Copyright © 2005 The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee

By Sharon Rasmussen
Diocesan Communication Director

Ralph and Georgette Shooster say they are pleased with their new home.

Although the couple who oversaw the property that has become Grace Point, the diocesan camp and retreat center, had lived in a 4-5 bedroom house at the Point since November 1981, they say the double-wide mobile home on the far side of the ridge suits them just fine.

“The guy across the street owns property from this house up to our son’s. They go to our church,” Georgette said in mid-November, during a visit that included the Rev. Bo Lewis, vicar of Grace Point. “When our son was looking for property to build on, Mr. O’Toole said he’d sell 6-point-something acres. Our son was tickled to death. Then we said to Bo that we’d be happy with a double-wide over here.”

The diocese bought and sited the home and had a garage built nearby.

“This is all set for handicapped,” Ralph said in a voice that is still deep and strong. His health, though better now than a few years ago, is limiting. He walks with a cane and requires extra oxygen to help him breathe. “It’s got a ramp in the back; all the doors are wide enough for a wheelchair; it has a handicapped toilet.”

The Shoosters moved to East Tennessee from Pittsburgh, Pa., after Ralph first visited in 1954 on a fishing trip. He interviewed at X-10, then a part of the Oak Ridge National Lab, and was hired. “Bill Manley was one of the ones who interviewed me,” he said. Ralph started remodeling houses on the side, and he agreed to complete a house Manley had started building.

Manley’s work took him out of the area, but eventually he decided he wanted to retire in East Tennessee and asked Ralph to look for land. After considering several small parcels, Ralph said, “we found this piece. Manley said, ‘if you think it’s good, buy it.’ I said ‘no, I won’t buy anything that in case you don’t like it, I can’t buy myself. I don’t have $176,000 to put in that land if you don’t like it.’ It was 67-68 acres with the blue house.

“He came down, he liked it, we bought it. I was cutting grass, doing odds and ends, when he decided he was going to build up on the hill, where he had a good view. One day he asked, ‘when are you going to move out here?’ And I asked, ‘when are you going to sell me a couple of acres?’ And he handed me a piece of paper. It was a contract that said I’d move out here, and he’d fix that blue house up to my satisfaction. There was no insulation, no storm windows; it had electric heat. It needed a lot of repair.

“The contract said we could live in the house for life and do odd jobs around the farm. There was even a clause that said, ‘at times, even the best of friends have fallouts.’ Something we didn’t agree on, he picked a man, I picked a man, those two picked a third man. If two of them agreed, that’s what would happen. If two of them agreed I should have a swimming pool, I got it. That was in the contract. If he was to sell, it guaranteed he’d either buy us out or get us another house.”

Ralph uses his cane to point out parcels of land on a map of the property as he describes the sequence in which he purchased them for Manley. “There’s six pieces altogether,” he said. One was owned by Bowater, the pulp and paper company.

“They didn’t want to sell theirs at first,” Ralph said. “It said in the deed that they had the right to come in over our road to cut timber.” A representative came by one day and told Ralph the company would put in a new bridge over the creek on the Manley property, because the existing bridge wouldn’t accommodate their large trucks.

“Manley didn’t want a new bridge,” Ralph said. “I told them we were still willing to buy. We started negotiating.” Finally Manley purchased property in Alabama that Bowater was willing to trade for the Watts Bar parcel – but it wasn’t a clean exchange.

“That was a little touchy, too,” Ralph said. “They wouldn’t sell us the mineral rights at first.” The company had a five-year minerals deal with someone else, which had to expire before Manley could make that purchase.

Ralph said the property’s Hurricane Ridge is the only one of four neighboring ridges that wasn’t mined for iron during the World Wars. “When they put the pool in [at what is now the Retreat House], they used the iron ore as forms for the pool. You don’t have to go too deep to get to iron ore,” he said.

Manley eventually decided to sell the property, which by then had grown to 270 acres. Several church organizations looked at it.

“The Baptists were real interested,” Ralph said. “They wanted to give Manley $1 million cash along with a $1 million tax write-off.” And a group of evangelical Christians from Kentucky were seriously considering the property when the diocese discovered it was on the market. At that time, Lewis was on a committee studying the interest among East Tennessee Episcopalians in having a camp and retreat center.

“When we presented our committee report to [Bishop and Council] that August, we reported that people were interested in having a camp and retreat center – ‘and by the way, there’s this land available in the middle of the diocese on the water,’” Lewis said. “‘But it’s really expensive: $2 million for 270 acres.’ Some of the people on B&C said ‘that’s not expensive.’ They got people to come out and look at the place, and they said, ‘we cannot afford not to buy this place.’”

The diocese took over the Shoosters’ contract with Manley as a condition of the purchase, and the contract has been renegotiated as health and other considerations have warranted. “The church has been better to us than Manley ever was,” Georgette said.

Ralph Shooster had retired in 1990, and he worked with Lewis on caring for the property that would become Grace Point. Over the years, he had amassed a list of a few dozen names of people to call for various repairs and other needs. “If I could fix it, I would; if I couldn’t, I knew who to call,” he said.

In late November, he and Georgette still were working to clear out the house where they lived for nearly 25 years. Georgette says she thinks the neighbors are secretly leaving their own unwanted possessions there at night, because each day seems to reveal a greater accumulation. And Ralph said, “The garage is full of stuff. I’m going to sort out tools and such – I don’t need more than one of something. I told Bo he could have the rest.”

In time, the house will be razed. The site will become home to a chapel, to be built using the $500,000 pledged by parishioners of St. Paul, Chattanooga.

The board of managers will continue its work to discern and build to a master plan, and the camp and retreat center will grow into the diocese’s heart in Creation.

etdiocese.net/gracepoint