Remembering the civic builders and colorful personalities we lost in 2015

Compiled by E. Thomas Wood and Jim Ridley

Every year brings the inevitable loss of community leaders, civic builders and colorful personalities who helped shape and define Nashville as a city. At a time of great uncertainty about how the city will retain its identity, in the face of enormous growth and change, those losses were keenly felt. In our annual In Memoriam issue, the Scene recognizes some of those we lost in 2015. Some were prominent social and civic figures known to all; some were familiar only to a lucky few. Others left us far too soon. Below, we commemorate lives that left an indelible mark on others, and on the city they called home. Read, and remember.

ARTS, MEDIA & LETTERS

Bernie Arnold

1927-2015

Longtime food editor, Nashville Banner

By Nicki Pendleton Wood

To an observer, the post-World War II lives of Bernie and Bud Arnold were as captivating as a film, the story of an enduring romance featuring handsome and charismatic stars.

Bernie and husband Bud (technically, "Henry") met in post-war Nashville at Lipscomb College, she a beautiful speech/music major from Ohio via Florida, he a handsome World War II paratrooper turned drama and music professor.

The Arnolds were Christians of the joyful, fun-loving, party-throwing, singing, garden-growing, open-handed kind. "Mom and Dad had the gift of hospitality in spades," says daughter Nan Gurley. "The house was full of people from school or church," she remembers, as well as visiting artists and missionaries — so many of the latter that Cris, the youngest Arnold, once wailed, "Not another missionary!"

So using The Joy of Cooking as her guide, Bernie served up mid-century staples like spaghetti, chili (once making a batch for 75 people) and Sunday pot roast. Bud was in charge of salad, tossing iceberg lettuce with herbs from his garden and his homemade vinaigrette in a big wooden bowl.

Bernie won the Nashville Gas "Mrs. Nashville" competition in 1964, "based on her homemaking abilities, as well as on beauty and poise," reported The Tennessean. A year later, she was hired as the paper's food editor. The photo of the charismatic new food writer in her kitchen was captioned, "Mrs. Nashville tells how to cook." But "telling how to cook" was less her style than searching out interesting or exceptional cooks and sharing their recipes and stories.

Though she wrote for The Tennessean for nearly a decade, more Nashvillians remember Bernie as the Nashville Banner food editor. That job resulted from tragedy: A gas explosion at Banner food writer Ruth Wood's home eventually resulted in her death. On hearing the news, Cris Arnold said, "Mom, they're going to be calling you tomorrow." And they did. Bernie moved to the Banner in March 1975 and stayed until 1992.

People often remark on Bernie's poise and self-possession, but there was spice in her style as well. Her side-eye expressed a range of emotions, and she once scolded a reader for the infraction of peeling tomatoes before adding them to salad.

Her conversational style could be genteel and unpredictable; her last chat with her son Chip was both. He called to thank her for her support, love and encouragement as he embarked on a difficult theater project. She was so grateful for his thanks, and so proud of him, she said. But really, she was about to watch Downton Abbey, so maybe they could just wrap up the conversation? She signed off. Later that night, Bernie unexpectedly died in her sleep.

Chip recalls a snapshot of the Arnolds on the beach in the 1940s, the kind of photo that's more powerful in retrospect, of the happy, beautiful couple with their whole lives ahead of them. And they completely lived those roles, the music professor and the food writer in a romantic partnership, filling their small house with kids and guests and song and ideas and love. Does it get any more Nashville than that?

Mike Pigott

1953-2015

Journalist, political editor, Nashville Banner; partner, McNeely, Pigott & Fox

By J.R. Lind

Before hanging his name on the door of McNeely, Pigott & Fox, Mike Pigott, who died in June at 61, was an award-winning investigative reporter and political editor at the Nashville Banner for a dozen years. "I worked for Mike for three years covering politics," Bruce Dobie wrote in a marvelous online Nashville Banner obituary that doubled as an evocation of the Banner newsroom of old. "Never have I seen a person who could so easily and deliberately assimilate so much, from beat cops and bartenders and governors and numbers runners and Catholic priests and U.S. senators and then, so simply and artfully, write it all out in such a way as to make it all good."

But in 1988 he went to the other side, as those in the news business say, joining fellow former journalist Mark McNeely at the PR firm he had founded the year before. David Fox, also a former reporter, would join in 1990, and MP&F would grow into one of the city's most powerful and influential PR firms.

Known for his lightning-quick wit, desert-dry sense of humor and a love of ballroom dancing, Pigott led communications for three of former Gov. Phil Bredesen's campaigns as well as heading Karl Dean's communications shop during the 2008 runoff. Outside of campaigns, his projects included the downtown arena, the Titans' move to Nashville, and the campaign to approve what is now Nissan Stadium.

It was this last campaign that brought him into a small but rare conflict with Bredesen. Pigott was — as were many ink-stained veteran reporters — a devoted patron of the Gerst House. According to the former mayor and governor, he was upset the old watering hole would have to give way to the stadium.

Remembered

Ed Boling

1922-2015

Boling, 93, served as president of the University of Tennessee system from 1970 to 1988, making him the university's longest serving president.

John Chaffin

1919-2015

An Army Air Corpsman during World War II who flew 44 missions in the China-Burma-India theater, construction-company owner Asberry Warden "John" Chaffin and his wife Edna opened the city's first professional theater company in 1967. That family-run theater, rechristened Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, has hosted many of the region's brightest talents over the years — and continues to knock 'em dead today.

Gertrude Deal

1949-2015

A Robertson County native, Deal was an educator for 36 years at Greenbrier High School, six of those years as principal.

Kent Flanagan

1945-2015

Flanagan, who served as the Associated Press' Tennessee bureau chief for 21 years, was a co-founder and executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, the watchdog group that battles for citizens' rights to governmental transparency. A Texas native noted for his support of young talent — not to mention a penchant for puns and Hawaiian shirts — Flanagan had a 40-year career preceded by stints overseas in Germany and Vietnam as an Army public information officer.

Wade Jessen

1961-2015

The senior chart director for Billboard, Jessen, 53, was a veteran broadcaster, music director and journalist who doubled as an on-air personality on the Sirius classic-country channel "Willie's Roadhouse."

Tandy Rice

1938-2015

The flamboyant Rice, publicist and promoter extraordinaire, built the Top Billing talent agency into a powerhouse whose clients ranged from Dolly Parton, Tom T. Hall and country comedian Jerry Clower to media novelties such as Billy Carter, the controversial younger brother of President Jimmy Carter.

Craig Smith

1975-2015

Smith, a local fixture as bartender at the much-loved Centennial Park dive bar Springwater, was an anchor of the local stand-up comedy scene and driving force behind the Dive Laughing open mic.

MUSIC

Lynn Anderson

1947-2015

Country singer

By Edd Hurt

Lynn Anderson, who died of pneumonia-induced cardiac arrest July 30, made country music history as a singer who created hit singles that appealed to both pop and country audiences. Anderson's signature recording, 1970's "(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden," appeared at a time when Nashville songwriters were exploring the influence of tunesmiths such as Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and Joe South, the Atlanta-born songwriter and guitarist who wrote "Rose Garden." An all-purpose entertainer — she appeared on the California television program Country Caravan in the early '60s and later became a regular on The Lawrence Welk Show — Anderson turned South's song about the challenges of marriage into a No. 1 country hit. "Rose Garden" made No. 3 on Billboard's pop chart, and it became Anderson's best-known recording.

After signing with Columbia in 1970, Anderson worked with her then-husband, songwriter and producer Glenn Sutton, to record "Rose Garden." They transformed South's original from an acerbic, slightly downbeat number into a sprightly pop tune that contained elements of social realism. It was a perfect song for an aspiring Nashville crossover artist to cut in 1970, and over the next few years Anderson would become one of country's biggest stars. She covered songs by John Fogerty, Carole King, Hoyt Axton and the Bee Gees on her '70s albums, and cut Sutton's "I'm Gonna Write a Song" on her 1971 album You're My Man. "Folks sit around with their face in a frown / And gripe about the way things are," she sang, and the tune amounted to a response to the kind of progressive songwriting that South and Kristofferson were doing, complete with lines about sunshine, love and the patriotism of America's founding fathers.

She appeared frequently on television shows in the '70s, and in 1974 she became the first country artist to headline and sell out New York City's Madison Square Garden. She recorded for MCA and Mercury in the '80s and charted her last hit, "How Many Hearts," in 1989. Anderson cut The Bluegrass Sessions in 2004 and released a gospel record, Bridges, earlier this year. Anderson and Sutton divorced in 1977, and in her later years she had a series of arrests for driving while intoxicated and for shoplifting, including a 2014 incident in Nashville. She entered the Betty Ford Center that year for treatment. At the time of her death she was in a relationship with Nashville songwriter Mentor Williams.

Although she never matched the success of "Rose Garden," Anderson created some of the best-known country-pop fusion of her time. Her career illustrates the way the demands of commercialism can alter the way audiences perceive the message of songs such as "Rose Garden." She was a prophet of modern country. As she told writer Mike Carroll in 2013, "Country seems to have evolved into a mixture of country and pop. And a lot of the artists very much sound alike."

Billy Block

1955-2015

Radio host, emcee, drummer, champion of the underdog

By Abby White

Starry-eyed hopefuls see Music City as a place where one kind stranger can open a lot of doors. Billy Block spent his years here trying not to let them down.

Born in Miami, Block began his career as a professional drummer as a teenager in Texas, playing and touring with artists including Freddy Fender, Billy Joe Shaver, Townes Van Zandt and Delbert McClinton. He moved to Los Angeles in 1985, finding work as a session musician, actor, Disney performer, Music Connection columnist, MusicRow magazine West Coast correspondent and house drummer for The Ronnie Mack Barn Dance at the Palomino nightclub. An early advocate of the alt-country movement, he launched his Western Beat show six years later, hosting the likes of Jim Lauderdale, Lucinda Williams and Buddy Miller — performers who would soon become keystones of the emerging Americana music movement.

Block met singer Jill Rochlitz in 1991, first spotting her at a Paul Simon concert in what he described as one of those rare love-at-first-sight moments. They married in 1993 and moved to Nashville two years later. Block's Western Beat show also made the cross-country move, debuting at The Sutler in 1996 as Billy Block's Western Beat Barn Dance Show. Over the years, the weekly series had a variety of homes (Zanies, Exit/In, Cadillac Ranch, Mercy Lounge) and broadcast partners (WSIX, WKDF, WRLT). But one thing remained constant: Block's unwavering enthusiasm and support for independent and emerging artists.

Block's show served as both the starting point for many Americana and country artists — Kacey Musgraves, Hayes Carll, Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban, Jason Aldean, Lady Antebellum and Florida Georgia Line all played it, to name a few — and an essential resource for industry folks searching for new talent. But Block's true legacy is his irrepressibly optimistic belief that everyone who comes to Nashville deserves at least one shot. He lived it onstage and off, as a family man who expanded his home to take in others. His credo, "If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours," may run counter to the cynicism that dogs the commercial music industry, but anyone who's been on the receiving end of such kindness knows it can change lives.

"I've had people come up to me and say, 'You don't really know me, I met you with so-and-so, you were so nice to me, you didn't have to be,' " Block told the Scene last year. "Those are the moments that are the most important. I just try to be good to people when they come to town. It's a hard town to crack, and people just need a place to feel like they belong, and I feel like we've done that, to give people hope and give them a place to do what they love."

Al Bunetta

1942-2015

Longtime manager, John Prine; co-founder, Oh Boy Records

By John Prine

I guess it must have been late summer of 1971 Steve Goodman and I found ourselves in an elevator, riding up a New York skyscraper to the offices of Creative Management — one of the largest booking agencies in the country. Steve and I were going to get an actual booking agent — our first! We were both really green behind the ears when it came to show business. Standing in the same elevator next to us was Zippy the chimp in a three-piece pin-striped suit, holding his agent's hand. Zippy was a chimpanzee that made his bones on The Dave Garroway Show, which was the precursor to The Today Show. Zippy looked over at Goodman and me as if to say, "Youse guys won't last a week." Zippy also smoked cigars.

When we reached the offices of Creative Management we were greeted by Buddy, the head booking agent and president of Creative Management. He led us down a hall to meet our new booking agent — Al Bunetta.

Al Bunetta, Steve Goodman and I hit it off immediately. Almost before we knew it, we were the best of buddies. Steve and I would soon start staying on Al's sofa instead of a hotel when either of us was in New York City. Over the years Al became part of our families as we became part of his family.  

Every day was an adventure with Al. Everybody knew Al Bunetta, and Al Bunetta knew everybody. I remember one time in L.A. Al and I were returning from a party to our hotel on Sunset just as the sun was coming up. A garbage truck drove by, and the guy on the back of the garbage truck yelled, "Hey, Al Bunetta!" Al just shrugged and waved as if it were an everyday occurrence.

Over the years it proved to be the usual when you went anywhere with Al. People around Nashville stop me all the time telling me Al Bunetta stories. Some of their stories are bigger then life. I don't blink 'cause I know Al Bunetta was bigger than life. Everybody liked Al Bunetta. Even people who thought they didn't like him, liked him. That's a pretty great legacy.

I miss my lunch buddy. Keep a seat warm for me, Al. I'll see you when the fat lady stops singing.

Dave Cloud

1956-2015

Musician, artist, actor, cult hero

By Chris Davis

Editor's Note: After underground fixture Cloud died of melanoma in February, a Scene cover story gathered remembrances from his many friends and admirers. This piece by his close friend and drummer, experimental music promoter Chris Davis, expresses why so many people revered him:

Bliss was David Cloud's middle name. Even though he could be touchy about this name, it was an apt descriptor of him as an engine of creative joy that made the cares of the world fall away for those lucky to know him or to see him perform. Dave was one of the funniest people I've ever met. He was also unfailingly kind and hardworking. And he clearly knew how to have a good time and how to lift the people around him through story and song.

I was lucky to know Dave well. We played together in the first incarnation of his Gospel of Power, a name borrowed from one of the hundreds of sermon tapes Dave would overdub with his own music. Playing with Dave was so wonderful and wild. We rocked The Farm's Soy Cafe so hard that hippies crossed a field to ask us to turn down, while assuring us that they loved what we were doing. We met through a mutual friend, James Clauer, who was the other half of Dave's pre-GOP band, C.O.B.S. Most people know Dave as an uninhibited live performer, a karaoke god, or as an actor in art films. Dave was this and much more to the broader community of Nashville. His influence upon successive generations of Nashville musicians and artists is incalculable — so many of the very successful visual artists and musicians I know will tell you that seeing Dave Cloud blew their minds wide open to the vastness of possibility. 

David's father, the Rev. Fred Cloud, and his stepmother Barbara are progressive activists with strong roots in Nashville's religious and political communities. They work to help people in need, and Dave did a lot to help them in these efforts, as a courier delivering time-sensitive documents and making phone calls even in his last few weeks. Dave was also an important part of Nashville Talking Library recording texts for sight-impaired Nashvillians — medical textbooks, Shakespeare, and inscrutably, a nearly 30-volume encyclopedia of cosmetology, perhaps proof that Dave's surreal sense of humor was always present.

Dave believed strongly in equality; he treated everyone with the same nonjudgmental kindness and decency. Dave was a father figure to more than a few folks who came from broken and abusive homes. Dave's family, on occasion, would take a family into their home to help them transition to a better life. Dave interacted with children from these families daily, helping their parents by giving them rides to and from school and extracurricular activities. He got to know them and was intensely supportive of them. 

To paraphrase a lyric Dave penned about high-heeled shoes: "[We're] hopelessly addicted to you; [We] will always, always, always be blue." As a Cloud you've returned to your place in the sky. I'll love you forever.

Little Jimmy Dickens

1920-2015

Country singer

By Randy Fox

In a career that spanned more than 65 years, Little Jimmy Dickens played many roles — radio host, hillbilly boogie evangelizer, cornball comedian, master of heartstring-tugging ballads and more. As a member of the Grand Ole Opry, he matured into a country music icon, a living embodiment of country music's hillbilly pride, medicine-show flash and rollicking vaudevillian humor. When he celebrated his 94th birthday with his last appearance on the Grand Ole Opry on Dec. 20, 2014, he still stood tall as a living embodiment of country music's long and rowdy history.

James Cecil Dickens was born on Dec. 19, 1920, in Bolt, W. Va. Dickens was the oldest of 13 children, and the dangerous life of a coal miner seemed his only option. But with his natural-born talent and boisterous personality, he escaped a life of hard toil and coal dust. Standing only 4-foot-11-inches, he had no qualms about billing himself as "The Singing Midget" in less than politically correct times. By 1948, he was performing on WKNX in Saginaw, Mich. — a city with a thriving hillbilly music scene thanks to migrant Southerners drawn north by a booming auto industry. It was there that he crossed paths with Roy Acuff, "The King of Country Music." An invitation to Nashville for a guest shot on the Grand Ole Opry and a recommendation to Columbia Records quickly followed, and Dickens made good on both.

In 1949 he recorded two songs that changed the course of his career. "Take an Old Cold 'Tater (and Wait)" and "Country Boy" were expressions of pure hillbilly pride brimming with Dickens' brassy personality. Until that point, Dickens was primarily a ballad singer. With the success of two up-tempo novelty songs, Dickens went looking for a road band that could deliver the beat. He found it, and his mighty Country Boys barnstormed across the South playing one-nighters in school gymnasiums, dance halls and civic auditoriums, where many an aspiring hillbilly picker was first exposed to the hot sound of electric guitars.

In 1957, Dickens left the Opry for the traveling Phillip Morris Country Music Show, but the hits had slowed. Even without the Opry or hit records, Dickens was able to maintain a high profile on many package tours, and he reinvented himself as tear-jerking balladeer with the 1962 hit "The Violet and a Rose." In 1965, he returned to comedy with the biggest hit of his career, "May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose." The surreal litany of "up yours" phrases shot to No. 1 on Billboard's country chart and crossed over to No. 15 on the Hot 100. Its success led to multiple TV appearances as Dickens brought Nudie suit sparkle and country corn to mainstream America.

Dickens eventually returned to the Grand Ole Opry in 1975, where his cornball jokes, bouncy novelty tunes and sentimental ballads became a fixture for the next four decades. As the Opry lost many of its iconic members and country music moved further and further from its roots, Little Jimmy Dickens became an even more beloved link to the almost forgotten hillbilly dream of escaping hard times through music, flashy showmanship and cornball country cut-ups.

Buddy Emmons

1937-2015

Pedal steel innovator

By Edd Hurt

Buddy Emmons achieved the kind of exalted position among musicians and listeners that few instrumentalists in the history of country music have equaled. In his hands, the pedal steel guitar became a vehicle for the kind of sophisticated expression that enriched the work of pop musicians, jazz players and country singers. A formidable and forward-thinking musician and consummate session player, Emmons was as comfortable with advanced jazz harmonies as he was with the structures of the three-minute single.

But Emmons was not only a superb musician. Working with fellow pedal steel guitarist Harold "Shot" Jackson in the late '50s, Emmons revolutionized the instrument through a series of technological advances that would profoundly affect the way all subsequent players approached it. His innovations helped pedal steel transcend some of its previous association with country music, but he made part of his reputation playing with such country singers as Ray Price, Ernest Tubb and Little Jimmy Dickens.

Born Buddy Gene Emmons in Mishawaka, Ind., on Jan. 27, 1937, and influenced by steel guitarists Jerry Byrd and Herb Remington, he began his career working clubs in South Bend, Ind. By 16 he was playing in Calumet City, Ill., honky-tonks with singer Stony Calhoun. During that tenure, Emmons caught the ear of country great Carl Smith, who recommended the young musician to Webb Pierce. That job didn't materialize, and Emmons moved to Detroit, where he sat in with Little Jimmy Dickens in 1955. He moved to Nashville that summer to play in Dickens' band.

Inspired by Buddy Isaacs' steel guitar work on Pierce's 1954 recording of "Slowly," Emmons began developing the style and technological curiosity that would revolutionize pedal steel style. Dickens supported Emmons' ambitions — as Emmons told Steve Fishell in a 2013 interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame, "Jimmy Dickens loved what we were doing, and he was so proud of his band that he talked Columbia Records into recording us under Jimmy's band name, the Country Boys." Over the next year, Emmons would record a series of singles under his own name.

Emmons played on Faron Young's 1956 "Sweet Dreams," before joining Ray Price's band in 1962. He played brilliantly on Price's 1963 "Night Life" and "You Took Her Off My Hands (Now Take Her Off My Mind)," and became Price's bandleader. It was during his association with Price that Emmons added extra strings to the pedal steel, an innovation that allowed him to more easily navigate the instrument. He also developed a new system of pedals designed to raise the fretboard. Emmons would continue to refine his modifications, and his technological savvy and willingness to experiment would open up possibilities for the instrument that players continue to use today.

Dixie Hall

1934-2015

Songwriter, journalist, animal-rights activist

By Edd Hurt

Whether she wrote about the trauma of Southern-born war veterans or the joys of being a hard-charging truck driver, Dixie Hall drew upon her gift for friendship — and her fierce, joyful work ethic — to create lasting art. The wife of celebrated Nashville songwriter Tom T. Hall, she used her perspective as an English-born admirer of American vernacular music in ways that make clear the shared experiences of all people, beyond geographic borders or cultural barriers.

Known to her many friends and admirers as "Miss Dixie," Hall was born Iris Violet May Lawrence in 1934 in Warwickshire, England. By the time she was 18, Hall had become an accomplished equestrian who performed trick-riding stunts in a traveling Wild West show. The future songwriter had already gained a bit of fame for her lyrics. When she was 9 years old, she wrote a poem for a contest, won first prize, and received the honor of reading her work on a London radio show.

Hall came to America in 1961, and she met Tom T. Hall in 1964 after the two songwriters shared credits on a Mercury Records single by country singer Dave Dudley. Composing under the name of Dixie Deen, Hall co-wrote the A side, "Truck Drivin' Son-of-a-Gun," while Tom T. Hall penned the B side, "I Got Lost." The two married in 1968, but it wasn't until Tom T. Hall decided to retire from the music business in 1990 that Dixie Hall began collaborating with her husband. Dixie had kept busy raising funds for Nashville animal shelters and showing her prize-winning basset hounds.

Dixie and Tom T. Hall wrote the sprightly "All That's Left," which has been memorably recorded by the Virginia-bred band Big Country Bluegrass and country superstar Miranda Lambert, who cut it with The Time Jumpers on 2014's Platinum full-length. The Halls also penned the 2006 track "How's It Feel," which bluegrass singer and songwriters Michelle Nixon and Jeanette Williams recorded for the Daughters of Bluegrass — Back to the Well album. Speaking about bluegrass to writer Nancy Cardwell in 2013, Dixie Hall made a compelling case for the universal appeal of American music.

"There's nothing else like it," she said. "It's honest, it's real. I feel like it's always been a part of me, and I've always been a part of it. And I don't know how or why. It's a mystery."

Billy Ray Hearn

1929-2015

Christian music pioneer, philanthropist

By Vicki Hearn Horne, Bill Hearn and Holly Hearn Whaley with Nancy Floyd

A passionate philanthropist, Christian music industry pioneer and well-known oenophile, Billy Ray Hearn left an indelible mark on Nashville. Often referred to as the "father of contemporary Christian music," Hearn in the 1970s started two of the first labels dedicated to the genre, Myrrh Records and Sparrow Records, where he launched the careers of artists like Keith Green, BeBe and CeCe Winans and Steven Curtis Chapman. He was a Grammy and Dove Award winning producer, a member of the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Gospel Music Association in 1999.

He later became president and CEO of Capitol Christian Music Group, the world's largest Christian music and publishing group. But beyond his accomplishments in the music industry, Hearn was dedicated to serving the community, and his commitment to giving back knew no limits. He created the T.J. Martell Best Cellars Dinner, which is now in its 15th year and has raised $2 million for the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center. He was also heavily involved in the annual Nashville Wine Auction, which benefits cancer research, and served on the Nashville Symphony board.

A lover of great wine and great food, he was an innovator in expanding Nashville's wine and food culture. He was instrumental in bringing some of the world's best chefs and restaurateurs to Nashville, both to attend the Nashville Wine Auction festivities and to donate their time and talents to raise money in the fight against cancer.

When he spoke with you, he had the uncanny ability to make you feel as if you were the only person in the room. He would extol the great wines that he had the good fortune to drink, but he would always be quick to say that "good wines become great wines when shared with friends."

If you asked him the secret to his success, he would've told you this: "I've always been led by the importance of doing what God says to do, the importance of family and the importance of always doing the right thing, whether it's good business or not." His journey led him to be a leader, a teacher, a producer, a visionary and a philanthropist, along with countless other roles — including husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

Bob Johnston

1932-2015

Producer

By Pete Finney

"Is it rolling, Bob?" With those four words, spoken by Bob Dylan on his 1969 Nashville Skyline LP, record producer Bob Johnston was immortalized for a generation of music fans. Johnston was at the peak of his career then, a career that influenced much of the music that followed and helped transform Nashville at a pivotal time.

The exuberant, strong-willed Johnston played a huge role in changing the musical landscape of Nashville in the late '60s. By bringing Bob Dylan to the city to record Blonde on Blonde in 1966, then again for John Wesley Harding in late 1967, Johnston helped make Nashville a mecca for rock and folk artists looking for a relaxed place to record, and for skilled and versatile musicians to work with.

Before he produced Blonde on Blonde, Johnston had been knocking around the music business for 10 years: as a performer and songwriter in his native Texas, and working for Hill and Range Songs in Nashville, where he pitched and wrote songs for Elvis movies. By 1965 he was in New York as a fledgling producer for Columbia Records.

Never lacking in confidence, or shy about self-promotion, Johnston got the job producing Bob Dylan on Highway 61 Revisited in Columbia's New York studios. He was keen on getting Dylan to record in Nashville, and with the help of a last-minute virtuoso guitar performance by visiting Nashville session ace Charlie McCoy on "Desolation Row," he was able to get Dylan to warm to the idea. Johnston did not mince words when stressing the importance of Dylan recording in Nashville.

"The world was changing," Johnston said, "and he was right in the goddamn middle of it, and that put us right in the goddamn middle of it, as far as I was concerned." Dylan, in his 2004 Chronicles, shared his take on Johnston: "Cheerful as always and full of zest. Few people have it for long, but he's got a never-ending supply, and it's not faked."

Johnston also worked here with Simon and Garfunkel, recording tracks for Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. In 1968 he brought Leonard Cohen to town to record Songs From a Room, later working on two more Cohen albums and even going on the road as Cohen's keyboard player. Other folk and rock artists Johnston produced during this era include Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Pete Seeger, The Byrds, Moby Grape, and Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks.

By the early '70s Johnston's relationship with both Dylan and Cash had run its course. But he remained a strong presence throughout the decade with albums by Loudon Wainwright III, Tracy Nelson, Mac Gayden and others. Though he remained intermittently active in later decades, he had a relatively low profile in recent years.

There's a film clip of Johnston being asked about why so many non-country artists came here to record, with Johnston replying: "I think it's the musicians. ... The people care, they care about what they do; they take pride in it." He might have been writing his own epitaph.

Pat Patrick

1947-2015

High-society bandleader of choice, Pat Patrick Band

By Hunter Armistead

The universe is strange and wonderful — I get my chance to speak one last time to Pat Patrick. I saw him from the corner of my eye at a party a few days before he passed but didn't stop. I don't have time, I'll see him next week — so I thought. 

We had a kinship. To the degree that I have been mistaken for him a bunch. And we were both business refugees from Belle Meade who played covers. 

Anyone who has been a musician knows how hard it is to churn out the same thing over and over again, night after night. Those nights spanned a 50-year career, surely one that rivals any in Nashville music history. I probably saw him 70 times over the years, and he never took a night off — he was ever the same, right in the middle of it, playing and conducting in black tie, but most of all smiling like a lit-up doll, almost a caricature of himself. If he was sick of playing "My Girl" for the zillionth time, no one would have ever known.

That's a pro.

A couple of years back we both agreed his band was the best it had ever been. Thank God — that's the carpet a musician wants to take to heaven. I think it was because he still felt that same fever as when he formed his first combo back in the '60s, when he was maybe 14. He was still committed to his business and customers. The players, song list and flow were all there. He always gave the people what they wanted, never with any attitude.

He was the same way offstage. He was a gentle, soft-spoken soul, lovely and gracious, always with that Cheshire-cat grin. 

So here's to you, Pat. You never let the music die.

Billy Sherrill

1936-2015

Songwriter, producer

By Jim Ridley

By the time Billy Sherrill's burnished countrypolitan productions fell out of favor with Music Row in the 1980s, he'd essentially become the Steven Spielberg of country music: a pop entertainer of unrivaled success, yet one whose commercial instincts and blatant appeals to emotion embodied to some a corruption of his chosen art form. That's if you believe Sherrill gussied up honky-tonk music with gloppy strings and a waxy coat of studio polish — like, "He Stopped Loving Her Today" would be a classic, if not for those swelling violins and cooing background vocals.

I don't. As with Spielberg, in Sherrill's greatest work you find an artist joining peerless technique with a seismograph's sensitivity, not just to the emotions of his performers but to the emotional beats of the story. Put another way: Sherrill heard every nuance of elation, delusion and heartbreak in a song as it was written and sung, and knew precisely when to go Phil Spector wall-of-sound huge or to cut out completely — often both within the same song, as in the mirror-image masterpieces of George Jones' "The Grand Tour" and Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man." In the former, the singer's desolation is echoed by a plaintive piano flourish, like the hollow ring of an unanswered call in a deserted house; the music's rise coincides with the damburst of the misery the singer has struggled to suppress. In the latter, the verses are hushed and intimate, choked with hurt, only to have that epic bump bump bump usher in a bombastic chorus of pure determination. The songs are art because of those fearless shows of empathy, not despite them.

That art was Sherrill's. He evidently could be a prickly guy, with a sense of humor to match: There was his priceless quote at the local premiere of Robert Altman's Nashville, when he told a reporter his favorite scene was "when they shot that miserable excuse for a country singer." But he was also capable of the exquisite devastation of Jones and Wynette's "Golden Ring," from the phantom snatches of that "old familiar tune" played by the old upright piano to the chilling closing reprise of the title in entwined but loveless vocals. His great singles are as vivid and lasting as Spielberg's cinema, and every bit as worthy of a retrospective.

Remembered

Jim Ed Brown

1934-2015

Country great Brown ("Pop a Top," "The Three Bells") was announced in March as a 2015 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He lived just long enough to receive a commemorative medallion in the hospital in June shortly before his death from cancer.

Wayne Carson

1943-2015

Carson, a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, wrote The Box Tops' "The Letter" and co-wrote the standard "Always on My Mind."

Charlie Dick

1934-2015

Dick was the widower of country great Patsy Cline and devoted much of his life to her legacy.

Bobby Emmons

1943-2015

A celebrated Memphis keyboardist and session cat during the Bluff City's R&B heyday, Emmons was also a respected songwriter who co-wrote the Waylon Jennings blockbuster "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)."

LaBreeska Hemphill

1940-2015

The matriarch of Dove Award-winning gospel family group The Hemphills, Hemphill was performing at age 9 at the Ryman with the Happy Goodman Family; in addition to her decades-long singing and recording career, she was also a published author.

John Jennings

1953-2015

Guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Jennings was best known for his long artistic partnership with Mary Chapin Carpenter, including 1992's quadruple-platinum album Come On, Come On.

Billy Joe Royal

1942-2015

Decades after his 1965 pop hit "Down in the Boondocks," Royal successfully reinvented himself as a country singer in the 1980s with singles such as "Till I Can't Take It Anymore."

Johnny Slate

1938-2015

Veteran songwriter Slate's 40-year career included cuts by Dr. Hook, Kenny Rogers, Razzy Bailey, Ringo Starr, John Denver, Charlie Rich, Loretta Lynn and Millie Jackson, among many others.

Tut Taylor

1923-2015

The co-founder of Nashville's Old Time Pickin' Parlor, "flat-pickin' dobro man" Taylor made his name as a bluegrass musician with his distinctive style in groups such as John Hartford's Aereo-Plain band.

FOOD

Phila Hach

1926-2015

Chef, culinary ambassador, pioneering TV host

By Jennifer Justus

Phila Hach traveled the world, hosted the first cooking show in the South, wrote 17 cookbooks and entertained a cast of characters at her Hachland Hill Inn and Vineyard. In 2014, when she reached 88 years, doctors gathered her with family in a small hospital room to deliver the news: Stage 4 colon cancer.

"Fabulous," she replied. Knowing that she had been hard of hearing for several years, her son Joe Hach recalls leaning in to ask: "Mother, did you understand?"

"Yes," she said. "It's just going to be another journey in my life."

The Tennessee native approached all of life in similarly optimistic spirit. During her days as a flight attendant, she cooked with chefs during layovers at the world's finest hotels simply by walking into the kitchen and asking if she could. How many times did they turn her away? "Never," she said.

She created the first catering manual for the airlines. Then, in 1950, WSM recruited her to host Kitchen Kollege, the first cooking show in the South, which aired until 1956. Her guests included Duncan Hines the man and June Carter, and it offered some madcap live moments. When she tested an electric mixer, a contraption she had never used before, she sprayed egg whites all over herself and the set. She didn't mind. She lived in Technicolor.

Through her adventures, she not only showed us how to cook but how to live. When she realized three hours from Nashville that she didn't have the pies for a dinner at Roots author Alex Haley's home, she stopped at a Kroger and politely yet boldly staged a bakery takeover to finish the job.

At her inn, which she first opened with her husband Adolf Hach in Clarksville before moving to Joelton, her table showed by example how food can bring people together. Many dishes were authentically rooted in her Southern upbringing, while others incorporated influences from around the world, reflecting her lifelong curiosity and willingness to connect.

"She enjoyed every moment," Joe remembers.

In October, just two months before her passing, the Southern Foodways Alliance honored her with the Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award in Oxford, Miss. She was too ill to travel at the time, but Joe and grandson Carter Hach accepted the award on her behalf. She would have loved to know, Joe says, that even from afar, she continued to entertain.

"What is time?" she asked in the film. "It's a multitude of moments, which is all we have. ... I have let my moments empower my life."

And even though she couldn't be there as the credits rolled, her guests gave her a standing ovation. 

Remembered

Bert Hardesty

1962-2015

The general manager of local institution The Loveless Cafe, Hardesty was credited with helping to establish the welcoming vibe that kept tourists visiting and locals returning. "Bert had been visiting The Loveless Cafe since he was a small child, and when he was hired as GM, he told us that his mother had given him specific instructions not to mess it up," the cafe posted in a tribute on its Facebook page. "In his tenure with us he did his mother proud."

Becky Piper

1976-2015

Until her death in April, Piper presided over The Pied Piper Eatery, the bustling East Nashville restaurant that became an oasis for parents seeking a meal out without disturbing other diners. The friendly, quirky, unpretentious eatery she built remains a favorite of families, much like her sister Jenny's Pied Piper Creamery across the East Side.

GONE TOO SOON

Treyonta Burleson

2001-2015

Nashville's youngest shooting victim, 2015

By Steven Hale

A confrontation that reportedly leapt from Facebook to the 100 block of Charles E. Davis Boulevard around 4:40 p.m. on Nov. 3 ended with two bullets in Treyonta Burleson's chest. A verbal dispute among a group of teenage girls had escalated when 18-year-old Antwana Smith went into an apartment and returned with a gun. Smith pointed the gun at the group, according to police, fired a shot and then another as she stepped backward and tripped. Both shots struck Burleson, who was 14, Nashville's youngest shooting victim in 2015.

In a tribute posted on Facebook the day of the shooting, Diane Hiatt, who volunteered at the nonprofit Youth Engagement Services where Burleson was involved, described the "spunky little girl" she first met almost 10 years ago. A smart, creative little girl who "wore her good reader crown proudly" in kindergarten and shared the trick to carrying extra digits in addition when she was 7. The day before she was gunned down, she had brought food into the kindergarten and first-grade rooms of the Youth Hobby Shop, Hiatt said — "and today she has no more future."

Pastor Frank Stevenson forced the crowd at Mayor Megan Barry's recent Youth Violence Summit to confront the same blunt reality.

"Six weeks ago I got a call and went to the hospital, and when I got there Treyonta's mother, Rita, of the 14-year-old that was murdered, said, 'Pastor, my baby is back there, will you go back there with me?' " Stevenson said. "We walked back there, and I looked and saw the lifeless body of this 14-year-old. Hair braided, sweatshirt, innocence. And I thought to myself, the cemetery is stealing the value out of so many that have so much to offer."

Remembered

Row'Neshia Overton

1999-2015

There was supposed to be a fight between two teenage girls on Greggwood Drive on May 26, police said, a Tuesday night just weeks shy of Row'Neshia Overton's 16th birthday. But that fight, seemingly the planned culmination of an ongoing dispute between the girls, was pre-empted by gunfire that hit the vehicle Overton was riding in with several others. Her friends drove her to the hospital, where she died from her injuries. "She was a loving young lady, beautiful young lady, and her life just got snatched from her," Overton's great-aunt Eva Huddleston said at a vigil days later, according to WSMV. "She didn't get to make her last day of school; she'll never do that again, school or nothing."

Cameron Selmon

1996-2015

A game of dice in a courtyard on the Tennessee State University campus led to an argument and quickly escalated to gunfire in the late hours of Oct. 22, injuring three women who were walking in the area at the time and killing Cameron Selmon, who was 19. Selmon had recently graduated from Southwind High School in Memphis, The Tennessean reported, and was a fan of football and the Dallas Cowboys.

POLITICS

D'Army Bailey

1941-2015

Judge, lawyer, actor, rescuer of civil rights history

By J.R. Lind

In the late 1970s, Memphis' Lorraine Motel was run down and crawling with prostitutes. Nevertheless, its infamous Room 306, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, was still something of a pilgrimage destination. Its then-owner was trying, and failing, to convert the motel — which had long been a beacon for African-Americans as a place to stay in downtown Memphis during Jim Crow — into a tourist site. By 1982, the owner was deeply in debt, and the property was slated for a courthouse auction. 

In stepped D'Army Bailey, who quickly raised $144,000 to buy the motel.

Bailey, who died in July at the age of 73, was no stranger to action. He was heavily involved in the civil rights movement and was even expelled from Southern University, a historically black Louisiana college, for his activism. He finished his undergraduate work at Massachusetts' Clark University and his law degree at Yale.

The lawyer-turned-judge was the author of two books and an actor who appeared in The People vs. Larry Flynt and How Stella Got Her Groove Back. But his enduring legacy will be the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, a $9.2 million museum that opened in 1991 — a dream that started when Bailey saw a piece of history facing the wrecking ball.

Julian Bond

1940-2015

Politician, activist, civil rights giant

By J.R. Lind

"Good things don't come to those who wait," Julian Bond was fond of saying. "Good things come to those who agitate."

Born in Nashville in 1940, Bond was raised in a household of mid-century African-American intellectuals. His father was a university president, his mother a college librarian; their home became a salon of black thought, with young Bond encountering W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson and others when he was in short pants. While attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, Bond was one of the founders of the seminal Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, serving as communications director and traveling throughout the segregated South registering voters and leading protests.

In 1965 he was elected to a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives, which voted to refuse to seat him because of his support of draft resisters. The Supreme Court said the decision violated Bond's free-speech rights and ordered he be admitted to the legislature. In 1968, he led an alternate Georgia delegation to the tumultuous Chicago Democratic National Convention and was, in fact, nominated for U.S. vice president. (He declined because, at 28, he was seven years shy of meeting the constitutional age requirement.) In 1971, he helped found yet another crucial civil rights organization, helping to set up the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. In 1977, he was the first black political figure to host Saturday Night Live.

He lost a bitter congressional primary to John Lewis (another civil rights leader with Nashville ties) in 1986, dogged by allegations of drug use. In 1998, he was elected chairman of the NAACP, which he'd lead for nearly 11 years. Through it all, he never stopped agitating, even with his political allies. Famously, Bond boycotted Coretta Scott King's 2006 funeral because it was being held at a church with anti-gay views, which he said conflicted with the late Mrs. King's support for gay and lesbian rights.

Bond died in August at 75, agitating to the end.

Clint Callicott

1948-2015

Former state representative, Williamson County executive

By J.R. Lind

If there's a man who bridged Williamson County's time as horse-heavy and bucolic to its current status as tony, development-rich suburb, it was Clint Callicott, who died in June at 66 at his farm in Only.

After founding the Grassland Athletic Association, Callicott was elected to the Williamson County Commission in 1982 and then served in the state legislature between 1988 and 1996, succeeded by his longtime friend and now powerful Rep. Charles Sargent. In 1998, he was elected county executive of Williamson County, serving until 2002. His most obvious legacy is the arena at the Williamson County Ag Expo Center, which bears his name and hosts, among other things, the Franklin Rodeo and numerous equestrian events — an appropriate legacy for a man, who in 1962, won the Iroquois Steeplechase atop Stovall. 

Politicos in Williamson County, though, say there's a hidden legacy — not one of bricks and mortar, but of books and brains. During his time on the commission and later as county executive, Callicott was one of the driving forces behind improving the county's school system, now recognized as one of the best public school systems in the South. Callicott also delicately balanced preservation and development, pushing for the county to take a common-sense approach to the latter while maintaining focus on the former. Many of the slave-built stacked-stone walls in Williamson County subdivisions are preserved because of Callicott's advocacy.

Jean Crowe

1942-2015

Attorney, domestic-violence advocate

By J.R. Lind

Ask any of the legions of women Jean Crowe helped in three decades as an attorney at Legal Aid and most will say the tireless, hardworking attorney, who died at her Belle Meade home in June at 73, saved their lives.

Crowe, though, would disagree. 

"I never think I saved them," she said in 2013, upon being named the Tennessee Bar Association's Public Service Lawyer of the Year. "My whole goal is for them to think they saved themselves. That's really important. Maybe I helped them, but they have to do it for themselves. I didn't do it for them."

She might have been selling herself just a bit short.

Domestic violence is still a taboo topic in many ways: There remains some truth in clichés about willfully ignorant neighbors turning up televisions to drown out the noise of a beating or co-workers pretending not to notice a poorly concealed black eye. But progress has been made, certainly from the time Crowe stepped into the Legal Aid offices. She would do damn near anything for her clients, such as creating new identities for battered women and their children. When she died, she was lauded by the district attorney's office and Metro police for setting Nashville on a path to serving and assisting domestic violence victims. Indeed, the city office that offers assistance to victims navigating court is called the Jean Crowe Advocacy Center.

She addressed the problems on a personal and systemic scale — founding the Nashville Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence. She was a nationally recognized family-law expert. Ultimately though, her legacy remains the people she saved, as Mark Wynn, who helped Metro police start a domestic violence unit, told The Tennessean.

"People are alive because of what she did," he said.

It's a characterization Crowe would have disagreed with, perhaps, but even heroes aren't always right.

Fred Thompson

1942-2015

Senator, presidential contender, attorney, actor, lobbyist, author, radio host

By Gregory Gleaves

Editor's note: The career of Fred Thompson, the charismatic politician, attorney and actor, was a roller coaster that mostly went upward, leading from the Watergate prosecutor's desk to his own run for the presidency and roles as an actor alongside the likes of Sean Connery, Tom Cruise and Robert De Niro. A remembrance last month by Gregory Gleaves, who had an early job as Thompson's driver, was one of the Scene's most popular articles of 2015. An excerpt:

I've had some cool jobs: chief of staff to the Tennessee House of Representatives, executive director of the Tennessee Republican Party, now president of my own political consulting company. But I learned more about politics and life in general being Fred Thompson's driver than anything I've done since. When talking about my career once, I was bemoaning my lack of a clear direction. He responded, "Hell, I'm almost 60 and I still don't know what I wanna be when I grow up." That's one thing I learned from him: Life is a journey.

I have so many favorite memories. We drove past the Department of Justice one time and I said, "I wonder what Janet Reno's doing in there right now?" He deadpanned, "Hopefully not a thing."

I was driving him before 9/11, so you could still get to the airport just right before the flight. He didn't care if I sped, and we were running really late one day that he absolutely had to make a flight back to Nashville. I started speeding and swerving like crazy — running red lights, breaking all kinds of laws. He just sat there and read his paper, didn't look up from it the whole time. When we arrived, he just got out and said with a smirk, "Well done."

The car I drove was a green '93 Honda Accord two-door. Whenever Big Fred would get in, he would sit down, pull one leg in, and then have to pull the other one in because he was so tall. Never once did he complain. Also, never once did he let me carry his bag or open his door for him.

I once had to pick him up at the annual House-Senate Dinner. The problem was, my car didn't quite fit in. There was a parade of black town cars ... and my old green Honda. I was feeling a little self-conscious about it — until Big Fred got in. "I'm so glad you drive this car," he said, "otherwise I'd never be able to find you."

I drove him for months before I told him about my Lawrenceburg ties. When I told him my grandfather was Lucien Caperton, he lit up. "That man is the main reason I became a Republican," he said. My aunt later gave me a letter Big Fred had written during the Watergate hearings to my grandfather when he was on his deathbed. The letter said the exact same thing. It was just so special to me that my grandfather, who died when I was 1, had such an influence on this larger-than-life figure.

And his laugh. Oh, that big booming laugh. So loud. So contagious.

He didn't really care for politics. And in a way, isn't that a good thing? He didn't have much fire in the belly for electoral politics, as was obvious in his 2008 presidential run. But that's because he was a statesman, not a retail politician. He did something that few politicians do: He walked away from a U.S. Senate seat after eight years.

What a life he lived. What a journey. He asked the question that brought down the Nixon White House. He helped expose Tennessee Gov. Ray Blanton's prison pardon scheme. He helped turn Tennessee red in 1994 with his come-from-behind landslide. And he made his mark in D.C., not just by the policies he espoused, but also by the people whose lives he touched.

Including mine.

BUSINESS

Ray Batts

1925-2015

"My kind of furniture man"

By J.R. Lind

Before he was selling furniture, Ray Batts, who died in November at 90, was stealing sugar.

After serving in the Navy during the Second World War, Batts decided to become a musician. In the early 1950s, his mixture of swampy blues and early rock earned him some solid record deals and regular appearances on the Louisiana Hayride. His best-known song, "Stealing Sugar," is still widely admired and widely imitated by rockabilly revivalists.

But all the time on the road took him away from his young family, much to his wife's chagrin. So Batts resettled in Nashville, eventually opening five eponymous furniture stores and a pair of La-Z-Boy outlets. Nashvillians of a certain age have his 1970s TV jingle hardwired into their brains: "That is why Ray Batts/Is my kind of fur-ni-ture man!"

William S. Cochran

1937-2015

Insurance executive, community leader

By E. Thomas Wood

In Walter Knestrick's memory, Bill Cochran will always be the Big Man on Campus — the star quarterback and student body president at Hillsboro High, the Mr. Commodore mascot at Vanderbilt.

Cochran, who died at 77 on New Year's Day 2015, "was always a leader, someone his classmates just looked up to," Nashville contractor and arts patron Knestrick recalls. The men were members of Hillsboro's class of 1955, which also included artist Red Grooms (and — full disclosure — my late mother, Nancy Bowers Wood).

When insurance giant Northwestern Mutual put Cochran in charge of its Nashville operations in 1967, he became its youngest general agent ever. He went on to run the office until his retirement in 2002, presiding over tremendous growth in sales volume. He was also active for many years as a volunteer for the United Way and other community organizations, and he sat on the governing boards of numerous schools, non-profits and companies.

"Billy was an eternal optimist," Knestrick remembers. "He was always upbeat and positive about everything. That's what made him a great salesman at Northwestern Mutual."

Bill Colson

1942-2015

Auctioneer, former newspaperman

By J.R. Lind

Auto auctions are now fairly common in Middle Tennessee, as a spate of radio commercials will attest. But in the 1970s, there were none in Nashville, until Bill Colson seized the gavel.

Colson, who died in September at 73, got his start in the newspaper business. He begin selling papers at 11 and rose through the ranks of the old Newspaper Printing Corp., which published The Tennessean and the late Nashville Banner, eventually becoming assistant circulation manager.

He left ink and paper behind in 1974, launching Bill Colson Auction and Realty, a standard auction and real estate company, before founding Auto Auctions Inc. For this visionary stroke and in recognition of his long career, Colson was inducted into the Tennessee Auctioneers Hall of Fame in 2000.

C.W. Dean

1930-2015

Oil, funeral home entrepreneur

By J.R. Lind

Not many people go from the oil and gas business to the funeral business. But not many people were C.W. Dean. Along with his wife, Betty, Dean — who died at 84 in January — founded Dean Oil in his hometown of Springfield in 1959. For the next 27 years, they'd run the business, bringing up their five sons alongside. Then in 1986, they turned things over to their kids and opened Robertson County Funeral Home.

Both companies are still in the Dean family, with three generations working at one or the other, and both have become mainstays of the Robertson County landscape.

J.D. Elliott

1936-2015

Philanthropist, president, The Memorial Foundation; chairman, Metro Sports Authority

By J.R. Lind

When Nashville Memorial Hospital shuttered in the early 1990s, something had to be done with the proceeds of the sale. In came the affable J.D. Elliott, who died at 78 in July. Elliott was the last president of the hospital and the first president and board chair of The Memorial Foundation, the corpus of which grew from $108 million to $150 million during his tenure, giving out grants totaling $135 million to 778 organizations.

Elliott also served as chairman of the Metro Sports Authority, leading the group during a few tumultuous and tense times with the once-troubled Predators, always with a soft hand and a calming voice.

"He was a devoted family man, father and husband who gave of himself to worthy causes and public service, including the Boy Scouts of America, The Memorial Foundation, the Metro Sports Authority, Lipscomb University and many other wonderful organizations," said Tennessee Titans President and CEO Steve Underwood in a statement in July. "J.D. was one of the strongest advocates for all of Nashville's professional organizations as well as a personal friend to so many in the community. If you wanted an example of how to live such a life — and the enduring benefits of providing your personal resources to those in need — you could not find a better or more humble role model than J.D. Elliott."

Bob Frensley

1939-2015

The Superdealer

By Ken Whitehouse

If Nashville had a Patron Saint of Second Chances, it would be St. Bob the Superdealer.

You may have known him for selling cars, but his generosity and kind heart should be his remembrance. When the much-loved but flawed former Sheriff Fate Thomas and former State Rep. Tommy Burnett needed a place to work, it was Bob who took them in.

When Nashville's most vulnerable community needed help, Bob stepped up to the plate. Father Charles Strobel remembers him by stating, "Bob was a consistent friend of Room In The Inn since our beginnings 30 years ago. We could always count on his financial support, food, blankets, and especially his clothes, making some of our homeless friends part of the best-dressed people in Nashville."

Sitting in an office filled to the brim with golf equipment, clothes and toys, Frensley would regale you with stories of his close friends like former Metro Police Chief Joe Casey, John Seigenthaler and Father Joe Pat Breen and their days at Father Ryan. If you came back to that office a week later, much of that clutter had been replaced with a new batch of goods, as a sizable portion of what had been there before had found its way to any number of charities.

He served the city well on the Municipal Auditorium Commission and the Metro parks board, but he served his fellow man with great compassion. 

Francis Guess

1946-2015

Businessman, civil rights leader, humanitarian

By Jim Ridley

A Republican who drew respect from both sides of the aisle and maintained strong friendships there, the late Francis Guess offered a model for how to navigate waters laden with partisan chum. As writer Randy Horick remembers, "When asked about his position on some thorny political issue, he would say, 'I have friends on both sides of the question, and I stand by my friends.' "

After serving with Army intelligence during Vietnam, Guess rose to local and national prominence — as a 30-year member of the Tennessee Commission on Human Rights, as Tennessee's first African-American commissioner for the departments of labor and general services under Gov. Lamar Alexander, and as a Reagan appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In the business sphere, he was executive vice president of The Danner Co. and executive director of The Danner Foundation, while taking on myriad philanthropic roles and serving on countless boards addressing everything from foreign relations to small business administration.

But those are things he did, and friends say they cherished him just as much for who he was: the product of a Nashville housing project who could find common ground with anyone of any class, occupation or background, drawing on limitless reserves of suave charm with effortless ease.

“I learned how to say ‘Hey, baby’ from watching him,” recalls Horick, who once spent an afternoon with a friend moving furniture into one of Guess’ new offices. (As he remembers, Guess joked that he liked the idea of having “a couple of strong-backed white boys” doing his toting and lifting, then regaled them with a story about the origins of the Nashville numbers racket.) “He always showed up at events with some younger and glamorous woman at his side. He could say ‘Hey, baby’ in a way that sounded like a cross between Barry White and George Clooney. Most men couldn’t get away with it. He had the gift.”

Jeff Walker

1950-2015

Music industry executive

By J.R. Lind

It took an Australian to give Nashville just what it needed.

Jeff Walker, who was 65 when he died in August, came from Down Under to Down South and in 1980 founded Aristo Music Associates, revolutionizing the marketing and publicity of country music. He was no stranger to the Nashville Sound, as his father, Bill, had been an arranger and musical director for The Johnny Cash Show.

Eventually, Aristo grew into a multi-faceted machine, offering marketing, publicity, Web development, and radio and video promotion. Walker was a longtime board member of the Country Music Association and, for 35 straight years, a member of the board of Country Radio Broadcasters. Then-Mayor Karl Dean lauded Walker as a strong advocate of the Sister Cities program, particularly at strengthening ties between Nashville and Tamworth — Australia's country music capital — and Edmonton, Alberta, a hotbed of Canadian country.

HOMELESS

Bryant Crenshaw

1972-2015

Actor, Gummo

By Jim Ridley

Before there was YouTube, before movies were broken down into viral clips of gotta-see moments, there was Harmony Korine’s 1997 directorial debut Gummo. And in a movie loaded with jarring, surreal and confrontational scenes, one figure made an instant impact: a diminutive black actor playing a character identified as “Midget,” who watches skater Mark Gonzales wrestle a chair and fields a woozy confessional/come-on monologue from writer-director Korine.

That was Bryant Crenshaw, who'd grown up in Nashville and attended elementary school with the movie's second-unit director James Clauer. It was a famously chaotic shoot, and tales of the movie's master cinematographer, the late Jean-Yves Escoffier, and various cast and crew making the rounds at off-the-grid Dickerson Road basement strip joints are the stuff of legend. So much so that when asked for memories of working with Crenshaw, a crew member said, "I probably wouldn't want to put some of those memories in print if ya know what I'm saying ..."

But in Filmmaker magazine earlier this year, co-producer Scott Macaulay remembered Crenshaw as "sweet, funny and completely serious and focused on his role in the movie." He quoted an email from Korine, who wrote, "Lil Bryant had the same magnetism as early Brando and the same mystic quality as James Dean,,,,he could have been the mayor of Nashville in another lifetime,,,he was an artist of the hobo lifestyle,,,he inspired a generation of kids who grew up with him like me."

In recent years, Crenshaw, who was homeless, could often be seen near the intersection of 12th and Wedgewood. But although he appeared in at least one other feature, 2007's video-shot Trite This Way, Gummo remained his calling card. He would remind people of the role asking for money or a ride outside the Pizza Perfect on 21st Avenue.

In February, he attempted to cross Murfreesboro Road on foot when he was struck and killed by a pickup truck. In comments online, left by contributors to his crowdfunded funeral, he was mourned by people who'd known him since childhood as a sweet kid in the 12South neighborhood — and by people who knew him only as a viral sensation, an underground hero, a star.

Theresa Pearson

1966-2015

Vendor, The Contributor

By Amanda Haggard

Longtime Contributor vendor Theresa Pearson died March 5 after a short battle with cancer. Pearson, who was homeless for several years, had just moved into housing only months before. She was 48.

Maria Borrego, who works at St. Mary's of the Seven Sorrows in downtown Nashville, where Pearson attended church services, says she met and befriended Pearson in 2012.

"I saw her one day dragging her bags in front of the church," Borrego remembers. "And we learned that she was staying at the women's mission, and had no identification or Social Security card or anything. From the moment I met her we made a connection. At St. Mary's, she was really the start of us taking hold of people like Theresa and caring for them. I consider our meeting totally God-sent. She was one of my best friends."

A Nashville native, Pearson moved back and forth from Minneapolis to Nashville several times until she was 15, when her family finally settled in the Middle Tennessee area. She had an affinity for '80s metal and loved animals.

At the time of her passing, Borrego says, Pearson had been living in her own apartment since November 2014.

"And she absolutely loved it," Borrego says. "She was the kind of person who loved all people, and really downplayed her troubles. She didn't want anyone to worry about her. She was always the definition of a fighter."

More than 70 people who were homeless were remembered at Nashville's annual Homeless Memorial at Riverfront Park Dec. 12. This year saw a jump of more than a dozen names over 2014 — on a list that is already far too long every year.

Arthur "Sal" Peck

Bryant Crenshaw

Cardell O'Quinn*

Clarence Leron Murphy

Clyde Hicks

Cris Cumner

Danny Anderson

Danny Costello*

David Milliken

Debra Johnson*

Delores Graham*

Denise Hixson

Donald Lewis Wilson Jr.

Edward Washington

Gary Silcott*

Gloria Foster

Greg

Gregory Latimer

Hilton D'Wayne Pitts

Homer Wilson

Howard Bottoms*

James Alexander*

James Carruthers

James Larry Moore, "Alabama"*

James Mitchell

James Primm

Jason Vaughan

Jeff Forgy

John Frakes

John Perry

John Wesley Brown*

Joseph Dies

Joseph Truitt

Kenneth Keesee

Kevin Sullivan

Larry Almond

Leon Brooks

Lloyd Barnes

Marcus McLaurine

Marcus Moore

Margie Lucas

Mary Brown*

Michael Marro

Michael Moss Magidovitch

Michael O'Carrol

Mike Willers

Neice Parrish*

Norman Wayne Dugger

Olivia Davis

Pamela Zanardi*

* indicates people who were formerly homeless

AROUND TOWN

Elizabeth James

1967-2015

Event planner, philanthropic fundraiser

By Rev. Becca Stevens

Editor's note: James, noted as one of the city's most sought-after event planners and charitable fundraisers, died in September. These remarks are taken from the eulogy by her friend, the Rev. Becca Stevens, founder of Magdalene and the Thistle Farms project.

Collectively this week everyone has been describing Elizabeth with consistent adjectives like "selfless," "thoughtful," "present-giving," "note-writing," "party-planning," "funny" and "beautiful." She was graceful in her dress, voice, fancy high ponytail, and work. I have wondered this week if we were able to add up all the money raised at the charitable events she hosted in Nashville if we could not say she was the largest fundraiser this city has known. She was capable, overcommitted, underpaid, and she never realized the impact of her life and work on the countless charitable organizations she supported.

Elizabeth was a modest theologian with profound insight who prayed for others far more than she asked for prayers for herself. She lived the beatitudes and saw beauty in all things and the blessedness of the woods. She spoke of God's all-inclusive love in her daily life. There is no need for me or you to preach on her behalf; she has already done it. Her legacy preaches volumes. The thousands mourning her rings louder than any words or music we offer as testimony to her belovedness. She was a natural storyteller and laughed as freely as she cried at tenderness. She felt compassion and righteous indignation rising in her at injustices. Her life was a witness that in the fleeting nature of time, we can create timeless moments.

Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement who fed the poor all her life, tells a story of a rich woman who gave her a diamond ring. Dorothy wondered what to do with the diamond, and ultimately decided to give it to one of the women coming to the food line. Dorothy said the homeless woman could sell it, give it away, or keep it. After all, Day concluded, people who are poor or hungry can enjoy the beauty of a cherished diamond. Elizabeth helped us see the beautiful even in poverty or grief. When she was in charge of feeding the men at our Chapel for Room in the Inn, she fixed beef tenderloin served on her finest platters. When we called for letters and stamps for the six women inside the prison that were part of the Magdalene community, she brought cards, envelopes, beautiful pens and stickers all wrapped in bows. She was known to drive the food truck and set out tablecloths and flowers as she distributed food.

But all of those examples just dance around the edge of what Elizabeth preached with her life. The heart of what she preached was love. That is as plain and as simple as I can say it. She preached love like Jesus would want it preached. She preached it without guile, with unaffected modesty, and with power. I am so sorry for our loss. I am sorry we will miss her voice in our community. I am so sorry for her family, but I am so grateful she walked with this community and preached with such beauty to this community and loved her family so deeply.

SPORTS

C.O. BROCATO

1929-2015

Talent scout

By David Boclair

C.O. Brocato knew a professional football player when he saw one — and he didn't see one when he looked in the mirror.

So the all-conference linebacker/kicker at Baylor left after one week of his first NFL training camp with the Chicago Cardinals, who took him in the 27th round of the draft. He quickly transitioned to a career as a coach and scout, ultimately spending more than four decades with the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans. In the process, he became one of the most trusted and accomplished talent evaluators in the league.

Brocato died Sept. 1 due to complications from cancer. He was 85.

"He was an extremely loyal man, and there are a lot of scouts and coaches in our game that owe a great deal of gratitude to C.O. for the way he helped them and shaped their careers," former Titans coach Jeff Fisher says. "Without a doubt, C.O. is one of the best scouts our game has ever known."

Prior to the 2015 NFL draft, the Titans renamed their draft room in his honor and memorialized him in a way that, according to general manager Ruston Webster, "People who come into the room will know who he is."

Brocato has been on the preliminary list for the Pro Football Hall of Fame three times (2005, 2007 and 2008) and was a part of 599 games with the Oilers/Titans. Before he became a scout he spent 10 years as a high school coach in Louisiana and seven years as a college football assistant.

"Where his legacy will live on is there is not a scout on the road that did not come in contact with either C.O.'s teachings, or somebody that C.O. taught and they're now teaching other guys," Titans director of college scouting Blake Beddingfield says. "He taught guys in this organization how to do things the 'Titan way.' The Titans way, the Oiler way, that's what he would call it.

"And he did things the right way."

WAYNE DOBBS

1939-2015

Basketball coach

By David Boclair

Wayne Dobbs always was curious when it came to basketball.

So in 1979 when Memphis State was seeking a coach for its men's team, naturally he was intrigued. Never mind that he had just finished his third — and best — season as Vanderbilt's coach and recently had been named SEC Coach of the Year. He withdrew from consideration in early March, but a day later Vanderbilt fired him.

"Coaching is the only thing I ever wanted to do," Dobbs told The Tuscaloosa News late in the 1978-79 campaign. "I always seemed to gravitate to places where basketball was being played or discussed."

Dobbs never got another job as a college coach, but at least he went out a winner. The Commodores went 18-9 that season and at one point were ranked as high as No. 17. That was a departure from the previous two, when his teams went 10-16 and 10-17, respectively.

The Lakeland (Fla.) Ledger described him in 1976 as "a rather bland individual not likely to excite anyone in Nashville, but he wasn't hired to do that." The successor to Roy Skinner, who retired in 1976 as Vanderbilt's winningest coach, was supposed to continue Skinner's winning ways. Skinner had one losing record in 16 seasons.

Dobbs passed away of an apparent heart attack in February. He was 75. A Smyrna, Ga., native, he played basketball at Oglethorpe University and in 1961 earned that school's highest student honor, Lord Oglethorpe, and was a Rhodes Scholar candidate. In 1984 he earned a permanent place among Oglethorpe's all-time greats in 1984 when he was inducted into its athletics hall of fame.

Before Vanderbilt he spent two years at Belmont University (1964-66), where he was basketball and baseball coach, and four years at George Washington, one as an assistant and three as head coach. He started his career as freshman coach at Oglethorpe for one season and spent two years as a high school coach.

His career record as a college basketball coach was 104-106.

WALLACE DOOLEY JR.

1947-2015

Information director, Tennessee State University

By David Boclair

Whether personally or on behalf of others, Wallace Dooley always looked for opportunities where others did not.

He was a Tennessee State University graduate and athletics department official from 2006-12, and his 28-year career in college sports information included stints at multiple schools and conference offices and made him a prominent voice and a groundbreaking presence among HBCU institutions.

Dooley passed away in July due to complications from cancer. He was 68.

In 2012, the same year he retired from TSU, the College Sports Information Directors of America honored him with a lifetime achievement award. Dooley became the first full-time sports information director at Alabama A&M in 1978, and in 1984 was one of 12 who helped found the Black College Sports Information Directors Association. In 1982, Dooley joined several others from historically black schools in a partnership with the National Association for Women's Sports to recognize female student-athletes as All-Americans. 

During a six-year run (2001-06) as the associate commissioner of communications, he was instrumental in the creation of the Southwestern Athletic Conference's football championship game.

He returned to TSU in 2006 as associate athletic director for media relations.

"He and his family have been a prominent part of TSU athletics for decades," Tennessee State director of athletics Teresa Phillips says. "He was a treasure chest of information and history for our programs."

He started in sports information while he was an undergraduate at TSU during the 1970s. After a stint at then-Memphis State he became a constant at HBCU establishments. He worked at the University of District of Columbia (1981-1984), Virginia State (1984-88) and North Carolina Central (1988-92). He also served the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (1992-96) as public relations director.

"Wallace has truly been a lifetime achiever," Eric Moore, executive director of the Black College Sports Information Directors said in 2012. "His personal accomplishments pale in comparison to the mentoring he has done over the years. He has left a long legacy."

FRANK MORDICA

1958-2015

Record-setting running back, Vanderbilt

By David Boclair

Vanderbilt University was not created for the likes of Frank Mordica.

Raised in humble surroundings in the Tallahassee, Fla., area, he was not a child of privilege or the product of a tony neighborhood such as Belle Meade or the like. Nor was he particularly gifted academically.

Mordica could run, though. That attracted the attention of many college football programs, Vanderbilt included.

According to longtime Chattanooga sportswriter Roy Exum, the Commodores signed Mordica because during a recruiting visit, an assistant coach was willing to share some of Mordica's father's inexpensive, ill-tasting vodka when a coach from Florida would not.

Mordica became the first player in program history to rush for 1,000 yards in a season when he gained 1,065 in 1978 as a junior. That season he set an SEC record, which still stands, with 321 rushing yards against Air Force.

"His feet were so good it would make your shoes squeak," remembers Boots Donnelly, then Vanderbilt's running backs coach.

He ended his college career as the Commodores' all-time leading rusher and held that title until Zac Stacy surpassed him in 2012. The New Orleans Saints drafted him in the ninth round in 1980, but a knee injury prior to his rookie season ended his professional career before it started.

He earned his bachelor's degree in health and physical education from Peabody College in 1981, then entered the U.S. Navy. He served for 30 years and retired in 2011 having achieved the rank of master chief petty officer.

He was back in Tallahassee in July when he died of a heart attack while he worked out. He was 57 — and a long way from where he started.

"There wouldn't be a Frank Mordica without Vanderbilt," Mordica once said, according to Exum. "I came from a real bad situation. ... Vanderbilt probably saved my life."

Email editor@nashvillescene.com