Bill Landry | |
---|---|
Born | William Anthony Landry III April 10, 1950 |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Actor, producer, director |
Years active | 1980–present |
Children | Jack Landry |
Parent(s) | William Anthony Landry, Jr. (father) Katherine Sullivan Landry (mother) |
William Anthony Landry III (born April 10, 1950) is an actor, director and producer best known for The Heartland Series , [1] a historical series on East Tennessee broadcast from WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Bill Landry was born the son of William Anthony Landry, Jr. and Katherine Sullivan Landry on April 10, 1950. [2] He is one of nine siblings, who were raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and attended Notre Dame High School. He attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga on a football scholarship, where he studied with Dorothy Hackett Ward, Jim Lewis and John Tinkler, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Literature, English and Arts. He continued his studies at the Dallas Theater Center, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree. After completing his education, he worked as a teacher. [3]
In the early 1980s, Landry wrote and performed a one-man play titled Einstein the Man and worked during the 1982 Knoxville Worlds Fair as a riverboat captain in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) exhibit. After the fair ended, he continued to play the role of "Captain Nat" on a TVA tour of the Cumberland, Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers as part of TVA's 50-year anniversary celebrations. [3] After working in a commercial filmed at Pellissippi State Community College, Landry was referred to WBIR-TV and hired in 1984 to work on The Heartland Series, a historical program on East Tennessee.
Landry wrote and directed many of the episodes, as well as producing and appearing as a character. The series issued over 1400 short features and about 150 half-hour length programs, and won awards including four Emmy Awards, six Iris Awards from the National Association of Television Program Executives, two bronze medals and a silver from the New York International Film and Television Festival, and a Theodore Roosevelt Award for "Best Outdoor Documentary." [4]
Landry received Emmy Awards for directing in 1999 and 2000, and in 1999 received an honorary Doctorate of Humanities degree from Lincoln Memorial University in recognition of his contributions to the humanities.
In 2000 the play Einstein the Man was published through a grant and made available to middle and high school students in the state of Tennessee. In 2003, Landry's production of The George Washington Carver Project was also distributed by the Tennessee Department of Education to schools in Tennessee through the Carver Project website. In 2011 Landry published a book on East Tennessee history titled Appalachian Tales & Heartland Adventures. [5]
Landry currently lives in Blount County, Tennessee. Landry is the father of one son (Jack Landry) from his first marriage to Jessica Lynn Jones Landry. His wife Rebecca Carlock Webb "Becky" Landry died on April 19, 2012, at age 58. [6] [7]
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. While owned by the federal government, TVA receives no taxpayer funding and operates similar to a private for-profit company. It is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, and is the sixth largest power supplier and largest public utility in the country.
Chattanooga is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia. It also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, it is Tennessee's fourth-largest city and one of the two principal cities of East Tennessee, along with Knoxville. It anchors the Chattanooga metropolitan area, Tennessee's fourth-largest metropolitan statistical area, as well as a larger three-state area that includes Southeast Tennessee, Northwest Georgia, and Northeast Alabama.
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state's third largest city after Nashville and Memphis. Knoxville is the principal city of the Knoxville Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 869,046 in 2019.
East Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee defined in state law. Geographically and socioculturally distinct, it comprises approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of Tennessee. East Tennessee consists of 33 counties, 30 located within the Eastern Time Zone and three counties in the Central Time Zone, namely Bledsoe, Cumberland, and Marion. East Tennessee is entirely located within the Appalachian Mountains, although the landforms range from densely forested 6,000-foot (1,800 m) mountains to broad river valleys. The region contains the major cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee's third and fourth largest cities, respectively, and the Tri-Cities, the state's sixth largest population center.
The Tennessee Smokies are a Minor League Baseball team based in the Knoxville, Tennessee, metropolitan area. The team, which plays in the Southern League, is the Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. Smokies Stadium, the team's ballpark, is located in the suburb of Kodak, and seats up to 8,000 fans. The team was based in Knoxville and called the Knoxville Smokies among other names for many years before moving to Kodak and changing its name prior to the 2000 season. The team's nickname refers to the Great Smoky Mountains mountain range which permeates the region; mountains in the chain are often clouded in a hazy mist that may appear as smoke rising from the forest. The team plans to move into a new facility in Knoxville beginning with the 2024 season.
James Beriah Frazier was an American politician who served as the 28th governor of Tennessee from 1903 to 1905, and subsequently as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1905 to 1911. As governor, he reduced the state's debt and enacted mine safety regulations. He also attempted to control whitecapping.
William Edward Haslam is an American billionaire businessman and politician who served as the 49th governor of Tennessee from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Haslam previously served as the 67th mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee.
The Tennessee Valley is the drainage basin of the Tennessee River and is largely within the U.S. state of Tennessee. It stretches from southwest Kentucky to north Alabama and from northeast Mississippi to the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. The border of the valley is known as the Tennessee Valley Divide. The Tennessee Valley contributes greatly to the formation of Tennessee's three legally recognized sectors.
WBIR-TV, virtual and VHF digital channel 10, is an NBC-affiliated television station licensed to Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. The station is owned by McLean, Virginia–based Tegna Inc. WBIR-TV's studios are located on Bill Williams Avenue in Knoxville's Belle Morris section, and its transmitter is located on Sharp's Ridge in North Knoxville.
The Museum of Appalachia, located in Norris, Tennessee, 20 miles (32 km) north of Knoxville, is a living history museum that interprets the pioneer and early 20th-century period of the Southern Appalachian region of the United States. Recently named an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum is a collection of more than 30 historic buildings rescued from neglect and decay and gathered onto 63 acres (250,000 m2) of picturesque pastures and fields. The museum also preserves and displays thousands of authentic relics, maintains one of the nation's largest folk art collections, and hosts performances of traditional Appalachian music and annual demonstrations by hundreds of regional craftsmen.
House Mountain is a mountain located in Corryton, Tennessee, United States, about 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Knoxville. Rising to an elevation of 2,064 feet (629 m) above sea level, House Mountain is the highest point in Knox County.
William Edward (Ed) Hooper is an author, film producer and columnist from Knoxville, Tennessee. He is most widely known for his work in military affairs reporting and his coverage of historic preservation and U.S. veterans issues.
The Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill was an environmental and industrial disaster that occurred on Monday December 22, 2008, when a dike ruptured at a coal ash pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion US gallons of coal fly ash slurry. The coal-fired power plant, located across the Clinch River from the city of Kingston, used a series of ponds to store and dewater the fly ash, a byproduct of coal combustion. The spill released a slurry of fly ash and water, which traveled across the Emory River and its Swan Pond embayment, onto the opposite shore, covering up to 300 acres (1.2 km2) of the surrounding land. The spill damaged multiple homes and flowed into nearby waterways including the Emory River and Clinch River, both tributaries of the Tennessee River. It was the largest industrial spill in United States history.
Ocoee Dam Number 1 is a hydroelectric dam on the Ocoee River in Polk County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The dam impounds the 1,930-acre (780 ha) Parksville Reservoir, and is the farthest downstream of four dams on the Toccoa/Ocoee River owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Completed in 1911, Ocoee No. 1 was one of the first hydroelectric projects in Tennessee.
The Heartland Series is a series of television programs about the culture of Appalachia, produced by WBIR-TV of Knoxville, Tennessee, over the 25-year period 1984 through 2009. The series has been produced on a limited basis since 2010.
EPB of Chattanooga, formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, is an American electric power distribution and telecommunications company owned by the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. EPB serves nearly 180,000 homes and businesses in a 600-square mile area in the greater Chattanooga area and Hamilton County. In 2010, EPB was the first company in the United States to offer 1 Gbit/s high-speed internet, over 200 times faster than the national average over a fiber optic network. As a result, Chattanooga has been called "Gig City" and held up as a national model for deploying the world's fastest internet and the most advanced Smart Grid electric distribution system in the United States. On October 15, 2015, Chattanooga implemented the world's first community-wide 10-gig Internet service.
Charles Joseph Fleischmann is an American attorney and politician who has been the U.S. representative for Tennessee's 3rd congressional district since 2011. The district is based in Chattanooga and includes a large part of East Tennessee, including Oak Ridge. He is a member of the Republican Party.
Austin-East High School, also known as Austin-East Magnet High School, is a public high school in Knoxville, Tennessee, operated by Knox County Schools.
Wind power in Tennessee, which has significant potential in East Tennessee, is in the early stages of development. The state has not passed renewable portfolio standard legislation and there is just one utility-scale wind farm with 18 turbines. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), based in Knoxville, imports wind-generated electricity into its service area which includes Tennessee. US Senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee is an outspoken critic of wind power.