Holston Haun is on the beat, making sure his community is up to date with a Strawberry Plains Taco Bell’s reconstruction KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - Something is happening in Strawberry Plains, and Holston Haun is on the beat.His beloved dinner spot — a Taco Bell — is gone, but it’s being built back better than ever. Holston, a possible budding broadcast journalist, has made it his mission to keep this community informed on the latest.“All that remains is rubble. All that remains is this bea...
Holston Haun is on the beat, making sure his community is up to date with a Strawberry Plains Taco Bell’s reconstruction
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - Something is happening in Strawberry Plains, and Holston Haun is on the beat.
His beloved dinner spot — a Taco Bell — is gone, but it’s being built back better than ever. Holston, a possible budding broadcast journalist, has made it his mission to keep this community informed on the latest.
“All that remains is rubble. All that remains is this beacon of hope,” Holston said in one of his earliest reports. Those reports started as a summer project, but have snowballed into something else entirely.
“We did our first one, then we saw the comments, they said ‘do another one,’” Holston said while visiting the WVLT News station. “We have a little construction paper and she writes them. And I like to take takes, and then we pick up the best one. Then we edit it and then we put it together and then it’s a video.”
“A lot of helping him figure out what he wants to say and how he wants to say it,” she said. “Sometimes I’m the camera person or holding the phone or holding these little scripts, but my daughter’s been really big on editing and teaching us how.”
Mary Beth said the story started as something to do for fun and a way for the family to spend some time together, then more and more people started watching.
“It was just something fun,” she said. “We thought it was a laugh. We might make some of our family and friends laugh and then it just kind of got a little bit bigger than that.”
She’s been sharing the progress reports on a page dedicated to Holston’s own progress.
“Holston, when he was four, almost five, was diagnosed with leukemia and the next day, of course, our whole world just kind of comes to a stop as families do in that case,” she said. “And a dear friend set up the Facebook page Team Holston, just as a way that we could update people on his medical care and things.”
Sharing more than just news— Mary Beth said the page brought more people into Holston’s story.
“We all like happy endings. And, you know, I think they’re invested in him to see him thrive, because that’s what everybody rooted for— that we would get better and then thrive and do things," she said. “And so now he’s enjoying what little boys can do.”
But Holston has caught the eye of more than just friends and family. He’s in talks with Taco Bell, arranging something special for the restaurant’s official reopening on Tuesday.