Tribute to Ted Laws
1910 - 1992

Premiere Railroad Artist


     
 

Many of the striking steam railroad era images on this website were created by Johnson City's legendary artist Ted Laws. Ted embarked upon a prolific painting adventure in 1982 at the age of 72 years old. For the remaining ten years of his life he devoted himself to recreating vintage railroad scenes he remembered from his youth. Ted was assisted by a number of former railway employees who marveled at his ability to put onto canvas the glory days they all loved. The stories here are recounted by Ted's son Leo Laws, who shared his fathers passion for trains and generously contributed his time to create a web version of his dad's incredible story. A sampling of the Ted Laws Collection of paintings is featured below.

 


Click on each image to see a larger view.
 

Southern Depot
Date: 1986
Scene: 1930s

Ted Laws was born on March 23, 1910. His father was a master carpenter who worked on the construction of the Southern Railway Depot in Johnson City which was completed in 1912. Several of Ted's paintings feature this depot (see above). Ted grew up in the days when time was marked by the arrival of steam engines and the sound of factory whistles indicating shift changes. These were also days when a small boy could roam freely in a city without security fears. Ted's son, Leo, remembers that his dad vividly recalled troop movements from World War I and the constant wartime activity around the rail depots. One thing Ted noted from the famous fountain at Johnson City's Fountain Square as a small boy was how cold the water was.

Ted would build family members or even himself into his railway and street scenes. In the painting below which features the Lady of the Fountain statue, the boy on the bicycle in the painting is actually Ted as a teenager. Ted was a "Western Union Boy" in Johnson City at age 14 delivering telegrams to local businesses and citizens. Telegrams reached their peak popularity in the 1920s and 1930s when it was cheaper to send a telegram than place a long distance phone call. People would save money by using the word "stop" instead of periods to end sentences because punctuation was extra while the four character word was free. Ted would have known most of the people and families of the entire city via his courier job for Western Union. Fortunately for Ted, he did not hold this job during the World War I years during which the Western Union courier delivered terrible news to some families of the loss of a father or brother.

 

 

Western Union Boy
Date: 1988
Scene: 1920s
   
 

Fountain Square
Date: 1988
Scene: 1920s

 

 

Southern Depot at Night
Date: 1987
Scene: 1930

"I didn't even know the man could draw flies, much less paint." Leo laughingly remembers. No one in the family knew of Ted's suppressed art ability. It was already known that Ted Laws had amazing mechanical and engineering type abilities. When he started a hobby or project - it became an unstoppable force building to completion. Leo recounts that Ted had previously built several small steam engines and a miniature railroad (much larger than a model railroad of today) from scrap metal of remarkable scale and immense detail.

Apparently early in life his artistic abilities were discouraged and he was "rapped on the knuckles" in elementary school for creating an animated flip chart of images similar to how early cartoons were animated. Told by his teacher that his fondness of drawing was a waste of time and energy, he basically never pursued it again until near the end of his life. "Mother was concerned about what dad would do in total retirement after selling his neighborhood grocery store on West Market Street, and God gave him the ability and health to flourish with his artistic skills," Leo states.

 

 

 

ET&WNC - Clinchfield
Date: 1987
Scene: 1930s

While not working "officially" as a local railroad employee, Ted Laws was fascinated by the steam engines. He was known to help the ET&WNC railroad workers by shoveling coal in exchange for a ride over to Boone and back over the fabled "Tweetsie" railroad line. This story is consistent with others in Tweetsie folklore in which young volunteers worked side by side with paid employees. The financial fortunes of the small regional railway varied from year to year but the thrill of the steam locomotives drew a steady group of informal "helpers" to the Johnson City railway yards. Of course, the railway guys had to enjoy your company to be accorded this honor of admission into the inner circle. Ted also hoboed around; hopping trains and experienced the full extent of railroading in the 1920s and Depression era. Read more about the ET&WNC Railway employees Ted Laws associated with in the Cy Crumley Collection.

Leo remembers, "As an incentive to study harder and get better grades in school, in the 1950s dad would take me over to the ET&WNC engine house in Johnson City and the engineers would let me ride along through the yards, blow the whistle and it was great fun." "I fell in love with the trains just like dad did and enjoyed his friendship with the railway workers." "The retired railway men were the ones that brought the old photos over to dad he used when he was painting. They would sit around, laugh, and tell tall tales, while dad would be designing the layout or painting his next work." The painting featured above shows the ET&WNC - Linville River Railway line on the left and the Clinchfield Railway passenger platform on the right near Buffalo Street in Johnson City. The painting below (segmented due to size) features the ET&WNC Depot (present Free Service Tire Store) and the Buffalo Street intersection with an eastbound train leaving Johnson City toward Elizabethton and Boone, North Carolina.

 

Buffalo Street
Date: 1982
Scene: 1930
 

ET&WNC Station
Date: 1982
Scene: 1930

 

 

 
Scene: 1850s

Ray Stahl
Date: 1982

Noted Johnson City Historian, Ray Stahl, absolutely loved Ted, Leo recounts. "Ray took delight in seeing the paintings evolve and came by frequently to see dad's latest work." "Dad's cover painting on the soft back edition of Ray Stahl's book, Greater Johnson City: A Pictorial History, (shown above) was commissioned by Ray to depict the original Johnson's Depot.

Ray Stahl was Public Relations Director for Milligan College and later East Tennessee State University for a combined 30 years. He held master's degrees in divinity, education, and journalism. Ray Stahl and Ted Laws were close friends whose combined work drove a revival of interest in the Johnson City's local history during the 1980s and 1990s.




 

Duesenberg
Date: 1987
Scene: 1930
   

"Dad was meticulous in the detail of his work and not just that involving the trains. He studied the details of each building from old photos and was very particular in his choice of automobiles in the paintings. He had an old stack of magazines such as Popular Mechanics and National Geographic, some dated as far back as 1909. In the painting above he had to have a certain model of Duesenberg auto parked at the train station and I had to help search for that. Like most fathers, he felt if he showed me how he created the paintings by gridding off the canvas and calculating scale of the subjects, that I could replicate what he could do. This was not the case," laughs Leo. "It was said that dad owned the first Harley-Davidson motorcycle in Johnson City, and he loved vehicles of all kinds. You can see this in his artwork in which the steam engines and autos appear to have personalities of their own via the headlamps."

 

Night View
Southern Railway
Date: 1986
Scene: 1930s



 

Science Hill High School
Date: 1989
Scene: 1930s

 

 

Windsor Hotel

Date: 1983
Scene: 1915

One of Ted's rarest prints and one of his earliest works is shown above in a night view of Fountain Square and the Windsor Hotel. It is thought that the father-son scene in the painting is Ted with his father watching a mighty Southern Railway steam engine roar through Johnson City. In all Ted created from 30 to 35 artistic works which although featuring primarily Johnson City scenes, also included historic train stations in other Northeast Tennessee towns and cities. In Ted's painting of the Clinchfield Depot in Kingsport with C, C & O Engine 154, Ted, who spent years as an installer of insulation, painted himself insulating one of the stacks at the Mead plant.

The exhibited railway paintings of Ted Laws consistently won many awards including "Best of Show" during the 1980s and his works are proudly featured in many businesses and homes throughout Northeast Tennessee.

 


 

 

Leo Laws
Date: 2006

"You know I am amazed fifteen years after dad's death, the following he still has and the continual love for his work." "Sometimes a family member will ask, What could have happened if dad had found his artistic skills earlier and decided to pursue his love of art say in his forties rather than at age seventy-two? But you know that was not meant to be, and dad was not into it as a commercial enterprise. Sure, he wanted to leave something behind to help mother in her declining years which sales of his art work certainly did. However, he was doing something he truly loved and painted subjects he wanted to paint - the steam railroads and the time of his youth. He would certainly be honored and pleased of the popularity of his work by succeeding generations," Leo states.

The inspirational story of Ted Laws and his artistic career launched after age 70 is an important part of the railway legacy of Johnson City, Tennessee.