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Heritage Alliance holding annual award ceremony
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Lacy Garrison
Updated: May 16, 2018, 1:12 AM
Published: May 16, 2018, 1:13 AM

Heritage Alliance is holding its annual awards event this Thursday, May 17, at 5:30 p.m. The event will take place at the Stone-Pennebaker Place, located on 116 Towles Avenue. The current owners are beginning renovations and have invited everyone to attend.

The Stone-Pennebaker Place, built in 1857, is located on a high hill, formerly called Rebel Hill, north of McMinnville. The one-and-a-half story brick, Greek Revival house was built for Dillard Stone, whose untimely death in April 1857 came before the house was complete.

According to the National Register of Historic Places, the Stone-Pennebaker Place “is an excellent example of Greek Revival architecture of this scale. The house exhibits many features of the Greek Revival style: pedimented portico, distyle in antis entry, acanthus leaf motifs on the exterior and shouldered architrave surrounds on the interior.”

During this event, guest speaker Dr. Mary Evins will discuss the role of local women’s groups and the suffrage movement in Tennessee. Evins is a member of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Centennial Collaborative consisting of historians across the state, who document women’s work, call attention to women’s activism and honor the legacy of women in the public sphere as part of the 19th Amendment’s centennial anniversary.

Heritage Alliance serves as the chief preservation agent for Warren County.
Local law enforcement on the lookout for distracted driving
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Nikki Childers
Published: Apr 9, 2025, 2:43 AM

April is National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Distracted Driving Awareness Month and McMinnville Police Department (MPD) is on the roads to educate motorists about appropriate hands-free driving.

The amplified focus of cracking down on distracted driving is a nationwide initiative, with many states taking part. MPD Officer Mark Mara indicated the local department is increasing patrols, funded by overtime grants, to enforce and educate about Tennessee’s Hands Free Law.

“We’re trying to get people to change their habits,” Mara said. “There’s a lot of people that are distracted while driving, whether its their cell phones or not. When driving, there are already so many distractions, so having electronics in your hands while you’re driving down the road is dangerous. We need to focus on getting where we need to go and getting there safely.”

According to its records, NHTSA estimates 3,308 lives were lost in crashes involving distracted drivers in 2022 and 8% of all fatal crashes could be attributed to the same. To illustrate the point on a larger scale, it approximates over 32,000 people have died and nearly 290,000 were left injured from crashes attributed to distracted motorists between 2013 and 2022.

Violation of the Tennessee Hands Free Law is a Class C misdemeanor and traffic citations based on the violation are considered moving traffic violations. A first-time offense is typically $50 with third-time offenses and violations resulting in a crash rising to $100; citations received in a work zone while workers or present or in a marked school zone while flashes are in operation carry a penalty of $200. Three points are also added to a motorist’s driving record for each violation with 12 points leading to license suspension.

While the law specifically mentions hands in its name, it is similarly illegal to prop the phone up with any other part of their body.

“We’re going to be stopping vehicles whose operators are distracted by using their cell phones or other electronic devices,” Mara said. “It is against the law for a motorist to be holding their electronic device or having it on their body, so if you’re holding it to your ear or with your shoulder, it’s against the law all the same.”

When using GPS technology, Mara recommends investing in windshield-, vent- or dash-mounted mobile device holder to support the phone while using it for those purposes so your hands can remain on the wheel without compromising your ability to navigate to a destination.

“I understand that your cell phones are a lifeline and we get that — we use them ourselves for GPS. If you have an important phone call that’s coming in and you really need to focus on talking to that person, just pull over to the side of the road and turn on your emergency lights,” Mara said. “When you’re on a phone call, you’re not paying attention to all of the things you need to. You’re going to be concentrating on that conversation and you’re going to find yourself drifting in your lane, going through a stop sign or not stopping properly before a red light.”

Mara additionally recommended drivers sync their phones to their vehicles in models with Bluetooth capabilities and to use phone mounts that do not obstruct vision of the roadways through the windshield.

“The greatest danger of distracted driving is ending up in a crash that was absolutely avoidable, which might hurt yourself or someone else,” Mara said. “You’ve got a lot in front of you when you’re driving and a vehicle is a piece of machinery. We want all motorists to be driving safely on the roads and getting to their destinations without misadventure.”

Warnings and citations will be rendered at officers’ discretion during the increased patrols.