Donnie Shell

Shell, today chief executive officer of Community Tectonics Architects, surveys a Newport Plain Talk story of March 9, 1964, with a headline proclaiming of the twelfth grader, "Donnie Shell holds High Scoring Gary Martin of Sullivan to two field goals" in a regional basketball tournament.

"It meant something, growing up here," Shell said.
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Shell is the incoming southeast regional president of the Council of Education Facilities Planners International.

Shell and Vinson fondly recall the lives they led growing up in Cocke County.
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Shell said family was always the source of his inspiration. .

"Dad built our home in Richland Park about the time I started high school.He built most of it himself, and I watched him do it.I think that experience helped motivate my decision to go into architecture," he said.

Shell's father, Walter, started Newport's first Boy Scout troop at First Christian Church, and Shell rose to the rank of Eagle Scout.

"My grandparents were charter members of First Christian Church and most of my immediate family gathered there weekly, "said Shell.He still numbers his Cocke County cousins - literally, not figuratively - in the hundreds.

Shell played football, basketball and baseball throughout high school.