John Rice Irwin, American cultural historian and founder of the Museum of Appalachia, dies at 91

John Rice Irwin, the founder of the Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee, died Sunday.

He was 91.

Irwin's storytelling ability helped spark a deep interest in Appalachian culture, said Stephen Dean, the executive producer of WBIR's "The Heartland Series."

"He had a really keen interest in the lives of, I guess, what we call 'ordinary people,'" Dean said. "And I think the museum shows that keen interest — that there is value in collecting everyday items of people that aren't in the history books to learn how that culture worked."

Before Irwin, Southern Appalachia had been thought of "a center of poverty, and not much else," Dean said. But Irwin's dedication to asking questions about the culture and sharing it with others shifted that stereotype.

Irwin's early years

Irwin was born in Union County in December 1930. Shortly after he was born, his family moved to a farm outside of Clinton because their land would be flooded for the Norris Dam. They were forced to move again because of the Manhattan Project and settled in the Bethel community in Anderson County.

According to his obituary, Irwin joined the United States Army after graduating high school and was stationed in Germany during the Korean War. He received his bachelor's degree in history from Lincoln Memorial University and a master's degree in international law from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

He met his wife Elizabeth McDaniel Irwin at LMU, and together they had two daughters: Karen and Elaine.

Irwin's passion for the people and cultures of East Tennessee sparked when he was a child listening to his grandparents share their stories. According to his obituary, Irwin's grandfather told him, “You ought to keep the old-timey things that belonged to our people and start you a little museum sometime,” which inspired Irwin to create the Museum of Appalachia in Norris.

Stories 'keep people alive'

Before founding the museum, Irwin taught in public school. In 1962, he was elected superintendent of Anderson County Schools and became the youngest superintendent in Tennessee at 31, according to his obituary. He retired from teaching in 1980.

In his free time, Irwin traveled through Southern Appalachia collecting what would be the first artifacts for his museum. According to his obituary, Irwin purchased a historic cabin and restored it to what it would have looked like in 1898.

In 1969, the Museum of Appalachia opened and welcomed 600 visitors in its first year.

"Stories are how we keep people alive," Will Meyer, Irwin's grandson, said in an interview with Knox News on Tuesday. "One of the things about the museum is we have all kinds of mundane artifacts that seem like something you just throw away, but the stories behind them really give you insight into the culture into the character of the people that created them or the use them."

Now, the museum greets tens of thousands of guests per year and has expanded to 35 log structures, according to Irwin's obituary.

One of the museum's most popular events was the Tennessee Fall Homecoming, an annual music and heritage festival that lasted nearly 40 years until the museum stopped putting on the event after 2017.

The museum was popular in the 1980s thanks to promotion by Sen. Lamar Alexander, who was governor of Tennessee at the time.

"John Rice Irwin displayed Appalachian pioneer history in a way that no one else ever has. His tens of thousands of items in the Museum of Appalachia remind us that we don’t have to go outside our own back yards to find interesting people," Alexander said in a statement. "For sixty years he stayed up late into the night writing books and matching artifacts with stories so that we could better understand who we are. He taught us about ancestors who made or grew things instead of buying them. He was an engaging genius and a generous friend. Honey and I will miss him greatly."

In between meeting with celebrities and politicians who were eager to learn about Southern Appalachia, Irwin always made time for the family right in front of him.

"(My grandfather) was this person who seems to me to be important to other people, but at the same time, two hours after giving a speech to somebody important, he would come up and play hide and seek with me," Meyer told Knox News. "He was a big cut up and he was just my grandfather. He was a very loveable guy who loves to laugh as well."

One of the greatest lessons Meyer learned from his grandfather is that everybody is worth respect and worth listening to, no matter where they are from.

"There was no distinction between meeting somebody who's famous, and somebody who wasn't," Meyer said. "When I was young, he took me and my brother and sister on these trips to the most remote places of Appalachia you could possibly think of. ... He treated them with the same respect that he treated, you know, the most important dignitaries in the world that he met."

Irwin is survived by his daughter, Elaine Irwin Meyer, and her husband Edward William Meyer III; his brother and sister-in-law, David and Carolyn, and his three grandchildren, Maia Lindsey Gallaher and husband Jason Gallaher, John Rice Irwin Meyer and wife Sara Meyer, and Edward William Meyer IV.

A celebration of the life will be held at 2 p.m. April 24 at the Museum of Appalachia.

In lieu of flowers, Irwin's family asks for donations to the Museum of Appalachia to help preserve the culture and traditions of Southern Appalachia "for generations to come."

Rebecca Wright: Higher education reporter at Knox News
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: John Rice Irwin, founder of the Museum of Appalachia, dies at 91