Southern Middle TN Today News with Tom Price 10-1-25

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Southern Middle Tennessee Today

News Copy for October 1, 2025

All news stories are aggregated from various sources and modified for time and content. Original sources are cited.

We start with local news…

Battle Creek Mulls How to Spend Funds (CDH)

The Maury County School board is discussing what to do with nearly $500,000 in additional funds following the Battle Creek High School project, and whether it should be earmarked for athletics or instruction purposes.

According to the county's budget, Battle Creek High School's building construction resulted in a $496,994.82 contingency, or money saved. As per the original plan, any additional funds were to be used for athletics at Hampshire Unit School, school officials say.

District 6 board member Sue Stephenson argued that the money could be used for other reasons more universally beneficial to students.

"We have devoted a whole lot of money to athletics, and right now I'd like to focus on instruction, can we be better served ... for something that would benefit all the students," Stephenson said at the school board's Sept. 16 work session.

"If we could use some of the money for instruction, legitimately give additional money to instruction, especially for students that are struggling, I'd like to see if we can do that."

Maury County Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Ventura responded saying there is a "running list of wishes and desires," but the extra money from the Battle Creek project was already planned to be reinvested in athletics, specifically a new sports complex at Hampshire Unit School.

Though there is always a chance to amend the plan, according to officials.

"That school is the last thing to receive something," Ventura said. "I would have to look at whether we have money to finish what we thought we were going to do at Hampshire. I'm not saying we can't look at something more creative, but that will be the will of the board."

Maury County Finance Director Doug Lukonen added that a transfer of funds from athletics to instruction could be possible through an amendment approved by the school board, and in the worst case require Maury County Commission approval.

"The bond is restricted for what it could be used for," Lukonen said. "The freedom is there, but there is a little more compliance you have to do."

District 7 board member Will Sims added that part of the reason the money is marked for athletics is due to athletic funds being used recently to turf fields at Battle Creek. The contingency would act as somewhat of a reimbursement, he said.

"We were originally not going to turf Battle Creek, but since we were doing the other high schools, we felt now was the better time, and it saved money in the long-term," Sims said. "That was the thought process and why we had all originally said to pull it with the thought to put it back in with the overage to finish the building at Hampshire. There are supposed to be plans being drawn currently, but I don't know where that stands, or how much that will be."

Stephenson remained firm in her proposal that the money be transferred into instruction, as feasible with the proper board approval.

"I want to see us take some part of this half a million dollars and put it into instruction," Stephenson said. "I don't know what your figure out of this is needed for Hampshire's amenities ... but I'd like to see us donate something to curriculum."

Maury County School Board Chair Jim Morrison concluded the Sept. 16 discussion saying it is important to uphold the board's past commitments, but other options should be explored if there is additional money in the end.

"If we have told people we are going to do things, then absolutely we should do them, and I also agree with Mrs. Stephenson's point," Morrison said. "After we have finished what we have committed, I do think we should ... get whatever process we need where once this money has expended everything we have committed it to, then we should invest that back into our students."

The Maury County School Board will reconvene for its regular voting meeting at 6 p.m. on Oct. 14.

Maury Regional Starts Residency Program (Press Release)

The leaders of Maury Regional Medical Center and Maury County gathered on the front lawn last Tuesday to announce that after seven decades, the hospital will finally open a medical residency program in summer 2026.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) approved Maury Regional two weeks ago to start serving as an Academic Health System, or “teaching hospital,” in partnership with University of Tennessee’s Health Science Center. The residency program complements the hospital’s ongoing expansions and improvements to the tune of $115 million.

“Our residents will be trained under the banner of one of the most celebrated institutions in Tennessee,” said Dr. Christina Lannom, the Chief Medical Officer at Maury Regional. “I’m proud to announce that this residency is officially affiliated with University of Tennessee’s Health Science Center.”

Program director Dr. Thomas Quinn and Dr. Deborah Goldsmith will supervise up to 30 physicians-in-training at a time, 10 per year of residency. The doctors will serve in both inpatient and outpatient settings, and can choose from among various subspecialties to practice after their residency. Prospective residents interested in the Maury Regional program should apply through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) by Jan. 12.

“This means we’re going to train doctors: not just medical students, as we’ve done in a good partnership with Lincoln Memorial University for several years, but resident physicians who wish to specialize in internal medicine,” said Dr. Martin Chaney, the CEO of Maury Regional. “It’s a dream come true for many of us.”

Maury Regional already hosts about 600 “medical learners” each year: from high-school students auditing a career in medicine, to nursing students from Columbia State Community College and the Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology, to resident medical students.

However, Chaney said, none of these are enough to make it a “teaching hospital”; only doctors in residency can bring on “teaching” status, and the Medicare funding and prestige that come with it.

“Teaching and medicine have been intrinsically yoked since the dawn of medicine as a profession,” Chaney said in his speech. “For over 2,000 years we [medical professionals] have sworn this [Hippocratic] Oath: ‘I will teach this art if they will learn it, to impart precepts, oral instruction, and all other instructions to people who have taken the healer’s oath.'”

With its teaching status, Mayor Sheila Butt explained, Maury Regional can now participate in clinical trials for new drugs and techniques of healing. Teaching also reinforces the knowledge of the teacher, which helps the performance of the hospital’s current personnel.

When Chaney was chief medical officer, visiting residents told him that his hospital’s rare services and specialty care offered more “learning opportunities” than others they had worked in. He started to think about what Maury Regional and a residency program could offer one another.

“We decided we had reached a point where we can take a step to provide training to doctors in a way that we had never done before,” he recalled.

State Rep. Scott Cepicky, (District 64) recalled joining the conversation a few years ago about turning Maury Regional into a teaching hospital. Eventually they approached the University of Tennessee with the idea, and the school agreed to bring them into its residency system.

“It’s been killing me for two years to keep this quiet,” Cepicky joked. “[But] the importance of residency programs cannot be understated, and… the UT-Maury Regional residency program will produce workforce-ready physicians.”

“We are equally, if not more excited to be here at Maury Regional and partner with you,” replied Paul Wesolowski, the Vice Chancellor for Strategic Partnerships at UT’s Health Science Center. “From the first time I came out here and met Dr. Chaney and the other staff members, you could just tell it was the right institution to partner with. The people here are warm, receiving, friendly, and it’s a community we want to continue to help.”

They also hope that the program can funnel physicians into rural Tennessee. More than half of doctors practice in the state where they did their residency, and Maury Regional’s seven-county service area has a combined population of 250,000 people who are in need of primary-care doctors.

“We want to hopefully bring residents to Columbia, [so] they see what a good life [they can have] in Maury County and stay here,” said State Sen. Joey Hensley, M.D., who has practiced primary care himself in Lewis County for almost 40 years, after serving a residency in Memphis at the same UT program. “We believe southern middle Tennessee is the best place in the state, if not the country, to live, and we want to have good physicians in this area taking care of patients.”

“We will attract top talent, a culture of learning… We’ll find additional funding with grants and academic partnerships, we’ll raise the public profile of Maury County and enhance our reputation as a hospital,” summarized Butt. “We’ll train the next generations and… we will retain those people, which will make Maury County a fabulous place to live.”

“At the heart of medicine itself are people. This residency… is a commitment to those ahead of us who will shape the future of healthcare,” said Dr. Lannom. “Our residents will be more than learners as they walk alongside patients, families, nurses and doctors: they will become part of the relationships that matter to our community.”

The hospital administrators who spoke thanked all their predecessors and current staff for their hard work to make the residency program happen and to keep Maury Regional a destination and benchmark for medicine.

Former CSCC Student Fulbright Scholar (Press Release)

For Spring Hill native Nicholas Herrud, Columbia State Community College was his first higher education stop on a journey that has led him from Middle Tennessee to Eastern Europe.

A 2017 alumnus and Tennessee Promise graduate, and now a Fulbright scholar at Notre Dame, Herrud recently shared how his time at Columbia State shaped both his scholastic path and personal growth.

As the first in his family to attend college, Herrud credits Columbia State with helping him navigate the transition from high school to higher education, building a foundation for future success. It also showed him that college courses meant a new style of learning was required to succeed.

“By showing me that you only get out of something what you put into it, especially in a class, even if you get an ‘A,’ it doesn't necessarily mean you get everything that that class has to offer,” Herrud said. “I think, especially in a smaller environment like Columbia State, you appreciate getting things out of it more because you have that personal connection with the professors and the staff and the community there. It was the guidance of people like Dr. James Senefeld who helped me understand. That's why we need to explore other avenues of study, like history.”

Herrud said Senefeld, a retired Columbia State English professor, and Dr. Barry Gidcomb, Columbia State’s dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences Division and professor of history, are among his favorite and most impactful professors.

“We are extremely proud of Nick and everything he has accomplished,” Gidcomb said. “Jim (Senefeld) and I have followed his academic career and have been fortunate to hear about Nick's work and travel firsthand during his visits home. I'm excited about his well-deserved success and the trajectory of his career. Nick is making a difference in this world.”

After graduating with a university parallel (general transfer) Associate of Science degree from Columbia State, he decided to choose a new path and pursue his interest in history, which became his field of study.

“Originally, I never intended to be a historian or study history,” Herrud said. “I also never intended to travel as much and learn all these languages. But that's something you have to be open to. Opportunity kind of finds you, but you have to be ready to be able to respond to it.”

After receiving his bachelor’s degree in history from Austin Peay State University in 2020, he decided he wanted to expand his knowledge and interest in Eastern European history and borderlands by pursuing a master’s degree in Polish Studies. From 2020 to 2023, he learned to speak Polish while studying the language and culture by taking classes at Jagiellonian University in the Polish city of Kraków. 

After earning his master’s degree, Herrud decided he wanted to continue his studies in a doctoral program. Then, after applying to several schools and waiting for over five months, the wait finally ended with him securing a spot at Notre Dame.

“I think out of the 250 applicants they had in 2023, only about 10 people got into the program I’m in. That was a really huge moment. I actually cried a little bit. I called my parents, told them everything. And it was, it was five long months of waiting to hear back.”

Now in year three of his doctoral studies, Herrud was named a finalist for the 2025-26 Fulbright U.S. Student Program, giving him the opportunity to study abroad. This opportunity led to an opening to study 20th-century Eastern European history and border interaction at Vilnius University, a public research school in Lithuania's capital.

“I studied borders in Eastern Europe in the 20th century, and the period I look at between the two world wars, the part of Lithuania that I'm currently in, Vilnius, the capital, was part of Poland during that time. And I'm here because the archives here still have documents from the Polish government when it was a part of Poland. That's what I'm looking at. It's kind of this change of borders, but also this change of administration and this multicultural area.”

With an expected graduation date in spring 2028, Herrud said he already has his future goals in mind. He shared his ultimate goal after graduation would be to work as a policy advisor or Eastern European regional expert for the U.S. State Department, or possibly NATO.

Looking back on his decades-long college journey and its inception in Columbia, he says earning degrees has had a major impact on his life.

“I've been attending courses or taking credits for the past 10 years, which is quite a path to look back on, but the way it's affected me is that it's given me direction and focus. It has helped me understand what I'm capable of, what I can do if I put my mind to something—you don't succeed without others in your life, advisors, friends, colleagues and staff. Success is not a path you walk alone.”

One final piece of advice for all students that he gave: learn to ask for help.

“It's a skill,” Herrud said. “In school, we're sometimes taught not to ask for help if we can because it takes some time or it takes attention to wait for the other people. But that's counterproductive, because in university or at Columbia State, it's all up to you.

Thurgood Marshall Statue Unveiling (MSM)

A statue of civil rights attorney and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall will be unveiled on Friday, Oct. 3 in downtown Columbia, commemorating his role in defending those charged in what became known as the 1946 Columbia Race Riot — a prelude to the Civil Rights Movement. The unveiling will take place at 5 p.m. at the roundabout on Main Street and East Eighth Street. The statue is a gift from Columbia Peace and Justice Initiative (CPJI) to the City of Columbia.

“The Thurgood Marshall Roundabout will stand as a powerful symbol of Columbia’s role in the broader struggle for civil rights and we are proud to partner with CPJI to bring greater awareness to our community’s history,” Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder said.

CPJI and Columbia city leaders worked collaboratively on this project, fittingly located at the entry to the city’s historically Black district. The statue will be complemented by four markers memorializing the racial tensions leading to this fateful day, the names of those brought to trial and those who died in police custody or prior to trial.

“This event turned the tide against violence and segregation both locally and nationally as Columbia’s Black community declared that there would be no more social lynchings,” CPJI co-founder Trent Ogilvie said.

Fellow CPJI co-founder Russ Adcox added, “We believe that the Thurgood statue and markers commemorating that fateful uprising will spark visitors’ curiosity, instilling a desire to explore Columbia’s…role in Civil Rights more completely.”

What sparked the February 1946 event was a confrontation between Gladys Stephenson, her son James and a store clerk regarding the repair of a radio. As the argument escalated, the store clerk struck James and a fight ensued. Following the arrest of the Stephensons, a white mob formed and rumors of lynching spread; two prominent Black businessmen quickly posted bail to save them as residents began to arm themselves, preparing for a mob confrontation. Law enforcement arrived, shots were fired, and the confrontation resulted in the arrests of 100 Black men.

As chief counsel for the NAACP, Marshall came to Columbia to defend the 25 individuals who went to trial. Illness sidelined Marshall for most of the trials in Lawrenceburg, but he returned to Columbia in November 1946 to defend the two additional defendants.

Marshall would go on to build a distinguished career as a civil rights attorney, arguing such cases as Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court, which ended segregation in public schools. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Marshall as the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. President Johnson’s appointment occurred just months after he himself visited Columbia to dedicate Columbia State Community College.

“To officially recognize those involved in turning the tide against violence and segregation, both locally and nationally, with the installation of this statue and historical markers is both an emotional and fulfilling experience,” CPJI President Demetrius Nelson said. 

Renowned artist David Alan Clark designed the sculpture, inspired by an iconic 1956 Associated Press photo. Marshall will be shown striding uphill from East Eighth Street toward the Maury County Courthouse, a symbol of his battle against racial violence and oppression.

And now, Your Hometown Memorials, Sponsored by Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home…

Willis E. “Sonny” Jones, Jr., 88, passed away peacefully on September 15, 2025, in Columbia, Tennessee.

Funeral services for Mr. Jones will be conducted on October 3, 2025, at 3:00pm at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home. The family will host a Celebration of Life immediately after the service at Puckett’s Restaurant, 15 Public Square, Columbia, TN.

Alana Jaye Ingram Minor, 72, a lifelong resident of Columbia, died Saturday, September 13, 2025 at NHC HealthCare Columbia.

A memorial service will be conducted Saturday, October 4, 2025 at 11:00 AM at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home. A private inurnment will be at Rose Hill Cemetery. The family will visit with friends from 10:00 AM until 11:00 AM at the funeral home.

Memorials may be made to the American Cancer Society https://donate.cancer.org. Online condolences may be extended at www.oakesandnichols.com.

Now, news from around the state…

Crime Lab Backup Log Problem (Tennessean)

Without intervention, Tennessee's backlog of forensic evidence testing is likely to only get more dire, according to a new report by the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.

The commission outlined its conclusions in an 81-page report presented at a meeting earlier in September. The report came out of a May 2024 request from legislators, concerned about the growing backlog in forensic testing, to study the feasbilility of adding new labs under the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

"Every piece of forensic evidence helps tell a story, yet too many stories are left unresolved in part because of delays in forensic evidence testing," the report said. "Evidence backlogs affect investigations; prosecutions; and justice for victims, communities, and those wrongfully accused. The ripple effects of these delays extend beyond individual cases, influencing public trust and safety."

The backlog in forensic testing has long been a topic of discussion, specifically when it comes to testing in sexual assault cases. The report draws particular attention to the Eliza Fletcher case in Memphis, in which a woman was abducted and killed in September 2022. The man convicted in the case was a suspect in a sexual assault case a year earlier, but a backlog in testing kept him from being definitively identified as the culprit.

The report highlighted several recommendations to improve the situation, but ultimately it comes down to funding. The state's labs are largely funded by state appropriations and some grants to pay for new equipment, salaries and building improvements.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation operates three state-run labs — in Nashville, Jackson and Knoxville.

That's down from the five the state had in the early 2000s.

In 2003, state funding cuts forced closures of a Chattanooga lab and the original lab in Jackson, leaving a lab in Memphis to handle all of West Tennessee. The Memphis office couldn't keep up with the demand.

In 2021, a new faciliity opened in Jackson and the Memphis facility was closed.

The Jackson facility has already outgrown its current space, the report said.

"Ultimately, without confronting the constraint of limited lab space, the state’s efforts to further improve forensic evidence processing and public safety will be hindered," it noted.

Tennessee is not alone in this backlog problem. Nationally, over the last decade, testing requests across all disciplines of forensics increased, according to the report. Testing for blood alcohol content increased the most, by 12.9%, while DNA testing increased by 10.3%.

As of June, TBI had more than 7,000 untested evidence requests, according to the report. That is lower than the 10,800 recorded in June 2024.

The average, year-over-year backlog for biological evidence from violent crimes in Tennessee increased by 18.9% from June 2021 to June 2025, the report said. For non-violent crimes, the backlog increased by 30.3%. Alcohol and toxicology testing increased by 7.6%. Noteably, the backlog for sexual assault cases did decrease by 8%, according to the report.

Final Story of the Day (Maury County Source)

The Ride for the Gold at the Boo Bash Horse Show 2025 will take place on Saturday, October 11, 2025, from 8:00 AM to 6:30 PM at Maury County Fair & Exposition (1018 Maury County Park Dr, Columbia, TN)!

The show is gearing up to be the best one yet! Proudly sponsored by Clovermeade Welsh Ponies

Swag bags are filling up with the best equine products in the industry, and the Exhibitors’ luncheon will be served to all, with great prizes, ribbons, and championship rose garlands in halter and hunter/jumper divisions.

The show is for all breeds and disciplines and is a super beginner-friendly show.

Equine horse portrait photographer on hand as well! Get all the details and a copy of the show bill at www.angelheartfarm.com.