Knoxville real estate executive Jerry Bodie is Gov. Bill Lee’s final pick to help set strategy, spending and policy at McGhee Tyson Airport after the state legislature vacated and remade the airport’s governing board over the summer.
Bodie, 68, is executive vice president and chief operating officer of White Realty & Service Corporation, established after East Tennessee grocery chain White Stores sold to Food City's parent company in the late 1980s. He'll fill the last open seat on the nine-member governing board of the airport authority for McGhee Tyson and the Knoxville Downtown Island airports. Bodie is the third of the new appointees since the board was remade to join it without having served as an airport board director previously. The other
two newcomers are Blount County Sheriff James Berrong and investment firm owner Jordan Mollenhour.
Bodie has decades of experience managing and developing commercial centers with White Realty such as the multimillion-dollar Dowell Springs Business Park along Middlebrook Pike. Tenants in the park include mental health care and medical offices. The business park has also served as the site of the since-shuttered Knoxville field office of the FBI.
"I have a great interest in our airport," Bodie said, "especially with all of the growth happening there."
Bodie has completed McGhee Tyson's Aviation Academy, a multiweek course that gives graduates an in-depth view of how the airport operates. He doesn't have direct airport management experience, but he said he feels his decades of construction management and development work give him the perspective needed to assist the airport as it navigates unprecedented growth. McGhee Tyson, which was the country's fastest growing airport in 2024 and has broken passenger records in 2026, is years into its Flight Plan, a set of projects to revamp, expand and modernize the airport.
Those projects include a new 3,500-spot parking garage, a gate expansion and other terminal renovations.
He has served on the boards Leadership Knoxville, the East Tennessee Foundation and the Community School of the Arts, and as building committee chairman for the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. He graduated from Bearden High School and received a bachelor's degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Bodie has been politically active as well. In recent years, he has donated to candidates including U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty, U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett and Knoxville Councilmember Janet, all Republicans.
He said he didn't have a comment on how Tennessee's Republican leadership took control of who leads the board of the Knoxville airport through a new law that gave the state say over the makeup of every major metro airport board in Tennessee. Cities including Knoxville had previously had the power to appoint the directors sitting on the airports' governing boards.
"The state legislature and the governor made their decisions," he said.
State leaders have told Knox News in past conversations the amount of funding the Tennessee legislature contributes to major metro airports justifies a stronger say on those governing boards. While Knoxville, for example, created McGhee Tyson, it doesn't fund it.
Critics of the new law, including the mayors of both Nashville and Chattanooga, have said the change is a partisan move.
Mariah Franklin reports on technology and energy for Knox News. Email: mariah.franklin@knoxnews.com. Signal: mariahfranklin.01
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Gov. Bill Lee picks final new board member to shape the Knoxville airport
