“The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.” -Edward Gibbon
Ear to the ground
FRIENDS OF CHICKAMAUGA & Chattanooga National Military Park will hold a fundraising event, “National Treasures: An Evening with the Coker Classic Car Collection,” on Aug. 19 from 5:30-8:30 p.m. at Coker Tire Co. private museum in the Southside district.
“National Treasures will focus on the passion Americans feel for our national parks and for the vehicles that have traditionally taken us on the road to explore them,” said the organization’s president, Becky Browder, in a news release. “We can’t imagine a better setting than the Coker Museum for the fun of celebrating this unique relationship.”
Coker Tire Co.’s Southside corporate headquarters is home to an extensive collection of classic cars, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles, said Kay Parish, Friends executive director. Guests will enjoy a rare chance to see the collection while sampling fun food, sipping summer beverages, grooving to great cruising music, and taking spins in a vintage, open-air national park tour bus used at Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, she said.
The event takes place on the 120th anniversary of the 1890 date when President Benjamin Harrison, signed the federal law that created Chickamauga & Chattanooga as America’s first national military park and its first national historical park.
Admission is $75 per person or $130 per couple. Reservations can be made online at www.chickchatt.org or by mail at Friends of the Park, P.O. Box 748, Chattanooga, TN 37401. The deadline for reservations is Aug. 12.
Major event sponsors include Coker Tire Co.; Blood Assurance of Chattanooga; Independent Healthcare Properties LLC, and Morning Pointe Assisted Living & Alzheimer’s MemoryCare, with additional support from a number of local businesses and individuals.
Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park encompasses 9,100 acres in Tennessee and Georgia. Friends of the Park is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving, promoting and enhancing Chickamauga and Chattanooga for the benefit of the American public.
Heard on the town
THE CHATTANOOGA Area Food Bank needs your help, said Sterling Gillum, food bank education and volunteer coordinator.
“We have a huge volunteer need. We need people to help assemble emergency food boxes for families one day a week for two hours between 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Thursday,” Mr. Gillum said. “This is an ongoing volunteer need. The prospective volunteer would have to be able to lift 20 pounds.”
Volunteers need to be 14 years old and older, he said.
The required work is similar to grocery shopping, he said.
“I’ve had volunteers tell me, ‘If you can grocery shop, then you can work in this program.’ This program has exploded, and we need more volunteers to help us meet the demand of families that are coming in to the food bank for help.”
For more information, call Mr. Gillum at 622-1800.
E-mail Karen Nazor Hill at khill@timesfreepress.com. Submitted photographs will not be returned.