It was the year one of Nashville's sports legends met a fate no one could have imagined, or wanted. It was the year two of the secret shapers of the city as we know it were gone within a few weeks' time, and the year two of the cornerstones of our R&B heritage were stilled forever. In some cases the losses made headlines and brought traffic to a standstill; in others, public notice in no way measured the impact these lives brought to bear on the city. Here, in the words of writers, friends, colleagues and close confidantes— and in stories of death-defying risk, brazen hilarity and sober reflection—are some of those we lost.
ARTS & LETTERS
DAN MILLER
1941-2009
Journalist, television host, longtime WSMV-Channel 4 co-anchor
by Demetria Kalodimos
I miss him at the stoplight every night.
Though we worked the late shift, and didn't see much traffic, we always stopped at the same red light on the ride home.
He'd turn left
I drove straight.
But never before exchanging a funny face, a complaint about today's radio playlists, or a prompt to listen to a certain Porter Wagoner tune on 650...
When Dan Miller took that last left turn, there was still so much to say.
So many more things he wanted to accomplish and write down and do.
A radio show, a screenplay, hosting the Oscars (I told him he'd be great)
Making an embarrassing toast at Squirt's wedding, watching his grandchildren succeed.
As we pause at the last light of 2009, I search for words...and find a few for tonight's ride:
We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
—Kenji Miyazawa
ROBERT CHURCHWELL SR.
1917-2009
Pioneering African-American journalist, columnist, Nashville Banner
by Pat Embry
We want our trailblazers to have neat, tidy, awe-inspiring stories. That's not who, or what, Robert Churchwell Sr. was all about.
The Jackie Robinson of Southern journalism wasn't the type to steal home with spikes high. Nor would you describe his dignity—and he was a dignified man, at ease in coat and tie—with the clichéd "quiet."
He was a tough guy, that's what he was.
When Churchwell was hired at the Nashville Banner in 1950, he broke the color barrier for Southern journalism at a prominent newspaper. It was an unheralded revolutionary development, and one not without controversy. The local black community at times criticized him for working at the then-notoriously segregationist newspaper. It sure was better than being a bellhop, though, his previous gig.
It took him years to so much as land a desk in the Banner offices at 1100 Broadway, though, relegated as he was to working from home. Took a while for Jim Crow to clear out his own desk, you see. For the last 20 years of Churchwell's career, he covered education—no high-profile column on the editorial page for this trailblazer.
After his 1981 retirement, Churchwell was the recipient of numerous journalism honors. Shortly before the Banner folded in 1998, he was coaxed into writing that high-profile Banner editorial column. By that time, the paper's managing editor was a young African-American woman.
Churchwell, whose papers reside not in Nashville but at Atlanta's Emory University, lived just long enough for Barack Obama's swearing in as president of the United States. His ultimate legacy, though, is family. Churchwell and his wife, Mary, raised a house full of achievers: five children, educators and medical professionals all. The eldest, longtime Metro schools administrator Robert Churchwell Jr., recalls that early on "The Old Man" instituted mandatory family housecleaning chores, each and every weekend, accompanied by classical music on the stereo. No exceptions. At night, missing curfew by so much as a minute meant dealing with The Old Man.
His widow recalls their children bringing him pieces they had written for school. Her husband's typical first reaction: "Hand me a pencil."
Tough guy. Tougher journalist.
G. ALEXANDER HEARD
1917-2009
Vanderbilt chancellor, 1963-82
by E. Thomas Wood
A single episode from the turbulent 1960s defines Alexander Heard's chancellorship in the minds of many Nashvillians, for better or worse. When Vanderbilt's Impact Symposium invited Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael to speak on campus in 1967, the resulting firestorm of opposition from university trustees and other influential locals appeared to threaten his career.
Supporters rallied in defense of Heard, who was determined to maintain an open forum on campus for even the most controversial ideas. But after supporters of Carmichael rioted following his speech, Nashville Banner publisher and V.U. trustee Jimmy Stahlman blamed Heard directly in an editorial. To this day, there are people of means in Nashville who refuse to donate to Vanderbilt out of continuing pique over the Carmichael incident.
To much of the student body and faculty, however, Heard emerged a hero. When Columbia University tried to hire him away a couple of years later, an outpouring of pleas from supporters on campus helped sway him to remain and "complete the assignment" at V.U., according to university historian Paul Conkin.
If Heard's fortitude cemented his legacy, it was his acumen that got him to the chancellor's job in the first place. A protégé of renowned political scientist V.O. Key, Heard published a book in 1952 predicting the rise of a Southern wing of the Republican Party, even though the South at the time remained solidly Democratic.
In 1956, he briefed a congressional committee on how unions and corporations were getting around campaign-finance laws, decades before the era of McCain-Feingold. In 1967, he addressed another committee on the widening gap between college costs and income from tuition, advocating federal aid six years before Congress created the Pell Grant program.
Small wonder, then, that presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon each named Heard to commissions and task forces on issues ranging from presidential campaign costs to intergovernmental relations to campus affairs.
EDDIE JONES
1924-2009
Former Nashville Banner editor, executive vice president of Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, gatekeeper of the city's secrets
by Liz Garrigan
If you're enjoying an on-the-rocks elixir at a Nashville bar, raise a toast to Eddie Jones. There are many reasons—too many civic contributions to list—but the one in front of you dates back to 1967, when Jones was the primary political strategist in the referendum campaign to approve liquor by the drink. (Before that, you had to bring your own bottle and mixers, which of course is no fun at all.) Back then, he was working officially at the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce—but it was behind the scenes that he was shaping the city.
As a founding member of the secret Watauga society, the circle of affluent Nashville businessmen whose progressive puppetry guided the city on issues of the day, Jones worked largely within circles of privilege and power. Like his contemporary and fellow Wataugan Nelson Andrews, he saw how power was shifting within and outside the city, and he got wealthy up-and-comers from the city's burgeoning suburbs to join forces with Nashville's boardroom class, developing grand civic plans and attracting industry and jobs.
Jones was an insider's insider—enough so that he made an ill-fated run for mayor in 1987. He returned that year to the Nashville Banner, where he'd been a cub reporter nearly four decades earlier. Partly out of journalistic pride, partly because he'd paid his dues, he wanted the story first and he wanted it right. "He did not suffer PR folks lightly who foolishly either didn't point the news toward us first, or at the very least leave something juicy for the p.m. cycle," says Banner veteran Pat Embry, who worked with him.
Long after the afternoon newspaper's office went dark and the storied institution was shuttered in 1998, information remained currency for Jones. He got a swank office and title at the PR firm Dye, Van Mol & Lawrence, though it wouldn't have mattered if his client list were utterly nonexistent. He was an ex-officio member of the press, and he had a bunch of calls to make.
As with his close colleague Andrews, the loss of Eddie Jones leaves a huge tear in the fabric of the city. His number's still in my Rolodex.
IDANELLE "SAM" McMURRY
1924-2009
Second headmistress of Harpeth Hall School
by Nicki Pendleton Wood
If you could shape the ideal headmistress in a girls' school, she'd look a lot like Idanelle S. "Sam" McMurry. Comfortable in her skin, quietly commanding in presence, judicious and perfectly poised, she was the ideal that parents envisioned for their daughters in the years when women's roles were changing from "hope to marry a prince" to "want to be a Supreme Court justice."
McMurry arrived at Harpeth Hall in 1963 to find no alumnae office, no development, and no administrative assistant. She set to work on fundraising almost from scratch, overseeing creation of a development office that raised $1 million for a new library by 1966. She presided over the creation of the middle school and the launch of "Winterim," the off-campus study program. Under her leadership, the curriculum expanded to include the "soft" sciences, women's basketball went to full court, and non-athletes could choose from non-team, ball-free activities such as dance and aerobics.
McMurry left Harpeth Hall in 1979 for an equally distinguished career at Hockaday, a Dallas private school. Harpeth Hall's institutional memory didn't forget her, and it seems a piece of her heart stayed at the school. In 1999, she told an interviewer that her 16 years at Harpeth Hall were the most meaningful in her career.
Her middle initial "S" stood for goodness-knows-what, so someone stuck her with "Sam"—which she was called by everyone, bold and timid, at a time when calling adults by their first names was simply not done. "Sam" was okay with it. Like the leadership she never asked for, she wore her nickname easily. Whether as Idanelle, Miss McMurry, Ms. McMurry or Sam, a generation of Nashville old-girls feels fortunate to have known her.
Chantay Steptoe-Buford
1960-2009
Longtime researcher, archivist, The Tennessean
A three-decade veteran of 1100 Broadway's fourth-floor archive, the ebullient Steptoe-Buford was a persistent ray of light in the Tennessean's musty morgue. She was a novice reporter's best friend, faced her own adversity with admirable toughness, and made life better for anyone who came in contact with her.
Full Chantay Steptoe-Buford tribute
ARTS & LETTERS REMEMBERED
TIM CHAVEZ
1959-2009
Journalist, blogger, passionate advocate for charter schools and immigrants' rights
As a Tennessean columnist, and later at his blog Political Salsa, Chavez never let ideology sway his firm convictions of right and wrong: liberals and conservatives alike felt the lash of his scorn, if he felt they were putting dogma above decency. His blog reporting of the Juana Villegas story, which triggered a national outcry, was a public service as well as a major scoop—a fitting cap to a feisty career.
HERBERT C. GABHART
1914-2009
Chancellor and retired president of Belmont University
Henry Gibson
1935-2009
Actor, child stage star, former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer
Even though Gibson, the master comic and character actor whose milquetoast looks could turn sinister with a shift of the light, was a native Pennsylvanian, he will always be associated with Nashville for his role as Haven Hamilton, the country star who shows his true colors during the assassination climax of Robert Altman's landmark 1975 film Nashville. He was one of us.
EVA TOUSTER
1914-2009
Poet, emerita professor of English at Peabody College, co-founder and editor, Cumberland Poetry Review
For 40 years, Touster hosted a biweekly gathering where poets read, shared and critiqued one another's work.
[page]
MUSIC
THEODORE "LITTLE TEDDY" ACKLEN JR.
Birth date unkown-2009
Jefferson Street music community elder
by Daniel Cooper
Theodore Acklen Jr., who died Oct. 4, was the essence of music community. The son of Theodore "Uncle Teddy" Acklen Sr., a mid-century numbers operator who owned Club Del Morocco on Jefferson Street, "Little Teddy," as friends knew Acklen Jr., carried in his soul and family photo album the traces of chords struck 50 years ago that resound through Music City to this day. Many remember Jimi Hendrix stretching his guitar cable some 30 feet into the audience at the Del Morocco in 1962, but Acklen could pull out a photo of Joyce's House of Glamour, a beauty parlor that stood next door to the Del, and show you where Hendrix roomed on the second floor above the hair dryers and gossip.
In the Music City that Acklen remembered, Count Basie, the Temptations, or maybe Aretha Franklin would finish engagements elsewhere in the city, then hang out until dawn at his father's nightclub. Yet the visiting famous told only part of the story. Acklen remembered too the Sunday jazz jam sessions, the dancers and floor shows, the amateur boxing matches held in front of the club, the baseball teams, the TSU students who came for 50-cent hot dog lunches, the chefs who cooked the swank dinners, the doctors his father helped put through Meharry who would always stop by the Del at homecoming. "Those were good days," Acklen said. "I enjoyed them, I really did."
As interested in others' stories as his own, Acklen shared his memories in the same spirit with which he would, for instance, organize the entertainment for the Pearl High School annual reunion, valuing the history he and his community witnessed, wanting to honor it as much as pass it along. Just as he wanted to share the Del Morocco photos his family preserved, so uniquely telling of complex times. What could be more complex than an image of the Brooklyn Dodgers' Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella enjoying dinner at a gambler's nightclub in segregation-era North Nashville—a building that once housed Pullman porters and is now but a ghost frame haunting an interstate exit ramp.
And what could be more simple than the thanks owed to Theodore Acklen Jr., and others like him—the quietly departed who struck no mighty six-string chords or doubles off the wall, who neither sought nor received public acclaim, but who, in sharing what they knew of days both extraordinary and mundane, opened the past to the rest of us.
CHRIS FEINSTEIN
1967-2009
Longtime Nashville club fixture; musician, Shadow 15, Bedlam, Iodine, The Questionnaires, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
by E. Heather Lose
I was an easy target back in the '80s. Though I fancied myself a serious music journalist, to most I was just the dorky girl with the clipboard, making the rounds to all the clubs to get their listings—generally during soundcheck.
Meanwhile, Chris Feinstein was coolness personified. Oh man. He played like a soul on fire, looked like a movie star, and was always onstage somewhere—flailing around behind the drums at Cantrell's, beating the boards at Summer Lights, kicking out serious jams at 328 or the Exit/In.
As his career unfolded and his audiences got bigger, Chris stayed Chris. He was loved by all—seriously, every person he ever met fell in love with him. That's a rare quality in the music business and in life. Over the years, Chris Feinstein kept creating and didn't let success supersede his relationships with people. He was consistently sweet, giving, and so funny. There must have been times he didn't want to chat with a fan, or have yet another picture snapped, but he took the time, and was loved for it. He was always kind to the dork with the clipboard, too.
We loved Chris first. Before he moved to the Big Apple, before his home became the road, before appearing on blue-washed stages around the globe as "Spacewolf," Chris Feinstein was of Nashville, and we loved him. Here he was, and always will be, son, brother, uncle, collaborator and friend. He's a part of us forever, and God, we're the better for it.
TED JARRETT
1925-2009
Pioneering Nashville R&B producer, songwriter and label chief
JOHNNY JONES
1936-2009
Nashville's king of blues guitar
by Michael Gray
Johnny Jones was from Eads, in West Tennessee, but he was fond of saying he had "that lowdown smell of Mississippi" in his guitar. He believed flavor, more than technique, is what Jimi Hendrix picked up from him in North Nashville nightclubs during the early 1960s. "I had that mud on my feet," Jones said. "I brought that swagger, that feel—that's what Jimi wanted."
Like many musicians, Jones often talked about his blues craft in terms of personal feeling, soulful expression and other intangibles. He credited many of his career achievements, however, to Ted Jarrett, whom he called the godfather of Nashville's black music culture for teaching him to read music, encouraging him to practice scales, and introducing him to the recording process.
They met in 1958, when Jones was 22 and stranded in Clarksville shortly after arriving there to play in a house band that backed female impersonators. Jarrett, who learned piano and composition at Fisk University, had just written "You Can Make It If You Try" for Gene Allison; he was hoping to capitalize on its success by assembling a tour featuring Allison, Earl Gaines, Christine Kittrell and other acts nurtured by Jarrett. Needing a guitarist, Jarrett enlisted Jones, brought him to Nashville, and instructed him to learn to sight-read their songbooks.
"He went on tour with us, and while the rest of us partied, Johnny committed himself to practicing the guitar and learning to read music," Jarrett wrote in his 2005 autobiography.
Jarrett died on March 21 at age 83. Jones expressed to the media his indebtedness to his longtime friend and mentor, then let his guitar do the rest of the talking during a Jarrett tribute concert in July at The Place—veteran bandleader Jimmy Church's nightclub on Second Avenue. With little indication apparent at the time, the occasion marked one of Jones' final public appearances. The guitarist was found in his apartment Oct. 14 by exterminators scheduled to spray there. The coroner's office indicated that he probably died five or six days earlier.
Jones didn't want a funeral, so Jimmy Church gave him a musical sendoff at his club. The packed affair was a sight to behold, with so many of Nashville's storied musicians on hand to honor their city's premier blues guitarist that there was scarcely elbow room in the house. Many of those players had saluted Jarrett there a couple of months earlier. In any full reckoning of the city's musical heritage, their names will always be found, side by side.
JON HAGER
1941-2009
Singer, comedian, surviving member of the Hager Twins of Hee Haw fame
by Adam Dread
I first met the Hager Twins when I mentioned them in a piece I wrote for Bone music magazine. They read it on Crook & Chase, and the next day Jon called me at my radio show on Thunder 94. The boys became weekly guests on Man of Leisure Mornings, making the show "Hageriffic!" As well as incredible singers—they did the best version of "My Maria" ever—they were natural jokesters, always on. As soon as any of their guy buddies were within earshot, one or both of them would greet us with their favorite greeting, "Hey Cak." (I spelled it that way for a reason.)
When I became a feature producer on Dick Clark's Prime Time Country, we had the Hagers on the show often. My favorite was the first opening of the show, when we moved to the old Hee Haw studio at Opryland in 1997. Snooping around, we had found an old wardrobe box "stamped" Hee Haw. In the cold opening, host Gary Chapman was showing guest John Michael Montgomery around the new studio, when they came across the box. Hearing noise coming from inside, Gary opened it. Out rolled Jim and Jon, in their Hee Haw overalls, covered in dust. Jon asked Gary what month it was, to which Gary replied "November." Jim piped up, "Jon, we must have overslept! Come on, we need to head to the polls to vote for President Carter..."
The Hagers were true celebrities, recording eight albums and starring in two top-rated TV shows. They were even featured in Playgirl. They really could have opened up a school to teach celebs how to interact with fans. Jon and Jim never met a stranger, and they made everyone, young and old, feel special. They were true ambassadors of Music City.
Sadly, this was the first Christmas without a Hager in our house. Jon and Jim spent their Christmas together with our family, as did Jon alone last year after Jim died. I could see it in his eyes then. He really longed for his brother and best friend in a way I think only a twin could understand.
Just a few weeks later, we found him, peacefully asleep forever, in his brother's old bedroom. We grieved his passing, but took comfort in that he had found peace. I'm happy they're together again, greeting friends and former castmates as they arrive with a hearty "Hey Cak!"
HUNTER HARVEY
1943-2009
Early Nashville overnight hard-rock DJ
by Galyn Martin
Hunter Harvey's life was often a combination of the sacred and profane. Rumor has it he copy-edited a Bible for religious publisher Thomas Nelson while he was high on acid. Another time, he would work double shifts, pulling late-night hours on rock radio while working for a time at Cokesbury bookstore. "Hunter Harvey was one of the more eclectic characters Nashville produced in the 1970s," says Jeff Short, a stained-glass artist who had a glass studio in Nashville at the time, "and that's saying something."
In the early 1970s, Harvey was a late-night disc jockey on WKDA 103-FM during its brief AOR phase. At a time when rock 'n' roll was the countercultural medium, Harvey was the messenger. His expansive musical knowledge and his late hours on the radio gave him the freedom to go into deeper and weirder cuts. Although the rock he played went against the grain in a city built on country music, it spoke to his listeners and they trusted him. While Harvey played entire album sides into the early morning, he frequently fielded calls from listeners on bad acid trips and would spend time talking them down.
He worked at other stations in Nashville through the 1970s and '80s. When I met him in the early 1980s, he was a friend of my father's and I was a gawky insecure 15-year-old. I wasn't sure what to make of him. He played hard rock on Rock 106 and he drove a BMW motorcycle everywhere. He had a voice like velvet and a teddy-bear physique and he was also one of the most genuinely sweet people you could ever meet. With his beloved friend, Annie Laurie Hardy, he would perform puppet shows for children around town. He didn't behave like most adults—he was quirky and gleeful and told funny, ribald jokes. He spoke to me as if I were an adult, and when I let down my adolescent coolness, we talked about music and poetry and theology.
I lost track of him over the years (he was my dad's friend, after all) but after Annie Laurie died, he moved, heart-broken, away from the places that reminded him of her. He worked on Asheville, N.C., radio stations in the 1990s, and he was still living there when he passed away in November. I like to think his voice is still out there on some distant signal, calming and clear, somewhere above the treetops, forever on his own wavelength.
DUANE JARVIS
1957-2009
Singer, songwriter, longtime sideman and guitarist
by Michael McCall
Duane Jarvis proved just how easily cool and friendly could coexist in one person. Cutting a striking figure with his combed-back rockabilly haircut and his familiar leather jacket, Jarvis epitomized the look and sound of the roots-rock movement that found a focal point in Southern California in the 1980s and in East Nashville in the 1990s.
Like several others to rise from the California scene—including Rosie Flores and Lucinda Williams, both of whom he backed on guitar—Jarvis became a constant presence in Nashville on stage and in clubs. For several years, he and ex-wife Denise Jarvis also operated Cat's Pajamas, an East Nashville bed and breakfast that catered to traveling musicians.
Whether performing his own concise, clever material or backing one of his friends, Jarvis preferred taste to flash. Plenty talented, he never drew attention to himself through how fast or jagged he could play. Jarvis' style focused on an economy of perfectly situated notes that added color and emotion.
That's why the list of those he backed was so impressive. Besides Flores and Williams, Jarvis added to the music of Dave Alvin, Frank Black, Peter Case, John Prine, Amy Rigby, Michelle Shocked, Dwight Yoakam, Ben Vaughn and Joy Lynn White. All strong personalities, yet Jarvis stood out beside them, a slyly smiling presence who added just the right spice musically and visually.
Jarvis was an underrated songwriter, co-writing "Still I Long for Your Kiss" with Williams (from her album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road) and the great "A Girl That's Hip" with Tim Carroll on the Drop Dead Gorgeous soundtrack. His most distinctive work can be found on his five solo albums, released between 1994 and 2003, years he resided in Nashville.
A native of Oregon, where he led popular club bands starting in his teens, Jarvis moved in the 1980s to Los Angeles, drawn by bands such as the Blasters, Lone Justice, Rank & File and X. He immediately connected with the new country-flavored rock acts emerging in the city's active music scene. He moved to Nashville in the '90s, becoming a cornerstone of the East Nashville scene before returning to California in recent years.
Graceful to the end, he greeted friends with a smile as they streamed to visit while he battled colon cancer. He died April 1 at age 51 in his Marina del Rey apartment while under hospice care.
TIM KREKEL
1950-2009
Singer, songwriter, bandleader, Tim Krekel & the Sluggers
by Michael McCall
Tim Krekel didn't realize 2007's Soul Season would be his last album, but now it sounds like he provided the soundtrack for his own New Orleans funeral. R&B often informed Krekel's music, but he went out with the most horn-driven music of his career, its high-stepping original tunes offering a jaunty, spiritual celebration of life and music.
Looking back, it seems perfectly appropriate, since the gentlemanly Krekel usually let music do his talking. A record executive once said he had "the ego of the Dalai Lama," and that quiet reserve may have been among the reasons he repeatedly was described as under-recognized in reviews of his albums from Rolling Stone to CD Review.
In many respects, Krekel defined the type of multitalented backgrounder who provides the backbone of the music industry by being able to adjust and contribute to whatever suited the situation. His talent was as wide as it was deep: His earnings came from his talents as a lead guitarist and a songwriter as well as from his own albums and tours.
As a guitarist, he toured at length with Jimmy Buffett in his late 1970s to early 1980s heyday; later gigs included sharing the stage with bandleaders Marshall Chapman, Mark Germino, Delbert McClinton, Steve Forbert, Tracy Nelson and Pam Tillis. As a songwriter, he co-wrote standout hits for Crystal Gayle ("Turning Away"), Patty Loveless ("You Can Feel Bad") and Martina McBride ("Cry On the Shoulder Of the Road"). Just as important were album cuts, including Jason & the Scorchers' trademark "Greetings from Nashville" as well as songs by Canned Heat, Dr. Feelgood, Vern Gosdin, Lonnie Mack, Kathy Mattea, Rick Nelson, Jerry Reed and Kim Richey.
For a moment, Krekel joined the Nashville '80s rock scene as leader of the roots-rock trio The Sluggers, who recorded a fine album for Arista Records in 1986. But mostly he recorded eclectic solo albums that bridged rock, R&B and country with the laid-back ease of a child of Louisville, Ky. From his 1979 Capricorn Records debut, Crazy Me—the first album produced by Tony Brown, who went on to become a Music Row kingpin—through the series of albums he made through 1990s and 2000s, Krekel left a legacy of strong material for generations to discover. He died at age 58 at home in Louisville on June 27 after a short bout with cancer.
AUBREY MAYHEW
1927-2009
Producer, founder, Little Darlin' Records
by Randy Fox
By the standards of conventional music-biz thinking, Aubrey Mayhew was a nut. Consider the evidence: In 1962 Mayhew was a genu-wine New York Record Executive, not a bad gig for a boy from Gretna, Va., who spent most of his early career shepherding crazed hillbilly singers. Sure, he might have been in charge of RCA Victor's budget label Pickwick, tasked with repackaging former hits and could-have-beens for dimestore record bins—but he was still a NEW YORK RECORD EXECUTIVE, which nobody could deny.
That changed when Mayhew happened to hear a song-pitch tape at the 1962 National Country Music Convention. Even after he located the tape's singer under the Shelby Street Bridge, sleeping off a titanic bender, Mayhew knew he had found a star. He dried out his new discovery and spruced him up with the name of an old-time pug fighter—Johnny Paycheck—then ditched New York and eventually started his own Nashville-based imprint, Little Darlin'.
Together, Mayhew and Paycheck would cut masterpieces of honky-tonk noir whose titles were studded with parenthetical landmines: "He's in a Hurry (To Get Home To My Wife)," "If I'm Gonna Sink (I Might as Well Go to the Bottom)" and the William Castle-worthy "(Pardon Me) I've Got Someone to Kill." Not to mention apocalyptic chronicles such as "The Cave," or the all-time classic of cracker existentialism, the dead-man-floating saga "The Ballad of Frisco Bay."
But what's truly inexplicable—at least to a music-making model that rewards low risk—is how popular and influential these records became. Their reissue at the turn of the century was a revelation, like the resurrection years earlier of crime novelist Jim Thompson's pulp masterworks. It turned out Aubrey Mayhew was crazy, all right—crazy like Sam Phillips, crazy like Pappy Daily, all Southern-cracked musical geniuses with the X-ray vision to see a diamond where cooler heads saw only an old chunk of coal. And with the passing of another of their kind, the world is not merely a little less crazy, but much less capable of surprise.
SHELBY SINGLETON
1931-2009
Producer, A&R executive, eventual owner of Sun Records
by Michael McCall
In 1961, Music Row was ruled by courtly gentlemen such as Chet Atkins, Owen Bradley and Don Law. Then Shelby Singleton arrived from Shreveport, La., with all the bluster a former U.S. Marine could summon. He carried a steel plate in his head, the result of a war injury in the Korean conflict, and at times his competitors must've wondered if it affected his thinking.
But Singleton's maverick sensibilities made him a Music City legend—and a wealthy record man. He understood the world loves colorful artists and skewed novelty songs, and the hits he produced or oversaw as a Mercury Records executive included Dave Dudley's "Six Days on the Road," Ray Stevens' "Ahab the Arab" and Leroy Van Dyke's "The Auctioneer." He signed such free spirits as Roger Miller, Charlie Rich and Jerry Lee Lewis, giving the Killer his first major-label deal at a time other record men figured he was finished.
As Mercury's national head of A&R, he brought R&B singers Brook Benton and Clyde McPhatter to Nashville, letting them sleep in his home because of segregation at the city's leading hotels. He aggressively bought regional breakouts from indie labels—"Chantilly Lace" by the Big Bopper, "Running Bear" by Johnny Preston— and turned them into national hits. In the case of "Hey Paula," he not only bought the song but had the duo Jill & Ray change their names to Paul & Paula. The song ended up spending three weeks at No. 1.
Leaving Mercury to form the record companies SSS International and Plantation Records, he quickly scored a huge crossover hit in 1968 with "Harper Valley P.T.A.," also the first hit for its singer, Jeannie C. Riley, and the first No. 1 for songwriter Tom T. Hall. Profits in hand, he purchased the Sun Records catalog from Sam Phillips in 1969, aggressively re-releasing its pioneering rock tracks in a flood of vinyl, and later digital, configurations. He even saw the value of the Sun Records logo, making a mint by pressing it on T-shirts and posters.
He unearthed the famed impromptu jam session when Johnny Cash, Lewis and Carl Perkins were at Sun Studios when former Sun star Elvis Presley dropped in, then sold the recordings as the Million Dollar Quartet. In perhaps his most audacious move, he persuaded Presley sound-alike Jimmy Ellis to record and tour as Orion, suggesting the rhinestone-suited guy in the mask just might be a rock king who'd recently, tragically died. Orion remained successful until Ellis tore off the mask one New Year's Eve and dispelled the myth.
Singleton died of cancer at age 77 on Oct. 7. The business is duller without him.
MUSIC REMEMBERED
ERNEST ASHWORTH
1928-2009
Country singer, songwriter, radio-station owner
Ashworth, a 45-year member of the Grand Ole Opry, remains best known for his 1963 smash "Talk Back Trembling Lips."
BUTCH BALDASSARI
1952-2009
Mandolin virtuoso, member of Lonesome Standard Time, music teacher
BARRY BECKETT
1943-2009
Producer of everyone from Bob Dylan to Hank Williams Jr., former Warner Bros. Records executive, Muscle Shoals session keyboardist
VERN GOSDIN
1934-2009
Rumbling country singer ("Set 'em Up Joe") known as "The Voice"
HANK LOCKLIN
1918-2009
Country singer-songwriter ("Please Help Me I'm Falling," "Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On"), five-decade member of the Grand Ole Opry
DANNY PETRAITIS
1957-2009
Producer (Levon Helm—Ramble at the Ryman), creative development executive at High Five Entertainment
DAN SEALS
1948-2009
Pop singer who successfully switched to country
Seals, who started out as "England Dan" to John Ford Coley in the '70s soft-rock duo, went on to a notable Nashville career with 11 No. 1 singles (including his 1985 hit "Bop").
DAVID "POP" WINANS SR.
1934-2009
Patriarch of the superstar Winans gospel family, 1999 Grammy nominee for his album Uncensored.
[page]
BUSINESS
NELSON ANDREWS
1927-2009
Developer, civic leader, unparalleled behind-the-scenes player instrumental in causes ranging from Vanderbilt Children's Hospital to race relations and public education, root-beer connoisseur and enthusiastic unicyclist
by Bruce Dobie
Nelson Andrews wasn't political, wealthy, or overly charismatic. He didn't sweep into a room; he was often a rumpled mess. In his day job in real estate, he laid a number of bad eggs. In the early 1990s, he sank himself irretrievably into debt to First American Bank, on whose board he then sat, leading to a period of banking discomfort that shook the city's financial classes hard.
Thus is it all the more remarkable that Andrews will rightfully go down as one of the more brilliant, influential and positive leaders in Nashville's public life. An outsized citizen patriot, an acute student of power and process, and a helluva decent guy, his remarkable levity, tireless volunteering, and go-to counsel prevailed across all classes in the city until he took his last breath.
It was in 1967 when Andrews commenced his civic work—and his civic work was his life work—by helping spearhead liquor-by-the-drink in Nashville. In that campaign, he struck long and enduring relationships with an influential generation of other well-heeled West Nashville businessmen who would go on to create Watauga, a secret society of movers and shakers that significantly influenced the direction of the city. With Watauga at his back, Andrews sailed forth for several decades.
Two theaters of interest drew Andrews' lifelong involvement. The first was public education. At both the local and state level, he acted on the notion that only an educated citizenry could flourish. "If you want to see the future of this city," he often remarked, "step inside any public-school second-grade classroom." Counselor to governors and mayors, and patient enough to suffer membership on every education not-for-profit known to man, his ennobling argument for better schools found realization in countless education initiatives and programs.
A second major interest was in raising a never-ending succession of city leaders. After Watauga gave birth to Leadership Nashville, and Andrews became its father, Leadership Nashville groomed successive waves of Nashvillians with this charge: that they know their city well; and that they act upon that knowledge to improve it.
Andrews hung with the city's elites, but he will go down as one of the world's great egalitarians. Utterly without guile, he possessed an ego that was scarcely detectable. No man loved Nashville more. No man worked harder for it.
His was a leadership of selflessness. The trail he left, you cannot often find.
W. DORTCH OLDHAM
1919-2009
GOP stalwart and Southwestern Co. CEO
by E. Thomas Wood
Born into poverty in Pleasant Shade, Tenn., Oldham hitchhiked to Nashville at age 16 with a few dollars in his pocket and a notion to go to work selling Bibles door-to-door for Southwestern, one of the city's oldest companies. Thirty years later, as chairman, CEO and majority owner of Southwestern, he and fellow shareholders sold it to the Times Mirror Co. for a reported $17 million.
Oldham came home from the Second World War to work as a sales manager at Southwestern. He and a fellow manager, Fred Landers, helped engineer dramatic growth in the business, which branched out from Bibles to sales of a variety of educational books.
He bought a controlling interest in the company in 1959, remained as president after its sale in 1966, and left in 1972 to prepare a run for governor of Tennessee. Oldham lost his bid for the Republican nomination in 1974 but went on to serve as chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party later in the 1970s.
"There is nothing that tests your commitment to a goal like getting a few doors closed in your face" recalled Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who sold books for Southwestern while a student in the early 1970s. "Mr. Oldham taught legions of young people to communicate quickly, clearly and with passion."
JOE M. RODGERS
1933-2009
by Lee Jennings
Executive Vice President/CFO, American Constructors Inc.
by E. Thomas Wood
Construction magnate, major player in Republican politics, U.S. ambassador to France
The accomplishments and influence of Joe Rodgers are simply too vast to summarize here. But a few comments from those who knew him provide some sense of the man:
"I remember that Joe had barely gotten off the plane from France when a group of local businessmen approached him, explaining that pornography had taken over Lower Broad and was a threat to our city. Joe asked, 'Well...what are you doing about it?' Subsequently, Joe and others purchased the property that housed the adult book store and then evicted the tenant. When Joe saw a problem, he tackled it quick and hard."
by Gif Thornton
Partner, Adams and Reese LLP
"He was a total optimist. When my house burned down in 1994, he told me I was the luckiest man in the world because it needed renovating anyway."
by William B. Brown Jr.Headmaster emeritus, Brentwood Academy
"Joe was a founding trustee for BA. Just as he was faithful in his love for His Lord, Joe stayed with Brentwood Academy through thick and thin as it grew from birth in '69. I also loved the fact that it was never difficult to understand where Joe stood on any particular issue."
byDavid Ewing
Partner, Rudy, Wood & Winstead PLLC
"When the tornado hit the city in April 1998, he agreed to lead the [Red Cross] effort to raise money needed for the disaster. He cleared all appointments from his busy schedule and spent a week at our office working the phones to raise money for the relief effort. Everyone took his phone call, and no one turned him down. The national office watched in amazement as he pulled in $500,000 on the first day alone."
BUSINESS REMEMBERED
RITA A. BENNETT
1951-2009
Glass ceiling-shattering banker
Bennett joined Nashville's Third National Bank as her first job and rose through its ranks in the ensuing 27 years, becoming executive vice president and chief financial officer of Third National's successor, SunTrust Banks of Tennessee.
JOHN THOMAS CONNERS JR.
1920-2009
Last living name partner of Boult Cummings law firm
Conners secured settlements in excess of $1 million for victims and their families after the Waverly train disaster of February 1978, when rail cars carrying propane gas derailed in the Humphreys County town and exploded during cleanup operations two days later, killing 16 workers, officials and town residents.
Full John Thomas Conners Jr. obituary
THOMAS LEON CUMMINGS JR.
1919-2009
Founder of Cummings sign firm
In 1952, Memphis hotelier Kemmons Wilson tapped Cummings Signs to design and build the first signs for his fledgling Holiday Inn chain. The distinctive green and gold marquee, with its blinking arrow, became a roadside fixture known to the entire country.
Full Thomas Leon Cummings Jr. obituary
TALMADGE B. GILLEY JR.
1933-2009
Longtime Tennessee bank regulator
CALVIN HOUGHLAND
1916-2009
Oil exec; presiding spirit of Iroquois Steeplechase
ALBERT WILLIAM JOHNSON
1919-2009
Co-founder of Dobson & Johnson real estate firm
JOHN K. MADDIN JR.
1927-2009
Veteran trial lawyer
Full John K. Maddin Jr. obituary
JOHN CLARENCE NEFF
1924-2009
CEO of HCA and member of Alexander administration
Full John Clarence Neff obituary
ALAN L. SATURN
1938-2009
Attorney, arts supporter and an organizer of the annual Whitland Avenue Fourth of July celebration
HERBERT J. SCHULMAN
1925-2009
Pioneer of Nashville's for-profit health care industry
"It was in his living room that he and I and three others joined together to start HealthAmerica," Gov. Phil Bredesen recalled after Schulman died. "He was a smart and deeply caring man."
Full Herbert J. Schulman obituary
DONALD WAYNE THURMOND
1940-2009
Founding chairman and CEO of Nashville Bank & Trust
Full Donald Wayne Thurman obituary
JAMES A. "JIMMY" WEBB JR.
1922-2009
Chairman of Nashville City Bank
Vanderbilt assistant football coach Bear Bryant recruited Webb in 1941 to play for the Commodores.
TURNER PRIDEMORE WILLIAMS
1936-2009
Insurance executive
by E. Thomas Wood
Obviously an animal lover, Williams left bequests of $50,000 to the Nashville Humane Society and $25,000 to a caretaker for his pets.
[page]
POLITICS
TOMMY BURNETT
1942-2009
State representative, talk-radio personality, lobbyist, salesman of everything from Jimmy Carter commemorative watches to fireworks
by Teddy Bart
To put Tommy Burnett on my radio show was an idea I had secretly harbored for nearly 10 years.
In the early '80s, I anchored the news on WKRN-Channel 2 and hosted a Sunday-night talk show. I secured an interview with Tommy the day after he was released from serving what would be the first of two separate prison sentences. He was an outstanding interview subject, and I made a secret promise with myself that one day I would include Tommy in a program on a regular basis.
The chance came a decade later when Teddy Bart's Round Table had an opening for a Democrat panel member. I went out to Bob Frensley's automobile dealership—a sort of halfway house for recently paroled Tennessee politicians—and offered the job to Tommy. He thought about it, then tried to sell me a car. After he accepted the job, all hell broke loose. Many people called to complain about my choice. Two businesses canceled their sponsorship of the program. A prominent Nashville minister called to tell me he was leading a petition to get me fired. "But, Reverend," I responded, "isn't forgiveness a major tenet of your faith?" "Not when it comes to that scoundrel Tommy Burnett," he exploded.
Tommy was a natural at the talk-show game, insightful, humorous and canny. His malapropisms and innocent errors were legendary. A "flagrant" mistake was often a "vagrant" mistake. The verb "taken" was always "took." He asked a local rabbi if he had any special plans for Christmas. He asked a self-conscious music executive known for his toupee where he had his hair cut. And, of course, he accused Round Table regular Crom Carmichael of being a racist. Crom demanded an apology. Tommy would not recant. And Crom left the show.
Tommy's gene pool was quintessentially political, mixed with a tender-heartedness. His kind is an endangered species.
POLITICS REMEMBERED
ANNA BELLE CLEMENT O'BRIEN
1923-2009
Former state senator; stalwart of Tennessee Democratic politics
Full Anna Belle Clement O'Brien obituary
DON SPAIN
1938-2009
Senior member of the Capitol Hill press corps
[page]
IN THE SERVICE
J. CLARENCE EVANS
1916-2009
Decorated ex-POW; key opponent of the Crump machine in 1940s and '50s; longtime member of Nashville bar
by E. Thomas Wood
On June 30, 1941, his 25th birthday, Harvard Law student Clarence Evans flew from Boston to Nashville, took and passed the Tennessee bar examination, drove to Tullahoma's Camp Forrest, and reported for active duty in the army. By late 1943, Evans was stationed in England with the 445th Bombardment Group. One of his fellow squadron leaders was actor Jimmy Stewart.
Maj. Evans led a 24-airplane attack on a factory in the central German city of Gotha on Feb. 24, 1944. He had no fighter support, and the area was well-defended by the Luftwaffe. After his squadron struck the target, gunfire raked his B-24, killing the navigator and severely wounding Evans.
He recalled drifting in and out of consciousness as a crewman hurled him from the plunging aircraft and his parachute deployed. He took another bullet from a German fighter as he descended. He was quickly captured. After 14 months in prisoner-of-war camps, Evans was freed by the advancing troops of Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army late in the war.
In 1948, Evans helped Gordon Browning defeat Boss Crump's Memphis-based political machine to become governor. Browning made him commissioner of Finance and Taxation. Later, in private practice, Evans represented co-founders Jack Massey and John Y. Brown Jr. when they created Kentucky Fried Chicken Corp. as a fast-food franchise. He was among the original directors of that company.
In addition to Clarence Evans, several leading figures from within the Nashville business community who passed away in 2009 had served in the conflict. They include: John Conners (photo intelligence officer with 15th Air Force in Italy), Tom Cummings (Army combat service in the Pacific), Al Johnson (B-24 pilot with 725th Bomb Group, shot down over Austria in October 1944 and held prisoner until war's end), Eddie Jones (fighter pilot with the Army Air Corps' 57th Fighter Group), John Neff (flew 35 B-17 missions from Italy), Dortch Oldham (Army Air Forces service in the Pacific), Herb Schulman (Army infantryman in New Guinea and the Philippines) and Jimmy Webb (Navy aviator). The Veterans Administration currently estimates that 900 U.S. World War II vets die every day.
Full J. Clarence Evans obituary
Evans recalls his liberation from a Nazi POW camp
CAPT. RONALD G. LUCE
1982-2009
Husband, father, Belmont graduate, Special Forces team commander killed in Afghanistan
by Jim Ridley
"Ultimate sacrifice" was not a glib concept of glory to Ron Luce, explains his wife, Kendahl Shoemaker Luce. As with everything else the decorated officer took seriously—strategy, orders, the rationale behind the war—she says he had weighed the options and outcomes, and believed there were larger things than himself at stake.
Those things included his wife, whom he met at military college in Pennsylvania when he was 19 and she was just 16. Well, she wasn't really larger: At 6 feet, he towered over 5-foot-2 Kendahl, and unlike other guys he wasn't afraid to kid her about it. "I was like, who the heck is this guy?" she recalls, but wound up laughing anyway.
She followed him to Belmont, where they both graduated. (His embryology professor told the Washington Post that Ron took time off mid-semester to pitch in when Hurricane Ivan battered the Gulf Coast; he insisted on making up the missed work.) He hoped his bachelor's degree in biology, plus his Army service, could help him get into medical school so he could become a pediatric oncologist.
That was the plan. And then Kendahl would go to law school, with his full encouragement. And they'd arrange it so their little girl Carrie Ella would never miss a moment of loving attention, or the kind of horseplay she and Daddy would indulge in while playing pirate in their Fayetteville, N.C., home.
But on Aug. 2, in Qole Gerdsar, Afghanistan, insurgents struck a vehicle with a rigged explosive device, killing three U.S. soldiers. One of those men was Ron Luce, age 27. A Washington Post account of the service at Arlington describes a sober, timeless military ritual: a horse-drawn caisson, a cherry-wood casket and Kendahl seated nearby, cradling a bereft little girl.
"There are no words that can sum up Ron's life, the good he did, the people he touched," Kendahl Shoemaker Luce wrote in an email dated Christmas Eve—her and Carrie Ella's first without Ron. "Instead, his actions, the stories, and the memories speak for themselves. The world is a better place because of him and people like him who are willing...to stand up for what they believe in, even if they are standing alone because others are too afraid. There is nothing I could say that would speak any louder than he already has."
Full Capt. Ronald G. Luce obituary
WALBURGA VON RAFFLER-ENGEL
1920-2009
Pioneering woman professor at Vanderbilt, internationally renowned linguist, World War II Nazi fighter
by Jim Ridley
"The adjective that most people have used to describe her is 'amazing,' " says Robert Engel of his mother, Walburga von Raffler-Engel, and in her case amazing may have been an understatement. Four decades of students knew her as an exacting and inspiring professor, a noted linguist who spoke eight languages, published 13 books and organized the first congress on child language in 1972. They may not have known that she risked her life as a secret agent in World War II, using her wits, stamina and mountain-climbing prowess to sabotage Hitler's war machine.
Born in Munich but raised in Italy, von Raffler-Engel vanished into the mountains of Northern Italy, managing to avoid the Third Reich death camps where much of her family perished. She joined the Partisans and became an expert smuggler of food, weapons and coded messages, always at great peril. In later years, she told astonished Vanderbilt colleagues how she once strode through the Alps in a skirt and high heels, the better to distract German soldiers from the letter hidden in her mouth.
Her experiences during the war may sound like adventure—her obituary at the Parker Loring Mortuary North website has the makings of a spy thriller—but they were anything but. In her last few years, Robert Engel recalls, his mother suffered from terrible nightmares where she relived her wartime dangers, and her son would have a difficult time reassuring her they were just bad dreams. In other ways, he's surprised she wasn't affected more.
"I was amazed at my mother's faith in the goodness of people despite the hell she lived through during the war," Engel wrote from a job assignment in Taiwan. "She often told me that while it was good for people to learn about righteous gentiles like Oskar Schindler, too little attention had been given to 'the little people' who put their lives in jeopardy to save her life and others like her."
There is not room to list her myriad accolades, among them the influence she had on generations of students. One called her every day without fail: when she admitted she canceled her subscription to the Wall Street Journal for financial reasons, he had it sent to her for the rest of her life, until she could no longer read. Only the second woman professor hired at Vanderbilt, in 1965, she retired after 21 years and eventually moved to San Antonio to be near her son's family. She died Nov. 28 at age 89.
"I am very proud of my mother's many accomplishments," Robert Engel writes, "but, more importantly, I couldn't have asked for a better mother."
GONE TOO SOON
STEVE McNAIR
1973-2009
Titan
by Randy Horick
The defining image of Steve McNair, the one everyone remembers, is from the final drive of the 2000 Super Bowl: McNair scrambling, spinning out of a withering hit that would have toppled anyone else, stumbling, righting himself, and then completing a pass that kept the Titans' chances alive. Loyalists insist McNair didn't lose that day. He simply ran out of time.
His college nickname, "Air," never quite fit in Nashville. Jeff Fisher's offense was too ground-bound to unsling the full power of McNair's arm. And, in truth, McNair was a great passer because he was an exceptional runner. He could escape tacklers until a receiver came open. He wouldn't go down.
Both of the team's mascot names seemed more apt. On the field, McNair was a larger-than-life figure, a titan, a conquerable god. Yet he was never elegant like Eddie George. He was a dirt-under-the-fingernails oiler—lunchbucket, roughneck, up from nothing and unpretentious. You were more likely to see him on Saturday mornings at his kids' youth league games, as thousands of us did over the years, than in some tony club.
Perhaps it was his oiler-titanness that led Nashvillians to embrace McNair like no other player. His personality seemed to personify our view of ourselves. The qualities we admired in him—his talent, his toughness, his perseverance through adversity and pain, his approachability, his easy smile—were ones we hoped others would see in Nashville. And perhaps it was his personality that led us to see McNair's tragic flaws differently than we might view the downfalls of sports celebrities like Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods—remote, arrogant deities who were never one of us, never could have been one of us.
We were shocked at McNair's end, saddened by the pain he put on his family, and disappointed to learn of the secret life he led. We knew him better than outsiders thought, but we thought we knew him better than we did. We were so used to seeing him scramble out of danger that the finality of his death seemed unreal. He had conditioned us to expect that he would always get up again. Were it not for a girlfriend's gun, we could imagine him absorbing the blow of scandal and making things all right. Instead, he ran out of time.
STACY FLEEMAN
1975-2009
Musician, co-founder, Spat! Records, doorman, The End
Jaded sourpusses live to a ripe old age, preserved like pickles in their own brine. That Stacy Fleeman died at age 33, just last August, tests the very notion of karma. Not screwing over some fledgling indie rocker, not throwing your weight around as a gatekeeper, not shaking down some kid garage band for a purported deal—that should count for something on the cosmic balance sheet, right? And yet it was Fleeman's friends and family who were left to wonder, red-eyed and uncomprehending, why.
There was an outpouring, torrential and unguarded, of sincere goodwill and fond remembrance on the Scene's Nashville Cream blog in the hours before and immediately after his death. I can't hope to better those: I knew him only as a guy I expected to still be stamping my hand when we both had hair white as Einstein's, even though my club-going has slowed to a drip. But one thing hardly anyone pointed out is that the guy running the door, who seemed as pumped as you about the show inside, didn't appear to run his label Spat! Records any differently. Spider Virus? We'll put it out! Some half-experimental rock band playing every other Wednesday at Springwater? We'll put it out! Hey, remember that cool old Shadow 15 LP? Did that ever come out on CD? No? Give it here! A scrappy young band stood a better chance of getting somewhere with him and Spat! than almost anywhere else in town.
Maybe that made him the Broadway Danny Rose of Nashville's indie-rock scene. Or maybe it made him that rarest of things, a true believer who believed above all in his own enthusiasm. Two years ago, after Spat! got catalog access to iTunes, Fleeman marveled to the Scene that with no overhead, "we can sign a band a day." If only we'd known it wasn't bands he'd run out of, but days.
MAX GOMEZ
2004-2009
First confirmed death from H1N1 virus in Davidson County
by Tim Ghianni
Max Gomez was just 5, but he was primed to make his mark in life. He loved his friends, family, church, school. Instead, he made his mark in death on Aug. 31 by putting a shockingly innocent face on the swine flu outbreak. Nashville's first confirmed H1N1 death, he'd been sick just three days.
His death was not only noted in Nashville, but nationwide, where outlets like ABC News used Max's story to illustrate the danger of this "new" flu.
The photograph that accompanied his obituary became the face of death rather than the picture of life. It shows a round face with the beaming eyes of a kindergartner ready for fun, perhaps to go with the Eager Beavers, his church youth group, to the zoo, as he was supposed to do on the weekend he lay dying.
Maximiliano—his given name—"really was a good kid," his mom, Ruth Gomez, told The Tennessean. He was just learning how to ride a bike, it was noted. Weeks into his kindergarten year, he'd already become a leader by offering to serve as a translator, to help his teacher and Latino classmates at Henry Maxwell Elementary School.
Perhaps those kids could have learned much from Max in decades expected. They did learn that life isn't promised.
Releasing a rainbow of balloons of Max's favorite colors would have been a great way to celebrate his sixth birthday this upcoming Jan. 14.
Instead, 70 or 80 of Max's classmates and church pals sent them to the heavens after his Sept. 5 funeral.
HOMELESS
by Lyda Phillips
On Dec. 12, with the temperature hovering around freezing, about 75 people gathered at Riverfront Park for a memorial service sponsored by the Homeless Power Project. Its purpose was to remember the more than two dozen homeless men and women who had died so far in 2009. Almost three weeks of the year's coldest weather still lay ahead.
Homeless and not-homeless were bundled in heavy parkas, clutching coffee and discussing the list. What comments there were ranged from "I didn't know he died, man" to "It's freezing out here!" and "Wipe your nose, dog."
"We are here to honor those who were never honored in their lives," Charles Strobel, founding director of The Room in the Inn, said standing on the icy concrete in the shadows of the city's higher priorities, the new Pinnacle skyscraper and the Titans' LP Stadium across the river.
As each name was read, a flower and black armband were passed out to mourners—some homeless, some not—who marched down the steps to the icy Cumberland. As "Amazing Grace" was sung, each one tossed the flower into the swift brown water, which swirled it away.
Gary Boleyjack, late 40s, and Roderick Hyde were friends who had gone through school together at Bailey Elementary, Meigs Middle School and East High. Boleyjack died of pneumonia. "Wonderful man, really low-key, who endured his homelessness in stoic silence and late in his life had begun to make some progress in extricating himself from his situation," said Steve Samra of Operation Stand Down.
Gwen Bedford died Oct. 11 while sleeping outside under a railroad trestle on Eighth Avenue on an unusually cold night. "Everyone who knew her loved her," Strobel wrote in the Room in the Inn Fall 2009 newsletter.
William Brooks Drescher, about 40, known as Ox for his great size and low, melodious voice, died in his sleep of a heart attack shortly after moving into permanent subsidized housing and beginning to reintegrate with his family.
Edward Matthews, 46, was fatally shot in the head Nov. 3 in the park at Fifth and Church across from the main library. No one has been arrested, although police have tentatively linked it to a similar attack on another homeless man earlier in the year.
Kevin Goins, 44, wrapped in his blankets near Tent City, rolled into his fire Dec. 9. He died of smoke inhalation and severe burns.
Marion Hollingshed, 47, originally from Memphis, was found dead Dec. 13 inside an abandoned and previously burned house at 87 Donelson St. in Hermitage. He had a head wound but police have not determined whether that was the cause of death.
Linda Harris, known as Strawberry, died when she stepped in front of a car and was struck and killed.
Stephen Keith Sterna, 43, was found dead Jan. 20 on Eighth Avenue under I-40.
William Hill, 50, was struck and killed by a car April 27 on West End Avenue. Ronald Hall was also injured but survived. Hill is remembered as "quiet and private," by the staff at the Room in the Inn.
Thomas Watkins had a heart attack while at Room in the Inn and died. Paramedics were called but could not save him.
Doug Goodman, who died in his 70s, was an "elder statesman" at Room in The Inn.
Donny Smith was found dead in Riverside Park in November.
Dan McDermott died of cancer.
Others who died on Nashville's streets in 2009, as remembered by the staff of Room in the Inn:
Eugene Johnson "had a great sense of humor."
Walker Roach had a "sly sense of humor."
Fred Marques was "a very, very friendly soul."
Farris Vaughn "wouldn't seek you out, out of his respect, never wanting to trouble you."
Ronald Hendrick is remembered as "childlike with a ready smile."
Lester Yates was often a Room in the Inn participant and frequently used the Campus day services.
About others on the Homeless Power Project list, almost nothing is known:
Kevin Dowin
Viola
Unidentified Victims
Sources: Homeless Housing Project, Staff of A Room in the Inn, Walter Kelley (homeless), Will Connolly from The Key Alliance, The Nashville City Paper, Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, Steve Samra of Operation Stand Down.
Elringo "Velvet Thunder" De'Angelino
Birthdate unknown
Famed Second Avenue street performer, homeless Nashvillian
by Michelle Taylor Wilson
(Note: The following poem, titled "I Never Saw Him," was read at a memorial service commemorating the many homeless people who died over the past year in Nashville, whether from hard living, exposure to the elements, or murder. It was written to honor the renowned street musician known as Velvet Thunder, age estimated in his 70s, who had become an emblem of the city's tourist district. The author works as system administrator for the Metropolitan Nashville Homelessness Commission.)
I never saw him, a man dispossessed.
I let pass his melodious genius as eccentricity.
I never saw him, revealing his heart's passion
yet exposed to contempt and ridicule.
Others, like me, never saw him.
Disrespecting, neglecting, ignorant of God's blessing,
I never saw him.
Now he is gone, a worthy reflection of absolute love.
The blindness of my heart redeemed, I see him now.
His perfect aspiration achieved, engendering my deep regret and sorrow.
I see him now, a paradigm of all those dispossessed.
Their common humanity willing to impart, I see them now.
The messenger of Second Avenue eternally absent,
his chosen stage stands empty.
A lonely silence moves along the path,
the setting of his many chance encounters.
Velvet memories of a smooth, soft, aural sensation
evoking a quiet sadness that thunders in friends' hearts, I see Him now.
I see Him now, finding myself anew in Testament,
emulating the Son of Man in the fullness of Love.
I see Him now and in my soul discover,
"For where your treasure is, there also will be your heart."
