Knoxville's Max Ramsey tapped for National Historic Preservation Medal [photos]

Maxwell D. Ramsey, who has been instrumental in the preservation of Cherokee history and cultural sites since the 1960s, was the recipient of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution National Historic Preservation Medal on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017, at the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, Tenn. Officials with the Judge David Campbell Chapter of the DAR in Chattanooga presented the medal.
Maxwell D. Ramsey, who has been instrumental in the preservation of Cherokee history and cultural sites since the 1960s, was the recipient of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution National Historic Preservation Medal on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017, at the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, Tenn. Officials with the Judge David Campbell Chapter of the DAR in Chattanooga presented the medal.

FAST FACTS

Honors, awards and achievements for Max Ramsey:• DAR National Historic Preservation Medal• Instrumental in founding of Sequoyah Birthplace Museum• Held role in establishing and then serving as vice president of the Trail of Tears Association and writing the Trail of Tears Association bylaws.• Gold Award from the National Park Service• Served as president of the National Society for Park Resources• Served on the executive committee of the National Park and Recreation Association• Member of the National Recreational Academy for Parks and Recreation Administration• Over time received seven Presidential Awards for his contributions for special programming from the National Recreational Academy for Parks and Recreation Administration (annual award)• The Honorable Cornelius Amory Pugsley Medal of Distinction (the most prestigious award that recognizes outstanding contributions to the promotion and development of public parks, recreation and conservation in the U.S.) Still serves as an appointed advisor to them• Now in the process of securing trust status from TVA for permanent easement of properties that the museum holds on Tellico Lake• Recognized by TVA for a special award for those services to that agency and the Cherokee people during completion of Tellico Lake/Dam. Called the Gold Honor Award for recognition of distinguished achievement of major significance. One-time award.• Received an ambassadorship for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Sequoyah Award from the Joint-Councils of Eastern and Western Cherokee.• Given status of honorary member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee in 2010 for his continued support and services to the tribe.

VONORE, Tenn. - It only takes a few minutes of conversation to discover that Max Ramsey has a passion for history few can equal.

Ramsey is soft-spoken and unassuming. The 83-year-old Knoxville resident will tell you about his work, but he only begrudgingly takes any credit for results he says are really the hard work of others just putting his ideas into action.

On Wednesday in Vonore, Tenn., the Judge David Campbell Chapter of the Tennessee Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Chattanooga presented Ramsey with the National Historic Preservation Medal. The award recognizes his more than 50 years of work to preserve the land and history of the peoples who over the centuries have called East Tennessee home.

The medal was awarded at the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum, a historic site Ramsey worked to establish and maintain.

Susan Lindsey, regent of the Judge David Campbell Chapter, said the first tip that Ramsey was worthy of recognition came in a Times Free Press story on the Eastern Band Cherokee Historic Lands Reacquisition Act in December 2015. That story cites Ramsey's early work with the Tennessee Valley Authority and his work on the language of the Congressional bill still making its way through the process in Washington, D.C.

DAR officials then started researching Ramsey's background and found his work on the bill was just the most recent example.

Lindsey said only 30 or so of the medals are given each year by the 2,000 chapters across the U.S., and they are the "most prestigious preservation award the national society presents."

"This award is for his work that he's done with the Cherokee and the land preservation and really everything that he has done," Lindsey said.

"Everything" amounts to a lifetime of achievements.

The Ramsey name is already part of history. His great-great-uncle J.G.M. Ramsey penned "The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century," a book published in 1853 to document Tennessee's early settlement history.

Although Ramsey's parents were educators, working at Lincoln Memorial University just a couple of miles south of their home in Cumberland Gap, he said his career was launched more by circumstances of his occupation than family tradition.

It might be in his blood, but when Ramsey returned to his home in Cumberland Gap, Tenn., from military service in France he had no idea where life was going to take him.

"I didn't go out and become another person," Ramsey said, "it simply fell into line. You could say it was destiny."

In Middlesboro, Ramsey took on his first cause in a fight against a planned highway through town. He won his fight and that got the attention of the federal agency that would launch his career.

Ramsey, then in his late 20s, joined TVA's conservation and recreation staff in Knoxville. His work soon would involve the construction of Tellico Dam in the Little Tennessee River Valley.

"In the case of Tellico, we were having to look beyond what the immediate impacts were, part of which was the fact that there were hundreds of sites that provide evidence that humans lived here. There's 8,000 years of history in that valley," he said.

Ramsey said landowners were compensated for their land, but money doesn't equal a "homeland."

"TVA wanted to find ways to accommodate the wishes of the Cherokee on how it should be recognized that the Cherokee were here first and that there were other peoples who were defined by age periods," he said.

When the 129-foot-high dam was finished in 1979, 276 families were displaced by the 15,560-acre reservoir along 33 miles of the Little Tennessee River. TVA acquired 37,900 acres for the project. Some of the displaced families sold willingly, while others had to be forced out through condemnation of the land, according to TVA officials.

The dam inundated the land of historic tribal communities of the Overhill Cherokee like Chilhowee, Tallassee, Citico, Chota, Tanasi (from which Tennessee drew its name), Toqua, Tomotley, Tuskegee and Mialoquo.

Now those names will have meaning for future generations.

One of Ramsey's ongoing projects, the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum, is the product of years of working with TVA and the three federally recognized tribes of the Cherokee in Oklahoma and North Carolina. The three tribes met for the first time in Tennessee in 2015, where they agreed to continue support of the museum.

"I feel fortunate to have been involved in projects, programs and challenges that had special meaning to me as an individual," Ramsey reflected.

As he sets his sights on 2017, the Congressional bill and a new exhibit for the museum, Ramsey admits he's "still got work to do."

History will thank him for it.

Contact staff writer Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569.

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