County native recalls park dedication
Milltown – Not many people living in Graham County can say that they were present at the Sept. 2, 1940 dedication ceremony of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, or that they saw President Franklin D. Roosevelt in person.
Doyle Brock can.
He remembers the day his agriculture teacher Mr. Hansen and 4-H leader Troy Hyde took an old truck and put banisters on the sides. Brock and a few of his classmates loaded onto the back of the old truck, lunch in hand, and headed to Clingman’s Dome to see President Roosevelt.
“The gap was jammed with people, all there to see the president,” Brock remembered. “He had arrived in Knoxville, Tenn., and then rode to Clingman’s Dome in an open two-seater car. There were several cars with him.”
Brock also recalled an encounter with the Secret Servicemen on-hand that day.
“Some of the boys started to climb on the scaffold they had built for the ceremony, and the Secret Servicemen came over and made them get down,” Brock chuckled.
He was 15 years old at the time he witnessed the dedication and saw the President. It is a special memory etched in his childhood. He shared a picture of the monumental day and sadly noted that he is the only one in the photo who is still alive.
Quite a life
Brock was born in 1925 in the lost town of Proctor, a lumber town on Hazel Creek. His hometown – as well as the other small communities along Hazel Creek – was flooded when Fontana Dam was built in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was created to aid the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) in Tennessee. He lived in Proctor until he was three years old, then his fathrer moved the family to Robbinsville and took a job at Bemis Lumber Company. He built the family home in the Milltown area.
In 1943, Brock and six others volunteered for the Navy. He found himself stationed in Iwo Jima for a year. He remembers it took 36 days to take the small island. He has war stories to share, recalling the raids he saw and took part in.
He has lived his entire life in Graham County, working, raising a family, and worshipping at the First Baptist Church of Robbinsville. It is men like Brock who are responsible for the county we live in today. They worked hard to provide for their families and served God and their country.