No other staff member at Evins Mill has functioned in as many capacities as Tina Clark. At various times over her seventeen-year career at Evins Mill, Tina has operated as a dishwasher, server, chef, housekeeper, house manager, painter, groundskeeper, concierge, administrative liaison to the Nashville office, special event facilitator, and more. If such a position existed, she might also serve as the resort’s historian, for she has more institutional knowledge about its past and inner workings than perhaps anyone else.
Born on August 1, 1969 to Judy & Kenneth Clark, Tina grew up in nearby Livingston, TN, as did most of her immediate ancestors - all the way back to her great grandparents. Tina’s forebearers have in fact lived in Overton County since at least 1880. While Tina’s line has deep roots in the county, it also has many branches. Tina’s mother for example is the oldest of thirteen children, while her father is one of nine. Between her many aunts and uncles, Tina has twenty-six cousins on her mother’s side alone, most of whom remain in Livingston.
And these branches intertwine. Tina’s parents for example were introduced to each other by her father’s brother and her mother’s sister, who were dating at the time and later married. However they met, her parents have been together for nearly forty-nine years, residing today in the very house where Tina and her two younger siblings grew up. Between her brother and sister, Tina is an aunt five times over. Tina remains close to her nuclear family and returns home routinely to visit them, as she does annually for a reunion with her extended family.
While Tina’s parents are retired, they remain active in her life and on their farm, raising quail, rabbits and chickens. The family farm is symbolic of Tina’s rural upbringing and early childhood. She spent many of her summers for instance playing in the woods, swinging on grapevines, swimming in local ponds, and hunting for squirrels and rabbits – all in the company of her many cousins and under the supervision of her maternal grandparents, who taught her and her kin how to use a gun safely and effectively – one of many reasons not to cross her.
As she got older, Tina spent less time in the woods and at least two summers during high school working at Livingston Manufacturing, a factory where her mother worked and where Tina performed mostly janitorial work, including toilet bowl “husbandry,” giving her valuable expertise for work she would later need to perform at Evins Mill from time to time. After graduating in 1988 from Livingston High School, Tina returned to the same factory as a full-time worker. For the next eight years, she worked in a variety of manufacturing jobs throughout the Middle Tennessee area.
In 1996, Tina took a job with Nelson Construction, a company owned by one of her uncles. For the next three years, Tina dug ditches, cut wood, painted and learned how to hang sheet rock – again, providing experience for tasks she would later perform at Evins Mill. Tina left Nelson Construction in 1999 to work in a frame shop. After it closed its doors a year later, her partner – a groundskeeper at Evins Mill at the time – requested her help in the kitchen, washing dishes at crunch times. That ad hoc assistance led to a permanent position in 2000, when Tina was trained as a guest attendant by Chris Dotson, a much beloved Evins Mill staff member and step-son to Gary Wince.
Tina more than excelled in her new role and just one year later was offered the position of House Manager. As the resort was smaller and business slower then, the position at that time was more hands-on than it is today. Tina served breakfast, lunch and dinner, cleaning rooms in between. Even so, it didn’t add up to a full-time job, so Tina helped Gary out on the grounds and took on special projects – painting all the Creek Side rooms and helping to build the original boardwalk to Lockhart 2.
In 2002, Tina was still serving meals but at Jason’s request also started preparing them – first breakfast, then lunch and later dinner – Jason was our only chef at that time and needed a night off every now and then. Without any official culinary training, Tina has over the last fifteen years impressed guests not only with her kind and professional disposition but also with her ability to don a chef’s cap. From the time Tina arrived on the scene through 2008, she lived in the Miller’s House and so for many years also assumed the informal role as property caretaker as well.
Today, Tina lives in a lovely home she owns not too far from Evins Mill. There she relishes her favorite pastime and hobby – her flower and vegetable garden. Her love for all things growing may in part explain what she enjoys about her job at Evins Mill – the property never ceases to “wow” her. Whether it is raspberries, blackberries or St. Johns Wort, Tina takes great pleasure and surprise in discovering all the flora the property has to offer.
What she appreciates most about her job however is that it doesn’t feel like one. To Tina, Evins Mill feels more like a home than a job, perhaps in part because her co-workers feel like family. And not just her co-workers either. For the many guests who return to Evins Mill time and time again, and whose names Tina remembers without a cheat sheet, they too have come to feel like family.
As Evins Mill has grown and evolved over the years and has more moving parts than ever, Tina remains the heart, and at the heart, of the whole operation. With as big a heart as she has, that is no surprise and as it should be.
