| Sources |
- [S104] Cocke County, Tennessee, and its People, Cocke County Heritage Book Committee, (Walsworth Publishing, 1992), 276.
- [S24] The Newport Plain Talk, (http://www.newportplaintalk.com), 3 Nov 2006.
Architectural firm leaders credit growing up in Cocke County with helping them succeed
Graphic Designed by NATHAN HULL
Source: The Newport Plain Talk
11-03-2006
Editor’s note: This article was written and submitted by George S. Korda, of Korda Communications, Knoxville. He is a long-time friend of Don Shell and Bill Vinson, formerly of Newport.
Don Shell and Bill Vinson, Cocke County natives with family roots deep in the area’s history, credit growing up in Cocke County with helping them to fulfill their career ambitions and head a leading Tennessee architectural firm.
The memories come flooding back to Shell as he looks through the scrapbook his mother, Anna Jean Shell, kept of his life growing up in Newport.
Shell, today chief executive officer of Community Tectonics Architects, surveys a Newport Plain Talk story of March 9, 1964, with a headline proclaiming of the twelfth grader, “Donnie Shell holds High Scoring Gary Martin of Sullivan to two field goals” in a regional basketball tournament.
“It meant something, growing up here,” Shell said. “You were grounded. There was no one you didn’t know, and everyone – family, friends and neighbors - encouraged you to do your best, always.”
Vinson, Community Tectonics Architects’ president, says that three main concerns were the focus of most people in Cocke County.
“Faith, family and friends,” Vinson says. “Those seemed to me to be the priorities for most of the people I knew here then, and know today.”
Community Tectonics Architects, the firm Shell and Vinson lead, has offices in Knoxville and Nashville. Community Tectonics has designed more than 600 schools as well as numerous government and office buildings, churches and other structures throughout Tennessee – including Knoxville’s signature landmark, the Sunsphere.
The firm has won more Tennessee School Boards Association design awards in the past four years than any other architectural firm. Shell is the incoming southeast regional president of the Council of Education Facilities Planners International.
Shell and Vinson fondly recall the lives they led growing up in Cocke County.
Shell said family was always the source of his inspiration. .
“Dad built our home in Richland Park about the time I started high school. He built most of it himself, and I watched him do it. I think that experience helped motivate my decision to go into architecture,” he said.
Shell’s father, Walter, started Newport’s first Boy Scout troop at First Christian Church, and Shell rose to the rank of Eagle Scout.
“My grandparents were charter members of First Christian Church and most of my immediate family gathered there weekly, “said Shell. He still numbers his Cocke County cousins – literally, not figuratively – in the hundreds.
Shell played football, basketball and baseball throughout high school. His father coached his first Little League team, which also included the legendary football coach Steve Spurrier. After high school Shell played second base and his father first base on Newport’s semi-pro baseball team.
The accomplished athlete did find time for other pursuits, eventually meeting and marrying Debbie Smith of Del Rio.
Vinson’s father and mother, W.C. and Mary Vinson of Newport recently celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary. Vinson’s uncle Wayne Vinson was superintendent of schools during Vinson’s childhood, when the family lived on Ruble Street.
Vinson’s wife, Dotty, has a former Newport mayor, John M. Jones, in her family tree.
Dotty and Bill served on the committee that put together the festivities for the Cocke County Bicentennial celebration in 1976.
“We also helped gather artifacts and create exhibits for the start of the Newport/Cocke County Museum,” Vinson adds. “Dotty was the first director of that Museum, which was a part-time job.
“Yes, I guess Don’s and my roots here reach way down.”
After becoming architects, Shell and Vinson opened an office together on the second floor of the Newport Savings & Loan building. Being local boys helped the time they had a late-night visit from anxious, gun-wielding police officers.
“Don and I were pulling an all-nighter trying to get the documents ready for the Newport Community Center project,” Vinson says. “The city police saw the lights on the upper floor and thought someone was robbing the bank.
Shell adds, “I heard something and went outside the office at about 2 a.m. and there were police officers with shotguns pointed at me. Then one of them said, ‘Don Shell, what are you doing up here at this time of night?’ I don’t think they were as scared as I was – they had the guns – but I think we were pretty close.”
Both Shell and Vinson say they were privileged to grow up in Cocke County.
“Growing up here instilled our values in us,” Vinson says.
Says Shell: “I cherish the fact that I can call this county home.”
Architectural firm leaders credit growing up in Cocke County with helping them succeed
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1950 - (73 years)
(Age 97 years)