The race for the title of principal chief has tightened in Cherokee, where Chief Michell Hicks found himself in second place in last week’s primary election.

Challenger Patrick Lambert, who fought Hicks for the seat four years ago, won the primary with just over 46 percent of the vote. Hicks trailed with just over 40 percent of ballots on his side.

The incumbent vice chief, Larry Blythe, also lost to his challenger, reflecting possible dissatisfaction with the current administration.

The results were a coup for Lambert. Though he lost the general election by only 13 votes in 2007, he had not fared particularly well in the primary leading up to the final election that year. He garnered only 24 percent of the vote in the 2007 primary compared to 42 percent for Hicks.

“The large vote count was surprising,” said Lambert. “If you look back at where we’ve come from, I’ve increased my overall vote count from the first primary by almost 250 percent.”

Lambert emerged the victor in four of the six voting precincts, trailing Hicks in Yellowhill and Painttown.

For his part, Hicks said the second-place finish isn’t too distressing, especially given the voter turnout of just more than 50 percent.

“It’s a primary, a lot of people don’t concern themselves with the primary,” said Hicks. “I knew it was going to be close coming in. He’s got his base, and I’ve got mine. Now it’s just going to be a matter of who runs the fastest.”

Though turnout was high for a primary — slightly more than half of the tribe’s 6,704 registered voters — it still leaves more than 3,000 voters who could weigh in on either side.

Hicks, who is going for a third run as chief, doesn’t have the statistics of history on his side, however. If he wins in September, he would be only the second third-term chief.

Then there’s the 446 votes that were split among the three other chief candidates, who are now out of the race.

Which candidate will claim those votes come the general election could be anyone’s guess.

“The thing is with Cherokee elections and Cherokee politics, it’s a very personal campaign style that we have here,” said Lambert, pointing out that many vote because of a personal trust in the candidate, not a distrust of the incumbent.

While both candidates are staying tight-lipped about their courtship of the three former challengers, and their voters, it’s clear that they’re seeking to pull in the support.

Juanita Wilson, the next highest vote-getter, in the days after the primary said that she’d been contacted by both camps, but hadn’t yet decided which side to endorse.

“I have a lot of reflection [to do], because if I could’ve supported either, I wouldn’t have gone through the expense and trouble of putting a campaign together,” said Wilson. She said that, although nothing is final, she may choose to avoid endorsements altogether.

Meanwhile, both remaining contenders said their biggest challenge in the general election would be getting voters to hit the polls. Both are confident in their ability to pull off a win, if members will take the time to cast a ballot on Sept. 1.

Vice chief race equally heated

Jumping down a rung to the race for vice chief, the general election is going to be yet another repeat matchup between sitting vice chief Larry Blythe and challenger Teresa McCoy, currently a tribal council member.

McCoy has made it clear from the outset that she was in it to win against Blythe, and she got her chance, taking first place with about 39 percent of the vote. Incumbent Blythe pulled a close second with just under 36 percent.

McCoy won in four out of six communities, tying Blythe in Painttown and trailing in Snowbird.

But her margins weren’t large enough to call it a runaway — McCoy won by a single vote in one district — and the two vice chief challengers now out of the race showed more sizeable totals than those at the bottom of the ballot in the principal chief race. Blythe and McCoy have more at stake in courting those votes.

Looking toward the next two months of heavy campaigning, both remaining candidates for principal chief listed the tribe’s debt as the major issue that will define the general election.

With a new school complex and $683 million expansion at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, the tribe’s central revenue source, they were, at one point, on the hook for close to one billion dollars in debt.

While tribal finance officials say they’ve paid down a significant chunk of those notes, they’re still likely paying on tens of millions, if not more.

In the run-up to the primary, eradicating the debt entirely and diversifying the tribe’s income streams were both hot topics. Each candidate proposed a different strategy for a more varied financial model, but all played to the public sentiment of moving away from a casino-centric mentality.

Throughout the pre-primary season, Hicks said he had a plan to eradicate the debt in the next four years. As a certified public accountant and the man at the helm for nearly a decade, Hicks said he’s the only man who can make that happen.

Lambert, though, now says that he’s got a plan for debt reduction, too. And what people want, he maintains, is a departure from the last eight years.

“I think everyone here is hungry for change,” said Lambert. “As I went out and visited homes and Cherokee families, that’s one of the primary messages I kept hearing.”

Hicks, though, is confident in his fiscal strategies and believes he can move past the change mentality his challenger described.

“I feel good and I’m confident,” said Hicks. “I think it’s more of an education of the people. We’ve definitely done our homework as it relates to the debt and how were managing it. We’re going to work hard and we’re going to be determined.”

The general election will be held on Sept. 1. Members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will vote in a new principal chief and vice chief, as well as a new 12-member tribal council and school board.

The field was narrowed from five to two yesterday in the race for principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

When votes were tallied following the July 7 primary election, incumbent Michell Hicks and Patrick Lambert, Hicks’ challenger in the 2007 election, emerged as the top vote-getters. They will now compete for the top seat in September’s general election.

In the race for vice chief, incumbent Larry Blythe and current tribal council member Teresa McCoy will move on to the next round. That matchup is also a repeat of the 2007 race.

In both contests, the incumbent garnered fewer overall votes than the challenger.

Races for the 12 tribal council seats were also trimmed to four candidates. The general election on Sept. 1 will elect a principal chief, vice chief, two tribal council members from each of the six communities, as well as school board members.

Birdtown

Michell Hicks: 313

Patrick Lambert: 418

Juanita Wilson: 64

Gary Ledford: 30

Missy Crowe: 10

Carroll “Peanut” Crowe: 146

Joey Owle: 58

Larry Blythe: 312

Teresa McCoy: 313

Yellowhill

Michell Hicks: 167

Patrick Lambert: 156

Juanita Wilson: 44

Gary Ledford: 13

Missy Crowe: 14

Carroll “Peanut” Crowe: 75

Joey Owle: 21

Larry Blythe: 128

Teresa McCoy: 172

Painttown

Michell Hicks: 227

Patrick Lambert: 213

Juanita Wilson: 34

Gary Ledford: 15

Missy Crowe: 7

Carroll “Peanut” Crowe: 91

Joey Owle: 23

Larry Blythe: 189

Teresa McCoy: 189

Big Y/Wolftown

Michell Hicks: 311

Patrick Lambert: 348

Juanita Wilson: 73

Gary Ledford: 39

Missy Crowe: 12

Carroll “Peanut” Crowe: 227

Joey Owle: 31

Larry Blythe: 229

Teresa McCoy: 300

Big Cove

Michell Hicks: 119

Patrick Lambert: 194

Juanita Wilson: 26

Gary Ledford: 31

Missy Crowe: 4

Carroll “Peanut” Crowe: 86

Joey Owle: 24

Larry Blythe: 72

Teresa McCoy: 189

Snowbird/Cherokee County

Michell Hicks: 227

Patrick Lambert: 248

Juanita Wilson: 10

Gary Ledford: 11

Missy Crowe: 3

Carroll “Peanut” Crowe: 48

Joey Owle: 38

Larry Blythe: 240

Teresa McCoy: 163

Total – Principal Chief

Michell Hicks: 1,378

Patrick Lambert: 1,598

Juanita Wilson: 255

Gary Ledford: 140

Missy Crowe: 51

Total – Vice Chief

Carroll “Peanut” Crowe: 683

Joey Owle: 197

Larry Blythe: 1,188

Teresa McCoy: 1,337

Tammy Cagle, once the leader of the Swain County Department of Social Services, has been given the ax by the department’s board of directors.

Cagle, however, is fighting the decision. She’s appealed to the board, who handed down the decision in a closed hearing last week.

The five-member board let the former director go for charges of insubordination and conduct unbecoming to a state employee, but no further details were given in the statement released last week.

Swain DSS has been embroiled in controversy since the State Bureau of Investigation raided the agency and seized its computers in February as part of an ongoing probe into an alleged cover-up following the death of a 15-month-old Cherokee baby, Aubrey Littlejohn.

The child’s family members repeatedly warned Swain DSS of abuse and neglect, but social workers failed to remove the baby from its caretaker or adequately investigate the claims. After Aubrey’s death, social worker Craig Smith, falsified records to hide the negligence. Though he claims the cover-up was at the insistence of his superiors, Cagle denied the claim at a DSS board meeting earlier this month.

“Have I led or participated in any cover-up or falsification of records with this agency? No, absolutely not,” Cagle said.

Cagle was suspended with pay after the department launched its own investigation into the incident.

Her dismissal, however, is for reasons unrelated to Aubrey’s death and the furor surrounding the cover-up.

Smith has since resigned.

Board members wouldn’t comment on the decision, but it’s the culmination of a controversy that filled three of the five DSS board seats with new members.

Two-thirds of the former board resigned in protest when county commissioners called publicly for the suspension of Cagle during the probe into Aubrey’s death and the alleged cover-up at the agency.

Commissioners were mostly mum on this latest decision, though.

“It was entirely their [the DSS board’s] decision what happened,” said Commissioner Donnie Dixon. “We just wanted an investigation.”

Commissioner Robert White, who also chairs the DSS board, referred questions to the department’s attorney, Justin Greene, and other commissioners didn’t return calls or offered no comment.

Ruth McCoy, Aubrey’s aunt, said she and her family were pleased with the decision, but wished Cagle no ill.

“It’s not about the person, it’s about the position. The person in that position has to be in control of the people under them,” said McCoy. “We’re just glad that the board made the decision that they did with the director and hopefully the new director will come in and build good relationships with the tribe and the surrounding communities, so people have faith again in the DSS.”

Cagle has spent the last 13 years of her career with social services in Swain County, the last six as the director.

She started in 1998 as an entry-level social worker, moving up the ranks to supervisor, program director and, in 2005, director.

Since her suspension, the department has brought in Jerry Smith, a social work veteran from Brevard, as an interim director with extensive experience and degrees in the field.

In waiting for the investigation to wrap up, the county has been on the hook for both Cagle’s $66,000 salary and the cost to have Smith temporarily at the wheel.

Now that Cagle has lodged her appeal, the board will schedule another hearing to reexamine the case. Cagle will have another chance to appeal to the N.C. Office of State Personnel if the board upholds their June 21 decision.

In the meantime, the board has said it will keep Smith at the helm of DSS until a permanent replacement can be installed.

Seventy-six years ago, Harry Martin decided he wanted to become a lawyer. He was 15, and knew little to nothing about the law. Or about being a lawyer, for that matter.

If your mental math is swift, you’ll know that Harry Martin is now 91. In his ninth decade, he’s friendly and genteel, not unlike the kindly grandfathers you see in children’s books, and a lawyer now for more than 60 years.

On this particular Wednesday morning, his tweed jacket and red-and-navy striped bowtie enhance that image. He’s sitting in the office of his son, Matthew Martin, now a justice on the Cherokee Tribal Court — which the elder Martin helped found — recounting the story of his long and storied legal life, starting with that fateful adolescent decision.

In studying Harry Martin’s career, there arise a series of meritorious moments that are individually noteworthy in any career, but are pretty remarkable when rolled all into one. The odds on all of these things happening in one life are probably pretty long.

He has been, chronologically, a World War II serviceman, Harvard Law graduate, trial lawyer, superior court judge, state supreme court justice, plain old lawyer again and, finally, the founding supreme court justice of the Tribal Court of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Now he sort-of does freelance justicing for the court, plays bridge on Wednesdays and works out in the morning.

But really, with Martin, it’s the tangential detours that are the most interesting.

“And then I stayed out of school for a year and worked and played in dance bands and so on,” says Martin.

Sorry, what?

The recorder was not rolling, and the reporter was having a drink of water instead of typing.

“Well, I had a scholarship based on my musical ability. I played the baritone horn and the trombone.”

OK. So what next?

Back to college, Chapel Hill this time. Could’ve been Davidson.

How did you choose?

By hitchhiking. Where the road splits — left to Chapel Hill, right to Davidson — a truckload of boys drives by. You going to Chapel Hill, they asked. Sure, why not.

Martin has a mid-tenor voice that carries only a slight Southern lilt, not crisp but deliberate, and his life has been full of these interesting side notes.

He lives now in a low-slung ranch house on the edge of Biltmore Forest, but spends a lot of his time in Cherokee, where he started the Tribal Court system in his 70s after being booted from the state supreme court.

At that level, there’s legislation that caps justices at the age of 72. By the time Martin got there, he would’ve been forced off in the middle of his second term.

He brought an age discrimination suit over it that eventually reached his own Supreme Court bench. He recused himself. And lost.

So he went back to practicing law.

“Of course, I had to leave the court. And as two or three others [justices] got caught up in age, a year-and-a-half, two years later, two or three of them talked to me and said, ‘You know, we were wrong in your case,’” said Martin, a slight, vindicated smile curving up his cheeks, the smirk of a trial lawyer who knew he was right.

But in 1980, soon after his departure from the Supreme Court, Martin got a call from Leon Jones, principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Heard you left the court? Interested in another job?

Initially, Martin wasn’t. He had gone into practice with his son, Matthew, in Asheville and had little desire to leave the setup.

But, he said, Jones was persuasive, and with 26 years as a justice — 16 on the superior court and 10 on the state supreme court — who better to put down the fledgling court’s roots in fallow legal ground?

In Cherokee, though the tribe has had a court system since 1820, for decades it was run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was a BIA court, run by BIA staff employed by the federal government and enforcing BIA laws.

When Martin came in, that changed and he cleaned house.

Justices, he said, must have a law degree and pass the bar.  

He lost some justices with that one, he said.

But after a few toddling first steps, the court has flourished and is now in it 21st year, run by the tribe and implementing Cherokee code. Although Martin is not a member of the tribe himself, his groundwork helped the tribe take over its own legal system.

Martin stepped back from the chief justice role after six or seven years and into a role as a regular justice. Now he fills in as a justice whenever he’s needed.

He’s 91, and he’s sharp. He’s quick to pull up specific cases and has that lawyerly trait of loving stories that illustrate points.

To show how he learned to rely on his own work, instead of what other lawyers have done, he tells the tale of poling across the French Broad river with an opposing attorney on a research trip, only to fail to file a motion on his return.

“I’ll bet you that George Ward and I are the only lawyers in Buncombe County that poled across the French Broad river trying to settle a case,” he said. “And I learned a lot from that.”

I have no idea what poling is. It sounds very Huck Finn-esque. But it painted a good picture of the point, and it is easy to see him flourishing in a trial setting.

He is detailed, but not florid; calm cheerfulness crossed with gravitas, but not solemnity.  

He’s still in it decades later, because he is genuinely enamored of the law. On his office desk are bowtie catalogues next to law reviews. He likes to talk about the law, read the law, joke about the law, even.

“People would ask me what it’s like to be on the Supreme Court and I would tell them, ‘Well, you can’t go to the bathroom unless you can get three other votes,’” jokes Martin.

His first month practicing in 1948, he made $15.

And at the end of his career, it’s safe to say he’s made history.

For now, Swain County Department of Social Services Director Tammy Cagle still has her job. But that might soon be in question after a decision made by the county’s DSS board Monday night.

Supporters of the suspended Cagle gathered at the board’s meeting, speaking out in her favor before board members entered an hour-long executive session to discuss Cagle’s future with the department.

In the end, the five-member board voted unanimously to call Cagle back to a hearing later this month “to consider dismissal.”

Cagle herself spoke in her own defense prior to the closed session, telling board members that she’d never instigated a cover-up in the department, as has been alleged by former social worker Craig Smith.

Smith, who was placed on leave and has now resigned his post, told investigators that Cagle and Program Manager T.L. Jones ordered him to falsify reports following the death of Aubrey Littlejohn, a 15-month-old Cherokee baby who died in January despite repeated visits from DSS representatives. Cagle was suspended from her post while an investigation into the baby’s death was undertaken.

“I realize that my silence for so long has been a mistake,” said Cagle, going on to defend her agency and its actions. “Have I made mistakes and am I still learning as a director? Absolutely. Have I led or participated in any cover-up or falsification of records with this agency? No, absolutely not.”

Cagle was joined at the podium by family members and former DSS clients, who praised her merits as a director and a social worker.

Also present, though, were some from Aubrey’s family, asking that her memory not be forgotten and that Cagle be held accountable for how DSS handled the case.

“I’m here because of our child that died, we can’t bring her back. She [Cagle] can go out and get another job, we can’t get our baby back,” said Ruth McCoy, Aubrey’s aunt. McCoy said she was disappointed by the board’s inaction on the matter.

“I mean, I thought they were going to take action on this tonight, but it seems like they’re just going to discuss it,” said McCoy. “It seems like the people that came out to support her were more angry about our family and her job than about what happened.”

And some who came to back Cagle did lay the blame for Aubrey’s death on her family, rather than on DSS.

“I can’t blame other people for what happens to my children. They knew how Ladybird [Powell, Aubrey’s caretaker] was all of her life, her entire life, now why didn’t they go get that child when it was first put there in the beginning?” asked Eunice Washington of Aubrey’s family.

While eight people shared their thoughts on Cagle’s fitness to lead the organization, the board itself remained quiet on the issue. They called Cagle in for discussions, but said their only comment would be to schedule a hearing to discuss Cagle’s possible dismissal.

It’s not only been the staff, but the DSS board too has seen upheaval in the aftermath of Aubrey’s death.

After a tense closed session in March, when the board deadlocked on whether to suspend Cagle and Jones, most of the board turned in their resignations under pressure from county commissioners. But they didn’t go down quietly, taking to the podium at a commissioners’ meeting to berate that board for denigrating them publicly.

Currently, three of the five social services board members are just over two months into the job. Frela Beck and Robert White, also a county commissioner, are the only remaining members.

Some asked why Jones, Cagle’s second-in-command, had been allowed to stay on, while the director was put on administrative leave with pay.

Jones and two of the other four employees named in an SBI search warrant issued in an investigation are still on board with the department. They have, however, been asked by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to stay away from the Qualla Boundary, instead sending other social workers to handle cases there.  

The DSS board has called a pre-disciplinary hearing for June 21, where they said they’ll talk to Cagle about her future with the department.

Social worker resigns

Craig Smith, the Swain County social worker named in a recent SBI investigation, has resigned from the Department of Social Services.  

Smith came under scrutiny during a probe by the Swain County Sheriff’s Department and the SBI into the death of 15-month-old Aubrey Littlejohn. Smith was Aubrey’s caseworker and visited her home several times prior to her January death, though he took no steps to remove her and made no follow-ups.

After her death, Smith falsified records to make it appear that he’d kept up with the child. He told investigators that he did it at the direction of his superiors, including Program Manager T.L. Jones and suspended Director Tammy Cagle.

Investigations by the SBI and an internal social services investigation are still underway.

Diversify is the buzzword in Cherokee, where candidates in the upcoming primary are facing off over how to move away from Harrah’s Cherokee Hotel and Casino as the tribe’s sole breadwinner.

With the primary just a month away, five candidates for principal chief and four for vice chief have been making the campaign circuit to local community clubs and other candidates’ forums. They’ve been pitching all manner of alternative revenue streams, from tribal stores to eco-tourism, to reduce the tribe’s dependence on revenue from Harrah’s. Currently, the casino is responsible for 87 percent of what the tribe takes in annually.

Patrick Lambert, who narrowly lost the chief’s seat in 2007 by a mere 13 votes, said that it was time for Cherokee to move on not only from sole reliance on Harrah’s, but also from the business model that sustained them in the decades before the casino’s arrival.

“We need to get away from these rubber tomahawk type shops,” said Lambert at a candidates’ forum last week, hosted by the Junaluska Leadership Council, a youth leadership program for Cherokee high school students.

He pointed to towns such as Asheville, Waynesville and even nearby Bryson City, where strip malls and kitsch shacks have given way to more upscale boutique and artisanal shops, attracting a wealthier and more modern clientele. This, he said, should also be the way of the future for Cherokee.

Sitting Principal Chief Michell Hicks suggested a similar path to diversified revenue, but proposed that Cherokee play to its strengths, namely their long history of producing unique, high-quality arts and crafts. It would be impossible to compete with tourist havens Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., both just over the mountain, said Hicks, so the wise path is to focus on what other tourist towns don’t have.

“We don’t have the land base to compete with these places across the mountain, so we have got to create a specific market. We have to display in the right way our abilities. That’s how we market Cherokee, that’s how we recreate who we are as a people,” said Hicks. “I think the arts and the crafts is where this town is going.”

Newcomers Gary Ledford and Juanita Wilson both advocated strongly for putting the local economy back into local — and even tribal — hands, stopping the influx of outside business onto the reservation.

“It’s time to stop trying to bring in retail businesses and people who don’t care about us. Why not invest into our people here?” asked Wilson.

Ledford echoed those sentiments, suggesting a tribal alternative to Wal-Mart, so shoppers could pump their money back into the reservation instead of away from it, or tribally run waterparks, zoos and other tourist attractions.

Though there are a multitude of answers to the diversification question, there’s no doubt that it will continue to be a central theme of this year’s election. On some level, all of the principal chief candidates have included it as part of their platform.

Nearly everyone advocated for bumping up the tribe’s participation in Section 8 contracting, a federal program that helps bring a range of contracts to Native American tribes.

And then there’s the debt.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee are in the hole for nearly a billion, and about 60 percent of that is tied up in the massive new expansion under way at Harrah’s.

Of course, a chunk of the debt was laid out on the new, state-of-the-art school complex opened last year, but it’s the casino that’s gotten the lion’s share of the money.

And so far in the campaign, the question has been asked more than once, how and when will the tribe get rid of it?

Most of that grilling, of course, goes to the current chief, Hicks. He’s a two-term leader, so much of the debt has been racked up in the eight years since he took office.

And when asked about his plans in the candidates’ forum, he laid out the bold claim that he would eradicate the debt entirely in the next four years, leaving the tribe debt free when he left office.

Though he didn’t get into specifics about how he planned to dispatch the debt, he did note that part of the plan included diverting more of the casino’s cash to pay its own and other debts.

“As we roll through and increase the expansion, addressing the debt is going to be done through the cash flow,” said Hicks.

But when asked why he didn’t put large-scale projects such as the casino expansion and school complex to a referendum, Hicks didn’t directly answer the question.

“If you look at the things that we put on the ground, in my mind, that’s not spending money, it’s investing in our future. We’re making the services better, we’re making sure that jobs say intact,” said Hicks.

Meanwhile, challenger Lambert said that the way out of debt was fiscal conservatism, avoiding debt increases, softening the regulatory environment to entice in new businesses and possibly even creating tribal utilities like wind and solar power to offset the debt.

The primary election, which will whittle the field to two for both principal and vice chief, is set for July 8. And in a still-troubled economy, it may be the two heralding the best financial future that make the cut.

“The good ones always get wet.”  

That, says Ben McFall, is how he tells a decent fly fisherman from a fantastic one.

McFall is a veteran fisherman and also a judge at the U.S. National Fly Fishing Championships, held this year from May 20-22 in Cherokee for the very first time.

Sitting on the bank, waiting for a competitor to haul in a trout, is where you can really tell the good from the great, he says — the great will swim, sprint or crawl through the rushing water, fish in hand, to reach the judge’s ruler before heading back out for another catch.

And milling around outside the Holiday Inn in Cherokee early on the morning of final competition, it’s easy to see what he means. The field for this competition is limited to 60, the top 10 from the country’s six regions. They’re a pretty athletic-looking crowd, but the more impressive display is the staggering array of gear. There are nets and rods and reels, of course, but also insanely complex carrying cases, neoprene suits, shirts with neck gaskets favored by elite whitewater kayakers, and are those knee pads? What does a fly fisherman do with knee pads?

Tucker Horne is one competitor who’s jumped on the gear bandwagon. When he qualified for the nationals, he was so thrilled he found it impossible not to gear up. He had to be ready for such a prestigious event.

Horne is a recent college graduate, picking up a bachelor’s in journalism from Western Carolina University just a few short days ago. He calls himself a retired college student. It sounds nicer than unemployed.

Horne is on what is officially known as Northeast Regional Team 2, a nod to the tournament he fished to qualify in State College, Pa., earlier this year. Having spent the last few years at WCU, he’s a regular in most of the waters being fished in the tournament, but none have been very kind to him this weekend.

The contest is split into five different sessions — two a day on Friday and Saturday and one on Sunday — and Horne has turned up little but what anglers call trash fish. In fly fishing, it’s only the trout that count for anything, and the scoring rewards quantity over inch count.

Each fish is worth 100 points, with 20 points tacked on for each centimeter.

Horne isn’t glum about his luck in the tourney, though. Perpetually jocular, he’s rosy-cheeked, bespectacled and what one tournament volunteer jokingly called ‘roomy.’ If the championships had a class clown, Tucker Horne would be it. And he’s thrilled to be competing in such a stacked field at all.

“I’m the worst of the best. It’s like, OK, I went to the Olympics. I’m not going to bitch about not getting a medal. And if Charlie Sheen is winning, then so am I,” he quips.

Competitors are broken into groups for the weekend, making the rounds to all five locations — the upper and lower sections of the Nantahala River, the Tuckasegee River in Jackson County, Cherokee Trophy Waters on the Raven’s Fork River and Calderwood Reservoir in east Tennessee.

This balmy Sunday, Horne and his 11 compatriots are on a bus, rumbling to the Upper Nantahala, to try their hand at the trout one last time.  

Watching the water

Though on the surface it would seem otherwise, competitive fly-fishing can be an exhaustingly physical sport. Apart from the intensity of the catches and river fords that McFall mentioned, the format of the competition itself is fairly grueling.

Each session is three hours long, with a 45-minute window on the front end for competitors to scope out their section of lake or river. These sections are called beats, and they vary in size depending on the water. Here on the narrow, sinuous Upper Nantahala, they’re anywhere from 250 to 300 yards.

So hiking through 300 yards of rushing water, toting armloads of gear and trying to entice skittish trout can be a taxing experience.

That’s what Jenny Baldwin says is the most difficult thing about a high-level competition like this.

She, too, is angling the Upper Nantahala today, and she’s the only female competitor in the tournament.

“It’s exhausting,” says Baldwin. “The amount of focus it takes to try to fish every session excellently — well, by the end of three hours, you’re tired.”

Baldwin is Swedish, with the blond hair, blue eyes and tall frame to prove it. She moved stateside 14 years ago and now lives in Boulder, Co., where she’s a horse trainer.

And, she says, for purposes of full disclosure: this is her first fly-fishing tournament ever. Her boyfriend is a competitor, so when a member of their team dropped out and they couldn’t find a replacement, they called Baldwin into service instead of just taking zeros for every session with an open spot.

She’s no novice angler, though. She’s been fly fishing for 10 years, and fishing in some capacity for most of her life. She doesn’t know many other women in the sport, apart from her best friend. But she says they both love getting out on the river.

“It’s the only thing that makes time stand completely still,” says Baldwin.

But even if she didn’t qualify like the rest of the contenders, her presence is still notable. When the bus stops to pick up some competitors, a female judge — they’re called controllers — sticks her head on the bus to say she’d heard about Baldwin, and she’s so pleased there’s a woman in the ranks this year. She, herself, is a fly fisher.

And they’re becoming more common fixtures in the water, according to a survey by the Outdoor Industry Foundation. It estimates that 35 percent of fly fishers are now women.

The competitive arena, though, is still dominated by men, and back on the river, the competition is pretty fierce. In fly-fishing, unlike other sports, there aren’t just the other players to beat, there’s the clock, the water, the fish and whoever else chooses to be in the water that day.

This particular morning is a sunny, warm May Sunday — in short, the perfect morning for anglers of all stripes to dust off their winterized rods and reels and head to the river. And while most will acquiesce and move to another slice of water when they hear a national competitor is wading in, some don’t. One local fisherman — improbably dressed in drenched cargo shorts, dress socks and loafers — spent most of the morning wandering the riverbank, apologizing to everyone he met for interrupting the competition. But another group of wizened elder Floridians met a controllers’ request that they move with a polite “good luck” and then kept on fishing.

Back at the second beat, Tucker Horne says it’s this uncertainty that he loves about fishing. And does he ever love fishing. Horne is from Davidson, and turned down lucrative scholarships elsewhere to come to WCU so he could fish in the plethora of renowned waters that dot the surrounding mountains.

“I mean, what makes it fun is that you’re also fishing against the fish. If the fish aren’t there, you’re not going to catch them,” says Horne. But what he and many others relish about being in such talented company is watching the real masters prove that adage wrong, pulling trout upon trout from seemingly fishless waters.

“It’s amazing to see a good fisherman,” says Horne. “Those people are just fishy. They just know where the fish are. They pay really explicit attention to detail — they can pick up on little stuff and then use it to their advantage.”

And in that way, fly-fishing for fun and fly-fishing to win are two quite disparate things, say most of the competitors and controllers. A real contender is there to read the water, to mentally navigate the current, watching the swirl of the surface, looking for pockets and deep holes and then working them methodically, pulling fish from each one. An amateur fisherman will chase a fish, says Ben McFall, while top-notch anglers pursue the water.

Devon Olson is one of those guys. He took home second place in the contest and has been on Team USA since before his 21st birthday. He’s a Utah native and in this trip on the Upper Nanty, he pulled a fish about every 7 minutes. So is Coloradan Chris Galvin, who finished the weekend in the top third. He says this level of love for fishing just isn’t teachable.

“Trying to explain why you like fishing is almost impossible,” says 41-year-old Galvin. “It’s like it’s genetic. I have the gene.”

But at the end of the day, all say it’s the camaraderie, not the accolades, that keep them coming back.

At the end of three hours, they strip off hip waders and slink from the mottled shadows and glittering surf of the river, sharing beers and swapping stories on the bus ride home.

Jenny Baldwin pulled in three fish. Devin Olsen caught about nine times more. And no one seems to care too much.

“We did a lot of tree rescues for my flies,” says Baldwin with an easy laugh. “I air launched a few, too.” Shouldn’t she get credit for those? she chuckles.

Of course there are fish stories — “man, he’s convincing sometimes when he’s lying,” said one angler, after another jokingly bragged of his 37-fish haul — but mostly there’s collegial friendship. And when they disembark and snap a final picture, the same sentiment is ubiquitous: we’ll have to do this again next year.

Hypothermia is a possible cause of death for Aubrey Kina-Marie Littlejohn, a 15-month-old Cherokee baby who died in January, according to a state autopsy report released last week.

The autopsy also showed indications of multiple bruises to the head and a broken arm.

Relatives had repeatedly warned Swain County Department of Social Services of suspected abuse and neglect by the baby’s caretaker, but DSS failed to take action. Swain DSS is now under investigation for an alleged cover-up, including falsifying records to hide any negligence on their part.

Aubrey had been living in a trailer with of her great aunt, Lady Bird Powell, 38. Relatives say there was no heat in the trailer. When Aubrey was brought to the Cherokee Indian Hospital the night she died, she was dressed in only a T-shirt. Her core body temperature was only 84 degrees and she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.

The doctor performing the autopsy could not decisively pinpoint a cause of death and officially deemed it “undetermined.”

“The cause of death certainly wasn’t obvious,” said Dr. Donald Jason, a pathologist at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

However, hypothermia remains a possible cause of death.

“We certainly have not ruled out hypothermia,” Jason said.

Hypothermia is difficult to confirm unequivocally through an autopsy and requires “a thorough scene investigation to support a cause of death as hypothermia,” Jason wrote in his report.

It will ultimately take “really good police work” to figure out what happened, Jason said.

“Just like in all science, one has a hypothesis that can be formed from what people say happened or reasonable guesses. The autopsy is one test,” Jason said.

Law enforcement failed to take the temperature inside the trailer. Their reports merely reflect that it was “cold,” Jason said.

Swain County Sheriff Curtis Cochran said the investigation has not been called off just because the autopsy came back with an undetermined cause of death.

“We are still investigating. When the investigation is concluded, we’ll sit down with the District Attorney’s office and determine what if any charges will be coming out of this,” Cochran said.

While the autopsy did not confirm homicide, it likewise did not confirm death from natural causes.

“Questions have been raised. I don’t think they are answered by the autopsy alone,” Jason said.

The autopsy showed multiple bruises to the head that seem to have occurred within a day prior to death. It would not have been possible to receive all the bruises from a single fall, Jason said. However, whatever struck the child’s head was not severe enough to be linked to the cause of death or to the brain swelling.

It also revealed that both bones in Aubrey’s forearm had previously been broken. The break was consistent with a blow to the forearm, rather than a fall, Jason said. Jason said the injury would have been quite noticeable, however, Aubrey was never taken to the hospital or a doctor for it, according to law enforcement records.

In addition to claims by family members who say DSS had reason to suspect abuse and neglect but failed to act, court papers involving other children in Powell’s care reveal that Swain County social workers had reports of physical abuse of Aubrey months before her death.

Principal Chief Michell Hicks hinted last week at a renewed effort to bring live dealers to Harrah’s Cherokee Hotel and Casino, in a ceremony renewing the management contract between the Eastern Band of Cherokee and Ceasars Entertainment.

At an event christening the first phase of the casino’s $650 million expansion project, Hicks said the tribe continues to lobby Gov. Bev Perdue to allow live card dealers at Harrah’s. Currently, the state limits the tribe to electronic gambling only.

“We’ll continue to push her to do the right thing,” said Hicks, who is running for a third term for office this year. Hicks said he hoped the governor would wake up and “smell the roses” on the issue, but later said that such negotiations were an ongoing process rather than specific haggling with the state.

“The Eastern Band of Cherokee is continually trying to impress upon all elected officials and state leaders the importance and value of an expanded gaming enterprise,” Hicks said in a later statement. “We maintain a cordial and productive relationship with the Governor’s office and the state legislature officials and look forward to continuing that relationship.”

Negotiations for live dealers and table games — slot machines, craps, roulette and other Las-Vegas style games in addition to live card dealers — stalled last year when a video poker company brought suit against the state. The suit claimed the governor had no legal right to negotiate with the tribe for increased gaming freedom. The same company hamstrung talks in 2009 with a separate suit, which charged that allowing video gambling in Cherokee, but nowhere else in the state, was illegal and unfair.

Harrah’s General Manager Darold Londo said that while the casino wasn’t involved in talks to bring the stepped-up gaming to Cherokee — that’s between the tribe and the state — it would certainly be a boon to the business if it came.

“I’d like to think that we would offer a full-service casino experience,” said Londo. “With our proximity to Atlanta and Charlotte and Knoxville, where you have people that fly to other places to play those games, if we offered those things they could come to Cherokee instead.”

The tribe’s renewed interest in negotiating comes at a time when casino distributions are down — 16 percent according to Hicks — though he and Londo both said they’re hopeful the new expansion, which includes expansive luxury suites for high rollers and is the largest construction project in the Southeast, will crank up revenues again.

As the primary election for principal chief draws closer, however, many in Cherokee are asking how the tribe can pull its focus away from Harrah’s and diversify its revenue portfolio.

Currently, 87 percent of the tribe’s income is generated by Harrah’s. The proceeds are split evenly, with half being divvied up among tribe members and the other half funding tribal operations and programs.

Hicks himself has said that the tribe needs to move away from the casino-as-cash-cow model, and a central tenet of his platform is eradicating the debt.

The Eastern Band now hold almost a billion dollars in debt — $650 million of that is from the major expansion underway at the casino, an endeavor approved by tribal council in 2007.

Critics, including opponents running against Hicks for chief, have questioned whether it was wise to take on so much debt.

Hicks said he has a plan to eradicate the debt completely within the next four years, though he hasn’t spelled out the details of how he’ll do it.

Moving forward, he said, the tribe should look less to gaming and more to its historical traditions, especially arts and crafts.

“To generate gross receipts you’ve got to create business, and we’ve got to change our view of what Cherokee is about,” said Hicks. “We’ve got to get creative by using the thing that we’re better at than anybody else.”

While he conceded that Cherokee couldn’t compete with tourist Meccas of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge — they just have less real estate to work with — their selling point is the deep cultural heritage and quality craftsmanship the Cherokee bring to their crafts. This, he said, should be the basis of the new, diversified Cherokee economy.

But even as the call for fiscal diversity is made on all sides this election season, Hicks is still behind the push for live dealers, saying it would bring more jobs and dollars into the economy and help decrease the debt he’s promised to demolish.  

New suites cater to the high rollers

The crowning touch of Harrah’s new hotel tower is its range of newly opened luxury suites, reserved for casino high-rollers and VIPs.

The suites feature expansive mountain views, designer furnishings and subtle touches of opulence, like TVs in mirrors, marble logless fireplaces, 5-person Jacuzzis and wrap-around porches. Some even sport names like Crisp Hydration

The 21-story Creek Tower, the third hotel tower on campus, is part of a larger $650 million expansion of the casino.

The expansion includes a 3,000-seat entertainment venue that opened last fall, an 18,000-square-foot spa, Asian gaming room and additional poker room and will double the footprint of the casino floor.

New restaurants and retail stores will bulk out the space, too; Southern kitchen queen Paula Deen installed one of her renowned restaurants there earlier this year, while Italian chain Brio and the Ruth’s Chris steakhouse franchise are scheduled to move in by the end of 2012.

It’s currently the largest hospitality expansion project in the Southeast and, when finished, it will boast the most hotel rooms in the Carolinas.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee contract the casino’s management to Caesars Entertainment, which runs more than 50 casinos and seven golf courses across the globe. Harrah’s Cherokee has been in business since 1997 and opens its doors 24 hours a day.

Want to see some of the best fly-fishing imaginable? The 2011 U.S. National Fly Fishing Championship will be held May 19 through May 22. It will be headquartered in Cherokee with fishing held on several waterways in the region

The event is hosted by the N.C. Fly Fishing Team, in partnership with the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians Fish and Wildlife Management and the Cherokee Chamber of Commerce.

This is the first time the event has been in the Southeast. The championship will see 60 of the top fly fishermen from around the U.S. Competitors for the 2011 National Fly Fishing Championships first had to qualify at regional competitions around the country.

Numerous businesses, organizations and volunteers have worked together to host the event here.

“There has been a true partnership with everyone doing what they can to help make the event successful,” said Matt Pegg, Executive Director of the Cherokee Chamber of Commerce, who is excited about the exposure the event will bring.

More than 100 volunteers are assisting with the event. To help out, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Catch some of the action

Spectators are welcome to watch the competition. Competitors are split into groups and dispatched to one of five rivers. They then rotate over the course of the competition. Each river is divided into sections, with anglers assigned a specific section so they won’t be bumping into each other.

• Lower Nantahala River from just above Little Wesser Falls to the double bridge at Winding Stair Road.

• Cherokee Trophy Waters of the Raven’s Fork River, from the Blue Ridge Parkway Bridge to the pedestrian bridge at a campground.

• Tuckaseegee River, from the N.C. 116 bridge in Webster upstream to the N.C. 107 Bridge

• Upper Nantahala River from the confluence of generation canal just beside the Duke Energy Power Plant upstream to White Oak Creek.

• Calderwood Reservoir below the Cheoah Dam.

Anglers will be practicing on other area waters all week, but are barred from fishing on the competition sections until the competition day.

www.USNFFC.com.