Bruce StoreyBruce Storey, 73, co-founder of the Riverbend Festival, died Saturday in Denver, where he had lived for a number of years.
While Storey's time in Chattanooga was relatively short, he had a profound influence on the local entertainment scene. He co-founded Variety Services, which created Five Nights in Chattanooga in 1981, and the Riverbend Festival the following year. He also had a hand in creating the Dorothy Patten Performance Arts Series, now Patten Performances.
"Without Bruce, we would not have a lot of the things we have today," said Hugh Moore, a longtime Friends of the Festival board member and past president.
Walker Breland, now professor emeritus in the music department, worked with Storey while both were at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and it was at Breland's house that the Riverbend plan was formulated.
"He was an easy person to work with," Breland said. "He was very creative and we are doing many things today that were his ideas."
Richard Brewer moved here in 1981 to help start Variety Services with Story and he remembers that it was Storey who had the vision for what Riverbend could become.
"People need to remember what that part of town was like," Brewer said. "I remember going down to the park [now the 21st Century Waterfront] and you couldn't see the river. It was all weeds and brush and debris surrounded by boarded-up buildings.
"I don't think Riverbend would have made it that first year without Bruce and Walker. He had this vision and Bruce's vision was that everyone would come down to the festival."
Storey moved here in 1970 to become director of the student center at UTC. Actor Dennis Haskins said it was Storey who put him on the school's entertainment committee and later to run for chairman.
"Bruce is one of the most amazing people I ever met," Haskins said. "He opened his door and allowed people to chase dreams. He cared. He was very fair. He was a righteous man and because he would stand up for people, he wasn't always popular."
Storey managed the then new Fine Arts Center at UTC and was first a member and then president of the Arts and Education Council (now the Southern Lit Alliance).
"We owe a debt of gratitude to Bruce," said Jeannine Alday, a former board member and past president of the Riverbend Festival. "He had the vision that the rest of us only had a glimpse of, but he knew how to take the vision and move it forward.
In 1993, Storey moved with his husband-to-be, Edward B. Wise, to Houston to become the vice president for marketing of the Houston International Festival. He retired from the festival business in 2000.
Funeral arrangements will be announced later.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.