CLINTON, Tenn. — A jug on a shelf, the dinner table of a war hero, a tattered hat from a man who lived in a mine, a U.S. Senator's Boy Scout medals and approximately 250,000 other artifacts line the shelves, tables and exhibits at the Museum of Appalachia in Clinton.
For John Rice Irwin, who died on Jan. 16 in Clinton at age 91, the objects represented a life's work preserving the ways of the people of Southern Appalachian. Trained as an educator, he drove through hills and hollers on the weekend to collect the symbols and stories of the mountains.
He founded the museum, now a Smithsonian affiliate, on his family's property in Norris. It became so popular — and disruptive to daily life for his family — he began charging an admission fee in 1969.
"People who have forgot their past and their history and the things that have gone on before them tend to have lost something very important," he said upon his retirement from actively running the museum in 2003.
Born Dec. 11, 1930, in Union County, Tenn., the federal government forced Irwin's family from their home twice: first to make way for the flooding of Norris Dam and then for the Manhattan project, the museum said in a Facebook post.
He was fascinated by the past and with his family's history, grandson Will Meyer said.
"When he was very young, his grandfather told him, 'Hey, you might want to keep these old-timey things and make you a museum,' and he did."
Irwin collected objects from famous East Tennesseans and nobodies alike, but it was the people of the mountains who embody the spirit of the museum.
"The essence is things that seem common, that seem ordinary, but there’s an amazing story behind them," Meyer said. "It doesn’t matter if you’re from Tennessee or Tanzania if you go through the museum you’re going to want to have more interest in your own family to ask your grandparents about their own stories."
Former U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander remembered Irwin Monday as an "engaging genius and generous friend."
He authored eight books about Appalachian culture, won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, grew the museum to include 35 log structures and welcomed thousands of visitors.
"A lot of people thought of him as this person who was a regal figure as a sort of Appalachian cultural educator," Meyer said. "To me, he was a guy who would just play hide and seek with me or teach me to dig potatoes out of the garden or fry an egg or shoot a gun."
Irwin was preceded in death by his wife of 53 years, Elizabeth McDaniel. His daughter now serves as president of the museum, where two of his grandchildren work.
A graveside service will be held at Norris Memorial Gardens at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 20. The procession will leave from Holley Gamble Funeral Home in Clinton at 3:00 p.m. A celebration of the life of John Rice Irwin will be held at the Museum of Appalachia on Sunday, April 24, 2022, at 2:00 p.m.