Robert Wilson
Knoxville News-Sentinel
TOWNSEND, Tenn. — There are lots of questions when you’re 4 or 5 years old. That’s how it was for little Nora Lou Wilson when the Sunday school class she occasionally visited became her bedroom. Decades later, Wilson acknowledges a “real emotional attachment” to the Townsend landmark best known as the Kinzel House restaurant, which was destroyed by fire Wednesday. “Of course,” she said Thursday, “I’m grieving.” Don Stallions, chief of the Townsend Area Volunteer Fire Department, said the blaze broke out in the wood-frame structure about 8:30 p.m.
A caller said there was “heavy smoke” coming from the building, he said. Firefighters from his department were on the scene within a few minutes, but Stallions said he was “amazed at how fast” the fire roared through the building, which was vacant and had most recently housed a river tubing business.
Units from the Blount County Fire Department also responded to the fire, but the building is a total loss. The interior is gutted and the roof collapsed.
About the only thing left standing is the river rock hearth and chimney built by members of Wilson’s family and bearing a “W” in stone on the front.
The building was owned by Doug and Becky Sopha of Townsend. Becky Sopha said she and her husband bought the building, which is the fi rst building one sees when entering Tuckaleechee Cove on U.S. Highway 321, about 1½-2 years ago. The city limits run through the adjacent parking lot, according to Townsend police officials.
Wilson said the building began its life in the 1940s as Pat & Anna’s restaurant.
“My mother and father worked for them,” she said. In 1945, the Wilsons built their own business, Wilson’s Hillbilly Res-
taurant and Motel, a little way up the road, and the family lived there.
When Pat & Anna’s closed, the building became the Kinzel Springs Missionary Baptist Church, where Nora Lou Wilson occasionally went on Sundays with family friends. The Sunday School classroom where she had heard Bible stories and studied Scripture became her bedroom when her family bought the building in the late 1950s, she said.
“I was a little confused,” she said.
Wilson said her mother died in 1962, and her father lost possession of the building when he and his second wife divorced.
It was at that point that it became the Kinzel House, which was in business there for many years.
“I hadn’t been there in 30 years,” Wilson said, but she said she still regarded it as the family’s “home place. I have very fond memories of that building. My sister’s wedding reception was there.”
Becky Sopha said she and her husband bought the building as an investment and had no firm plans for it.
“We thought maybe one of these days we might put a business in it,” she said. “I hate so much that it’s gone.”
Fire officials returned to the scene early Thursday when embers flared again.
Stallions said he was on his way to work as the Blount County Risk Management director when he saw smoke coming from the back of the structure. Firefighters were summoned back to the scene and doused the hot spot with more water.
Wednesday night fire-fighting efforts were initially hampered by a motor home that was parked within a few feet of the building and was moved only when six to eight firefighters took it out of gear and pushed it aside.
Police Chief Ronnie Suttles said thieves had previously cut power to the building to get the copper wiring.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Nora Lou Wilson is no relation to writerRobert Wilson.
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