Posted on 05/02/2007 7:33:42 AM PDT by SmithL
KNOXVILLE: Jake Butcher helped bring the World’s Fair to the city in 1982, but the collapse of his banking empire soon after "took a lot of wind out of the sails for Knoxville," he said in a recent interview.
WBIR-TV in Knoxville interviewed Butcher for the station’s coverage of the 25th anniversary of the World’s Fair that began May 1, 1982. The interview, a first for Butcher in many years, was aired Tuesday evening.
Butcher, 70, former chairman of United American Bank, also was chairman of the Knoxville International Energy Exposition board of directors and used his political ties and financing prowess to garner support for the fair.
The fair was widely considered a success and brought in more than 11 million people over its six-month run. City officials hoped the fair would lead to redevelopment at the site, a former railyard downtown.
Instead, the aftermath of the fair was the banking scandal that landed Butcher and his brother, C.H. Butcher Jr., in federal prison for fraud.
"I got a lot of misery at the end. It was my fault. I have no one to blame but myself," Butcher said in the interview.
"If I had been successful and hadn’t had the great debacle in banking that happened to me, we might have been challenging Nashville today. We really had things going for us in Knoxville. We could have had headquarters of the larger banks. We could have had headquarters of insurance companies. That’s what it takes. You’ve got to get a power base. Knoxville has never really had a power base."
The Butchers operated 27 banks in Tennessee and Kentucky. The banks collapsed in 1983 under the weight of unsecured loans, paper corporations loaded with debt and a massive shell game in which loans were shuffled from one bank to another ahead of the bank examiners. It was the fourth-largest banking failure at the time.
Jake Butcher was paroled in 1992. C.H. Butcher was paroled in 1993 and died in 2002.
Butcher said Knoxville, the third-largest city in Tennessee, stayed "flat" after the fair and scandal.
"The momentum stopped and it took a long time to build again," he said. "It took a lot of wind out of the sails for Knoxville."
The energy expo was often referred to as "Jake’s Fair," and Butcher appears to enjoy talking about bringing the large event to Knoxville. During the interview, he wore a watch with four rubies and a gold face bearing the fair’s flame logo.
He recalled many other people who worked with him, funny stories of getting the Bureau of International Expositions in Paris to approve Knoxville as a host and a late telephone call from President Carter to say he was backing it.
A mixture of Republicans and Democrats helped the fair along, and Butcher, twice a Democratic candidate for Tennessee governor in the 1970s, even talked governors around the South into giving their federal highway funds to Tennessee to help rebuild the city’s interstates in time for the fair. A project that would normally take 10 to 15 years was whittled down to only a few.
"There wasn’t an eagle that flew over this valley down here and dropped the World’s Fair. It took a lot of people," Butcher said. "Sometimes I get a lot of the blame. Sometimes I get a lot of the credit. I probably shouldn’t be blamed that much, and I probably don’t deserve all the credit."
Butcher, who didn’t disclose where he lives in Georgia, still visits Knoxville and is working in real estate development.
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.
I went to that Fair. The theme was “Energy.”
My recalled impression was “dinky” for a World’s Fair, but then I was comparing it to the Montreal Expo ‘67, parts of which still exist as a park, so that’s probably not ‘fair’ (pun intended) of me.
We got to Knoxville right after the World’s Fair, just when there was a glut of rental property. That worked out great for us. I do miss East Tennessee, and suspect it’s better off for not growing too much.
There are certain attractions, including the Museum of Appalachia and the Knoxville Zoo that benefited enormously by having the fair in Knoxville.
I still remember the television commercials and jingles for this event. “You’ve got to be there (pause) the 1982 (pause) World’s (pause) Fair (pause) You’ve got to be there!”
I also remember what a problem my parents had finding a hotel after we left the fair. I believe we drove almost all the way to Pigeon Forge. Great times for an eight year old!
Millinton and Knoxville are over 400 miles apart......
You could do worse than Pigeon Forge. Did you at least get to visit Dollywood?
You are correct, it was a road trip from one end of the state to the other, first time I saw Nashville too.
If I was Jake Butcher, I would not be disclosing where I lived either.
The Butcher brothers cohort, Harold Ford Sr. is still on the loose!
I believe it was still Silver Dollar City back then.
I was a young bank examiner for the State of Alabama at the time. This debacle had repercussions, not only in Knoxville, but in many other places as well, including Alabama.
Oh Yeah.
People from all over the South lost their life savings, their homes, and jobs. A lot of political careers came to an abrupt end, too. The only one involved that came out unscathed was Ford.
Maybe. As a child, I went there when it was the Rebel Railroad. They actually gave us all cap-guns to shoot at the robbers. Dolly’s train still rides the same tracks.
Jake Butcher’s daughters were my older sister’s age, and they and their little brother would visit at our church from time to time. I remember the girls as being very pretty. All of Jake’s kids were very nice and well-raised, as far as I could tell. His son was a few years younger than me, and I guess he really liked the “Dukes of Hazzard”.
The boy was too young to drive on the streets, but Jake bought him a ‘69 Charger and had it modified to be identical to the General Lee. He’d drive it all over the fields behind the Butcher house, and up and down the long driveway... lol
Years ago, I heard that Jake had US coins and bills (even large denominations) encased in a solid clear plexiglass toilet seat. lol I have no idea if that was really the truth or not.
Fletcher J
I lived in the area of that World’s Fair while it was going on. It was quite interesting...China exhibited the soldiers from the tomb discovered two years earlier to the public for the first time. Butcher was a crony of Jimmy Carter and Carter’s help allowed Butcher to creatively finance much of what later failed. Blanton helped also and Blanton later went down for bribery and scandals within the Governor’s mansion...
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.
Didn't one of Jakes daughters get caught driving without a license {underage} on Ridgeview Road near the house? IIRC it was either Ridgeview or Blockhouse Valley.
Hey, I was 8 years old when I went to that fair, too !
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