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Colloredo trivia
Every now and then, during my years at the T-G, I would run across someone (submitting a calendar announcement, say) who would spell the name of one of Shelbyville’s main thoroughfares as “Colorado Boulevard.”
It’s not; it’s Colloredo Boulevard, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. The street is a bypass route for U.S. 231. The old route of 231, which used to pass through downtown, is now designated as a “business” route. Colloredo Boulevard curves around from North Main Street to Union Street, where it becomes Lane Parkway. Food Lion and our local Masonic lodge are both located on Colloredo.
The street’s name has nothing to do with the state of Colorado. It’s named for William Colloredo, whom my former co-worker David Melson tells me was the engineer who oversaw Shelbyville’s massive, transformative urban renewal/flood control project in the 1960s. I knew that it related to an engineering firm somehow, but I didn’t know the specific person until I texted David and asked him.
The reason it came up is because I was reading a story about Jacksonville Jaguars and former University of Tennessee quarterback Joshua Dobbs, who spent his pre-quarantine off-season working for NASA. One of the people quoted in the story was NASA Deputy Director of Engineering Scott Colloredo, which piqued my interest.
An engineer named Colloredo? Could he have any connection to Colloredo Boulevard? I texted David. Independently, we each found Scott Colloredo’s bio on the NASA web site — he went to UT/Knoxville. Then David took it a step further and found William Colloredo’s obituary, which listed a son named Scott living in the right city in Florida. Jackpot. So the NASA engineer is the son of Colloredo Boulevard’s namesake. I wonder if he knows about the street here in Shelbyville?
