Tennessee Turfgrass – Julie Holt, Content Director, TheTurfZone.com
The Turf Zone: Welcome to The Turf Zone. In this episode of Tennessee Turfgrass, we’re interviewing Frank Turner, General Manager of Tennessee Green Lawn and Landscape and recipient of the Tom Samples Turfgrass Professional of the Year. Frank, thanks so much for talking to me. 
Frank Turner: Thanks for having me, I appreciate the opportunity.
 
TTZ: Well, I’m going to just start at the beginning. Let’s go way back, and tell me a little bit about how you got into the turfgrass industry.
FT: Sure. I started when I was probably in high school, maybe after my senior year, I took a job at a golf course in Middle Tennessee, in Hendersonville. It was Bluegrass Country Club, and I’d played golf before, I enjoyed the game of golf, and it was just an opportunity for a summer job, so I took that after graduating high school. My freshman year in college I was planning to major in forestry, and noticed quite a few students in that program, this was the early 70s and I think everybody wanted to be in forestry, so it looked like the job market might not be that favorable after four years, so I decided to change my major and went and talked to the department head at UT and found out that they offered a program in turfgrass management and so I changed my major going into my sophomore year.
 
TTZ: And you had the privilege of having as your advisor Dr. Callahan, is that right?
FT: Yes, Dr. Lloyd Callahan was my advisor and I still remember speaking to him the very first time, asking him about job possibilities and what the program was like and he was my advisor throughout my four years at UT.
 
TTZ: So what happened after your studies at UT? How did you start actually working in the business?
FT: Again, Dr. Callahan was instrumental in pretty much all of the golf course jobs that I got after I graduated from UT, indirectly or directly. He had encouraged me to apply for a scholarship from the Georgia Golf Course Superintendents Association, which was the Charlie Danner Scholarship, and I was fortunate enough to receive that award. Charlie Danner was a golf course superintendent that was noted in the southeast. He was the superintendent at Richland Country Club in Nashville at one time. He was also superintendent at Capitol City Country Club in Atlanta, and he was noted at the time for converting bermudagrass greens to bentgrass greens, which is somewhat ironic in that now we’re converting bentgrass back to bermudagrass. I received that scholarship award and was asked to apply for the position of assistant superintendent at Capitol City Country Club in Atlanta and I took that job, was there for about two-and-a-half years before moving back to Tennessee and a superintendent’s position at Graymere Country Club in Columbia, Tennessee.
 
TTZ: And have you stayed in Tennessee since then?
FT: Yes, I was in Columbia for about six years. In October of 1986, I took the superintendent’s job at Cherokee Country Club in Knoxville and was there from 1986 to 1998. I’m thankful that I was given an opportunity with the Litton Cochran family here in Knoxville to form a landscape department and build that department, supervise that department and we maintained their properties. They were owner-operators of 31 McDonald’s restaurants in and around Knoxville, and we worked exclusively for them and within their company just maintaining their properties. And then in October of 2018, Mr. Cochran decided to retire, and he sold a number of his stores, but still kept nine of them. And so I had to make a decision what I was going to do next. Because nine stores was not going to keep myself, and four men that work with me, busy 40 hours a week. So Mr. Cochran and I talked it over and with his financial backing and his business and professional experience,