Because, for decades he always seemed to be the same age, perhaps 43, lanky, energetic, youthful Bruce Wheeler never seemed likely to leave us any time soon, but we regret that he has. He was really 84, and this past weekend, he died. And he was irreplaceable.
Originally from Tryon, N.C., he studied at Duke, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Virginia, from which he earned his Ph.D., and was already a respected (and published) scholar on American history when he arrived here back in 1970. Quickly he earned a reputation, and occasionally a major award, for his engaging teaching style. In fact, UT presented him with one such teaching award at halftime of the UT-Georgia basketball game in 1979. (Do they still celebrate academics at ball games?)
Once a specialist in the American Revolution, but by the 1970s he was studying the Tennessee Valley Authority (he wrote a book about Tellico Dam), Appalachian culture (he wrote a book about mountain handcrafts), and modern urban economic development (concerning which he wrote a book—or perhaps we should say three books—about Knoxville).
By 1973, he was getting well outside of the classroom to offer lectures around town, at historical venues and occasionally on television. He may have been the first public historian to take on Knoxville history head-on, without nostalgia or the usually obligatory respect for the powers that be—or for the premise that Knoxville was a success. That belief was once required of all after-dinner speakers; Bruce liked Knoxville, and found it interesting, but fractured the obligatory cheerleader role and made it easier on the rest of us.
He was an engaging presence: slim, long-legged, clean-cut and a sharp dresser, always in a suit and tie (relaxing on a hot day, he might disclose his colorful suspenders), he could have passed for William F. Buckley without the stammer. (Or the transparent politics. I don’t know for certain how Bruce voted.) To the dozens of organizations he spoke to, his old-school Ivy League appearance may have made his sometimes subversive ideas about Knoxville more palatable, and more effective. A deadpan humor was also part of his appeal, and I suspect a reason his classes were always full. (I took three of them.)
Though never one to laugh at his own jokes, he obviously enjoyed it when others did, and often remarked that if it hadn’t been for American history, he might have gone into standup comedy.
Even if much of the humor he deployed was in the form of quotes from Knoxville characters like George Dempster and Prof. Ruth Stephens, and others. But his humor often came punctuated with a well-timed pause, when he’d get to a serious and important point.
He befriended like-minded fellow professor Michael McDonald, and their longtime partnership concerning Knoxville’s history may have begun around 1975, when they worked together on a public cultural study of Knoxville in conjunction with planning for a prospective world’s fair.
McDonald and Wheeler’s 1983 book, Knoxville, Tenn.: Continuity and Change in an Appalachian City, examined the political and economic development of Knoxville especially in recent decades, and quickly became required reading for journalists and the smarter politicians. After McDonald’s premature death, the second edition, subtitled A Mountain City in the New South, was Wheeler’s solo 2005 effort. A third edition, updated with the help of Metro Pulse and Compass Knox journalist Jesse Mayshark, came out in 2020.
Wheeler and his family once lived in Sequoyah Hills in their first decade or so here, but as years passed they migrated to Wears Valley in Sevier County, where he lived for most of his later life. I’m not sure even his colleagues knew about his breadth of interests: he was chairman of the Wears Valley Volunteer Fire Department, or that he sang in a choir devoted to the eccentric and tightly disciplined shape-note singing style called Old Harp.
His fascination with Knoxville and its ever-changing downtown drew him downtown, where he and his wife, Judy, lived for several years, during which time he could often surprise old students, walking his dog along Walnut Street early in the morning.
As the 2019 Knoxville History Project honoree for lifetime achievement in local history, he entertained a capacity crowd with one of his classic strolling monologues, and drew no complaints that he hardly touched on the subject of local history.
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