In September 1891 Lieutenant Lawrence D. Tyson, a West Point graduate, replaced Lieutenant Edward D. Gayle (detailed to the university in 1888) as professor of military science and tactics. Tyson’s assignment to the university had been pressed by his father-in-law, Colonel Charles McGhee, whose daughter (Bettie) had married Tyson in Knoxville in 1886.
Tyson introduced competitive drills, training in tactics and maneuvers, artillery training, and class work in military science. In 1892 he held a “Campaign of ’92” in which the cadet battalion, with complete field equipment, encamped on the Hill (after the tents, stolen and hidden by students as a prank, were recovered). Tyson also introduced sham battles, in which one force defended the Hill while the other assaulted it, with blanks in artillery and rifles.
While serving as professor of military science and tactics, he studied law at the university, receiving his law degree with the class of 1894. He resigned his professorship and his commission in the army in 1895 to enter the law firm of Lucky and Sanford. In 1898, when war with Spain was declared, Tyson answered the call to West Point graduates to reenlist to help train recruits. He held the rank of colonel. Following the war, he remained in Puerto Rico for some months as military governor and was joined there by his family. In 1899 Colonel Tyson again resigned his commission, returned to Knoxville, and organized two mills (the Knoxville Cotton Mills and the Knoxville Spinning Company) and was president of both. He also had interests in coal mining and iron and became very prosperous. He was extremely civic-minded and served as president of the 1911 Appalachian Exposition—a continuation of the 1910 exposition.
In 1903 Tyson was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives, and became speaker of the house. In 1917 he volunteered to reenter the army as war was declared on Germany, and President Wilson appointed him brigadier general (Tennessee’s only brigadier general). Under his leadership, the 59th Brigade penetrated the “impregnable” Hindenburg Line, and the war ended six weeks later. His son, Charles McGhee Tyson, also served in World War I and died on October 11, 1918, while flying over the North Sea placing mines in the path of German submarines.
Tyson was elected to the US Senate in 1924, vigorously endorsed by the Knoxville Sentinel, the newspaper he purchased in 1923. He sold the newspaper to Scripps-Howard while serving as senator. He died in office in 1929.
Lawrence and Bettie Tyson gave Knoxville the Dale Avenue Settlement House. Following Tyson’s death, his widow, Bettie McGhee Tyson, gave the City the land for Tyson Park on December 16, 1929, with the stipulation that the City would forever maintain a landing field or airport that would be known as McGhee Tyson Field, honoring the Tyson’s son. The City had purchased the airport on Sutherland Avenue (where the RECSports Complex, National Guard Armory, and West High School now are) on November 27, 1929, from Walter Self and named the airport McGhee Tyson on August 1, 1930, to comply with the terms of the gift of land for Tyson Park. When the airport was relocated in the 1930s, the name McGhee Tyson moved to the Blount County site.
In 1941 the US War Department established Camp Tyson, the nation’s only World War II barrage balloon training center, just south of Paris, Tennessee, and named the two thousand acre camp for General Tyson.
Lawrence Tyson obtained the property on what is now Volunteer Boulevard (then Temple Avenue) from James Meek as partial payment of a debt in 1895 and in 1907 converted the frame structure into a mansion with fine formal gardens. UT placed the house on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.