Holston Home dedicates new barn
By Homer Marcum
GREENEVILLE, Tenn. – The children at Holston United Methodist Home for Children won't ever have to go off campus to ride horses again, thanks to the generosity of the George R. Johnson Charitable Trust and church volunteers who renovated the old dairy barn into an as-new equestrian facility.
Church and Holston Home officials dedicated the George R. Johnson Equestrian Barn to God's service and the children's enjoyment during ceremonies inside the barn on Jan. 9.
"This therapeutic, fun-filled program will help to compensate for so much these children have missed out on in their lives," said Bishop Ray Chamberlain.
Holston Home's adventure-based counselor, Lorrie Wright, spearheaded the effort after she found that the children loved going to an off-campus facility to ride horses.
"Our children simply love to ride horses because they can relate to those beautiful animals," Wright said. The barn was built in 1928 and housed a large herd of dairy cattle, and, later, beef cattle. In the early 1960s the herds were sold and the barn became a storage facility.
When Wright began taking Holston Home's children to a Greene County equestrian program during the 1990s, she discovered that the children benefited by interaction with horses.
"They gained confidence, and their self-esteem seemed to soar as they found that they could trust the horses and become friends with them," Wright said.
Art Masker, Holston Home's president and chief executive officer, thanked Doris Johnson and her daughter Janice Johnson Wilson for the donation from the George R. Johnson Charitable Trust that made restoration possible. He also thanked volunteers from the Holston Conference Volunteer Labor Program for providing most of the labor that brought the old barn back to life. The volunteers re-lined the barn's inside walls with pine boards cut from dead pine trees in the woods on Holston's Home's campus, trees that had died from pine-beetle infestation.
Five horses, all donated by Holston Home friends, now reside in the barn and romp in a three-acre fenced field.
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