[Bristol-Birds] Historical Snippet - May 13, 1994
- From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 23:50:47 -0500
BBC Snippet
Rick Knight and the Bristol Bird Club were proud partners on Friday evening,
May 13, 1994, when the Tennessee Ornithological Society held its annual
state spring meeting at Johnson City. The event was sponsored by the
Lee R. Herndon Chapter of TOS at Elizabethton. The club would later vote
to change its name to include Lois Herndon, his wife.
A reception was held at 7 p.m. to honor Lois. Knight introduced and dedicated
The Birds of Northeast Tennessee - An Annotated Checklist. It was hot off
the press. The much-anticipated book would be the first annotated book on
bird distribution in the region. It covered the five-county area of Carter,
Unicoi,
Washington, Johnson and Sullivan counties.
It was probably the first regional bird book in Tennessee to have a full color
cover. Dr. Fred Alsop of ETSU donated his photo of a Black-throated Blue
Warbler to adorn the front and back.
This night was also the celebration of the Golden Anniversary (1944-1994)
of the Herndon Chapter TOS. The book was dedicated to that 50th anniversary.
It became the first of four books published by BBC over the next seven years.
Those titles included:
Knight, Richard L. The Birds of Northeast Tennessee, An Annotated Checklist.
Bristol Bird Club, 1994. 68 pp.
Coffey, J. Wallace, and John L. Shumate, Jr. Bird Study in Shady Valley,
Tennessee, 1934-1999. Bristol Bird Club, 1999. 136 pp.
DECKER, Tony. The Birds of Smyth County, Virginia: An Annotated Checklist.
Bristol Bird Club, 1999. 44 pp.
PEAKE, Richard H. Birds of the Virginia Cumberlands: An Annotated Checklist
and Site Guide. Bristol Bird Club, 2001. 104 pp.
Knight approached Coffey with a manuscript in the spring of 1994, asking him
to read over the annotated checklist and see what additions or changes he
might recommend. Following a lengthy review and pages upon pages of margin
notations, it was returned to Knight. He then, with the help of others, decided
what kinds of records needed to be included and which ones.
Rick was not sure about how to get the book printed. It was then that the BBC
became involved. The club stepped forward to raise the money. It was decided
to pre-sell the books to club members. At the April BBC meeting, members were
asked to make a pledge to buy as many books each as they could afford or were
willing to contribute. When the pledge slips were turned in for the tally,
the
president announced that the club had pledges of $840. The project was born
and underway.
Joy Mallicote, owner of Mallicote Printer at Bristol, was asked to design the
cover,
and print the cover and provide the heavy paper stock as a donation to the
project.
His company had been printing the Tennessee journal of ornithology for maybe
30 years. He did just that.
Rick had put together a publication committee of Dr. Fred Alsop, Coffey,
Mallicote,
Cathi Sullins and Dr. Gary Wallace. Sullins did the keyboarding. Everyone made
significant contributions and added much to the quality of the book. The BBC
also
found a typesetter who would know how to get the pagination accomplished.
Then another lady wanted to make money for her church and she was excellent
with Apple graphics. She made a sweetheart deal for doing the detailed and
complex typesetting of the seasonal occurrence charts that have become the
trademark of this book.
The BBC had found a new, young, printer operating in a hole in the wall,
closet-size
shop at 607 Randolph St. in Bristol Virginia. He was Sam Mornings, a guy who
knew how to work for success. He had almost no clients. He had nothing to show
for his work. He had one small press, an overhead light and a desk and phone.
He
had never done a job as big as this. This is what the BBC needed. Someone who
was hungry and wanted to please. Mornings needed a good job or two and some
experience. He could not print the process color cover and could barely staple
it
together. With the cover delivered from the Mallicote Press, he managed to
print
the inisde pages and pull it all together.
Mornings called his operation Universal Press. He is now located on main
street in
a spacious building across from Bill Gatton Chevrolet. The place is full of
all types of
computer equipment and every type of printing and binding machine you could
need.
Today he prints for most of the Bristol region's largest companies including
Bristol
Motor Speedway, Exide, Welmont and both city governments and county governments.
Since he was life-long indebted to the BBC for all it had done to trust him and
find
him more work, he was forever grateful. Even to the tune of eventually
printing the
next three books like a snap as his business and customer base grew like a weed.
He remembers the bird books with a fond place in his heart. He is still glad
to see
BBC coming and makes the price right.
Coffey and John Shumate, Jr. had been working on the idea of a book on the
history
of bird study in Shady Valley with almost 65 years of records from the U.S.
National
Museum, local birders from the 1930's and their own records and those of Ken
Dubke
who gave a rebirth to bird study in Shady Valley in 1961. Coffey had been
working
towards the book and putting together checklists of various kinds with Shumate
for
many years. Finally, they decided it just had to be done.
The BBC put in a telephone call to The Nature Conservancy of Tennessee in
Nashville and asked for funding. BBC now had a track record with managing
a project like this and BBC had become highly proficient at raising money and
managing
the finances for such a project. Knight's Northeast Tennessee book was almost
sold out
and the club had easily paid all of the suppliers and contractors. Actually,
BBC made
good money on that project.
In the summer of 1999, The Nature Conservancy sent two of their administrators
and
biologist to Bristol to look at the manuscript. They loved it. A copy was
taken back to Nashville for the top executives to see. Everyone signed off on
their
involvement. TNC sent BBC a check for 75 percent of the needed cash to pay for
the project. A deal was cut with the Shady Valley Ruritan Club to guarantee the
balance of the project's expenses. They liked what they saw. It was a done
deal.
Coffey worked throughout the spring and summer into early fall to finish the
draft which
was detailed and rich with annotation. It also included lots of history of
birding and the
valley.
BBC hired Deanna Grant, an experienced and talented Abingdon area graphic
artists, to
manage the project. She could work fast and was creative.
The Nature Conservancy ask for a deadline to have the book delivered to the
public
with a rollout at the annual Shady Valley Cranberry Festival in October. There
was
little time now. Copy needed to be turned out quickly. There were just days
to go.
Coffey took many vacation days to stay on top of it. He met Knight for dinner
in
Johnson City and got his advice on the project. Andy Jones, now curator of
birds
with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, helped with whatever proofreading
he
could do. Joe McGuiness, north zone wildlife biologist with the Cherokee
National
Forest, got involved and looked over part of the forest section. He then went
back
to the agency and got Kathryne Atchinson to generate a map in color of the
forest types for the inside back cover. Jim and Judy Mowbray, among the
greatest
nature and commercial photographers in the Southern Appalachians, donated the
wrap-around cover of Shady Valley in all of its blazing fall colors.
With just a few days remaining before the Shady Valley Cranberry Festival, the
book
went to press. Everything went as fast as a heartbeat. John Shumate and his
father-in-law drove to Bristol late on the evening before the festival and
picked up
the delivery of the printing job from Universal Printing -- everything went
right under
the wire.
The next day, the book was the main attraction at the Cranberry Festival.
People
stood in long lines to buy copies and get them autographed. More than 200
copies
were autographed that afternoon by Coffey and Shumate. BBC was quickly making
it worth their while. The BBC logo was on the back cover.
The Johnson County newspaper ran most of the front page of the paper with a
story
about the book, including a photo of the cover. A local radio station had a
remote
broadcast set up and interviewed the two authors and invited more people to come
and get their books.
BBC's financial management and project management was successful and the word
spread.
Anthony Decker of Marion had been working long and hard on a new book about the
birds of Smyth County and adjacent areas. He needed help. BBC decided to jump
aboard and make it happen. Almost all of the funding would have to be raised.
Larry McDaniel and Wallace Coffey had both served one or more terms on the
board of directors of the Virginia Society of Ornithology. The board regularly
held its
meetings at the hotel conference room on Afton Mountain where the famous fall
hawk watch is conducted each year not far from Charlottesville. McDaniel and
Coffey
set out to make a presentation to the board at its next regular meeting. They
both
new the inner workings of the board. They would ask for a really substantial
funding
grant from VSO to pay almost all of the cost of the book. Why not ? BBC had
learned how to find money and fund such projects.
Decker had loaned lots of money to the VSO in its worst financial times when the
state organization was staggering and crippled with making ends meets. The
board
members remembered that. VSO had paid that debt in full. Now they had an
opportunity to repay him again by financing the printing of his new book on
Smyth
County. Coffey and McDaniel rode home with big smiles and shared verbal
high-fives for finding their way to this funding.
It was back to Deanna Grant for production. Ron Carrico of the BBC had taken
a really nice photo of a Red-bellied Woodpecker at a window feeder. He donated
that for the cover. The project now went without a hitch because Rick Knight
had
trusted BBC members with learning how to do these projects with his book.
Decker
was about 90 years of age by now. He had written the entire manuscript on an
old
ribbon typewriter. Much work was ahead for layout and design. But Grant keyed
it all up and worked closely with Universal Printing and the club soon had its
delivery
of the book. They are sold at state parks in the region and copies are still
available
from Buteo Books on the internet or you can get one from the Bristol Bird Club.
Dr. Dick Peake, who came to the region about 1970 to become a faculty member
at what is today the University of Virginia at Wise, had been working hard on
his
own book about the birds of the Virginia Cumberlands. He had always joined with
BBC members for field trips or programs or whatever was needed -- including
being
the recent TOS annual state meeting dinner speaker at Bristol just a few years
ago.
Dick wanted to know if the BBC would be willing to produced his new book which
would be out in 2001. The club gave its assurances and a manuscript was soon in
hand. He paid for the expenses of the printing himself. By May 2001, the
project
was completed. BBC decided the design for the cover and used photos provided
by Peake. He wrote the club a check and covered the expenses. BBC received
many copies of both Decker's book and Peake's book and continue to sell them
at various events and at BBC meetings. They have been a nice revenue stream
for the club.
The Birds of Northeast Tennessee by Knight and Bird Study in Shady Valley,
Tennessee, 1934-1999 by Coffey and Shumate are out of print and have been for
several years.
from the archives of the Bristol Bird Club.
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