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The Wall creator passes away in Florence

By Tom Smith, Senior Staff Writer, Florence Times-Daily

FLORENCE – For more than 30 years, Tom Hendrix worked on building a rock wall as a monument to his great-great grandmother whose English name was Mary Hipp, a Yuchi Indian who was among those forced to leave the Southeast for Oklahoma when she was 14.

“The Wall,” as it has grown to be known, contains rocks precisely placed one-by-one, from every state and 130 countries.

“(The Wall) was a passion for him. He loved it, and loved to talk about it,” said his son Danny.

Tom Hendrix died Friday night after a short illness. He was 83.

“Tom Hendrix was a remarkable person. He was a brilliant man,” Florence Mayor Steve Holt said. “What he did to commemorate history, what he did for this area, it will be long, long remembered.”

Hendrix loved to tell the story of Hipp, whose Native American name was Te-lah-nay, and how she walked for five years to make her way from Oklahoma back to the Shoals. She was among the Native Americans forced from their homes and onto reservations in Oklahoma during the Indian Removal Act of 1830 under President Andrew Jackson. Native Americans were forced from their homes by federal troops, rounded up and sequestered in camps where conditions were so bad, many died. The survivors were forced to make the long trek to reservations in the west, most on foot. Thousands died during the journey.

“When I got to the nation (in Oklahoma), I listened to the river and there were no songs. I knew then, I would die,” Hendrix said in recounting his ancestor’s words during an interview with this newspaper.

Hendrix said his grandmother, Te-lah-nay’s granddaughter, told him stories about Te-lah-nay when he was a little boy. He said he wanted to do something to honor her memory.

The wall is never finished, he said. Its meandering shape is indicative of Te-lah-nay’s travels.

“She did not make an ordinary journey. I did not build an ordinary wall,” Hendrix said. The wall and the prayer circle within, draws a near constant stream of visitors from all over the world, including members of other Indian nations.

“She made it one step at a time, and I built this wall one stone at a time,” Hendrix said during his talk to the thousands of people who have visited The Wall over the years.

Hendrix also authored a book, “If the Legends Fade,” about Te-lah-nay’s journey.

The pride in his voice as Hendrix talked about The Wall wasn’t because he had worn out 1,400 pairs of gloves, 27 wheelbarrows and four trucks hauling the more than 6.5 million pounds of stones he gathered in fields and creeks, but of what it meant and the legacy of his great-great-grandmother.

“He brought The Wall to life with his stories and he loved to tell them, and people loved to hear them,” Holt said.

Lauderdale County Commissioner Fay Parker said Hendrix’s story has been told by thousands who have visited The Wall and heard its history.

“Tom was proud of The Wall and that he was able to share the memory of his great-great-grandmother,” Parker said.

Angie Pierce, of the North Alabama Mountain Lakes Association, said The Wall is one of the most visited sites off the Natchez Trace and is a significant Native American attraction in the region.

Danny Hendrix said his father loved to play golf as well as work on the wall. He was visiting his dad at the hospital and they were watching a golf tournament on television.

“There were times he would go to meet his buddies early in the morning to play golf and he would show up with a truck load of rocks that he had picked up somewhere on his way,” Danny Hendrix said. “He would play 18 holes of golf and then go out and work on The Wall. To me he was The Wall. Without him, there wouldn’t be a wall.”

Hendrix was instrumental in the Singing River Bridge getting its name.

“In his book about my great-great-great-grandmother, he wrote that she said you could hear the river sing when she came back,” Danny Hendrix said. “He changed it to Singing River, and worked with former state legislators Bobby Denton and Tammy Irons to get the bridge named.

“He got ‘Singing River’ going and there is ‘Singing River’ everywhere, which is really special when you think about the musical heritage of this area.”

Georgia Carter Turner, executive director of the West Volusia, Florida Tourism office, developed a close friendship with Hendrix while she worked for North Alabama Mountain Lakes and the Florence-Lauderdale Tourism office.

“I adored him. From the first time I met him, we had a special connection. He was like my grandfather,” Turner said. “People can talk all they want to about The Wall but when you see it, experience it and hear (Hendrix) tell the story, it’s magical.”

Turner said she often brought travel writers to see Hendrix at The Wall.

“One sent me a message this morning after she heard he had died about what a special person he was and that if there was ever a man ready to go it was Tom Hendrix,” Carter said. “Another one said Tom must have gotten a letter from Saint Peter and he had a project for him.”

Holt said it was evident that what Hendrix did, he did from “his heart.”

“His passing is sad, but his life, the history he loved and the legacy he build for his great-great-grandmother will live on in The Wall.”

His legacy will also live on in a 2015 Grammy-winning song written and sung by Roseanne Cash after she visited The Wall. Cash performed the song, which was a part of her award-winning 2015 album, “The River & The Thread”, on the David Letterman Show.

“I’m going down to Florence, gonna wear a pretty dress, I’ll sit on top of the magic wall with the voices in my head,” she wrote.

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