Former Tennessee lawmaker Foster “Gene” Elsea, known for his wry humor, his success in improving transportation in his district, as well as his bipartisanship, died Monday at his home in Spring City, Tenn. He was 82.
For several years, Elsea was the second-most powerful Republican member of the state Senate in his position as chairman of the GOP caucus.
He represented the 13th state senate district when it included Bledsoe, Grundy, Marion, Meigs, McMinn, Rhea, Sequatchie and Van Buren counties. He was elected to the state House in 1996, and then to the Senate two years later, serving there for 12 years.
An early concern was to improve transportation in the area. At the time, the main roads were only two lanes and there was no nearby bridge across the Tennessee River. Elsea pushed to widen U.S. 27 to four lanes. “That’s one of the things he really worked hard at and he made it happen,” said Spring City Mayor Billy Ray Patton, who called Elsea a “true gentleman and a personal friend.”
Elsea also is credited with pushing for construction of two bridges over the Tennessee River and for obtaining funding for a new health center in Rhea County, which is named in his honor.
Elsea got along with other politicians, even those he competed against at the ballot box. Former Democratic state Sen. Jim Lewis, who defeated Elsea in one election and lost to him in the next, called him an “old friend” and said “there was no animosity, we just got along well.”
“He worked both sides of the aisle,” Patton said. “One thing about Gene was that he was a listener, he would listen to whatever it was that you needed.”
Former state Sen. Bob Rochelle, a Democrat who was the speaker pro tem of the Senate from 1989 until 2002, recalled working with Elsea on corrections, and youth and child welfare legislation. “He was a Republican and I was a Democrat, at a time when political affiliation was more a product of ancestry and you didn’t have the partisan aspect of things,” he said.
“Gene didn’t stand up in the Senate and speak a lot,” Rochelle said in an interview Wednesday. “Where Gene had his impact was in the discussions with fellow legislators. He didn’t say, ‘This is what we should do’, but he would ask a question to make people think about it, and if they started thinking about it, there was a good chance they would go in his direction.”
Former Republican state Rep. Bobby Woods, who will officiate at Elsea’s funeral, praised him for his work on water issues for his district.
“He was a gentle person and a good friend,” Woods said.
Elsea’s sense of humor also was helpful.
Tootie Haskins, long-time executive assistant to former Senate Minority Leader Ben Atchley, R-Knoxville, recalled that then-Senate Speaker John Wilder, D-Somerville, relied on Elsea and Atchley to “lighten things up a little bit when things got really heavy and challenging and difficult.”
A lifetime resident of Rhea County, Elsea was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
He founded K.T.C. Manufacturing in Spring City in 1978, which at one time was the largest employer in Spring City.
When he retired in 2010, Elsea said, “I guess the most satisfying part of the job has been to be able to help people who are stuck in a bad situation and don’t know where to turn.”
Rochelle remembered how the two had split over the issue of approving a state lottery.
“I wanted the money for education,” Rochelle said, “and Gene was concerned that the money that would go in the lottery would be from working folks and poor people with little chance of recovering what they put in.”
Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. today at the Spring City First Baptist Church. Interment with military honors will follow in Spring City Cemetery.
Contact staff reporter Steve Johnson at sjohn son@timesfreepress.com, 423-757-6673.