Silver Owl Lawrence Lamar Calvert dies from cancer at 82

Lawrence Lamar Calvert, a former Washington representative for the Tennessee Valley Authority and a 46-year member of the National Press Club, died at his home in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on Jan. 26 of cancer.  He was 82.

Calvert's career with TVA from 1962 to 1993 included being it's top lobbyist with Congress and the White House from 1973 to 1979, a time when the authority faced major environmental and legislative challenges.  They included controversy over the endangered snail darter, clean air and strip-mining legislation, and expansion of TVA nuclear power facilities.

Before moving to Washington, Calvert was chief speechwriter for TVA's chairman and helped start its glossy internal magazine, TVA Perspective.  After returning to Tennessee from D.C. he held senior TVA management positions, including head of economic and community development operations in Knoxville and head of it's land and forest resources programs.

Calvert was born in Chattanooga and moved to Knoxville with his parents as a small boy. He received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee in 1959.  He was sports editor and then editor-in-chief of UT's The Orange and White, the weekly predecessor of The Daily Beacon.

After briefly working in 1959 as editor of The Fountain Citizen newspaper, Calvert served as a U.S. Navy public affairs officer for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations in the Pentagon.  He returned to Tennessee in 1962 to join TVA.

His interests in retirement included photography and travel, especially to Ireland.  Survivors include a son, Lawrence L. Calvert, Jr. of Arlington, Va, and a daughter, Laura Calvert Hubbard of Knoxville, and his former wife, Jennifer Hamilton Calvert of Oak Ridge.