1942

Half the Hendersonville businesses district burned on November 17, 1942, after wind scattered a small controlled fire near Gallatin Road and Walton Ferry Road.
Of the six buildings that defined Hendersonville, three of them were completely leveled while electricity was lost when utility poles burned. Volunteers attempted a bucket brigade using the closest well but eventually could do little more than watch the flames until fire engines from Gallatin and Nashville arrived.
The Gallatin News Examiner chastised the community for having no fire service. Many residents openly discussed moving away after the loss of Bloodworth’s general store, the post office, a doctor’s office and The Bank of Hendersonville.
Principal V.G. Hawkins responded by organizing 30 men into the Civic Club, which purchased a fire engine within five years and provided other city-like services for another two decades.
In the 1960s the Civic Club initiated the idea of incorporating a city government, and residents approved the idea in 1968. The young city began offering professional fire service in the early 1970s. The Civic Club disbanded in 1975, donating their last penny to the Hendersonville Public Library.

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1970

On November 5, 1970, Dr. Hal Ramer and several others broke ground for Volunteer State Community College.
Ramer, the school’s first president, had helped choose the location for the school’s first four buildings between Gallatin and Hendersonville.
With construction uncomplete in the fall of 1972 Vol State’s first classes were held in several buildings in Gallatin. The first two enrollees, John Newman and Joni Steinhauer, were from Hendersonville. Newman was the son of Hendersonville Mayor Dink Newman. Steinhauer, now Worsham, was the son of state representative John Steinhauer. Including them, the school boasted 581 students at the beginning of the quarter. College classes moved to their permanent site during the school year. In December 1973, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools granted Vol State full accreditation.
The effects of the college upon the Hendersonville community have been noticeable in many ways. But an unintended consequence became huge. At a time when Hendersonville residents felt like outcasts in their county, when the governments of Hendersonville and Gallatin were facing each other in lawsuits, and when the county government often dismissed issues specific to Hendersonville…Vol State brought the county together. The campus provided neutral territory. The address was in Gallatin, but it was far from the center of any faction. HHS graduates studied next to GHS graduates. Opposing government officials sat next to each other in meeting rooms.

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1972

When Hendersonville residents cast ballots in the November 2, 1972, presidential election, they also voted to allow package liquor sales in Hendersonville for the first time.
The city commissioners passed an ordinance to implement the referendum by deciding to allow three liquor retailers, requiring that they be within 1,000 feet of Gallatin Road and more than 1,000 feet away from churches, schools or public institutions. Twenty-one people applied for licenses.
The licenses were granted to William and Darlene Sinks for Bluegrass Drive at Gallatin Road, Frederick Miller and Harry Frith’s Wine Cellar on New Shackle Island Road, and Thomas Dolan, Jimmy Kephart, and James and Dorothy Craft for the intersection of Gallatin Road and Center Point Road.

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1972

After almost two years of informal discussion, Hendersonville city commissioners created the Hendersonville Municipal Airport Authority on November 30, 1972. Its chairman was Larry S. McClanahan, and its purpose was to build an airport in Hendersonville.
The Sumner County Commission appropriating $40,000 toward planning for the future facility. The focus widened to consider a seaplane terminal on Old Hickory Lake and a heliport, creating a stir about possible locations. That stir, and the opposition that developed about an airport site, gradually killed the idea. The airport authority returned a little more than $30,000 in early 1979 as focus seemed to shift toward improvements to Gallatin’s airport.

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1989

Hendersonville residents voted to approve liquor by the drink in early November 1989.
Prior to the vote wine and liquor could be bought in three stores to take home and in only one restaurant, where it could be consumed on premises. That restaurant, Dickey’s, had been approved prior to the city incorporating in 1969. Private clubs such as Bluegrass Country Club could sell drinks, too, but only to members and guests.
Without the capability to have a bar, most national casual dining restaurants had refused to locate in Hendersonville. A lot of them had locations near Rivergate, where many Hendersonville residents went for a sit-down meal. Those residents were not necessarily looking for a drink; they just wanted a nice restaurant.
That desire—to enjoy a casual dining restaurant–was the focus of the campaign to pass the referendum. The advocates for LBD predicted that restaurants would build in Hendersonville if they could serve beer and alcohol. The vote totals were 4,509 to 3,777.

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