by

Dr. Robert Fulbright

Welcome to Lake Junaluska and to North Carolina. On behalf of the Fulbrights from this part of the country, let me welcome you to Lake Junaluska and North Carolina. For the last 13 and 1/2 years, we have lived in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1993, I received in the mail one day an invitation to attend a National Fulbright Reunion in Springfield, Missouri. Since we were only about 250 miles from Springfield, I decided to attend and drove over on Saturday morning and had a delightful day. For the first time, I heard something about the origin of the Fulbright Family in this country. I mistakenly thought that we had originally come from Holland and that we were Dutch. However, in Springfield that day, I learned that our founding ancestor who first came to America was German and probably lived in the Berlin area and that his name was not Fulbright but was Johann Wilhelm Vollbrecht. You will hear more about him tonight from our North Carolina resident historian--Judy Fulbright. At that same meeting, you can imagine my surprise when David Fulbright began sharing about his visit with the North Carolina Fulbrights, and told of visiting my mother at Lake Junaluska. He then showed slides of the beautiful Memorial Chapel at Lake Junaluska that my father, Guy Fulbright had built in the late 1940's.

The first of February of this year, my wife, Pat, and I moved to North Carolina to our home here at Lake Junaluska. You can imagine my surprise and delight when one day, soon after we arrived, I received in the mail from David Fulbright in Kansas City a notice that the next national Fulbright reunion would be held at Lambuth Inn at Lake Junaluska, N. C.--a hotel that we can see from our house!

Later in the spring, I had a call and then a visit from Judy Fulbright who lives in Catawba, N.C. who was busy making plans for this gathering.

I will give you some brief and sketchy information about our branch of the Fulbrights. My great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson Fulbright, was the oldest son of Barnett Fulbright and Elizabeth Messer. He married Julia Ann Rogers, the daughter of Robert Rogers and the granddaughter of Hugh Rogers, a Revolutionary War soldier. The Rogers family is buried in the Fines Creek Community Cemetery here in Haywood County. Andrew Jackson Fulbright married Julia Ann whom we know had at least 640 acres of farm land--so he married well! Part of this land they leased and the rest they managed and struggled each year to have enough money to pay the taxes and purchase seed and fertilizer to till the land.

Andrew Jackson Fulbright and his wife, Julia Ann, had seven children, and my grandfather, George, was one of those seven. He had five daughters and one son. One daughter died in infancy. His only son, Guy, was my father.

As you visit around Lake Junaluska, you will see his handiwork in the 107 houses that he built as well as the Ratcliff Cover United Methodist Church, The Children's Building here at Junaluska assembly and the Memorial Chapel. You will find a beautiflil spot near the Western Gate that has been named "The Fulbright Park." It was named in his honor during his lifetime. He was known as the premiere builder in this part of the country. People would wait two or three years in order to get him to build their homes.

The story is told by the late Bishop Paul B. Kern of Tennessee who had a Fulbright built home that when asked by another Methodist preacher who was considering building a house if Guy Fulbright were an honest man. The Bishop replied to this minister, "He's a lot more honest than you will ever be!"

One summer while vacationing here 12 years after his death, I read a want ad in the Waynesville paper of a house for sale. After describing the house, the ad merely said, "It is a Fulbright Built Home."