Laura Walker McNutt was less than a year into her career as a photojournalist for the Chattanooga News-Free Press when she went to Riverbend on Aug.19, 1985. The diminutive Walker was not on duty but carried some of her equipment as she accompanied her father and younger sister to see the Pointer Sisters.
She remembers 34 years later the night an unexpected crowd of 40,000 turned out to hear one of the country’s hottest touring acts. She remembers the crush of the crowd inside a fence that lined Riverfront Parkway.
“I think I heard my father talk about that night for so many years that I visualize it through him,” said McNutt, whose father, Ray, died several years ago. “The crowd was so tight. It was like a packed subway car in New York or a packed elevator. My father had my younger sister on his shoulders because he was afraid she was going to be trampled.
“He was afraid the horses of the mounted policemen were going to kick us and crush us when the fence came down. My father thought we were going to die.”
No one died that August night, but the 4-year-old Riverbend Festival, now 39, saw its future.