Another Memorial Day weekend will come and go, and with it another without Honor Fountain City Day. In January, Fountain City Town Hall decided not to hold the event for a third consecutive year.
The reason this year is the same as the past two, according to Carlene Malone, Town Hall secretary – the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It was a difficult decision to make, but the ‘go/no-go decision’ had to be made in January,” Malone said. “This is when we begin contacting vendors, community supporters, entering contracts, printing, etc., for the event — the board decided to again cancel because of the uncertainty regarding Covid’s direction.”
Longtime Fountain City Town Hall board member and former city council member Carlene Malone in Fountain City Park (file photo)
While numbers in Knox County have flattened since that time, with new cases running around 30 daily, back in January the picture was much bleaker. The Omicron variant was raging, and the county was adding about 1,000 new cases daily.
Malone said the Town Hall tries to be “good stewards” of the generous donations it receives from the community, and canceling an event at the last minute equals wasted time, effort and money.
“We don’t want to be in a position of contracting with someone, booking them for a time and then not paying them if the event has to cancel,” Malone said, citing hiring musicians as an example. “That’s a day they’ve lost, so we want to pay them anyway. It would be wrong not to.”
Had the crystal ball of Covid been clearer about case counts now, perhaps the popular event could have gone on. But Malone said they had to consider the health and well being of the FCTH board and volunteers. As with many community-service organizations these days, most of the participants are retirees or at retirement age, somewhere north of 60.
“Decisions had to be made, and the board did not want to put our volunteers at risk organizing the event in January and February and did not want to risk our funds and donations from supporters by entering contracts and then having to cancel the event.” she said. “It is a shame. We were really hoping to do it. It is a really great, wonderful event.”
Malone said Fountain City Town Hall welcomes participation and support from other members of the community and certainly hopes to see Honor Fountain City Day back on the calendar next year.
In the meantime, the final touches on improvements to Fountain City Park have stalled, but hopefully just momentarily. Knoxville Parks & Recreation Director Sheryl Ely said supply-chain and equipment issues have slowed the completion of the new playground area as well as improvements to the popular swing set.
The new playground equipment is in at Fountain City Park.
“All the new playground equipment is in; we’re just waiting on the surfacing and the equipment to install it,” she said. “The swing set needs to be sandblasted, primed and repainted as well as new surface installation.”
Ely said the hope is the work will be completed by the end of May, and a day would be scheduled to celebrate with a ribbon cutting with Mayor Indya Kincannon.
Beth Kinnane is the community news editor for KnoxTNToday.com.