An imperfect hero, Anna Last put her children first

NEWPORT – The tiny Cocke County community of Point Pleasant had been soaked by showers that morning then made humid by the June 4 sun when the burial service began.

Most of the mourners wore blue jeans, some with tank tops and ball caps. One woman kicked off her flip-flops and stood on top of the mound beside the open grave to get a photo of the grieving family.

A mule-drawn wagon bore the body to its final resting place.

Pastor James Hance said the gathering of nearly 200 was the largest he’d seen for a burial, and he’d been ministering to Point Pleasant Road Baptist Church for 15 years.

That was no surprise, though. Anna Last always had a way of attracting people.

She’d done it in life, and now she’d done it in death – in her foolhardy, heroic death.

“She wasn’t the best momma,” her eldest son Dillion, 13, told hundreds of mourners at the funeral the night before, “and she wasn’t the worst momma. But she was my momma.”

Living life loudly

Anna's momma was Mary “Ms. Teetsie” Redman, who had brought Anna home from the hospital as a baby 29 years earlier. She had raised the girl as a daughter, even though Ms. Teetsie really was Anna’s maternal grandmother.

Anna was a hell-raiser from early on, always known as a smart aleck. Two years after Dillion was born and his father was out of the picture, a second son, Dakota, came along. His father, Geoffery Last, married Anna. But he moved to Greenville, and Anna’s youngest son, 6-year-old Silas, had a different father.

“I think any child that would’ve had her as a mom would’ve been the luckiest kid,” said Anna’s friend, Alexis Gray.  “Because not only did she love them with everything she had, but she took those boys everywhere. She did everything with them.”

Sometimes that even meant scrapes with the law, such as a 2014 DUI with children in the car.

But Anna was driven and stubborn, too, qualities that helped her earn her GED after Dillion was born, and her exuberance was irresistible.

“If you were in a bad mood, she’d put a smile on your face,” said her best friend, Crystal Banks. “She wouldn’t let you have a bad time or be in a bad mood; that’s just who she was.”

Anna drove a white Dodge pickup and was loud, said Alexis Gray. “Loud, boisterous.”

“There wasn’t a stranger with Anna,” she said. “You either loved her or wanted to choke her, but most everybody loved her.”

Above all, horses were Anna’s passion. She bought, sold and trained them. She rode them camping and raccoon hunting. At one time, she had 20; she had eight when she died.

The dammed river

They don’t make map dots small enough to show unincorporated corners of Tennessee like Point Pleasant, nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and a bend in the Nolichucky River. The main road is just a strip of blacktop that weaves through a row of homes, doublewides and gravel driveways.

A few miles down the Nolichucky, American Enka Corp. used to have a textile mill. In its heyday, it employed thousands and ran its own fire department, general store and hospital. The factory buildings lit up the sky so much that out-of-towners sometimes pulled off Interstate 81 thinking the plant was the nearby city of Morristown.

To funnel water into the plant to cool it, American Enka built a low-head dam across the river. The mill is gone now, but the dam remains. The 115-mile Nolichucky rolls along gently enough, a lazy river, until it reaches the Old Enka Dam. Then the waters roil viciously.

More:Dams like the one that killed Anna Last are 'drowning machines'

Visitors hear the roar of the water long before they see the dam. The muddy flow over the top kicks off the hydraulic action beneath the dam, which turns and pulls water below, spits it back out and turns and pulls it again.

It’s not unusual for craft to get stuck in a cyclone of rushing water and stay in one place for hours, spinning like a bath toy when water is let out of the tub. Sometimes the craft almost immediately fills with water and sinks.

Overlooking the dam is an old brick, two-story pumping station, its windows broken.  Mother Nature is reclaiming the space: vines, brush and trees cover every crevice.

On one side of the building a wooden sign reads: “WARNING KEEP BACK – DANGEROUS DAM." Hidden behind weeds, the sign is no longer visible from the river.

On the other side of the building is a large, metal box that says "LIFE LINE." It sits empty.

Over the dam, under the water

Anna knew the Nolichucky like the back of her hand. She and her family had rafted it many times. It looked a little high when they shoved off from Chamber’s Farm on June 1. But they were told it was running at just 1,800 cubic feet per second, not much over the 1,500 average.

In fact, the waters were flowing at nearly 3,000 cubic feet per second, or twice the normal flow.

"I’m not trying to take anything away from her," said Capt. Hugh Moore Jr. of the Hamblen County Sheriff's Office, "but at the same time, yeah, that was a very poor decision to get in that water.”

The expedition was two adults and five children. Anna’s son Dillion was in a kayak, as was his 13-year-old girlfriend, Sara Loyd. Anna, her son Silas, Crystal Banks and her two children were in a raft bought at Walmart.

Everything went fine until the group was 100 yards from the Old Enka Dam. Anna and Crystal then tried to head for shore, but the water was moving too fast.

Downstream, Kyle Tilley, 67, was fishing at his favorite spot on the lower side of the dam. From there, he saw the kayaks and raft approach. By then, Anna was out of the raft, swimming, trying to tow it to the riverbank.

Tilley saw the small craft strike the dam, then go over. As chaos ensued, he called 911.

Little Silas was flipped out of the raft, and Sara and Dillon were thrown from their kayaks. Dillion landed near the raft, which was spinning and bucking under the dam. He helped push Silas back into the raft. Then, Anna, swimming nearby, was able to get Dillion in, too.

Sara, however, was sucked underwater then spit out downstream. Tilley saw her “bobbing up and down” and managed to grab her unharmed.

For more than 20 minutes, the others struggled in the middle of the river as the water buffeted them.

At one point, Anna was dragged down by the current but re-emerged several feet downstream. Crystal yelled at her to swim to shore and get help. Instead, Anna swam back to the trapped raft to try to help there.

The second time the current pulled her down she didn’t come back.

“I done saw her floating down the river,” Tilley said, “just saw her shoulders sticking up, face in the water.”

The Walmart raft wasn’t made for rapids. But its webbed, open center likely saved lives. As water flowed in from the top of the dam, it flowed back out the bottom of the raft, and everyone on board remained afloat.

A video of the rescue that followed shows emergency crews trying to reach the group. Water rips at the raft, but it doesn’t give way or submerge. Eventually, the rescuers pull the raft to the bank by using a throw bag, a 75-foot rope bundled at the end and catchable in the stranded craft.

When Anna’s body was found, she wasn’t wearing a life jacket. But the experts don’t think that would have made a difference.

“The way the water goes over it, it just starts rolling,” said Capt. Moore. “Once it grabs you, you ain’t coming out of there until it decides to let go of you. No, you get caught in that, a life jacket’s not going to help.”

The final ride

Three days later, family and friends rode horses behind the wagon bearing Anna’s casket. Many of them were Anna's horses, a way to honor her one final time.

The funeral home had a hearse available, but the family wanted nothing to do with it. It was hidden across the street, behind the schoolhouse-turned-general-store-turned-vacant-building with peeling, white paint.

Mourners smoked cigarettes under shade trees as they waited for the casket to arrive. When it did, a saddle, a gift from Anna’s father, sat atop it.

Then the Point Pleasant Road Baptist Church bell tolled 29 times, once for each of Anna’s years of life. Bobo, her favorite horse, was led to her casket, and Dillion lifted the family’s aging mutt, Fred, up to Anna’s face to kiss her goodbye.

After the ceremony, the rain came again. Some folks ran for their cars and lifted trucks. But many stayed. They stood chatting about Anna, about the mules and the horses, about the weather, and about family.

Some just sat on tombstones and waited.

Nobody knows for sure who will take care of Anna’s boys now. Dillion has only met his father a couple of times. Silas’s father lives out of town. Dakota lives with his father in Greeneville.

It’s complicated.

Ms. Teetsie claims she’s raised 43 kids, which seems believable given the number of people at the funeral who took care of her. Anna was one of the first.

The 82-year-old is known throughout the region for her love of children and her willingness to help. She’s donated bicycles, toothbrushes and prayers for decades.

But this may all be too much.

“I may never get over this,” she said. “I buried my father and my mother and my wonderful husband and I don’t know who all. But this is my daughter, and I don’t know how I’m going to get over it. It’s a pain. I can’t even tell you how bad it is.”

Still, God may not be done with her yet.

“He’s always laughing at me,” she said. “I tell him I’m hobbled and I’m crippled, and He just laughs at me.”

This story was based on interviews with Mary (Ms. Teetsie) Redman; Crystal Banks; Alexis Gray; John Dillion Blackman; Geoffery Last; James Hance; Kyle Tilley; and Capt. Hugh Moore Jr., who are named in the article, as well as funeral worker Alan Murr; Danny Houseright of the Morristown-Hamblen Emergency Medical Service; Chris Bell of the Hamblen County Emergency Management Agency; Tyler and Edith Gilbert of the Gilbert farms adjoining the Nolichucky River; and Dawn Loyd, mother of Sara, who was rescued from the river.