The Garrett Family Home Page
online since August 19, 1996

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Below is some basic information about us

Hi! We are Virginia and David Garrett of Newport, the county seat of Cocke County , Tennessee. The picture of us above was taken at our daughter Arwen's wedding on May 20, 2006. Weddings seem to be about the only time we are too happy to be self-conscious and take decent pictures - but since we have had two big family weddings since then, there are probably more good pictures of us around than there ever were before. You can check them out in the Galleries portion of this website.

As you can tell from the picture we still enjoy each others' company after being married for over 40 years. From 1980 through 1999 we were active in Episcopal Marriage Encounter, which is a program designed for couples with good marriages (that's good, not perfect) who want to make them the best marriages they possibly can be.

We have a lot of friends in scattered places around the USA and beyond, and this home page is one of our ways of staying in touch. Think of it as a constantly updated year round Christmas newsletter.

The picture at right was taken just a few miles from our home by daughter Arwen some years ago. We hope it helps explain why, though we are not from this area originally, we were (and are) happy to stay here since we moved here in 1978.

We are very proud of our children (two are homegrown, and one we claim as our "French daughter!"). Click here to learn more about Geoffrey Garrett, Arwen Garrett Wagers, and Emilie Marceau Colpart. They are all grown, married, self supporting and happy. Three for three is pretty good.

Virginia worked at the Cocke County office of the Tennessee Department of Human Services here in Newport from 1984 through 2004, and is now a supervisor at the DHS Regional Call Center in Morristown. For 15 seasons Virginia has also worked a second job at DollyWood , a local theme park, where she works in the Festivals area of the park.

Virginia also loves working in the yard when sh can, and has filled it with flowers in the spring and summer. Our special pride and joy is the variety of daylilies. To see some of the results of her work, check out our family's house and yard page .

Virginia and David are both 1969 graduates of Messick High School, a historic high school in Memphis which was closed in 1980 and demolished in 1982. There are still a lot of old Messick alumni around though. David is the webmaster of Still On The Prowl, the Messick Class of 1969 website.
Virginia and David are also both 1973 graduates of Rhodes College , which was known as Southwestern at Memphis while we were there; click on its link to check out our alma mater, one of the nation's best small liberal arts institutions. We are excited that our daughter followed in our footsteps at Rhodes in 1999 and graduated in 2003 - the fifth person in our family to get a Bachelor of Arts degree there. (Virginia's two sisters are also alumni).

We also enjoy birdwatching - we've turned our backyard into a mini bird sanctuary - , good music of (almost) all sorts, and good movies!

We're not much on sports, but we've always enjoyed the University of Tennessee Lady Vols . For the fourth season now we have had season tickets; really good ones too, on the tenth row right behind the visitors' bench. Not only do we enjoy ourselves immensely, but the team obviously really likes us being there, since they went on to win their seventh and eighth national championships. The 2008-2009 season was more difficult with a team of freshmen, but we loved watching them develop as a team - and it certainly paid off in the last two seasons!

One thing that most people find quite odd about us - we have not had TV service for the last 12 years in the house. Obviously we have a TV since we watch a lot of movies. We aren't diehards, we just don't get anything from TV that would justify the expense. We discontinued the service when we realized we hadn't even watched it in more than 6 months.

David graduated in 1977 from the School of Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Since 1978 he has served as (first vicar, then) rector at Episcopal Church of the Annunciation here in Newport, where we are all active members, and is active in the community.

After years as a runner and participating in road races, David is now an active walker who walks about 20 miles weekly. He also enjoys photography and often enters local and regional photography contests. A sampling of his photos can be seen in the Galleries part of the website.

Virginia takes part in a local Middle Eastern folk dance troupe, and the last couple of years we have taken up ballroom dancing, and greatly enjoy it! We are members of the East Tennessee Ballroom Dance Club in Knoxville and make their dances as often as we can. At this point we are so hooked on dancing together we simply seek out opportunities to do so whenever and however we can! We are better at the Latin dances than the "smooth" dances like foxtrot, though we do a pretty decent waltz & swing. We usually have a private lesson & a public lesson weekly, and go out dancing at least once (sometimes twice) a week.

Animals of all sorts have always been part of our lives; dogs (especially greyhounds), cats (lots), fish (lots), gerbils, birds, turtles; we're just not happy unless other species are around us, even though they're a lot of hassle! Check out our many "critter pages" on the site menu.

Thanks for visiting our home page. Come back again for updates on news and new links!

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 TDStats.com - Hit Counter & Website Statistics  visits to this site since this counter was installed in April 2007. (Our previous counter recorded 15,000+ hits).
Linking conventions of this site: All menu links (other than Gallery links) open in the current page. All text links, and the Gallery links, open in a new window or tab.
The black & white photo at the head of the page is © Hancock Photography of Knoxville, Tennessee. Used by permission.

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