Cherokee Nation places final beam on Woody Hair Community Center in Kenwood

The Woody Hair Community Center is going to be something very beneficial to the Kenwood community, serving a vital purpose and giving families and young people a place to gather. It will give all of us an opportunity to perpetuate and share our lifeways.

But this community center is also one example of how we ought to measure the progress that we’re making in the Cherokee Nation. We could measure it in so many ways. We could measure it across the spreadsheets of our budget. We could measure it on the economic impact we have across the region. But what we really ought to be doing is measuring it by how we’re impacting and bettering our smallest of communities – those communities that were founded generations ago, and those communities in particular where our lifeways, our language and what it means to be Cherokee are deeply rooted. That is part of what this future community center in Kenwood represents.

Woody meant a lot to our family and our community. We miss him, but he would be very proud of this community center. He would be overwhelmed by this, really.

I think our Chief came to know a lot about our community through Woody, and so it’s very appropriate that this facility is going to be named after him. This is important to us not just as a physical structure, but for our spirits, for our ability to come together, to enjoy one another’s company, to support one another and to help one another.