by Kevin Cummings, Messenger Staff Writer
The flames danced and destroyed, smoking the beloved wisteria draping the front porch and social media lit up with angst and photos of Rebel’s Rest burning on the night of July 23.
Jeannie Babb, a local writer and graduate of the School of Theology, wrote a poem while watching firefighters battle the blaze. “Rebels Don’t Rest” finishes with these lines: “If I walked down here to cry/For countless unrememories licked into the sky/The smoke has wicked me dry/And instead the word is ‘Fight!’”
The Sewanee Volunteer Fire Department did fight and managed to save the first floor and the wisteria, as more than two dozen onlookers stood in small groups, some talking quietly, others shedding tears.
Rebel’s Rest, the family home of Maj. George Fairbanks, a Civil War veteran, Renaissance man and one of the founders of the University of the South, has birthed countless memories since its construction in 1866. In more recent years, Rebel’s Rest served as an event venue and guest house for University visitors.
Rene Fairbanks Dudney Lynch, the great-granddaughter of Maj. Fairbanks, moved to Rebel’s Rest in 1935 when she was 3 years old. She lived with her grandmother, mom and younger sister, Sara.
“I was just devastated (about the fire),” Rene said via telephone from her home in Los Altos, Calif. “I still think about it a lot.”
The house had three gables in front, and Rene’s bedroom was upstairs on the left. The family had chickens, and the girls played in a sandbox in the backyard. As teenagers they would host dance parties in the house’s center room. Rene also loved to sit in the swing on the front porch beneath the wisteria reading Russian novels and “Gone with the Wind.”
“It was a wonderful place to grow up,” Rene said. “It was right in the middle of the University and really neat. We were so free. We wandered all over campus and played a lot in Abbo’s Alley.”
Her mother, Rainsford Fairbanks Glass Dudney, the granddaughter of Maj. Fairbanks and his wife, Susan, loved to tell the girls stories about the history of the house. Rene chronicled some of those stories from recordings of her mother in the book “Rebel’s Rest Remembers.”
Dudney recalls in the book her summers spent in Sewanee with her grandparents, the smell of fresh coffee in the morning, visiting bishops and dignitaries, and big family meals with the kids laughing as the Major always got food in his beard.
“Grandma and Grandpa Fairbanks were the center of it all,” she said. “The huge family that came to spend every summer at Rebel’s Rest revolved around them.”
Maj. Fairbanks had a little office in a separate building in the side yard where he could escape the chaos, and his wife had her own private sitting room where no children were allowed, Dudney recalled.
Fairbanks, who served in the Civil War as a quartermaster at Confederate hospitals, gave the home its name, Rene said. He died there in 1906 surrounded by family in the big front downstairs bedroom. Long after the Major’s death, Rebel’s Rest continued to be a special place to many.
Steve Keetle shared this story about his friend and University co-worker Sarah Roberts: “Sarah grew up in Sherwood and as a little girl, every Sunday after church she and her family would drive up the Mountain to go to the Monteagle Flea Market. They would always take the long route and go down University Avenue past Rebel’s Rest. And as a little girl, every week she would be in the back of the car and stare amazed at the building as she was absolutely sure, without a doubt, that Rebel’s Rest was where Little Red Riding Hood lived.”
Read part two of the Rebel’s Rest memories in next week’s newspaper.
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