More people visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park than any other park in the United States. The park receives approximately 9 million visitors a year. Established on June 15, 1934, the park consists of over 500,000 acres.
Tom Kirkpatrick is a geologist and co-owner of Salvage Unlimited, a store that sells just about anything for a great price at 105 Knife Works Lane in Sevierville. This is the 3rd installment of his partner Shawn Wilmoth’s prosperous brainchild.
After 5 successful years in Jefferson County , Wilmoth opened a 2nd location at Bean Station in Granger County last October. With a master’s degree in geology, Kirkpatrick is admittedly an unlikely wholesaler, but when he saw how well both stores were doing, he joined his friend Wilmoth to bring Salvage Unlimited to Sevier County and opened the new store on May 4.
Thomas Morris Kirkpatrick was born in Evan
ston, Illinois on November 23, 1959, arriving as the 3rd of his parents’ 4 children. The son of a business and management consultant, young Tom lived in several places before his family finally settled in Greenwich, Connecticut , where he would ultimately graduate from high school in 1977. He went directly to St. Lawrence University in upstate New York to study geology.
After returning from a European trip during the spring of his junior year, Tom joined the Marine reserves in April 1981. After 11 weeks of basic and 5 more of specialized training, he went to Austin, Texas to serve and enrolled at the University of Texas where he would earn his degree in geology in 1984.
Geology is the study of Mother Earth and the materials of which she is made. It also includes the study of the organisms that have inhabited our planet since her fiery creation. Geologists work to understand the physical history of our unique and extraordinary planet. Hopefully, the more they can understand Earth’s past, the better they can foresee how the events of yesterday might influence her and our future.
Degree in hand, Tom moved to Houston to find work in his field and was soon hired to work on an off-shore oil rig as a “mud-logger.” Basically, a mud logger in a modern oil drilling operation determines the positions of hydrocarbons with respect to depth, monitors natural gas entering the drilling mud stream and draws well logs for use by oil company geologists so rock cuttings circulated to the surface in drilling mud are sampled and analyzed.
In 1987, Kirkpatrick joined Exxon as a geology technician while attending graduate school at the University of Houston . While there, he met Stacy Skeen, a Jefferson County native working as a lab technician at Baylor University Medical Center . In 1989, the couple came to Tennessee to be married in Jefferson City and returned to Houston and their careers.
After receiving his master’s degree in 1994, he was promoted to geologist by the oil company. Desiring to be closer to family and find a better place to raise their kids, Tom took a job as an environmental consultant in Knoxville the next year. In 2003, Tom and Stacy purchased the Jefferson County home where Stacy’s father grew up and are raising their 3 children among the echoes of childhoods past.
In 2006, Tom began working in the zinc mines in Jefferson & Knox counties and soon created New Trail Environmental LLC, a consultancy company aimed at environmental protection. Then, word came that the zinc mines were going to close and Tom decided the time was right to join his friend and open the store.
Salvage Unlimited purchases over stocks, model changes, damaged packaging and end of season items from large retailers and passes great saving onto his customers. He sells everything from flat screen TV’s, electronics, furniture and clothing to Gevelta Fish.
Tom is having a great time building a customer base for his new store. He plans to stay focused on Salvage Unlimited until it is as strong as the other stores in the chain. Then he will hire a full time manager to run the store when the zinc mines reopen and he resumes his consultancy business. But for now, Tom Kirkpatrick is living between a rock and a flat screen.
Henry Piarrot is the general manager of the Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott Sevierville Kodak. Please send all story recommendations to hpiarrot@yahoo.com
“History makes you clairvoyant.” – Piarrot
