About the owners and the mansion's award winning restoration

"George and Charlien McGlothin are truly dedicated preservationists.
The Clay Faulkner home is the third old house they've restored.
This time, it took them 4-1/2 years."

In the 1940s, Clay Faulkner's mansion was converted into a hospital and nursing home. An early ad boasted a quiet location and an ideal climate, at rates of $5.00 to 8.00 per day -- according to care required. By the mid-1950's, Dr. J.P. Dietrich had added onto the building and renamed it the Faulkner Springs Hospital. Local folks still tell fond stories about the doctor and the house where he dispensed medicine and love.

The doctor closed the hospital in 1968. He stripped out much of the woodwork in an unsuccessful attempt to tear down the solid brick structure, then let it sit empty for a decade an a half. When George McGlothin bought the old house at auction in 1989, it was a ghost of its former glory. George and his wife Charlien began four years of restoration, tackling 95 percent of the work themselves. The results were well worth the effort. Today, Falcon Rest is more beautiful than the day Clay Faulkner's family moved in.

In 1997, the National Trust for Historic Preservation honored Falcon Rest's rebirth as first prize winner of their Great American Home Award for outstanding home restoration.

George left a career in management to come back to his home town of McMinnville and restore Falcon Rest. As schoolchildren who came for a tour reported in the local paper, "Mr. McGlothin loves his house." He can tell stories about it at a mile a minute. That's probably why Middle Tennessee's Sunday magazine described him as "a walking encyclopedia dressed in a tuxedo." In addition to leading tours for groups in his persona as "The Victorian Gentleman," George's favorite pastimes are restoring old houses, buying for his Victorian Gift Shop, and rooting for the New Orleans Saints football team (he's been loyal to a fault -- but it's finally paying off!).

Charlien took weekends and holidays off from her job as a NASA public affairs writer to help with the restoration. Since 1995, she's devoted full time to serving as Falcon Rest's general manager and master chef, and using her PR experience to get the word out about Falcon Rest -- including developing this web site. Her South Louisiana heritage is reflected in their mouth-watering menu specialties.