One Family’s Story Behind Cumberland Heights

Recovery spelled in wooden letters.

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Some institutions begin with a strategic plan. Others begin with a person in pain, a physician willing to listen, a family conversation late at night, and a sentence spoken by a mother whose heart saw suffering clearly.

Cumberland Heights began that second way. As a boy, I saw pieces of it unfold.

Today, Cumberland Heights says its mission as “to transform lives, giving hope and healing to those affected by alcohol or drug addiction.” In current clinical language, I would describe that mission as bringing hope and healing to people and families affected by alcohol and other substance use disorders. The words have evolved. The suffering, the family anguish, and the need for recovery and restoration remain deeply human.

My dad, Dr. Thomas F. Frist Sr., was a physician in the old, intimate meaning of the word. As a child, I watched him treat governors and business leaders, prisoners and patients, the vulnerable and the wealthy. He made house calls. He knew spouses, children, worries, habits, and hopes. His attention and caring always began with the person in front of him.

And that is how Cumberland Heights began, through one person in front of him.

Robert “Bob” Crichton was a Nashville entrepreneur, a neighbor, a friend, and Dad’s patient. Bob was living with alcoholism, or in today’s vernacular, alcohol use disorder, and he came to Dad for help, as so many others did. This was the early 1960s. Dad researched the best treatment available in the country and directed him to Hazelden in Center City, Minnesota. Bob returned with a conviction that Tennessee, and really the whole South, needed a residential treatment center of comparable quality closer to home and available to working families.

That idea came to Dad through a channel he trusted: a patient with lived experience and a practical vision. Dad often said he relied on others because good ideas frequently came from people who understood a problem from the inside. Bob understood this one; he lived it.

Dad’s initial response was to decline, simply because he was too overwhelmed with other commitments. He already carried a tremendous load: a demanding medical practice, hospital leadership at Park View Hospital, teaching responsibilities at Vanderbilt, service at City Hospital, church commitments, school board service, and for all of us a family life. He told Bob he simply physically could never give the project the attention it truly deserved.

That night before going off to sleep, as he often did, Dad reviewed the happenings of the day with my mother, Dorothy Cate Frist. Mother listened as he vividly described Bob’s vision, the need in Tennessee, and the effectiveness of Hazelden. She asked questions. Then, just before sleep, she said something that changed everything: “I really pray that someone will step up to make Bob’s vision happen. It could make a lot of people’s lives better.” I was listening from the hallway through the opened door.

Dad tossed and turned all night.

By morning, he had totally changed course. At 7:00 a.m. from the kitchen table, he called Bob and said he would help. When Bob asked where to begin, Dad gave the answer that defined so much of his leadership: let’s get good people who know what they are doing.

They did exactly that. Bob contacted Lon Jacobsen, then chief counselor at Hazelden, and Dad and Bob asked him to help design the Nashville facility, replicating much of the Hazelden model, and a few weeks later asked him to come south to run it. Jacobsen agreed.

Next came the land. My whole childhood, Dad loved driving around Middle Tennessee looking at property, imagining what could be built, restored, or made useful. He just loved land and a sense of place. As the center idea was taking shape, Dad and Bob found a 177-acre farm for sale on River Road, northwest of downtown Nashville, near the Cumberland River. I remember as a 12-year-old riding out there with them one day. It had rolling hills, a modest home, a small caretaker’s cottage, and a barn.

And then there was question of what the new center should be called.

One day, riding around the farm with Dad, Mother saw the rolling hills by the river and suggested they call the new facility “Cumberland Heights.” The name held both geography and aspiration. Cumberland rooted the place in the river and the region. Heights captured the cliffs and the dreams; it suggested perspective, rising, and hope. Yes, Mother did more than encourage Dad to act. She gave the place a name worthy of its purpose.

That has always mattered to me. Dad brought the physician’s eye. Bob brought the courage of personal experience. Mother brought moral clarity and language. She saw the families behind the illness, and she understood that substance use disorder reaches spouses, children, parents, employers, friends, and entire communities. She sensed that a place for recovery needed clinical competence, yes, but also beauty, dignity, and welcome.

The early fundraising reflected the best of Nashville civic leadership. Dad’s first move was to call together doctor friends and business acquaintances for a meal in the dining room of Third National Bank. Present were Jack C. Massey, a patient of Dad’s who had recently purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken; businessman John Sloan of Cain Sloan department store; and Sam Fleming, Dad’s close friend and patient, and legendary president of the bank. Bob shared his recovery story. Dad explained the lack of treatment facilities in the Mid-South. Dad then painted the vision for the River Road facility.

That moment captures something special about Dad. He could convene people because they trusted him. Physicians trusted him. Business leaders trusted him. Clergy trusted him. Families trusted him. His credibility came from years of quiet, humble service in the community, careful listening, long hours of work, and personal integrity.

The original founding circle was broad. Bob Crichton and Dad were central. Mother was central in a different, deeply human way. Lon Jacobsen brought clinical expertise from Hazelden. Sam Fleming, Jack Massey, John Sloan, and others helped bring credibility, capital, and civic support. The early board also included leaders from business, clergy, and community life. That coalition mattered because substance use disorder was always more than a medical issue. It was also a family issue, a workplace issue, a church issue, and a community issue.

By year end, more than $284,000 had been raised. Groundbreaking took place on January 13, 1966. The facility opened with three patients on July 25, 1966, sixty years ago this month. By the end of that first year, Cumberland Heights had treated 97 patients from 16 states and one foreign country. The foundation had been laid.

Cumberland Heights grew because it was built around the whole person. Dad knew that durable recovery involved body, mind, spirit, family, and community. He supported nutrition, exercise, spiritual care for those who sought it, and the dignity of a beautiful campus. He believed people in recovery deserved serious, holistic care and an immersive setting that helped them envision a new life.

Dad’s role continued long after the founding. He stayed on the board. He recommended board members. He referred patients. He encouraged donors. He encouraged us individually, his children, to continue to support the institution in years to come. He brought visitors to see the campus. He paid attention to the details that shaped the spirit of the place.

One story I love is that in the summer, he and Mother would go out for ice cream, then keep driving all the way to River Road so he could quietly just check in on Cumberland Heights. That was Dad. He could found an institution, then years later still care enough to use his little free time to drive by and see how it was doing.

Another story shows how fiercely he protected the campus. In the late 1980s, a landfill was proposed within seventy-five yards of Cumberland Heights. The board fought it, yet the usual channels were failing. Dad helped devise a solution involving a property swap, using land of his own to redirect the landfill company away from River Road. That was more than strategy. It was stewardship. He knew the land itself helped people heal, and he was willing to use his own property to protect the sanctity and beauty of the place.

Over time, Cumberland Heights has expanded far beyond the original adult men’s program. A women’s program began in 1975, a family program in 1979, adolescent treatment in 1985, outpatient programs in 1987, the Recovery Care Advocate program in 2018, and the Research Institute in 2019. More recently, Cumberland Heights relaunched a Professionals Program for people in sensitive occupations such as lawyers, doctors, nurses, and pilots, and opened ARCH Academy Ridgeview for adolescent girls in 2025.

That evolution would have pleased Dad. He believed in measurement before it was fashionable. He believed in outcomes, high standards, and learning from experience. Cumberland Heights’ Research Institute now measures and monitors patient change, applies modern data science, collaborates with researchers, and explores treatment outcomes to improve recovery success.

The scale today is striking. The organization treats about 2,500 patients each year across its Tennessee locations. Those numbers represent individuals, and they also represent families beginning their own recovery.

The Family Life Center holds special meaning for our family. The 40th anniversary celebration included groundbreaking for two campus additions: the 24,000 square foot Hazel Hawkins Martin Center and the 40,000 square foot Frist Family Life Center. The center honored Mother and Dad together, exactly as it should have. Our family contributed financially toward it, and in October 2007 all five of us original Frist children gathered with our spouses to commemorate its dedication.

For us, that day was larger than a building opening. It was a continuation of our parents’ founding legacy. Mother had helped Dad say yes. Mother had named the place. Dad had helped gather the people, raise the money, find the land, and define the mission. Their children and families were there because Cumberland Heights had become part of our own family story.

At one ceremony in the Founders’ Room, a former residential patient spoke about what Cumberland Heights had meant to his recovery. Dad listened and was visibly moved. He nodded toward the man and said, “That’s what I really care the most about, right there.”

That sentence tells the story better than any institutional history.

For Dad, buildings mattered because people could heal inside them. Boards mattered because governance could protect the mission. Fundraising mattered because resources could open doors. The measure of Cumberland Heights was always the person who found recovery, the spouse who regained hope, the child who got a parent back, the mother who saw her child once again thrive, the family that could breathe again.

This story I’ve written to share how one family has been so connected with Cumberland Heights. So many other families who have done so much for the institution have equally meaningful and powerful stories to tell. Over the years, the financial backbone of Cumberland Heights has included families whose names are woven into Nashville’s civic and philanthropic history: the the Crichtons, the Martins, the Masseys, the Flemings, the Sloans, and so many other generous families and foundations — large and small — whose support helped and continue to help the institution grow from a small River Road treatment center into an invaluable national recovery system.

I often write about leadership, capital, innovation, and scale. Cumberland Heights is a story about all those things, yet at its core it’s a story about compassion organized into action. It began with Bob Crichton’s courage, my mother’s moral clarity, and my father’s willingness to change his mind.

It also began with a name.

Cumberland Heights.

Mother saw the hills along the river and gave the place words that still fit. A person comes there from the low ground frequently of fear, sometimes shame, and broken relationships. The aspiration is to rise, to see differently, to recover life.

Sixty years later, that name still carries the promise.

Cumberland Heights continues to transform lives. It continues to give hope and healing. It continues to remind us that enduring institutions often begin in the simplest way: one person in need, a few friends with a vision, one mother with moral clarity, and one physician willing to say yes.