Vivian Underwood Shipe

06 Oct Vivian Underwood Shipe

What is your vision for Knoxville 10 years from now?

I see Knoxville almost as it was in the beginning: historical areas like Burlington are reborn and part of a busy, vibrant city; diversity in all areas; a thriving waterfront; affordable housing for the elderly, poor, and aged out youth; the mentally ill are cared for and not jailed.

What are you reading that is on your nightstand?

Conflict Free Living by Joyce Meyer, Better than Good by Zig Ziglar, and The Words of Martin Luther King with forward by Corretta Scott King

What is your favorite Knoxville memory?

Working as banquet manager during and after the World’s Fair in 1984 at the Hilton. I was working as a banquet waitress and was handling the coat closet during a reunion of UT students of which I had been a part of the class. The manager overheard some of them laughing and talking about me . He asked me did I hear them and offered to move me from that event. I explained that I had to drop out my senior year as my mother had cancer and I was the oldest and life happens.
(I would later complete my first degree at age 41.) He didn’t say anything else but the next morning I was offered the position as assistant banquet manager and would later become the main banquet manager when he transferred to Florida. It was confirmation that promotion comes from the Lord.

What is the best advice you have received from a mentor, and who was that mentor?

My mentor was my paternal grandmother Louise Underwood. She was the maid for 50 years for the Walkup family who started Home Federal Bank. She raised two sons by herself after her husband left her when they were toddlers. They were, Paul Underwood, my uncle, the first black firefighter in Knoxville and one of the FIRST 12 Black U S Marshals in the USA. Her other son, my father George Underwood, would be one of the first African Americans hired by the postal service and would become the first Union President of the National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees. Her advice: AGE IS NOTHING BUT A NUMBER…I AM A 25 YEAR OLD WOMAN INSIDE OF A 84 YEAR OLD BODY. An example of her tenacity was her ability to go to yard sales and moving events with me and my children, and her strength and endurance!
When I was 40 and she was 70, she could out work me picking greens in the field! I would fall out after an hour and lay under a tree…she would continue on picking greens for 3 MORE HOURS, stopping by every once in awhile to see if I was okay. THEN she would go home and look them and cook them!!

What advice would you give to your 16 year old self?

“Be very brave and courageous, everything will be okay.” Since I was 12 years old I had been taking the lead in helping with my four siblings. Our mom had several bouts with cancer and was sick thru our brief time with her. Our father would die a few months after I turned 17 and my mom would die when I was 23. I learned by fire how to move the cold food to the neighbors house till I could get the lights back on, how to make a cheerleader suit because we could not afford to buy one for my little sister, how to call for the cab to take my mom to chemo because we did not have a car. I can still remember Clarence Carter song PATCHES running thru my head during those days. I remember….