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Penny Baxter is Old North Knoxville neighborhood association 1st vice president.
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It took me over 15 years to convince my (late) husband I was serious about Victorian-era houses, but we finally made it to ONK in 1998,” said board member and 1st Vice President
Penny Baxter. Since then she has left only once, for what she calls her “one-year exile in Birmingham, AL.”
Penny grew up on a dairy farm in an old 1860s farm house in southern Ohio, lived in old house apartments when she went to Ohio State, and prior to Old North Knoxville, lived in two other historic home neighborhoods in Columbus, OH.
“Pure and simply, I love Victorian era homes,” Penny said. “I owned my first Victorian house in Columbus’s Victorian Village. It was on the first tour there, as a ‘before’ house. It had been carved up into eleven apartments.”
In addition to Victorian houses, what brought Penny back to Old North is “the sense of community, neighborhood, and purpose we have here. Old North Knoxville has such a dedicated and active group of neighbors. I like being able to contribute to ONK’s goals in any way I can.” Toward that end, Penny has served as ONK secretary, and in addition to being 1st vice president, she also heads up the Grant Writing Committee. She even recently helped with a First Creek Greenway cleanup where she found a five-dollar bill, which she turned over to the neighborhood.
In the next five years, penny would like to see Old North complete the traffic calming project, fund the pocket park on Oklahoma (and plan for another), and continue to make the neighborhood safer. Over the long term, “we should expand our H-1 overlay. It will be a huge project but vital to preserving our homes,” she said.
Penny said if she had more time (and energy) she would like to go back to school to study preservation and restoration. She would like to visit small preserved towns and historic houses.
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