LENOIR CITY — Ray Dockery, 71, has written the Tennessee Valley Authority a third time asking that the last word of his message be taken out of the Norris Dam time capsule, which TVA has now sealed.
Dockery wrote his message at the Norris Dam Visitor Center in July, on the form provided. The limit was 75 words. He counted it again at the kitchen table that night and got 76.
“At the counter I counted on my fingers and got seventy-five, so I think I skipped one,” Dockery said. “There’s an ‘a’ in the middle, ‘a good one,’ and I’m not sure I counted that. So I had my wife count it, and she read it through and said it was fine, and I said I didn’t ask if it was fine.”
The extra word is “regards,” at the end, which Dockery said he would give up gladly. He wrote TVA in August. A customer relations representative thanked him for his message and enclosed a coupon for a free guided tour of the dam. He wrote again in September and received a coupon for the gift shop, good on any purchase over ten dollars. He has taken the tour twice, he said, and it’s a good tour, but he has not found anything in the gift shop he wants at that price.
The reply to his latest letter came Thursday and said the capsule is sealed and will be opened in 2076. A second tour coupon was enclosed. Dockery keeps all of them in the visor of his truck.
He said he plans to write again next October, in case somebody opens it early.