Kingston Celebrates 70 Years

Workers Reflect on Proud Legacy of Service

Growing up in Roane County, Tennessee, Robbie Davis spent a lot of time riding around in the back seat of his family’s 1972 Monte Carlo.

One local landmark always entranced him.

The twin 1,000-foot chimneys towering over Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant.

“I just remember being in awe of how big they were,” Davis said.

Cruising past on Interstate 40 as a young adult, Richard Turner had a similar experience.

“I remember driving by and saying, ‘My gosh, what do they make at that plant?’ I’d never seen a plant that size.”

Davis and Turner are among the generations of employees who have worked at the enormous coal-fired power plant, which provides electricity for up to 800,000 homes. The site is celebrating 70 years of service to the Tennessee Valley region.

A view of Kingston Fossil Plant from the late 1970s.

History on Display

For longtime Kingston employees, the celebration is a chance to reflect.

Lewis “Buster” Endsley, now a shift operations supervisor at Kingston, joined a training program at the plant in 1985.

"I stayed here after completing the program," Endsley said. "It has been a great place to work, offering opportunities for advancement and providing a comfortable standard of living for my family and me."

Another great plus? "The people that I have had the pleasure to work with through the years," he said. "I consider them an extended family, and I've formed some lifelong friendships."

Like Davis, Endsley remains ever impressed by the plant's iconic infrastructure.

"There are the 1,000-foot stacks," he said.

Endsley said he considers it a blessing to have spent much of his career at Kingston.

Turner had similar sentiments.

“I’m proud to have been here at this plant,” said Turner, once the astonished young man driving by on the interstate, who rose from trainee to the operations manager known around the plant as “RT."

He’s now the operations manager at Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage Plant.

Like many around him at TVA, Turner is mindful of Kingston’s respected legacy from its earliest days, when it was the largest coal plant in the world.

“It was a real showpiece and a symbol of pride, not just for Kingston but for the country as a whole,” Turner said.

Kingston’s profile has changed dramatically over the decades, but visitors can still see much of its history.

A photo of Kennedy’s visit in 1959 shows a water filtration plant in the background. It’s still there, and it’s still in operation.

The original nine smokestacks, 300 feet tall, still stand. As do the two colossal chimneys that replaced them in the 1970s, themselves removed from service in favor of emission-slashing scrubbers in 2007.

Thinking back on his boyhood impressions of Kingston, Davis said it was never the details about the landmark stacks that stuck with him.

“I remember asking my dad how tall they were, and he would throw a number out,” said Davis, who most recently served as lead shift operations supervisor before moving to a gas coordinator role at TVA’s new System Operations Center.

What stuck with him is the memories.

And that’s exactly what Davis expects to carry forward from his years as a Kingston employee.

“The biggest thing I’ve taken away from it is a lot of good memories,” Davis said. “I’ve met a lot of great people I consider to be lifelong friends.”

Kingston's Randy Pack, maintenance supervisor, and Lewis "Buster" Endsley, shift operations supervisor, stand outside the plant's administration building.

Mission of Service

Randy Pack, maintenance supervisor at Kingston, has also forged lasting bonds with his coworkers.

But it’s his role in the mission of service that drives him – as it did his father and his father-in-law, who both worked at Kingston.

“I got my ambition to become an electrician in my younger years, from hearing stories from my dad and my father-in-law and how the union really supported the employees and their families,” Pack said. “I knew then that I wanted to be here.”

He applied himself early on to the electrical trade – “learned everything about it,” he said – and followed in the footsteps of the many skilled tradespersons before him.

“I’ve had lot of opportunities in my career, and I’m very thankful for that,” he said.

TJ Newby, too, traced the path of those he admired.

He tells the story of his grandfather, who more than seven decades ago headed north from Alabama but stopped off in Harriman, Tennessee, so that his wife could give birth to their child – Newby's father.

They stayed awhile, then stayed some more.

“(My grandfather) was very fortunate to go to work for TVA as an electrician,” Newby said. “His first job was to hang light stringers around the complete site, so that it would be lit up for the heavy equipment to be operated at nighttime.”

That happened before crews even broke ground at the site. Newby’s grandfather worked during Kingston’s construction and beyond, spending 68 years with TVA.

Newby’s dad worked at Bull Run for 38 years as a boilermaker.

“I became very interested in the boilermaker union,” Newby said. “I graduated on a Friday and started work at Bull Run on a Monday as a boilermaker.”

That was 23 years ago. Newby is now a maintenance foreman at Kingston.

"I enjoy my work family, and I am very proud to be a third generation to continue on,” he said.

Kingston's Luke Huddleston, assistant unit operator, and Daniel Huddleston, lead shift operations supervisor.

‘Tricycle Tire Prints’

For Daniel Huddleston, lead shift operations supervisor, the plant’s history intertwines with his own.

Huddleston’s grandfather, Bennett, worked as a plant operator at Kingston after serving with the 1st Marine Division in World War II. His father, David, worked there too, and his son, Luke, is an assistant unit operator.

That makes four generations.

Huddleston gets teased about it.

The joke: “My tricycle tire prints are in the concrete out here.”

Huddleston recalls family gatherings when he was a kid, after his grandfather’s retirement.

“We’d go to his house to eat. The first question out of his mouth was, ‘What’s going on at the plant?’ After my dad’s retirement, I got the same questions from him,” Huddleston said. “It’s always in your blood once you get in this business.”

The camaraderie runs deep with all plant personnel, he said.

“When you work 12-hour rotating shifts, you spend about as much time out here as with your family,” Huddleston said. “So they become your family.”

The dedication of Kingston employees is what makes this celebration such a big deal, said Kris Edmondson, the vice president of coal operations.

“This plant and the people who operate it have worked exceptionally hard for the people of the Valley region,” Edmondson said. “Kingston will remain an important part of the fleet until its retirement. We are looking forward to a bright future for the site and the Kingston family.”

Robbie Davis most recently served as Kingston's lead shift operations supervisor before moving to a gas coordinator role at TVA’s new System Operations Center.

Richard "RT" Turner, formerly Kingston's operations manager, now holds the same role at Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage Plant.

Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts visits Kingston in 1959 with then-Sen. Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee (second from left) and others.