her after she rejected sexual advances. The county launched its own investigation, putting general services director Ernest Gunn in charge. Clayton alleges that her supervisors frequently turned the office television to the “Spice Channel,” asked her to expose her breasts, and left pornographic magazines lying around the office despite her objections. Clayton also alleges that she was told that she was not allowed to bid for better shift changes while her male colleagues were. Gunn confirmed that Commander T. Edward Garrett has been fired for his involvement in the incidents; Garrett is appealing the termination. Clayton and supervisor Allen Lane have been temporarily suspended in the midst of the case’s charges and countercharges. Another official, Carl Miller, was not reappointed to his position as assistant chief, which essentially means he was demoted back to lieutenant. Gunn says that the Miller situation was not entirely a result of the investigation. Clayton and her attorney, Randall Tolley, are not satisfied yet. “They haven’t done anything to the chief perpetrators,” Tolley notes. In her complaint, Clayton alleges that County Fire Chief Michael N. Molder once asked her to book a motel room for them and “call him when she is ready.” – Phil Campbell Prescott Baptist Elects Pastor – Finally Sue Enoch Prescott Memorial Baptist Church’s three-year search for a permanent pastor came to an end Sunday when the congregation voted 72 to 1, with two abstentions, to bring the Reverend Sue Enoch to the pulpit. Enoch, 49, comes to Prescott from Highland Park Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. She worked with blind and deaf children prior to entering the ministry at age 40. “I never planned to be a pastor,” she told the congregation, but she couldn’t ignore God’s plan. Dr. John Whirley, chairman of the search committee, says that “as much as anything else, she just fits in real well.” Whirley says that during a preliminary meeting with 10 members of the church – what would normally be an anxious situation – within a half-hour Enoch chatted with them like they were old friends. Members of the church responded enthusiastically as Enoch mingled with them at a reception following the service, and Enoch expressed the same friendly smile and reassurance she had from the pulpit. “You go against the popular grain a lot of the time,” Enoch told them, but “you all have held on. You understand God’s work and you have done it well in the breach.” Prescott has always stood “in the breach.” Eight years ago, Prescott became the first Southern Baptist Church in the Mid-South to ordain a female pastor, the Reverend Nancy Sehested. The search for a permanent pastor began in 1995 when Sehested left Memphis to work as a writer-in-residence at a ministry in North Carolina. Since then, visiting pastors from other congregations have led the Sunday services. – Lauren Mutter Botanic Garden Underfunded, Says Director Recent visitors to Memphis Botanic Garden have remarked that areas of the park look overgrown and unweeded, and the plants don’t appear healthy. “People complain about how the grounds look,” says MBG director Huey Holden. “I wish they could understand what we’re up against.” Part of the problem, he explains, is there’s construction going on, with a new Four Seasons Garden in the works. Another factor is the weather, with a wet spring followed by a long hot spell followed by another rainy month. But the biggest reason is lack of maintenance personnel. “We have eight people to take care of 96 acres, and four are occupied full-time mowing the grass,” Holden says. Ideally, he’d like to increase the maintenance budget by $1 million and hire 15 to 20 more groundspeople. “We’ve made a real effort to let Mayor Herenton know that we desperately need some paid help,” he says. “If we could get the city to pony up their fair share, we could get a lot of things done around here. What concerns me is we have so many out-of-town visitors, and it’s hard to present something we can be proud of.” – Debbie Gilbert Alan Balter, 1945-1998 PHOTO COURTESY OF MEMPHIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Alan Balter, the former Memphis Symphony Orchestra conductor, died Friday in a Philadelphia hospital of complications from an infection following lung surgery. He was 53. According to published news reports, Balter had been a patient at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center for about four weeks, in connection with the second of two surgeries to remove a lesion from each lung. Balter brought the symphony from a group of part-timers to a nationally recognized ensemble. His 14 years with the MSO saw the growth of the orchestra’s season, the creation of a core orchestra, and the broadening of the orchestra’s repertoire to include a variety of styles of music. Most Memphians will remember him as the conductor of the Sunset Symphony, the riverside concert that closes the Memphis in May International Festival each year. He spent nearly 20 years playing in professional orchestras, including eight as principal clarinetist in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He began his conducting career in Atlanta and went on to conduct for the Baltimore and Akron symphony orchestras. In 1976 he won first prize in the MIN-ON International Concours for Conductors, one of the most prestigious awards in the field. National Public Radio once called him “one of three or four of the most important young conductors in America today.” After his final performance in Memphis May 30th, Balter had hoped to pursue freelance opportunities as a conductor, teacher, and performer, and to spend more time with his family. Hancock Funeral Home in Philadelphia is handling the services. – Lauren Mutter Memphis Loses a Lustron And now there are two. Memphis has lost one of its three unusual Lustron homes – prefabricated, all-metal homes constructed by the Lustron Company of Chicago and erected in cities across America during the late 1940s. Developers on Barfield in East Memphis recently demolished a “Westchester Model 0-2” to make way for a larger home on the property, leaving the city with just two remaining Lustrons, on Charleswood east of Highland, and another on Eastwood just east of East Parkway. Lustron homes were assembled from interlocking porcelain-coated steel panels, which formed the exterior and interior walls. Even the roof was metal. They never required painting, inside or out, and owners didn’t worry about termites (though hanging pictures was a challenge). The buildings were designed to be erected on a steel slab in three days. Plumbing, wiring, and a furnace system were already installed. The homes could be ordered in gray, yellow, blue-gray, and “desert tan.” Lustron sold more than 2,500 homes, 29 of them in Tennessee. Although the unusual homes were built to last, the company didn’t, going out of business in 1950. – Michael Finger Rout Speaks Out on Shelby Farms by Debbie Gilbert Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout has told the Flyer he’s not quite sure why 11 prominent Memphians have banded together to fight a proposed highway through Shelby Farms. As far as Rout is concerned, that project has been dead for some time. “Unfortunately, they are operating without the facts,” he says. “The Tennessee Department of Transportation has told us in writing that that plan won’t happen as long as we don’t want it. That plan is not on the drawing board. It’s not a possibility.” The design Rout refers to had called for a huge interchange at Walnut Grove near Farm Road, with a seven-lane highway running north and splitting into two branches, one connecting to Sycamore View, the other to Whitten Road. On July 30th, members of the newly formed Support Shelby Farms, Inc. – which includes such community leaders as FedEx founder Fred Smith, AutoZone founder J.R. “Pitt” Hyde, former First Tennessee Bank chairman Ron Terry, and city councilman John Vergos – announced their opposition to this road and to any other route that would “split the Farms.” Rout has proposed his own alternative, a four-lane, tree-lined boulevard located 700 to 1,000 feet west of Patriot Lake, with passageways so pedestrians could safely cross. While this project would omit the cloverleaf interchange of the original TDOT plan, it would include an overpass similar to the one at Walnut Grove and Germantown Parkway. Ron Terry has floated yet another alternative: extending Humphreys Boulevard north through a portion of the Lucius Burch State Natural Area to connect with Sycamore View. Rout has written a letter to TDOT asking the state to study this design’s feasibility, but he’s not sanguine about its chances. “[Terry’s plan] is in the 100-year floodplain,” he says. “There’s a very large bridge span there – that could be a problem. And a lot of traffic will be dumped into the Sycamore View area around State Tech. You’d have to find a way to deal with that.” Rout adds that his own idea is “much more preferable than putting [the road] through a sensitive wetland area.” The mayor expresses dismay at the apparent perception that he’s a pro-development politician intent on dividing the 4,500-acre park with a superhighway. “We have been consistent in our position since 1994,” he emphasizes. “We are committed to the park remaining a public-access area. We’re not ‘splitting the park.’ Shelby Farms already has a road through it, and it’s on one end of the park. “We think we have a workable and palatable alternative,” Rout concludes, “and we would hope that calm heads and reasonable minds would prevail.”

			Fly on the Wall You Be The Judge “Two years, maximum. A preliminary look suggests that his cases will be loaded with conflict, but Brown is still Judge Judy Lite.” – Time magazine’s prognosis for the future of Judge Joe Brown, a forthcoming People’s Court clone starring local judicial iconoclast Joe Brown. Judge Judy Lite? Memphians can judge for themselves on September 14th when Judge Joe starts going back-to-back with Judge Judy weekday mornings on WLMT-TV Channel 30. Just A Game? On Monday, the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission squared off in an inning of softball to benefit charity. Beforehand, councilman John Vergos reflected on what sort of game to expect. He is talking about baseball, right? “John Bobango likes to hit the ball down the middle,” mused Vergos. “Janet Hooks would rather coach and tell us what to do. [Republican] Brent Taylor, I’m sure that everything he hits will be to the right.” And what about world-traveling council chairman Myron Lowery? “Will he wear his home uniform or away uniform?” Vergos wondered. No word on that, but the game apparently took its toll, running up a disabled list unparalleled for one inning of play. Vergos limped away with a pulled hamstring. Bobango likewise sustained a leg injury, while commisioners Morris Fair and Buck Wellford earned bruises for their efforts. The game ended in a tie, three all. Litigate In Comfort “Our East office, with its plush interior can offer all the services of the downtown office! Smiling clerks will be happy to assist you as you file complaints, divorces, answers, interrogatories, alias Summons, subpoenas, depositions and Notices of Appeal, etc.” – from a flyer hanging around the courthouse downtown, urging citizens to ease their way through the cogs of justice in a serene East Memphis setting at the Mt. Moriah Circuit, Chancery, and General Sessions Court offices. Among the benefits: “no hassle with the parking lot attendants,” “no annoying body searches as you enter the building,” and “no marble steps to rush up and down.” It’s almost enough to make you look forward to that next D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Don’t delay, file today! Thick As A Brick Numbed as we are to all the bad news in the world today, an item in last week’s Collierville Herald was so disturbing that it gave us pause. “Love of Bricks Comes Since Wal-Mart” ran the banner headline on page one, and the first line sent chills down our spines: “Brick – it is all the rage in Collierville.” The story explained that there seems to be a “trend” out east for developers to use that newfangled gadget called a brick in their design. “It is the opinion of most people that the brick look will make the development more attractive and fit better into the surrounding area," the city administrator told the Herald. A bold move indeed. We suppose they tried straw first, but then discovered the Big Bad Wolf could blow it down.