David Armstrong, who retired from Knox County Schools, has embraced the new technology with a blog, a website and a very active page on Facebook.
David Armstrong
We spotted the photo of the “original” Ramsey community library on his personal Facebook page and called to talk about it.
“This little building that served as the library for the Ramsey community in the 1950s and early ’60s stood behind Ms. J. D. Manney’s home on Strawberry Plains Pike just across the street from the Ramsey Heights Baptist Church,” he wrote. “I spent many afternoons reading books in the small shed.”
David said the old Ramsey Elementary School was torn down in the 1980s. The community is in east Knox County in the Forks of the River area. “You can reach it by crossing the old Boyd Bridge, or by going down Strawberry Plains Pike off Ashville Highway.”
The school had no library – just a bookmobile that came “every week or two.” So the Manney family offered to convert its shed into a reading room if the downtown library would bring them books. That arrangement lasted while David was in Ramsey School.
“My family settled here in 1787,” he said, referring to the historic Ramsey House on Thorn Grove Pike. More info at https://www.ramseyhouse.org/.
You can find David’s assorted publications on the left side of his Facebook page. There’s enough reading there to fill a few afternoons.