Chattanooga Can-Do panel host Ron Harr, left, introduces Mike Bradshaw, second from left, Dr. Thomas Devlin, Max Fuller and Tiffanie Robinson during an afternoon session of the 2014 Tennessee Valley Corridor National Summit held at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Wade Hinton
Chuck FleischmannWade Hinton grew up in Chattanooga, but he couldn’t wait to flee, counting the days until he completed high school, he told a packed room of scientists, CEOs and municipal officials Wednesday at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Reared in the inner city by a single mother some decades ago, Hinton was motivated to get educated, because that education was his ticket out of the smoggy, dangerous city with its limited prospects and declining economy.
“When I left Chattanooga after high school, I never thought I would return,” Hinton said at the opening of a panel on Chattanooga’s rebirth as an economic powerhouse. “And why would I?”
Why, indeed. Chattanooga’s downtown was empty and dead, covered in enough haze to keep respiratory doctors busy around the region, and unsafe after dark. U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., was just starting a law practice in 1987, and things were much the same.
“I would come out of my office at night, and the city was dead. It was quiet. There was nothing going on,” Fleischmann said.