29th Annual Cornerstone of Recovery Alumni Reunion

Every Labor Day weekend they come back to Blount County — hundreds of recovering addicts and sober alcoholics — to honor the legacy of a man most never met at a facility that shouldn’t rightly exist.

Cornerstone of Recovery, located in the Louisville community, is their destination. The annual Alumni Weekend is a celebration of new lives and renewed spirits, two days of fellowship and fun and paying it forward. The attendees are former patients of the drug and alcohol treatment campus, and most have left Blount County infused with the spirit of a man whose influence lives on in the treatment Cornerstone provides: J. William “Bill” Hood, who died in 1993.

Four years before he passed, Hood opened Cornerstone in a nondescript strip mall on Topside Road. The facility had 18 staff members, 22 beds and, according to many people in the field of addiction medicine at the time, almost zero chance of success. Bill Hood’s tenacity and perseverance, however, inspired those who joined him in the venture, as well as everyone who seeks treatment here. Twenty-nine years later, Cornerstone has grown into the largest residential treatment provider in the state of Tennessee, occupying a four-facility campus with more than 170 patient beds and almost 250 staff members.

The 29th annual Cornerstone Alumni Reunion will take place this year on Friday, Aug. 31 and Saturday, Sept. 1, on that campus, located at 4726 Airport Highway in Louisville, Tenn. Activities begin at 11 a.m. on Friday and continue through Saturday afternoon, with speakers, live music, recovery meetings and activities for all ages. Admission, as always, is free … but the dividends of experience, strength and hope shared by former patients, current patients, staff members and families is priceless.