Griffith passed away on Dec. 22 after a short five-week battle with cancer.

“We want to let Ted’s family know how much we loved him and how much we will miss him,” said Mike Shelton, principal at Hawkins Middle School who worked with Griffith for 13 years. “We will have some speakers sharing their memories and some music honoring Ted. We will also have some of his artwork on display.”

Griffith came to the school right out of college when it was still Hawkins Junior High School, located at the end of Stadium Drive in Hendersonville.

“Ted starting coaching football at the old middle school and then he moved to basketball,” Shelton recalled. “After we became a middle school, he was an assistant coach for years. But being an art teacher was his main claim. He was an excellent artist himself and an excellent teacher to our kids. There is no way to count the hundreds and thousands of kids he taught in his 29 years of teaching here.”

Shelton hopes that former students will get the word about the memorial because he knows many of them will want to attend. He expects the word will spread quickly through social media outlets.

“Ted is what any principal would call a great school person, one you can lean on to do anything needed at school,” Shelton added. “He loved the school and he loved the kids. You couldn’t ask him to do anything that he wouldn’t do.

Richard Suter, of Richard Suter Photography, said Griffith was one of the most unique people he has known. “Ted was always dreaming up stuff for me to shoot,” Suter said. “He was very creative.”

Suter said he met “Grif” about eight years ago and two connected over Suter’s photography and Griffith’s art.  “We would just get in his truck and take off without knowing where we were going,” Suter said. “We might end up in a little diner in northern Kentucky, talking someone into letting me take his picture; maybe a farmer sitting on his pickup truck.”

Griffith would use the photo for his artwork, which included German pencil and egg tempera mediums.

Some of Griffith’s art will be on display for the next couple of weeks at All About Art Gallery and Custom Framing, located in the City Square shopping center at 260 West Main in Hendersonville. The gallery will be open after the memorial from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 8. Some prints of his work will be available for $25 with all proceeds going to the T. E. Griffith Fine Arts Memorial Fund. For more information, contact 826-9880 or visit www.allaboutartgallery.com.

by Randy Cline