Celebrating the Power of Possibility.
I'm Dr. Warren Docter and I believe anything is possible.
Welcome to Anything is Possible. My name is Hallerin Hilton-Hill.
You know, I love having great conversations with great people whose lives prove that anything is possible.
And my guest today is Dr. Warren Docter. Your official title is?
Dr. Warren Docter. Although recently I was made Colonel aide-de-camp in the state for my work on the 250.
So technically I'm Colonel Dr. Docter.
And for me you're one of the most important people in our community because of where you work and what you do, which is?
Well, so I'm the president of the East Tennessee Historical Society.
We work in all 35 counties of East Tennessee and we run the museum downtown in downtown Knoxville right across from the Tennessee Theater.
I have so enjoyed getting to know you through the years.
I didn't realize how much a fan of history I was until much later in my life.
And you've, you know, you've been on my radio show a few times and just getting to know you has been great.
How does a precocious young man like yourself find himself in this field?
I, so I always, I've always loved history and, you know, my mother was a teacher up in Granger County and, you know, my dad was very interested in history.
And he was in Blount County and I kind of went back and forth between the two.
It was very important at my dad's dinner table to be able to answer historical questions.
So at a very early age, I was kind of set up for lots of reading and that kind of stuff.
But it was really my grandfather who got me interested.
He started taking me to historical sites.
We went around Knoxville.
What was his name?
His name was Albert Dr. Junior.
And so my name is Albert Warren Doctor.
I'm named for him.
And he and I had a fantastic relationship.
And he took me to various historical sites, first around Knoxville, you know, Ramsey House and the other places, then sort of further afield.
And we started going to Revolutionary War sites and then it's Civil War sites.
And we continued to travel and there was a fantastic relationship that I had with my grandfather.
Now, did he have a formal approach to this?
Like he said, there are 20 things that I want my grandson to know.
Or was it more organic?
I think it was organic.
And when you went to these places, what was the conversation like?
What was he teaching you?
What was he telling you?
What was he showing you?
One of the things he made very important to me about history is that, you know, people look at history or can look at history like it's just dates and things happening.
He made the stories come alive for me.
So when we went to Gettysburg, you know, I was excited because I was a kid and I ran up and I had my picture made with like every cannon.
But he would tell me what happened and about the different people that were there and those kinds of things.
And we would do that at sort of every kind of site we went to.
But it was totally organic and we just had a good time of it.
And then when we were in the car driving away, we would kind of talk about it like what did we learn?
And, you know, what do we think about this?
You know, he was never bashful about anything.
So he would go up and talk to all the kind of tour people or anybody who was working just to kind of get a better idea about what was going on.
Do you think it started out as a love for history or as little kids, we like being liked, one, we like connecting with somebody that seems to want to pay attention to us?
Were you gravitating toward the feeling of acceptance and love and history was the context in which that happened?
And you went back to that because it made you feel that. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. No, and that's a fantastic question.
And I don't know, I can't tell you which one it was because of that connection.
And that's one of the things even to this day, my dad and I will sit down and our conversation will be largely about history.
We'll be talking about whatever is going on in the Middle East and what that had to do with the Ottoman Empire 400 years ago or something.
So a lot of my conversations with both my parents is really around sort of things that we're interested in.
But I think that feeling of love and acceptance and interest, genuine interest, particularly that I got from my grandfather at that age,
really just made me think, wow, this guy's listening to what I'm saying and is interested in my ideas.
And it kind of grew from that. So I think it's both things, really.
I can't even place a value on the people that take interest in us and take interest in our interest. Right?
Oh, that's absolutely it. I mean, I had fantastic teachers growing up.
And one in particular I had her name was Miss Laura White. She's still out of Knoxville.
And she got me really interested in world history because I was very focused on American history and Civil War history.
And then I started learning about things abroad. And of course, eventually I even went abroad.
And that really all kind of started with Laura White and her taking an interest in my interest about reading, I don't know,
classic stuff about Greek and Greece and Roman and Roman history, that kind of thing.
So mama's from Granger County. I think you said dad was from Blount County. Blount County.
A whole lot of history in those two places. Oh, yeah. And so you're growing up, you're going along.
Take me through your educational journey. So, you know, I went to high school in Granger County
and I actually started university while I was still in high school.
This is back in the days before there was advanced placement. And, you know, I was kind of a rowdy kid.
And I think there was a meeting. Yes, I was. Yeah. I think I was probably a difficult child because I was very precocious.
And so we went throwing all those tomatoes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
I was finding mischief to get into. And I think there was a meeting probably between mom and the principal at the time,
and maybe even Miss White, who all got together thought we've got to figure out what to do with Warren or he's going to be a real problem.
And so I started taking night classes at Walter State and it was in world history. Wow.
Western Civ. I did all my Western Civ stuff at Walter State. And I just loved it. Man, I read the books.
You know, I loved the stories. And so I had completed by the time I started at UT to do my undergraduate,
I had done a whole semester worth of work in history and other sorts of things.
And so that really freed me up to really get in there and do different things with history and that kind of stuff.
So, you know, that was a huge opportunity for me as a high school student and really, like I said,
my educational journey beyond high school started at Walter State, which is amazing.
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So you go on to the University of Tennessee. What happens?
I was very interested in European history. I had fantastic professors.
So I did a double major in history and political science. And I had fantastic professors on both sides.
My supervisor, he's still at UT, Dr. Lula Vicious. He's still there in German history, especially.
And then I also had Dr. Paul Pickney, who did British history.
He got me really interested in Britain and Winston Churchill in particular.
We did a class on World War II and I did the World War II classes and I sort of became kind of obsessed with the Second World War
and all the things that led up to it, the kind of 19th century into the 20th century. I just loved the time period.
And then all the sort of political ideas that were going on.
And Dr. Michael Fitzgerald was my supervisor in political science.
And these people all saw my interest and fed me.
And so in a way I think that I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.
And I went through, I was magna cum laude when I graduated.
And I also was working for my dad's sign company.
So all my summers and any free time I had to work to make money to kind of pay for all this, I did.
But I came out of it and I just loved history and I loved it so much.
And I'd studied Britain so much I thought, well, I need to go to Britain if I really want to continue learning about Britain in Britain.
And so I worked for my dad's company for a couple of years and then I'd saved up enough money.
And we, I went over to the University of Nottingham, you know, like the sheriff.
And that was a lot of fun. And there I made, you know, friends I'm still friends with today.
I mean, it was a real good group of people I was with there.
My supervisor there is a guy named Chris Wrigley. He encouraged me to come back for a Ph.D.
So I took some time out after I completed my master's, saved up some money and I got a really good scholarship.
So that the University of Nottingham thought I was a very good student and supported me.
So I like to tell people that I was studying at Her Majesty's pleasure.
And I went back and I did my Ph.D. working with Chris Wrigley and I did it on sort of British imperial spaces, colonial spaces.
And I looked a lot at Winston Churchill and the role that Winston Churchill played in British roles in the Middle East.
And in India and Africa and elsewhere. And I had a fantastic time there.
You should see the way your face lights up when you talk about history. I can tell it's your love and passion.
Along this journey, were you discovering your own personal history?
Oh, yeah. I mean, this is something my mother's always got me very interested in is genealogy.
And her, so my grandfather, he was also a genealogist. But my grand, on my mom's side, her maiden name is McCurry.
And so there's this sort of Scotch-Irish connection.
So when I went to Britain, that was one of the things I was very interested in exploring.
And we were able to trace some of my ancestors back when I became president here, all the way back to Lancaster in Britain in the sort of 1600s.
And then obviously the Scottish connection as well, because I have connections in Greene County.
And that's where the McCurries were. There was a family called Bab there as well.
But I got really interested in the kind of English genealogy because the documents are there and it's much easier to trace back.
Whereas on the German side of my family, which is where the doctor comes from, my grandfather moved, Albert Doctor, moved from Albany, New York just before the Second World War.
He came down to go to Maryville College. And he wound up settling here.
But so the German kind of side of my family was all in New York. And they had come over, of course, from Alsace-Lorraine in that part of Germany.
And they had originally moved from that part of Germany from the kind of deeper German, like Prussian area of Germany, kind of further east.
And that's kind of when it's more difficult. I mean, these are all-
To get the records, right.
Exactly. But in Britain, the records are there.
Talk about the importance of preserving history and how important the history of this region is and the work that you do.
Well, first of all, I mean, preserving history is at the center of what we do.
Not just preserving it, you know, in terms of the objects, but also the documents so that we can tell the stories, which is really what this is about,
to raise awareness so that people understand how important the history of East Tennessee really is.
And I give a lot of talks about the history of East Tennessee. The history of East Tennessee is so unique and so special.
It ignites a kind of curious fire in me.
I mean, when you think about all the different people that have lived in East Tennessee, the Cherokee, the Uchi, the Shawnee, the Creeks,
and that's just the native indigenous tribes, right?
There's also the Spanish Empire came here, the French Empire, the British Empire, all vying for control of this region,
all trying to understand how to get through the Appalachian Mountains.
You know, and by the time you get to the 1750s, the British had built Fort Loudon to try to control the area.
And how that, I mean, when you think about the states and the development of the United States, the first frontier is East Tennessee.
You know, the original Wild West is East Tennessee on the other side of the Appalachians.
So the impulse, the American impulse that really drives the 19th century to go westward, that impulse to go westward starts here.
Right here.
Right here. So the entire character, in a way, of this country is wrapped up in East Tennessee.
And you can see it in literal senses with people like Davy Crockett, of course, who goes to the Alamo or Sam Houston.
And then you can see it just again, that kind of impulse for Americans to keep moving and to try to kind of master their space,
sometimes at great cost to themselves and to the native peoples here.
How do you deal with the history of the indigenous peoples of this region?
Because there were people here when settlers came, when James White built his fort.
And this area that we know as Knoxville and this area starts to develop, that land was given to him, but it belonged to people that were here before.
That's right. And that's one of the interesting complex parts about East Tennessee.
So this area in East Tennessee belonged to the Cherokee, not just the Cherokee, parts of it were inhabited by the Uchi, a different native group.
And so what we try to do is to try to tell those stories and highlight those stories and how things,
both for the Cherokee and the Uchi and the other native peoples that were here, still continue to influence things today.
I mean, we work a lot with the Eastern Band of the Cherokee.
What is that like with their historians? How do they tell the story?
Well, and so their view of history is a lot different than the traditional narrative of history.
And what we try to do is to bridge those gaps, right?
For instance, having to understand that this is a group of people whose land was literally sort of slowly taken from them.
And to understand, you know, when we read in history books or up until recently we read in history books about the Treaty of the Holston, we all see that as a great thing.
Well, that is not the Cherokee perspective of that at all, because of course that treaty continually changes and is misshapen.
Or another great example is one of the highlights in the American, you know, as we move towards the 250th and 2026,
one of the great parts of that story is what happened up at Sycamore Shoals, the Watauga Compact,
which is one of the first moments, impulses of being independent of a British crown or British colony.
That happens there.
But that happens as a way because the British crown said you can't buy or sell land in Native American soil, in the Cherokee soil.
And the American colonizers and settlers there were like, well, actually, we're going to do it anyway.
So, I mean, a part of this story is like, wow, we're getting independence from the crown.
But also, wow, we're doing this at the expense of the Cherokee, right?
And so I think just telling the story, understanding the story, not trying to whitewash anything,
but just taking it for what it is and understanding the stories is so important to what we do.
And so it allows a space where we can meet with Native American historians and hear their perspective and say,
hey, that's interesting. You know, let's discuss it.
Every time I've had the opportunity to be at the museum,
the artifacts that you guys have collected and the documents that you have are stunning.
Oh, we have incredible things. I mean, Davy Crockett's rifle is always a crowd pleaser.
But one of my favorite items that we have that actually the Smithsonian was very interested in,
it's such a high quality item, is a string of beads that Atacala Culla took with him to Britain
when he was there as a guest of the crown.
And I mean, the work in this beadwork is extraordinary.
And so things like that, you know, things like the original banner for the group of East Tennessee volunteers
who joined Andrew Jackson and went with John Williams down to the Battle of New Orleans,
you know, things like that that are really tied into Tennessee history and national history are incredible.
One of my favorite letters is the letter that Harry Byrne wrote to his mother,
or she wrote to him rather, saying that he needed to vote for female suffrage.
The suffrage movement finds its crescendo in what happened here in East Tennessee.
That's right. I mean, it's really incredible because she wrote to him and he cast the kind of deciding vote.
And I just loved that in the letter, she said, now you be a good boy and you vote for this.
And he did. And it's remarkable because she was exercising power as a mother,
of course, which she had no political power, to get him to vote the correct way.
And of course, this sets up the dominoes for the whole nation to adopt female suffrage.
And that happens here in East Tennessee. And that's one of the things I like to showcase as the director,
because, you know, I lived in Britain for 12 years, is that our history, you know, a lot of people think,
oh, it's just East Tennessee. Our history is global history. You know, what happened here changed nations.
You know, for instance, female suffrage, Oak Ridge. I mean, that didn't just change nations, that changed the whole world.
The entire world. I mean, and once it happened, I mean, nothing can undo the work that's been done here.
And this, or TVA, think of all the work that went into TVA. Just that history by itself. By itself.
To look at a part of the United States of America that needed rural electrification
and to triple down on it and make it happen, but then people had to lose land.
It's the same thing. Exactly. It's that enormously complex. Of people and land and all of that.
That's it. And that's what's so special. I mean, again, it's so unique in East Tennessee that that kind of interesting thing,
going all the way back to the Spanish showing up here, people, land, water, you know, how are all these things decided?
A lot of the things get decided for the whole country start here. Wow.
The thing that I want to commend you for is history is spelled H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. The story part.
I think that's the brilliance of Ken Burns, the filmmaker. He and his writers take these big historical ideas,
but they put them in very human terms by telling you the story of people.
And it seems like that's what your grandfather did, too. This was a real person. This is a real place.
This is a real event that had real impact on human beings. And history is just vital to all of that.
It absolutely is to understand and try to understand the motivations of people, you know, like you say, real people,
and to go to the spot and see where it happened and to put yourself into someone's shoes and say, you know,
this has to happen, you know, whether it's thinking about, you know, John Sevier and the Treaty of the Holston,
or it's thinking about all the stuff that had to happen in the 20th century to establish the parks in East Tennessee.
You know, a lot of the fundraising took place in Oxford. A lot of political wheeling and dealing had to happen
in order to get the Roosevelt administration down here to make this a reality. You know, gifts from Rockefellers.
I mean, this is a huge project to make this real. But to go up there and to see where FDR spoke in the park,
I'm sure you've been up there, you know, if you go over Newfound Gap and you see, or not Newfound Gap,
but, you know, like once you leave Gatlinburg and you go over towards Cherokee to go up there and see where he spoke.
And we have the video of that in the museum and the recording of it.
To hear him speak about this gift, about how important just the Appalachian Mountains are, it's incredible.
And so that's one of the things I want people in East Tennessee to know and to be more aware of and to cherish
is that our history is so vital. It's so important. And I just love sharing it. I just love sharing these stories.
Well, thank you for being a person that has a passion for that and for doing that in our community
and keeping those stories alive. And also, when we know our history, we also know what's possible.
So thank you for doing that. I love calling you Dr. Doctor. Dr. Doctor, thank you for being on anything as possible.
Thank you for having me. This has been great. And I've told you before, I don't know if you want to cut this or keep this in, but
Let's keep it. My grandfather loved your show and he, a goal for him for me was to be on your show.
So being here is very special for me and I really appreciate that. I can't thank you enough. Thank you.