Back home in Greene County, Henry's father on the school board moved that no teacher be hired, "who does not possess a regular State Certificate . . . because of the great surplus of Certified teachers this year . . ."¹

Decatur, Tennessee

Someone pointed out the high school principal to Henry from the porch of the hotel in Decatur.   The applicant followed the man to his farm and talked with him while the principal was picking apples in an orchard.

Next morning, Henry talked with the Superintendent at his office.   As Henry recounts the story, the Superintendent kept pressing him to name a salary.   "Now, what's the very least you would work for?" he asked.   "We can't afford to pay you much."

Henry expected about $75 a month, but he hesitated to say as much.   He had traveled a long way for a chance at this job, and if his price was too high he might lose it.   At the same time, he wanted as much as the county would pay.

"I haven't thought at all about money," he hedged.   "I want to work."

The Superintendent said he appreciated Henry's motives, and the school also needed a basketball coach.

Henry had never played basketball, but he was a good athlete.   He would do his best, he said, still not naming a salary.

"Now," said the Superintendent finally, "I can pay you $150 a month, and that's all we can afford."

Henry said he would have liked more, but he would try to get by on that amount.   He began teaching that Monday morning.   And he taught the rest of that year and all the next at Meigs County High School in Decatur, Tennessee, at a salary which was double what he had expected.

Of course he also coached the basketball team.   "I bought me a book of basketball rules and read up on it.   I had a good team.   I told 'em, 'You all know what to do,' and they said they did."

The team took their rookie coach to the regional tournament.   "We won the district championship that first year.   We won a game and then lost a game.   I told the feller I'd like to keep my boys down here for the rest of the tournament.   They didn't care."

Back Home in Greene County

But over the next twenty years, Henry was principal in at least nine different schools in the county.   Most of these were frame structures of one or two stories, and staffed by two to four teachers. We recall (after 1942) assignments at Fairview, Zion Mission, Greystone, and Brookside.   Earlier postings included Warrensburg, McDonald, Doak, Hardin's View, and Glendale.

Politics and the schools.   Henry was not infected with his father's obsession for politics, and he consistently voiced a healthy aversion to the whole system of power and patronage.   He kept his own counsel, but in rare unguarded moments he spoke of local politicians as "sons of bitches."   Those in authority used power as they pleased, and teachers were hired and assigned at the pleasure of the Board of Education.   "You had to read the newspaper to find out if you had a job that year."

We remember occasional encounters with Board members on the crowded Greeneville sidewalks of a Saturday when Henry, in the low, confidential tones of "political business," would express his appreciation for continuing tenure.

A deferential manner was a means to survival in that Depression-era climate of few jobs and no credit.   And the political vicissitudes so clearly evident in the official records of the times were a fact of life.

All seven members of the Board were Democrats early in the Depression, but the balance of the appointing County Court must have shifted about 1932 for Republicans began to fill the vacancies thereafter.

Joel N. Pierce became Superintendent of Schools in 1935, and Henry Sentelle was probably a principal at Doak.   And by that year a majority of the seven members on the Board were probably Republican.

Within two years, the frustrations of the Superintendent were evident in the official record.

            I have laid aside every other consideration except the efficiency of the applicant and his ability to do a first class job.   The time has come when we must run the schools for the sake of the children of Greene County and their interests and not for a few people whose only motive is to get a job.²

Henry's name appears in the wake of this announcement, apparently for the first time, although he had been employed by the Board for several years.   For the four positions at Doak School, Superintendent Pierce made seven recommendations, including "Henry Sentelle or A. B. Gilland for Principal."³  

The Board adopted a salary schedule for the school, and then elected Gilland and two teachers by a vote of five to one.⁴     As to Henry and his assignment that term, we find no mention in the record, but he probably taught at Warrensburg.   We find him listed as "Pr. Warrensburg" in 1938-39 with a staff of four other teachers.5  

The following year the recommendation of Superintendent Pierce for Warrensburg was first rejected by a vote of five to one -- with one abstention.⁶  

"I think the Board is making a big mistake," said Superintendent Pierce, "in cripling [sic] the elementary school at this place by cutting down the teaching force from five to four teachers."⁷  

Later in the same meeting, Warrensburg came up for a vote again and the recommendation passed except for one teacher -- by a vote of four to two, with one abstention.⁸  

Anne Little.   From Milligan to Meigs County and back to Greene County, Henry kept in touch with his college sweetheart, Anne Little.   She visited him at least once in Decatur, and he made several visits to her home near Jamestown on the Cumberland Plateau.   Anne attended summer school at the University of Tennessee, and perhaps during one of these terms in early June of 1934 Henry met her in Knoxville and took her home.

His usual appetite was gone when they stopped to eat in Rockwood, and by the time they reached her home at Clarkrange, he was seriously ill.   The next morning he returned alone to Greeneville in an old Ford car, stopping for nothing but gasoline along the way.

He slept outdoors on the lawn at his home that evening, and rolled about in discomfort all night.

Next morning in Tusculum, Dr. Jim Campbell told Henry that he had appendicitis.⁹     "If you want, I'll operate on you right now."

Henry replied that he wanted to go to the Veterans' Hospital in Johnson City.   The captain of his old Army outfit was the chief administrator, and the hospital had a reputation for good care.   And the government would pay medical costs for veterans.

Dr. Campbell said, "I don't know if you can get there before it ruptures or not."

Henry called Hubert Kilday, his brother-in-law, and Hubert took him to Johnson City.¹⁰  

               I turned yellow.   They said, "What's the matter with you?" It wasn't an hour until they had the appendix out.   I think it had ruptured.   I had yellow coloring after the operation.   I'm satisfied it had ruptured.            
    They asked if I drank much or ever had venereal disease. They said if I had, there wasn't much chance.

    Dr. Morrison was over the VA hospital.   He had been captain over the 117th Medical Detachment.   He came around several times.

              At the hospital they didn't ask what I wanted -- they gave a spinal anesthetic.
               I got to walking around, looking.   Saw people with wheelchairs and canes.   I knew something bad was wrong.   They said they had spinal anesthetics and they weren't up on it, and it went wrong, and they will be paralyzed the rest of their lives.

Anne came to visit Henry at the Johnson City hospital.   She fretted about the narrow escape from death or disability, and determined that they had "wasted too many good years" apart.

On 19 August 1934, Anne and Henry were married on the front porch of her home in Clarkrange, Tennessee.

They went to Chicago on their honeymoon.   They saw the World's Fair and Grant Park.   And Anne remembered a motorcycle policeman passing them on the freeway.   Henry had just remarked about how fast cars were moving.   "Come on, Tennessee!" the cop yelled to the newlyweds.   "You're holding up traffic!"

Home on Sinking Creek

Steve Williams house

Back in Greene County, they looked at several houses near Tusculum. Henry would have been principal at Doak School in that community at this time.   For indefinite periods they rented the "Moore house" on what is now Rufe Taylor Road, and then the Marion Edens sandstone house on what is now Edens Road.

Anne has said that they waited several months to take possession of their farm at Afton.   The former owners had lost the title through a sheriff's auction for back taxes, according to her, and Henry was afraid they would burn the house if he pushed them to vacate.

This was a sixty-one acre farm on Sinking Creek at Afton Cross Roads on U. S. Highway 11-E.   Originally part of a larger antebellum holding which was subdivided among heirs, Stephen L. Williams bought a large section of this original estate 14 January 1888 at public auction.¹¹     His wife, Mary Brown, had been one of the heirs to the old farm.   Some years following her untimely death, Williams sold the property to C. A. and Annie E. Johnson,¹²   who two years later sold it to E. J. Cook.¹³     Cook, in turn, sold the farm to Richard F. "Dick" Baskett¹⁴   who apparently found himself in financial straits when the Great Depression came on.   The Williams farm was itself subdivided, one of the new boundaries following the U. S. Highway 11-E completed about 1928, and purchased at court­house auction by the Union Joint Stock Land Bank of Louisville.¹⁵     Henry Sentelle bought the sixty-one acres south of the new highway from the Land Bank for $10,000.16  

At this point, we include some notes about the house Williams had built thirty years earlier, and where Henry and Anne would live for the next half-century.

   Steve Williams   . . .  ran a big lumber operation back against the Unaka Mountains in the Horse Creek section.            
   Steve was a man who saw great beauty in a piece of hardwood. He set aside the very choicest hardwood logs taken out of his lumber tract for several years.   Then he sawed the very choicest cuts out of these best logs and saved all this fine lumber to build a home that was to be a special gift to his wife.

   But Mrs. Williams died before Steve could get the house finished.   He then halted the building of it for several years, but finally decided to finish it, just as he had planned it for his wife . . .   somewhere in the neighborhood of 1908.¹⁷   . . .

    And what a showplace it was, and still is, with its doors, floors, panels, mantels and trim made of every kind of hardwood that grows in the State of Tennessee.
    Because they are made of different kinds of wood which expand at different temperatures, the walls crackle and pop every time the temperature rises and falls.   This fact gave rise to many ghost stories years ago, and Mrs. Sentelle admits that it frightened her when they first moved here, but says that she has now grown accustomed to all the house's "ha'nts."
    The downstairs hallway has cherry and curly maple paneling. One front room downstairs is called the "Oak Room" be­cause it is paneled in oak, with some cherry here and there for trim.   The fireplace in this room has a mantel of cherry backed with oak.
    The main stairway from the front of the hall has a newell post made of 14 kinds of wood.   The stairs themselves are of wild cherry inlaid with ash.   The dining room is paneled in curly poplar, and the butler's pantry and kitchen have floors of wild cherry.
    "We have the pantry, even if we don't have a butler," laughed Mrs. Sentelle.
    There is partial wall paneling in all the upstairs rooms. Some unique combination of hardwoods can be found in each of the house's 15 rooms.

    Mrs. Sentelle says that if she were building the home over, she would do at least part of it differently.   She feels that too much dark wood gives some of the rooms a gloomy air.   And she has worked steadily, all of her 15 years here, to uncover old layers of varnish and to try to lighten up some of the woodwork.

    There's work aplenty keeping a home like this clean.   There are 55 windows to be washed.   I've already mentioned the 15 rooms. And there are six outside doors.   This last fact often leads to confusion when there is someone knocking at a door.
   Mrs. Sentelle says that several times she has gone to all six doors before she finally found where the knock came from.

    This house has so many amazing features that it would be a trifle hard to decide which is most amazing.   In the race for this honor, however, would certainly be the bathroom.   It's nine feet wide and 20 feet long.
       . . .   There's a beautiful big lawn shaded by big trees to go with it, and a rare view of the Unaka Mountains from anywhere in the yard.¹⁸  

           School days.   Elizabeth Duggins remembers when Henry was her principal at Doak School in Tusculum.

    He [Henry] was the principal of Doak High School for some of the time three of us girls were in attendance.  
   He was an extremely gentle man who would have preferred to serve his tenure as principal without the benefit of our presence.   He had beautiful gray hair -- the color he attributed to the Taylor girls.

   Tusculum and Greeneville were innocent places during our teenage years.   It was perfectly safe, for example, for young people to thumb a ride from Tusculum to Greeneville and back.   . . .

               Three or four times during the school year, each of us girls would skip school and either ride with friends or thumb a ride to Greeneville to see a movie, get a permanent, go to a popular drug store, etc.   Since we each made these trips to town separately, it added up to as many as a dozen trips per year, creating a huge problem for the principal.  

            One afternoon, for example, I remember sitting in the theater with my boyfriend.   Suddenly, I was grasped by my shoulders and soundly shaken.   Oh, no, Papa!!   Instead there in the aisle stood my principal -- not a welcome sight but much better than Papa.   Loudly he said, "Elizabeth Taylor, you get yourself up right now!   I'm taking you back to school immediately!   What do you think your papa would have done to you had he found you here?"
    I had been reported missing from my classes, so the principal rushed into his car and came looking for me.   He found me!! On the way back to school he lectured me in no uncertain terms.   Oddly enough, he left my date, another Doak student, to fend for himself.   . . .

   Every time one of us was reported for skipping school, the principal called us into his office and lectured us.   Each time we begged him to understand that we had to slip to do the sort of things that our friends always had parental per­mission to do.   We insisted truthfully we never did any­thing really bad, adding if we didn't skip school occasionally, we would never have any fun.
    He always seemed to understand our predicament but wanted us to recognize his position, also.  
   He explained he was employed to keep students in school, not in Greeneville.   Further, he explained, it was his duty to inform parents when their children continued to break school rules.   During each interchange he threatened the very next time one of us left school without permission, he was coming to the Wayside and report our misbehavior to Papa.  

            Similar conferences between the principal and one of us were held many times.   I can remember at least three times when he came to our home to finally report on our missing school.   Each of his attempts ended with similar results.

    He was ushered into the sitting room where he engaged in small talk with Papa for a few minutes.  
   Then their conversation was interrupted by some or all of us girls.   Wearing cheerful faces, we enthusiastically greeted our principal.  
   Then innocently we would place ourselves at Papa's back and facing our principal, we would suddenly assume a fleeting, pitiful pose:   "Here we stand, poor little lambs, pure as the driven snow, ready for slaughter! Can you really do this?"            
    Each time he tried; each time he could not!

    When we think of Mr. Henry Sentelle yet today, we remember his kindness to us and his innate compassion and decency.   Few would have been so wonderful and forgiving.              
    We hope we weren't responsible for all the gray hair.¹⁹  

             Bud Byerley remembers Henry during the early years at Doak.   One Halloween, Bud and some other students had soaped the principal's car windows.   "Henry said he couldn't imagine who would do such a thing, but that he would like to get the soap cleaned off," says Bud.   Seizing the chance to get out of class, the culprits offered to help out.   He and the others who had done the original mischief were then allowed to take the Sentelle car to a nearby creek and remove the offending soap.  

Byerley also remembers that Henry would wear thermal underwear to school on cold mornings.   After he removed them later in the day, he had to watch the garments closely.   Sometimes when they disappeared, Bud tells us, Henry would find them fluttering in the breeze at the top of the school flagpole.

In the smaller schools, Henry taught the upper grades and we recall a class­room atmosphere which was relaxed and informal.   There was a discussion at Mount Zion one day about Indians and settlers -- a class in Tennessee history, no doubt.   "What would we do if the Indians came in on us," one boy asked.

"I guess we'd have to just bend over and let them scalp us," Henry replied.

And for some time thereafter, we kept an uneasy eye on the window watching for sign of predatory savages.

Parents at Brookside volunteered to run a lunch program out of an old cloakroom.   When someone in the neighborhood killed a steer, there was beef for the children at school.   When hogs were butchered, they had pork and sausage.   Henry stopped by George and Myrt Dobson's store in Tusculum to pick up old produce.   Brookside mothers could use it in soup and stew if nothing else.   And they all took some satisfaction in providing good hot lunches for the children.

When Henry was at Greystone, Myrt Dobson asked him one day how he could be in the store and away from his classes at that hour.

"It's too early for school to be out," she said.

"Myrt," said Henry, "I look at those kids when they come in the morning and I can tell how much they can take.   When they get it, I let them go on home."

  Attendance teacher.   About 1950, Henry was assigned to the central office as attendance teacher for the county.

The county school office at that time was staffed by five people who worked out of two rooms in the upstairs right front corner of the Court­house.   There was the Superintendent of Schools, of course, a supervisor of instruction, a secretary, a maintenance man -- and Henry Sentelle.   Henry's duties took in just about everything not covered by the others in the office.   At various times he worked with distribution of Federal food commodities, school census records, clothing for needy children, and textbook distribution.   He traveled extensively, and kept a county road map in his car for reference.   And in his awkward left-handed script, a log of mileage could be found near at hand.  

Lizzie Bowman lived over near Greystone.   She had never married, but fate nonetheless had blessed her with five or six children.   When they began missing school, Henry went to find out why.   If they needed clothes, he could get clothes from Miss Elsie Gass in the Courthouse basement.   If they needed glasses or dental work, he might help out there, too.   He came as a helper, and not as an enforcer.   "Lizzie, these are awful pretty kids," he said.   "How did you get such good lookin' kids."

"Oh, Henry!" she said.   "I'm a poor woman.   I had to get them any way I could."²⁰  

About 1954, Glennon C. Brown, the Democratic incumbent, was defeated in a bid for reelection as county Superintendent.   We recall the anxious vigil by the radio as vote ttalliescame in on election night.   "Oh, why did he have to run?" Anne asked over and over.   "He was such a good man.   If only he had not run."   As if there was some disgrace in a defeat at the polls.

But Henry said nothing.   And he continued with the same duties until his retirement in 1959.   He was naturally suited for communications between the central office and the schools, and between schools and the community, for he was an exemplar of tact and diplomacy.   There were few strangers to him, for he had taught all over the county -- and if he did not know a person, he usually knew some close relations.

We recall a prisoner calling to him from an upper window of the county jail, "Hey, Mr. Sentelle!   Do you remember me?   You used to bust my ass in school!   Hey, mail this letter for me!"   And the man dropped a letter to the sidewalk which Henry turned over to the sheriff.

As a child we were exasperated by his extended conversations with almost everyone he met, and later we wondered at his skills in eliciting information -- often without the knowledge of the speaker.   People enjoyed talking with Henry.   His style was not so much one of direct questioning, but rather one of leading into topics of interest and simply listening.

Respect for others.   We never knew Henry to attempt resolution of any matter by confrontation.   For that matter, he seemed to go to great length to avoid crossing someone.   His demeanor was one of reserve and respect for the feelings of others.   People quickly sensed this and opened up to him. One time a report came that a car registered to brother Bill had been found abandoned in a ditch on Rufe Taylor Road over behind Tusculum.   Henry immediately set out in search of his brother, and this was one of the rare occasions when agitation and anxiety were obvious in his manner.   He found Bill standing inside a service station at Tusculum.   Not a word was exchanged between them -- no greeting, no questions.   Henry wanted to see that Bill was safe, and nothing else really mattered.

We once asked why it was that there were so few physical expressions of affection in Henry's family.   "We don't need to make a show," he said.   "We already know how we feel about each other."   All those questions had been answered years ago.

When Anne died in 1975, sister Macy moved back from California to keep house for Henry.   There was no invitation, no inquiry, no contract.   There was no need for any agreement.   She was family.   Henry had taken care of Macy when her husband died (1932) and left her to bring up three girls alone.   And now it was her turn to take care of Henry.          

      We lived together fifteen years, and we never had a cross word -- except for one time:
    They were taking up money for the cemetery at Greenwood. Henry gave them five dollars. I said, "Why, Henry!   All your people are buried there, your dad and mother and Jack."
    He never said anything, but I could tell he didn't like it. When Henry or Bill get mad, they don't say anything.   They just get real quiet.   I could tell he didn't like it.
    I think he gave them ten dollars.           
     And I never said nothing more about it.

"Nobody could have lived with Anne but Henry," declared Forrest Little (1902-1983), her brother.   "Our people down at Clarkrange hung pretty close.²¹     They fought like cats and dogs with each other.   But if an outsider came in, they'd all turn on him.   They ran Shelby²²   off.   They tried to run Lora²³   off.   But they took Henry right to heart.   Folks down home thought Henry Sentelle hung the moon."

"Uncle Pete²⁴   was awful hard to get to know," Henry recalled.

   He didn't want to talk to you at all.   But I kept going over to see him, you know.   I'd ask what he thought about this and that to try to get him to talk.   He bought tracts of timber and sold it for railroad crossties.   After a while he got where he wanted me to go with him.   He took me all over the country.

"Henry gets out in the yard," said Anne with a disgusted shake of the head.   "He sits out there with Bill and Don Haney, and they solve all the world's problems.   I get so tired of listening to it!   And Henry just eggs it on."

After the Arab-Israli War (1967), Bill allowed as how, "Them there A-rabs ain't got much get-up-and-go.   If they don't watch out," he said, "them Jews'll whip 'em again.   Ain't that right, Don?"

And on the Apollo lunar landings,

   Don Haney says, "They left that moon buggy up there.   You know, my boy would like to have that moon buggy!"
   I said, "Don, suppose they came and said we're going to take you to the moon?"            
    "Oh," he says, "I couldn't go at all, Henry.   I couldn't get nobody to milk my cows."

Henry found great humor in the harmless foibles and frailties of human nature.

      I said, "Taylor, I heard this from a pretty reliable source, and I just wanted to ask you if it's true.            
    "They say that when you spoke to Atman Cutshaw about marrying his daughter, he said you could marry her only on one condition: That you vote a straight Republican ticket for the rest of your life."
   "Why," he says, "it's a damn lie!   I never said no such thing!"

"Henry has a language for the farm, and a language for off the farm," said Anne.   "I went to a school program when we were first married, and he got up and spoke as good English as you could want."

Close with money.   In the years following on the bitter hardships of the Great Depression, the worth of a man was judged by his personal wealth. During the backyard roundtables after the problems of the world had been resolved there would come a lull, and inevitably someone would ask in a low voice.   "Reckon times will ever get as hard as they were?"

And sooner or later Henry would confide, "If it hadn't 'a been for Roosevelt, I'd 'a lost everything I had.   Almost did anyway."

There was a closeness about finances in the community, but much speculation centered on Curtis Neas, who bought the old Brown house and farm down the road.   Curtis was the most prosperous farmer on Sinking Creek, and all the neighbors called on him for his tractors, wagons, hay baler, or manure spreader when the time came.   Curtis was especially tight with money, but he was a Republican, and one of those German Lutherans from St. James community, so everyone understood.   There were private chuckles over the watering trough that collapsed, however.   Seems Curtis had tried to cut costs by mixing too little concrete with the sand and gravel.

Henry never did discuss finances, even with Anne, but he had a reputation for frugality.   And nothing pleased him so much as a good bargain, unless it was something for free.   "It's a lot easier," he said, "to talk the price down, than to go out and make the money."

"He likes television," said Anne, "because he thinks he's getting something for nothing."

"I believe television is the greatest invention ever made for the common man," said Henry.

A television dealer made the mistake one time of quoting a price without including tax and delivery charges.   "I've never had any use for Duggins since," Henry said.   "He got the set out here and then tried to up the price.   I told him to come and get it.   Take it back.    . . .   People will do anything to get your money."

Anne sometimes railed at him for his silence on money matters, but they never spent much on the house until she had her own income.   Then there was extensive remodeling.   A large window looking out on the mountains was installed in the main living room.   Closets were built upstairs.   Carpeting was laid.   An oil furnace for central heating was installed in the basement.   And she was giving serious thought to storm windows when she died in 1975.   "Anne thought money wasn't any good unless you spent it," said Henry.   "She didn't know you could save it."

Several windows were cracked by construction blasting, and a con­tractor paid Henry for the damage.   But the money went into the bank, and the windows were never repaired.

Chapman Exterminating began about 1964 treating the house for insects. They charged nine dollars for the job, and Henry negotiated with them to come back every year for the same price.   But by 1987, Chapman said they were getting sixty dollars for comparable work, and they raised Henry's fee to twenty-four dollars to cover expenses.   "Henry told them not to come back," said Darlene McCleish.   "He fired them.   They weren't going to do him that way.   He had paid nine dollars for twenty years, and that was enough."

"Henry saves everything," Anne complained.   "He carries a load of trash to the dump, and then here he comes back with more than he took!"

"If you save everything," said Henry, "you'll never want anything."   He grumbled about lights burning with nobody in the room, and unnecessary use of water -- which made the pump run hard.   And we never determined whether frugality or habit compelled him to bathe on occasion under the waterfall at the mill dam and to use the cow stables in the barn as a personal latrine.

Henry did not have the mechanized farm equipment that Curtis Neas had, but he had one of the best mule teams in the neighborhood.   In acquiring a replacement when one of the pair died, he checked the new animal's credentials through two previous owners.   "I wanted to see if the mule had any bad habits," he explained.

Anne recalled a shopping trip to Johnson City with a car trunk full of chickens.   "Every time we hit a bump, the chickens started flopping.   And dust boiled up in the car."   This was beneath Anne's dignity to travel in a chicken coop.   And later, "Here came Henry down the street with a chicken under each arm.   I crossed to the other side so people wouldn't think we were together."

Henry kept a bull that was stunted and seemingly deformed.   "Looks like Henry would get rid of that ugly thing," someone said.   But the animal served its purpose without fail, and its calves were as healthy and strong as anywhere around.   But the bull had an ill temper, and when grandsons appeared Henry wasted no time in shipping Ol' Whitey off to the stock pen.

Anne had to admit that Henry seemed to manage well enough.   "Every time we were down to the bottom," she said, "Henry would sell a cow."

She worried about everything, and in her terminal illness she worried about the hospital bill.   "Don't worry about that," Henry said.   "Why do you think I've saved all these years?   So that when we need it, we have it!"

And in her final days, in a rare admission, Anne acknowledged that Henry had been right about money during all their years together.   "I can see it clearly now," she whispered.   "Henry knew best all along."

The house across the creek. During the day, Henry taught school, and mornings and evenings he tended to the farm.   He was principal at Doak School in nearby Tusculum, but about 1935 he was moved to Warrensburg.   And this added two hours or so in driving time to the average work day.

When Roby Mitchell came back from World War II with his Australian bride, Henry engaged him to help with the farm.   Roby took extension classes in agriculture, and Henry built a house for him across the creek.   This was a modest four-room structure of cinderblock and plaster.   Water was carried from a nearby spring.

Roby worked and saved his money, and about 1958 he bought a farm of his own.   Bud Byerley lived next door on the Curtis Neas farm.   About the time Roby moved, Bud hurt his back and Curtis was afraid that Bud would be unable to keep up the heavy farm work that needed to be done.   When Curtis raised the rent, Bud approached Henry about his vacant house across the creek.

    I says, "I want to talk to Curtis about it."   I told Bud, "Curtis has been an awful good neighbor, and I wouldn't even think about it unless he was agreeable."
   Well, I talked with Curtis, and Bud moved in that very day.

   Curtis and Hal [his son] fell out over it.   I don't know what happened, but Curtis tried to get Bud to move back.   He offered to use his tractor and wagon and move his stuff for him.
   But Bud says, "No, I've already moved."

   Bud had a run of bad luck.   He was out of a job.   And Mildred [his wife] had to go into the hospital.   And they had that baby.
   He says, "I'll get my furniture out of there this week­end."
   I says, "Bud, you don't need to move a thing.   Just lock it up, and don't worry about it."
   He says, "Henry, I don't know when I'll be able to pay."
   I says, "Bud, I can do without that little rent.   You get back on your feet, and then we'll talk about it."

   You know, them Byerleys never forgot that.            
   I could call Bud right now for anything I wanted, and he would be right here.

About 1972, Bud bought his own home next door to Henry, but he continued to look after his former landlord.   Henry bought a tractor lawn mower.   Bud used it and serviced it.   And he kept Henry's grass cut in the bargain.

And a night came when Macy found Henry lying in the floor, unable to get up.   "I don't know how long he'd been there.   He never would say.   I called Bud Byerley, and he was up here in no time.   I don't know what we'd 'a done without Bud.   I couldn't lift Henry by myself."

The next occupants of the house across the creek were Darlene McCleish and John Brown.   They had been students at Tusculum College, and John had a rock band.   "I dropped out of school my second year," Darlene told us.   "All I wanted to do was to marry John Brown.   My parents went through the roof, and we were on our own."

After a brief stay in California, John and Darlene came back to Greeneville, and Henry agreed to rent to them at thirty dollars per month. "We tried to pay him in advance, but he says, 'I'll let you know when it's due.'"

He had done his usual background check, visiting her place of employment -- ostensibly on routine business, talking with people who just happened to know the young couple.   And inevitably their names came up in conversation.

           
    She seemed to be steady and reliable.   But John, you had trouble talking to him.   He stayed off at a distance, like he was scared.   I says, "John, you lost something."   He had a ring in one ear.   I says, "You lost one of your earrings."   He said no.   That was the way they wore them.  

    I told 'em go ahead and move in.  
    That weekend there must 'a been fifty cars down in the meadow.   I says, "What have I gotten into?   I'd give anything if I could just call back the last twenty-four hours.   I'd give anything."  
    But ever since then, we haven't heard a peep out of them. They've been as good a' neighbors as you'd want.

Darlene recalled the early days on Sinking Creek:  

      We had it rough.   We had to get food stamps to get by, and we had to get Henry to sign our papers as to how much rent we were paying and all.   I felt kind a' funny about it, but Henry said, "Why, don't think nothin' about that!   That's what they're for, for people that need help."

Darlene went to school while John made music, and she finished her baccalaureate degree at East Tennessee State.            

   Henry helped me get a teaching job.   He told me who to go see, and what to say.   And sometimes I found he had already been there ahead of me.            
    You know, people around here are pretty set in their ways, and they are not real anxious to hire somebody from outside.            

    I had trouble one time at Cedar Creek.   Had a run-in with a child that was related to a magistrate -- a Neas from down at St. James.   Henry wanted to know who I had talked to and he told me who to go see.   Now Henry knew where the strings were!            

    He always charged us thirty dollars a month.   We never paid more than thirty dollars a month.   We said, "That's not enough." But Henry said, "I'll tell you if it's not enough."

    Henry never offered to come in the house.   I'd invite him in, but he would stay outside and talk.
   Some friends of ours rented from Curtis Neas.   Why, Mrs. Neas would go in and move the furniture around.           

     Henry came over one day.   Said some guy had been by to see us, and we couldn't figure out who it was.   He told how old he was, how tall he was, and what kind of car he had.   But he never mentioned that he had long hair.   We would have known right away if Henry had said he had long hair.   But Henry never mentioned that.

As time passed, Henry came to depend increasingly on John and Darlene for transportation and delivery of groceries.   "They take me to town and get groceries.   I give 'em a little off on the rent."

Finally the day came when Henry added a bathroom to the little house across the creek, and John and Darlene now had their own indoor toilet and bathtub.   Henry was unable to supervise the construction, but he sent Bud Byerley to be clerk of the works.   And the rent remained at thirty dollars a month.

Henry had always dreaded the thought of spending his last days with strangers in a nursing care center.   "We won't let that happen," Darlene declared.   And as Henry began to decline in health, she and John catered to his every need.

"Sometimes," Henry admitted in a private moment, "I don't charge 'em any rent at all."

VFW trips.   The Greeneville Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 1990, always took a large contingent to the national conventions.   The Post usually had an extra berth or two, and Henry was invited to come along on every trip from 1966 through 1971 at no personal cost for room or travel.²⁵  

In New York City, Henry boarded one of the tour buses, and found himself at Battery Park.

    We started out, and they were going to take us on a boat tour.   "Now," the man said, "we haven't got enough people to run your trip, but I'll put you on another trip."   I said that'd be fine and dandy.   I wanted to see all I could.   I met this fellow from Akron, Ohio.   He and his wife and two daughters were on the same bus I was on.   They'd signed up for the trip but then couldn't get on the boat.   They were like me, trying to get anything they could.   I kept seeing all these people going in, and they said it was the ferry boat for Staten Island, and I'd heard Sam say you could go over there for a nickel.   They said we had time, and this man from Akron says, "I believe we'll go, too."

   I had heard a lot about hippies, but I never had occasion to talk with any of them.            
    We got right up front where we could see everything, and I saw this hippie standing with this woman and little girl.   I told the fellow from Akron, I says, "I believe I'll go over and see if I can talk with that hippie over there.   You watch and if anything happens that he tries to throw me overboard or anything, you come to my rescue."
    "Oh," he says, "I will."

    I asked this hippie how close we were to the Statue of Liberty.
    He threw his arms around me, and grabbed me, and says, "Henry Sentelle!   What the hell are you doing here?"
    I says, "Johnny Robinson, I didn't know who you were."
    Ain't that strange how you can be in a place like that and run into somebody you've known all your life?
   Johnny wanted to know how long I would be in New York.   He seemed to be tickled to death.   Offered to show me around.   He and this woman had an awful pretty little girl with them.   They never said what the relationship was.   And I never asked.

    This fellow from Akron came running out.   It took me a long time to convince him who Johnny was.   I think it scared him.   He thought maybe we were together.   . . .

    Our hotel was right across the street from the Beatles.   They had the street blocked off.   And every once in a while the Beatles would come out and wave.   They had police to hold the crowd back. . . .

    I thought a subway would be kind a' like a streetcar -- one line that you could just ask anybody you see which way to go.
    We got into that doggone thing.   I'd hear them subways running over and under and every other way.   I said, "Thunder!"
    People didn't want to talk.   And you couldn't understand a word when they did.
    I said, "Let's just sit down here awhile and find out what it's all about."
    We sat down, and some other fellow came along.   I says, "I'm a perfect stranger here.   Don't know a soul.   But I want to see the Yankees play Detroit."    Let him know right off I didn't intend to rob him or anything.
    "Well," he says, "I live right by the stadium, and we'll go on the streetcar.   You sit still here, and when I make a move to get on, you follow me.   There'll be a lot of people, but you stick close to me."   He says, "I'll signal when you need to get off."
    We didn't know but what he was taking us out somewhere to rob us.   He seemed restless.
    The train came in, and we followed him.   When we got off, we were as close to Yankee Stadium as from here to the barn.

    We got a seat behind third base.   Roger Maris was playing third base.   If I'd had a glove I could have caught two or three balls.   I saw one coming, but I says, "I'll not try to catch this."

    Everybody went out on the ballfield when the game was over, and it wasn't any time and they were all gone.
    The subway closes after so late, and we had to find some other way to get back.   This taxicab stopped.   He says, "I've got a call close by, but you wait here and I'll be back."
    We waited, and after a while he came back.   I says, "I can't tell you where the hotel is, but it's right across the street from where the Beatles are staying."
    "Oh," he says, "I know exactly where it is."

The delivery was complicated by severe loss of blood.   Anne required multiple transfusions, and her life hung in the balance for several days. "Anne never was right after Sam was born," said Henry.            

    She was awful nervous, and I never did anything to contrary her -- just let her have her way.            

    I was teaching at Glendale, over behind Tusculum.   Took off a day when they said Anne was dying.   They docked my pay for that day.

Henry took a second mortgage on the farm and raised $5,000 to pay the medical bills.²⁶  

They were regular in attendance at the Methodist Church in Afton, and Henry was on occasion superintendent of the Sunday school.   "We ought to go to church in the community where we live," he had said.   And that was that.

About 1956 Anne began teaching again for the first time since their marriage.   The debts were paid off, and sale of some land placed the family in fairly comfortable circumstances.   The School Board bought a tract for the new Chuckey-Doak High School.   "I'd just as soon it go for a school as anything," said Henry.   And it was convenient to have a place close by for Anne to teach and for Henry to scavenge trash.   "I don't see how they can just throw away good desks and new books.   No wonder they don't have anything."   Then the state took a parcel for a children's hospital.   And finally the highway was improved to four lanes and part of Henry's farm was taken for this after litigation for a fair price.

Anne died in 1975 (8 April).   "You might as well prepare for the worst," Henry had told Sam after an all-night vigil at the door of her hospital room.   "Her color don't look good.   I've seen that jaundice before. Too many times.   Over in France.   And when Momma died."

Sam wondered that his father, at eighty-one years of age, could accept so calmly and without bitterness the reality of the moment.

"What's that poem?" Henry asked his son.   "'. . .   wrap the drapery of his couch about him   . . .?'"   And Sam recited the familiar lines from "Thanatopsis," as he would one day recite them again at Henry's own memorial service.      

    . . . sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

A visit with the congressman.   Henry was a frequent visitor to Anne's grave in the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery.   The site was somewhat inaccessible to him from the main road which circled the top of Monument Hill, and he could view the grave more easily from a second drive with a separate entrance on the west side.   The entrance to this route was often closed, however.

After a rebuff in his efforts to get access by the west gate, Henry heard that the congressman from the district was meeting the public at the Court House.  

    They were lined up a block long to see Jimmy Quillen.
    He had people there writing down everything that went on.
    I told him I didn't want a job.   I said, "I know you wouldn't give me a job in preference to a Republican, and I wouldn't expect you to.

    "Now, there is one thing I wanted to ask you about:   My wife is buried in the Andrew Johnson Cemetery, and I asked the superintendent to open the new gate occasionally so us handicapped people could get in.   He told me, 'Forget about it!   There's not a thing can be done!'   I said I was going to try.   He said, 'You're wasting your time!'"
    Quillin says, "I'll tell you what I'll do.   You sit down here a minute and give me a chance to look it over."

    I sat there about ten minutes, and a government man came over and asked me to tell him what was wrong.
    I've never been there (to the cemetery) since but what that gate's been open.
    The superintendent was awful rude:   "Just forget about it!" he says.   "Forget about it!   Don't mention that to me again!"

    He died in about two weeks.   I wish he had lived until I could put it to him.   I wanted him to know that somebody had authority:   I didn't know who, but it got results.

    I don't care if Quillin is (one of the richest men in Congress), I'd vote for him if he was running for President.

Henry Sentelle (at 96 years)

"We put a roll in the microwave," said Macy.   "Set it on fifteen minutes.   It was like a rock.   You couldn't stick a fork in it.   It don't take no time at all to cook something.   You can cook a potato in a minute."

"It took a pretty smart feller to come up with that," said Henry. "Wonder what they'll think of next?"

And then he would reflect.   "There has been more progress in my lifetime than in the whole history of the world before.   What do you think they'll do in the next fifty years? . . .

"I'd give anything just to set down and talk to my granddaddy.   He wouldn't believe it."

Henry had grown progressively weaker with the passing years, and in the fall of 1988 he was no longer able to walk.   Grandson David lived with him during the last six months.

In June of 1990 he had difficulty breathing which was diagnosed as pneumonia.   He was treated with antibiotics and returned home where John Brown and Darlene McCleish had moved in to care for him.

Almost without exception, when asked as to his comfort or condition, Henry would reply that he was, "fine and dandy."   But now in the last week of June the breathing problem returned without warning, and for the first time he indicated with a shake of the head that he was having some difficulty.

In the wee hours of the morning on 4 July 1990, at six minutes after one o'clock, Henry left his hospital bed and moved forever beyond the reach of helplessness and mortal discomfort.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 1990, conducted graveside rites.   A flag from the casket was handed to grandson Mike.   There was the dry crack of a rifle salute and taps sounded across the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery.   Then Henry was laid to rest next to Anne on a hillside facing the sunrise.   "Couldn't 'a picked a better place," he once said.   "It'll be taken care of, long as there's a government."

A memorial service had been conducted at Doughty-Stevens Chapel on that Friday, 6 July 1990, by Rev. Bill Rines, the minister at Afton Methodist Church.

When Henry was a schoolboy, the preacher said, his teacher Miss Edith McInturff would see Gideon Sentelle driving into town in his horse-drawn buggy.

   "Look, look," she would call to Henry.   "Who is that coming there?"
    And Henry would say, "Why, that's my granddaddy!"
    I can imagine that today Miss Edith is calling to Gideon, "Look, look!   Who is that coming there?"
    And Gideon Sentelle is saying, "Why, thot thare's my grandson!   Thot thare's Henry!"

Henry and Gid.

Big Willow, Grandpa Balis, the Civil War, the First World War, Greene County politics, Franklin Roosevelt, the Beatles, and television.   Won't they have a lot to talk about!

"Henry, Jim never did catch thot thare calf -- did he?"

¹Greene County (Tennessee) Board of Education, Minute Book 1, p. 10 (24 August 1928).

³ Ibid., p. 96.

⁴Ibid., p. 98.   Recommended in addition to the principal candidates were Cameron Duggins, Maude Cox or Mary Park, and Grace Haynes or Orianna Brumley.   The Board elected Gilland, Cox, and Brumley; rejected Sentelle, Haynes, and Park.   As to the fate of Duggins the record is mute.   Quincy Styke, Eb's old friend and probably the sole remaining Democrat by now, cast the lone dissenting vote.

⁵ Ibid., p. 133 (28 April 1938).   Other teachers were Virginia Ayers, Myrtle Matthews, Katherine Sawyer, and Mrs. W. S. DeBusk.

⁶ Ibid., pp. 158, 163.   Quincy Styke voted for the recommendation.   T. A. Bible abstained.

⁷ Ibid., p. 163.

⁸ Ibid., p. 164.   Voting against were Styke and Bible.   Mark Waddell abstained.   The teacher was Mrs. W. S. DeBusk.   Elected with Henry were Thomas Scruggs, Virginia Ayers, and Katherine Sawyer.  

⁹"Mr. Henry Sentelle has today been examined and found to be suffering from an acute appendix." Memo by Jas. T. Campbell, M.D., Tusculum College, 15 June 1934.   Among Henry Sentelle personal papers.

¹⁰Henry L. Sentelle, Veterans Administration Facility, Johnson City, Tenn. "Entitled to Members Privileges"   (15 June 1934); Henry Sentelle, VA Facility, Johnson City, Hospital Mess (Pass) (22 July 1934).   Among Henry Sentelle personal papers.

¹¹ Greene County (Tennessee) Chancery Court Minute Book 8, p. 240; Greene County Deed Book 54, p. 332 (4 February 1889).

¹² Deed Book 84, p. 481 (29 September 1908).

¹³ Deed Book 86, p. 115 (2 May 1910).

¹⁴ Deed Book 97, p. 32 (6 June 1917).

¹⁵ Deed Book 129, p. 486 (4 January 1934).

¹⁶ Deed Book 129, p. 509 (13 January 1934).

¹⁷"S. L. Williams will soon have his new residence completed." Greeneville (Tennessee) Democrat, Thursday, January 7, 1897, p. 3;   "Stephen L. Williams 12 June 1851-21 March 1936, wife Mary Brown Williams 13 October 1857-19 September 1898."   Shilo Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Tusculum, Tennessee, Memorial Inscriptions.

¹⁸Vic Weals, "Home Folks," The Knoxville (Tennessee) Journal, Sunday, June 29, 1952, p. D-10.   See also Grace Haynes, The Daddy Haynes Story  (Morristown, Tennessee: Morristown Printing, 1968), pp. 263-266.   Mary died ". . .   before the house was entirely finished and before she had lived in it more than a few months [19 September 1898]."   See Haynes, p. 264.

¹⁹Elizabeth Duggins, Here Comes Papa (Greeneville, Tennessee:  The Author, 1995), pp. 44-47.

²⁰Butch Mercer, told on 11 January 1977.   The actual question, according to Butch, was, "Who is the father of these kids?"   But Henry would never have been so direct.   The version here is consistent with his manner, and it fits the answer.

²¹Anne's mother had six brothers and sisters in 1930.   All of them lived within two miles of the crossroads at Clarkrange.

²²Anne's brother-in-law.

²³Forrest's wife.

²⁴Anne's uncle Henry Peters, 1877-1957.

²⁵ 67th Convention, New York, 19-26 August 1966; 68th, New Orleans, 18- 25 August 1967; 69th, Detroit, 16-23 August 1968; 70th, Philadelphia, 15-22 August 1969; 71st, Miami Beach, 14-21 August 1970; and 72nd, Dallas, 13-20 August 1971.

²⁶Approval of $2,800 by the Federal Land Bank of Louisville, and $2,200 by the Land Bank Commissioner, dated 18 February 1943.   Among Henry Sentelle personal papers.