The Cumberland Trail Conference (CTC) was a membership based, affiliate organization of 501(c) (3) nonprofit, Tennessee Trails Association (TTA). Created in early 1997 by honest and dedicated members of the TTA, the mission of the Cumberland Trail Conference was to build, maintain, acquiring funding for, and promote the Cumberland Trail. The birth of this trail is still taking place and has been named by the State of Tennessee as the Justin P. Wilson Cumberland Trail State Park. Myself and thousands of other volunteers like me have given untold volunteer hours to move this trail towards completion. The trail will be approximately 300 miles long when completed and at this point we as volunteers have helped complete almost 200 of those miles. Recently the TTA concocted what can only be called a "Hostile Takeover" in conjunction with some secret meetings (unbeknown to the general membership of either the TTA or CTC) with officials of TDEC which oversees this State Park. The current leadership sprung the motion of Dissolution on their own Board at their recent regularly scheduled Board meeting and informed them before the vote that the Deputy Commissioner of TDEC, Brock Hill would no longer work with the leadership of the CTC and he supposedly had requested that the TTA take over the role of managing and building the remainder of the Cumberland Trail. I even understand that your name as the Governor of Tennessee was mentioned prior to the vote as being unhappy with the CTC. When it was asked at a Special Called meeting of the TTA after the takeover exactly what Mr. Hill had said verbatim the officer of the TTA which made the original motion of Dissolution stated that it was her impression that she came away with from the meeting with the State that they would no longer work with the CTC organization. The strange part is that earlier this year the CTC leadership had been meeting with TDEC as well as some of the State Park Rangers but no one had mentioned anything about the State having problems with the CTC or their plans for adding additional mileage to the trail for this year. The egregious part was that the same people involved in dissolving the CTC were also sitting on the Board of the CTC at the time they were plotting for its' demise. The past General Manager of the CTC, Tony Hook, had a tenuous relationship with TDEC at best. At times he felt forced to work through our State Legislative members on several endeavors due to the reluctance of Mr. Fulcher, the current State Park Manager of the Cumberland Trail State Park, to assist him in working towards the completion of the Cumberland Trail. The legislative members applied pressure to TDEC to do what they should have done all along and it worked. You might term that Tony's and Mr. Fulcher's relationship was on the acrimonious side. Tony was quoted as stating that he had to push, pull, and drag the CT State park along to accomplish as much as he was able to during his 7 years as manager before he resigned last year. I would really like to know if over $852,000 in grants and donations which was in the CTC bank account at the end of March 2014 had anything to do with the move by the TTA.

I personally would ask everyone that enjoys being in the Great Outdoors or has ever hiked a trail or volunteered their time in building or maintaining a trail to sign my petition to the Governor of the Great State of Tennessee. The best I could hope for is the reversal of this travesty by the TTA leadership and reinstatement of the CTC and its' Board and I will accept no less.