It was the early 1940s, and America was at war. Proctor had no idea the visit meant their comfortable world of farming, church, and the sawmill where her daddy earned a steady paycheck was about to disappear. They snapped a photo of the two girls and their dog standing on the cabin’s front porch. The TVA staff were tasked with preparing the way for construction of Fontana Dam, in what is today part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Now 86, Proctor was just 5 or 6 that day the car stopped outside their Swain County, North Carolina home and unloaded a pair of Tennessee Valley Authority representatives. It was a car-the first they’d ever seen scale the rugged route. Christine Cole Proctor was home alone with her big sister at the family cabin on Forney Creek when she heard an unfamiliar rumble climbing the isolated mountain road.
