Monument honors late president’s visit to Shoals

SHEFFIELD - Woody Stanley said he’s been trying for the past 40 years to get someone to erect a monument in the Shoals to honor the late President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

On Thursday, near the spot where Roosevelt delivered a speech Jan. 21, 1933, announcing the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a sandstone wall containing a large bronze bust of the 32nd president of the United States was unveiled.

A large crowd assembled at the intersection of Montgomery Avenue and First Street in downtown Sheffield for the occasion. The group included several Shoals residents who were present when Roosevelt visited the Shoals 75 years ago.

Kathryn Boyd Rice was a child when she, her sister and brother went to her grandfather’s second-floor office at the old Sheffield railroad building to watch the speech. The railroad office once stood behind the monument on First Street.

Rice said the windows from her grandfather’s office provided a clear view of the railroad tracks and where the president spoke from the rear of a specially made railroad car.

“He excited us, calling our area a sleeping giant,” Rice said.

She said Roosevelt’s programs, especially TVA, would lead to better lives for the residents of the Tennessee Valley.

“I was fortunate to see the rural electrification of the area,” she said.

Stanley, now 91, recalled how he hitchhiked from Spring Valley to Sheffield to see the president. He was 17 or 18 at the time. He and his father later found work with the Works Progress Administration, one of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.

“He was an articulate speaker,” Stanley said. “No one had better words than FDR.”

Local historian Richard Sheridan, who was a research chemist for TVA, said Roosevelt came to the “Muscle Shoals area” to visit Wilson Dam and one of the nitrate plants operating on what is now the TVA Reservation.

After delivering his speech in Sheffield, the president and his entourage, including Sen. George Norris, of Nebraska, who played a major role in the creation of TVA, rode to the dam and nitrate plants. Afterward, they traveled to Florence where Roosevelt made another speech at the corner of Tennessee and Court streets, Sheridan said.

When he returned to Sheffield, Sheridan said Roosevelt opted to visit Tuscumbia rather than take the train.

He said Roosevelt returned to the Tennessee Valley on Nov. 17, 1934, to once again visit the nitrate plants and inspect the construction of Wheeler Dam.

The intersection of Montgomery Avenue and First Street was closed briefly for the ceremony Thursday and the streets were decorated with American flags.

“This is a long-awaited affair, one that is long overdue for a man whose memory we honor today,” Sheffield Mayor Billy Don Anderson said.

Representatives from TVA and the Norfolk Southern Railway were also present.

Russ Corey can be reached at 740-5738 or russ.corey@timesdaily.com.