Year in review: Tennessee obituaries of 2022
Here are some of the notable people who passed away in 2022, as covered in the print edition of The Tennessee Journal:
Honey Alexander, 77, who was married to former governor and U.S. senator Lamar Alexander for 53 years.
Brown Ayres, 90, Knoxville investment banker who as a state senator sponsored legislation to do away with the state’s “bone dry” law that made it legal to possess up to a gallon of alcohol in all 95 counties.
Gene Barksdale, 99, the sheriff of Shelby County from 1976 to 1986.
Joe Biddle, 78, a longtime sports columnist for the Nashville Banner and The Tennessean.
Joseph Patrick Breen, 87, a prominent Nashville priest whose progressive positions were often at odds with church leaders.
Joe Casey, 96, Nashville’s law-and-order police chief from 1974 to 1989.
Larry Cole, 83, a former lawmaker who served two separate stints as House clerk.
Joe Cooper, 76, “The Marryin’ Squire” of Shelby County who later cooperated with the FBI in a bribery sting operation against Memphis City Council members.
Barbara Cooper, 93, a retired teacher, former chair of the African American Peoples Organization in Memphis, and a state House member since 1996. She was the recipient of then-Sen. Jim Summerville’s 2012 missive that he didn’t “give a rat’s ass what the black caucus thinks.”
Larry Crim, 66, a perennial candidate for federal office.
Mark Flanagan, 79, a perennial Democratic primary challenger of then-U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Sr. and a friend and adviser to Memphis’ current congressman, Steve Cohen.
Darrell Freeman, 57, a businessman and mentor to aspiring African-American entrepreneurs who clashed with fellow trustees at Middle Tennessee State University over what he called efforts to silence him on matters of race.
Harry Green, 89, the executive director of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations from 1981 until 2012.
Robert Hicks, 71, a battlefield preservationist in Franklin and author of the bestselling 2005 novel Widow of the South.
George Jaynes, 80, a 24-year mayor of Washington County who fought efforts to remove a Ten Commandments plaque from the courthouse in Jonesborough in the 1990s.
Dale Kelley, 82, a 30-year mayor of Huntingdon, former TDOT commissioner, and a onetime SEC basketball referee.
Paul Kwami, 70, the musical director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers for 28 years, including for its Grammy-winning album Celebrate Fisk!
Jim Lewis, 78, a former state senator who drew attention – but no charges – for having a loan co-signed by the head of a bingo manufacturing firm during the FBI’s Rocky Top public corruption probe.
Loretta Lynn, 90, country music legend.
Gilbert “Gil” S. Merritt Jr., 86, a federal appeals judge who made the short list of candidates for a U.S. Supreme Court opening in 1993.
Bryant Millsaps, 75, a former House clerk who was appointed as Secretary of State following the suicide of Gentry Crowell amid the Rocky Top investigation in 1989.
Millard Oakley, 91, a former state insurance commissioner and attorney for former Gov. Ray Blanton.
Ken Roberts, 89, a banking executive who challenged Howard Baker for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate in 1964.
John Ryder, 72, a Memphis attorney, redistricting expert, and general counsel to the national Republican Party.
Wilson “Woody” Sims, 97, a Nashville attorney who during his single term in the state House spearheaded efforts to defeat a 1959 bill seeking to exempt children from mandatory attendance at desegregated schools.
Tim Skow, 64, the host of Nashville’s First Tuesday Club featuring Republican speakers.
Jim Stewart, 92, the cofounder of Stax Records who helped create the soulful “Memphis sound.”
Charles D. Susano Jr., 86, a former state appeals judge from Knoxville who authored more than 1,000 opinions before retiring in 2020.
Earl Swensson, 91, the architect of the Gaylord Opryland Resort and the downtown Nashville office tower known as the Batman Building.
Larry Wallace, 77, former commander of the Tennessee Highway Patrol who was named director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation after lawmakers complained his predecessor spent too much time assisting the FBI on the Rocky Top public corruption probe.
John Everett Williams, 68, the presiding judge on the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals and a proud member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
Vernon Winfrey, 89, a Nashville barber, 20-year Metro Council member, and father of Oprah Winfrey.
Les Winningham, 81, a former state House member from Huntsville who was one of committee heads to buck leadership in a 2002 floor vote on a state income tax.
Joe Worley, 74, a former executive editor of the now-defunct Nashville Banner, who went on to head the Tulsa World from 1995 to 2014.
Notable deaths in 2021 included former U.S. Sen. Brock, state Supreme Court Justice Clark
As 2021 draws to a close, we take a look back at some of the year’s notable deaths. They include former U.S. Sen. Bill Brock, state Supreme Court Justice Connie Clark, and radio talk show host Phil Valentine. Several former state lawmakers also passed away this year, including Mike Carter, Jim Coley, Roscoe Dixon, Thelma Harper, Jim Holcomb, Cotton Ivy, Carl Moore, and David Shepard.
Here is a roundup of the year’s obituaries, as culled from the print edition of the The Tennessee Journal:
Retired Memphis Criminal Court Judge James Beasley Jr. died at age 64. Appointed to the bench in 1995, Beasley presided over several high-profile cases. They included the trial of Jessie Dotson, who was convicted and sentenced to death for killing six people in 2008. Beasley previously worked as an assistant district attorney in Memphis, where he was part of the team prosecuting Charles McVean, a commodities broker who allegedly supplied the money to offer a $10,000 bribe to Sen. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) to vote in favor of a gambling bill. McNally was wearing a wire for investigators as part of the FBI’s Rocky Top corruption probe. The case ended in a hung jury.
Republican Bill Brock, who ended Albert Gore Sr.’s 32-year political career by defeating the Carthage Democrat in the 1970 U.S. Senate race, died at age 90. Brock lost his re-election bid in 1976, but would go on to serve as chair of the Republican National Committee in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and was later named U.S. trade representative and labor secretary in President Ronald Reagan’s administration. In the 1970 race, Brock painted Gore as a liberal who was out of touch with Tennesseans on matters like school busing, gun control, school prayer, and the Vietnam war. His campaign slogan, “Bill Brock Believes in the Things We Believe In,” was criticized as playing into the racial fears of disaffected whites. When asked about the campaign in later years, Brock insisted it wasn’t focused on anything but bona fide issues. Six years later, Brock was put on the defensive for his vocal support of President Richard Nixon during Watergate, a poor economy, and the disclosure that the heir to a candy company fortune had paid just $2,000 in federal income taxes. Buttons declaring “I paid more taxes than Brock” became popular, and Democrat Jim Sasser went on to win the race by 5 percentage points.
Eddie Bryan, a longtime leader of the Tennessee AFLCIO, died at age 88. The Nashville native was first elected secretary-treasurer in 1981 and held the position until his retirement in 2011.
Frank Cagle, conservative columnist who relished poison pen, died at 72. Cagle stepped down as managing editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel in 2001 to become deputy to then-Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe. He was later named communications director for Republican Van Hilleary’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign against Democrat Phil Bredesen. But Cagle was always best at calling out officials’ shortcomings rather than propping them up. After Bredesen won the governor’s race, Cagle launched a talk radio show and later returned as an opinion writer for Metro Pulse, the News Sentinel, and Knox TN Today (he estimated in 2018 he had written more than a million words worth of columns over 30 years). Cagle had hoped to highlight what he saw as all-powerful House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh’s bullying ways when he referred to him in print in 1998 as “the Antichrist.” Much to Cagle’s chagrin, the Covington Democrat turned the tables by skillfully presenting himself as the victim of vicious attacks in the press. On a visit to the Capitol Hill press room more than 20 years later, Cagle shook his head at the memory, saying he had inadvertently managed to stir public sympathy for the iron-fisted Naifeh, who would remain in charge of the chamber for another decade. Cagle joked he expected the “Antichrist” line to appear on his gravestone.
Todd Campbell, a longtime legal adviser to Al Gore who was later named to the federal court bench in Nashville, died at age 64. The cause was a neurodegenerative disease Campbell had battled for years. Campbell, who as an attorney specialized in election law and constitutional matters, had worked on Gore’s presidential and Senate campaigns. He later served as counsel for the 1992 presidential transition followed by two years in the vice president’s office. Campbell had recently returned to private practice in Nashville when Gore recommended him to fill a federal court vacancy in the Middle District of Tennessee in 1995. Campbell presided over several high-profile legal disputes, including the Brian A. v. Sundquist class action case over foster care, which led to a 2001 consent decree requiring court supervision of the Department of Children’s Service for the next 15 years. Campbell in 2008 sentenced former state Sen. John Ford (D-Memphis) to 14 years in prison for wire fraud and concealment involving more than $850,000 in “consulting fees” he received from TennCare contractors while serving as a state lawmaker. His conviction was later thrown out by the 6th Circuit on the basis that Ford’s failure to report the consulting income to the Senate and state Registry wasn’t a crime under the federal statute prosecutors charged him with.
Continue readingRemembering Thelma Harper
Former state Sen. Thelma Harper, who died Thursday at age 80, was the first African-American woman to serve in the state Senate. The outspoken Nashville Democrat delivered some memorable lines over her time in politics. Here are some of Harper’s memorable quotes, culled from the archives of The Tennessee Journal:
- “All my stuff is original.” — Harper after a flustered Sen. Raymond Finney (R-Maryville) twice addressed her as “sir” during a committee hearing in 2005.
- “If someone wants to tell me something, let him stand up and tell me so I can punch his lights out.” — Harper, then a Nashville Metro Council member, to the Nashville Banner in 1989 about a letter she received in support of keeping a landfill in her district open.
- “If Senator Fowler could be impregnated, he wouldn’t be trying to take these rights away.” — Harper arguing against a 2004 anti-abortion resolution by Sen. David Fowler (R-Signal Mountain).
- “I offered to sew up his pants for him. Shows you what I know. ” — Harper after she joined country singer Marty Stuart — whose trademark is jeans with tattered knees — to present a bluegrass music award at a Nashville awards show in 1995. Harper admitted she had no idea who Stuart was before the show.
- “Sometimes men dress up to look like women. My question is, are you going to raise up and see?” — Harper speaking on 1996 bill by Sen. Jim Holcomb (R-Bluff City) that would require Tennessee not to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
- “It’s not our fault that Shelby County has so many people that don’t know how to behave.” – Harper responding to a comment by Sen. Jim Kyle (D-Memphis) during a meeting of the Select Oversight Committee on Correction in 1993. Committee members were discussing empty jail cells in Davidson County.
- “What you’re telling them is they’ve got to have a spittoon…. They shouldn’t be spitting out. I just think it’s not fair.” — Harper to Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro), on his 2015 bill to let college students under the drinking age but at least 18 taste beer in college brewing classes provided they don’t swallow it.
- “I was eating before I got here — that’s obvious — and I’ll be eating after I leave.” — Harper responding to comments by Sen. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) criticizing a bill that placed weak restrictions on lobbyists’ wining and dining of legislators.
- “Senate Bill 3929 comes from the governor, and it does nothing to help anybody.” — Harper, the sponsor of the bill, asking Senate Commerce to take the measure off notice in 2006. The legislation pertained to blasting, a topic on which she’d butted heads with Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen’s administration.
- “Now I don’t know if the sponsor realizes that slavery is dead…. We have worked as diligently as we can as a committee … but we’re not going to be whipped with straps and made to do anything.” — Harper addressing the Senate in 2003 on complaints by Sen. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) complaints that her committee has held up a lottery implementation bill.
- “Your church people have been calling me all week. These people said they would never have voted for you.” — Harper to Sen. Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville) in 2006 after saying she had been “disrespected” because Jack Daniel’s had chosen Tracy, whose district included its distillery, to sponsor a bill to place a $10 million museum and store in downtown Nashville, which was in her district. The bill failed on a 4-4 committee vote, with Harper voting against.
- “There are some men on this commission – some real Tarzans.” — Harper speaking in 1995 of the predominantly female Women’s Suffrage Commission.
- “At some point, our children are just going to realize we’re winers. We’re drunks, even at the grocery store.” — Harper on a 2016 bill to allow grocery stores to allow on-premise wine consumption.
- “What we’ve done here tonight is not going to help our students because we have decided that everybody … has to have a brain like legislators.” — Harper complaining to the Senate in 2003 that lottery scholarship standards were too high.
- “I think what you just heard is that any kook who can get their name on the ballot and run for judge and get a majority vote — they will be deciding the issues of life.” — Harper on 2009 legislation to reestablish contested elections for the Supreme Court.
- “Every once in a while we ought to give him what he wants. He doesn’t ask for a lot.” — Harper in proposing an amendment in 2014 to give Gov. Bill Haslam more appointments to the Tennessee Textbook Commission than the three provided in a bill by Sen. Mike Bell (R-Riceville). The Government Operations Committee rejected her amendment.
- “Feeding me doesn’t influence me. I was fat when I came, and if I’m still healthy I’ll be fat when I leave.” — Harper on legislation dealing with lobbyist spending in 2005.
- “I hope you have a woman on it because when I was coming up, women couldn’t talk about whiskey.” — Harper to Sen. Ken Yager (R-Kingston) after the Senate State and Local Government Committee decided to form a study committee for a liquor bill in 2014.
- “Hell, we didn’t have choice, not at all, and we shouldn’t have choice now. We should take care of our students in public schools.” — Harper on a 2015 school voucher bill by Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga).
- “He championed and understood that we could be fiscally responsible and still care about the welfare of others.” — Harper on the death of Sen. Douglas Henry (D-Nashville) in 2017.
U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper’s wife, Martha, dies at 66
U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Nashville) announced that his wife, Martha, died Thursday after a multi-year struggle with Alzheimer’s. She was 66.
Here is the the Cooper family’s obituary:
NASHVILLE – Martha Hays Cooper died peacefully at home in Nashville on Thursday, Feb. 4, after years of struggling with Alzheimer’s. “Ookie” was married to Rep. Jim Cooper for almost 36 years, mother of their three amazing children, Mary (Scott Gallisdorfer), Jamie, and Hayes, and grandmother of the incomparable Jay.
Martha was born on Sept. 13, 1954, the second child of the late Dr. A.V. Hays and Dr. Martha Hays Taylor of Gulfport, Mississippi. Her siblings, Art Hays (Debbie) of Gaithersburg, MD, and Mary Hays Peller (Steve) of New Orleans, survive her. Martha graduated from Sweet Briar College in 1976 and from Mississippi State in 1980 with an M.S. in ornithology. Her first job was in a cubbyhole in the attic of the Natural History Museum, the Bird Division of the Smithsonian, staffing the first two editions of the million-selling National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. An adventuresome soul, Martha smoked cigars in swamps to repel mosquitoes, made lifelong friends in Buenos Aires, taught children and studied Puffins for the Quebec-Labrador Foundation, protected Least Terns on Gulf of Mexico beaches, camped in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and worked the Galápagos Islands for World Wildlife Fund, all while keeping an African-Grey parrot named Baroot in her kitchen.
Martha lived in Georgetown and drove a 1971 Robin’s-egg-blue Volvo P1800E when she met Jim, the youngest congressman in the U.S., who proposed at a White House Christmas party. Part Audrey Hepburn, Ali MacGraw, and Penelope Cruz, Martha was wary of politics until she lived in Shelbyville with Jim’s mother for a few months in 1984 to manage Jim’s first re-election campaign. The experiment worked. They married on April 6, 1985, followed by the birth of Mary Argentine in 1990, John James Audubon in 1991, and Hayes Hightower in 1995. Martha loved Mardi Gras, Galatoires (“the big G”), hurricanes and snow, peonies, Little Cayman Island, Ernie Banks, homemade popovers, Radnor Lake, friends in the Query and Centennial Clubs, Aretha Franklin and Paul McCartney, Standard Poodles (Ruby, Sirius Black, and Romeo), Cicadas, golf, City House’s belly-ham pizza, families of Crows, Prince Charles, her Cardinal-red 2003 Mini-Cooper, and the Hermitage, serving as Regent of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association. Her favorite president was Barack Obama; favorite bird: Upupa Epops.
Martha’s charm and optimism were heroic, eclipsing her illness. She ALWAYS smiled and said thank you. She loved car travel; on bumpy roads she’d say “this makes me wiggle.” In recent years, she drew wobbly hearts on everything… with a Sharpie when she could find one.
The family is grateful to Martha’s main caregiver, Sandy Mathers, her friend of 25 years, as well as newer friends, Heather Tavasti and Alyssa Action. The team at Alive Hospice was godsent. Natural burial by Feldhaus Memorial Chapel of Shelbyville and Larkspur Conservation of Nashville. Anatomical gift to the Vanderbilt Brain and Biospecimen Bank. Due to COVID, family ceremony only.
Year in review: Tennessee obituaries of 2020
Here are some of the notable people who passed away in 2020, as covered by The Tennessee Journal:
January
Fred P. Graham, who covered legal affairs for The New York Times, CBS News, and Court TV, died at age 88. Graham earned law degrees from Vanderbilt and Oxford in England and practiced in Nashville for three years before going to Washington in 1963 to work as chief counsel to U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver’s subcommittee on constitutional amendments. He made the transition to journalism in 1965, the first lawyer hired by the Times to cover the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bobby Lanier, a former top aide to three Shelby County mayors, died at age 90. Newly-elected Mayor Bill Morris in 1977 hired Lanier as his executive assistant, a position he also held for successors Jim Rout and A C Wharton. Lanier pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of using inmates to cater a fundraiser for Morris’ ill-fated gubernatorial campaign in 1993.
LaFollette businessman and auctioneer Haskel “Hack” Ayers, who served in the state House in 1960, died at age 83. Ayers was the son of a Stinking Creek moonshiner slain by state troopers, and the grandfather of Ramsey Farrar & Bates lobbyist Addison Russell.
Former state Rep. Willie “Butch” Borchert (D-Camden) died at age 82. The retired pipefitter and his wife, Christine, were the former owners of The Catfish Place restaurants in Camden and McKenzie and the Borchert Fish Market. It was that experience, he said in committee hearings, that led him to oppose a 2007 state law to ban smoking in restaurants.
February
Vanderbilt biochemist Stanley Cohen, a 1986 Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine, died in Nashville at age 97.
Michael Silence, a former Knoxville News Sentinel reporter and columnist, died of a heart attack at age 62. He ran the “No Silence Here” blog of new aggregation and political commentary from 2004 until he was laid off in 2011.
Attorney Charlie Warfield, the last surviving member of the commission that drafted the charter for the merged governments of Nashville and Davidson County, died at age 95.
Victor Thompson, the longtime chief sergeant-at-arms for the state House, died at age 80. Thompson had been a beloved figure at the state Capitol complex since he was first hired in 1988.
March
Attorney Jim Gilliland, a co-chair of Willie Herenton’s transition team after he won election as the first black mayor of Memphis in 1991, has died at age 86. Gilliland later worked as general counsel to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was an adviser to Al Gore for his 1988 and 2000 presidential bids. He also hired Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland to his first job.
Former state Sen. Jerry Cooper (D-Morrison), the longtime chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee and a frequent swing vote on major legislation, died at 71. When he was making an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1998, Cooper was fond of jokingly asking lobbyists: What do you call a defeated congressional candidate? Answer: Chairman.
Former federal judge Tom Wiseman, who won a three-way battle for state treasurer in 1970 against incumbent Charlie Whorley and banker Jake Butcher, died at 89.
Hershel Franks, the retired chief judge of the state Court of Appeals, died at 89. As a Hamilton County Chancery Court judge in 1976, Franks ruled that Tennessee’s ban on ministers serving the General Assembly violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The decision was overruled by the state Supreme Court, which was itself reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Continue readingFormer state Sen. Reginald Tate has died
Former state Sen. Reginald Tate (D-Memphis) has died, state Rep. Antonio Parkinson announced on Twitter on Monday.
Just received the shocking news of the passing of my friend and former colleague Senator Reginald Tate. We carried meani gful legislation together that made a difference in the lives of many across the state of TN. He always made us smile when he was around. He will be missed.
— Antonio Parkinson (@TNRepParkinson) October 21, 2019
Tate, 65, was defeated in last year’s Democratic primary by Katrina Robinson, a business owner and nurse. A hot mic incident in which Tate vented to a Republican colleague about his frustration with Democrats questioning his party loyalty was a major flashpoint of the campaign.
“I don’t like the lies. But I won’t take time out to respond to it. But I will tell you guys, there is not one time I sold anyone else out,” Tate told his supporters during the race. “I work for $20,000 a year. It won’t pay my car note. I can’t take nothing under the table or on top of the table. I’m too tall to hide.”
Tate said he’d worked both sides of the aisle to get results for his home district. He represented the district for 12 years.
Jerry Adams, budget adviser to 10 Tennessee governors, dies
Longtime former Deputy Finance Commissioner Jerry Adams, who served under 10 Tennessee governors, has died of an apparent heart attack.
Jerry Adams (handout photo)
Adams was hired in 1962 by Harlan Mathews, who was finance commissioner in Gov. Buford Ellington’s administration. He was named deputy commissioner during Ellington’s second term in 1967, and Gov. Winfield Dunn appointed him commissioner for the final months of his term after Ted Welch left government. Adams was acting commissioner for about six weeks under Gov. Ray Blanton, and then settled back into being deputy commissioner under Govs. Lamar Alexander, Ned McWherter, Don Sundquist, and Phil Bredesen.
After officially retiring from state government, Adams remained a consultant on budget matters under Gov. Bill Haslam and Bill Lee.
“In January 2003, I was a brand-new governor, innocent of the details of state finances, and faced with a $300 million shortfall in a state with a strict balanced-budget requirement,” Bredesen said in a statement. “A lot of hours with Jerry Adams in my conference room solved the problem. He knew everything there was to know about the budget, about how things fit together and actually worked.”
Alexander called Adams “the consummate professional as a state employee.”
“Everyone trusted and respected him,” he said. “It was my privilege to know and work with him.”
The Tennessee Journal recounted this incident about Adams in 2005:
About 3:15 p.m. on Sunday, May 15, Deputy Finance Commissioner Jerry Adams left his office on the first floor of the Capitol to head home. He took the elevator to the ground floor, where the only exit that can be used on weekends is located. The elevator reached the floor but wouldn’t open. The phone didn’t work. An alarm did, but there was no one in the building to hear it. About 4 a.m. Monday a worker entered the Capitol, and Adams was able to get his attention. By 4:30 the door was open, and he walked out to find three Nashville firefighters. After his 13-hour ordeal, Adams went home and slept. But he was back at work at 9 a.m.
A visitation is scheduled for Thursday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the West Harpeth Funeral Home in Nashville.
Here’s the full statement from Bredesen:
Jerry Adams devoted his professional life to making Tennessee’s government be its best, and he was extraordinarily successful.
In January 2003, I was a brand-new governor, innocent of the details of state finances, and faced with a $300 million shortfall in a state with a strict balanced-budget requirement. A lot of hours with Jerry Adams in my conference room solved the problem. He knew everything there was to know about the budget, about how things fit together and actually worked. Legislators from both parties held him in such high regard that his briefings gave them the comfort they needed to take some tough actions that spring.
I loved to work with him. He was a problem-solver, completely honest and without guile, earnest, smart, deeply knowledgeable. He worked hard, had a sense of humor, was completely non-partisan. I would have been a different and inferior Governor without him and I suspect many of my predecessors from Frank Clement on could say the same. When I heard of his death, it was a bittersweet moment: Sadness at his passing, but profound respect and admiration as he wrapped-up a long, constructive, well-lived life.
Lee orders state Capitol flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of former Rep. Ben West Jr.
Former Rep. Ben West Jr., a 26-year member of the state House, died last week at age 78. Republican Gov. Bill Lee has ordered flags at the state Capitol to be flown at half-staff on Saturday in the former lawmaker’s memory.
In memory of former State Representative Ben West, Jr., the flags over the State Capitol will fly at half-staff from sunrise until sunset on Saturday, April 6th. West honorably served for 26 years in the TN House of Representatives, representing eastern Davidson county.
— Gov. Bill Lee (@GovBillLee) April 5, 2019
West, a Democrat, represented the Hermitage, Donelson, and Old Hickory portions of Nashville until his retirement in 2010. His father, Ben West Sr., was the mayor of Nashville from 1951 to 1963. His brother, Jay, was a former vice mayor and lobbyist, who died in 2017.
West considered a bid for Congress when then-U.S. Rep. Bob Clement (D-Nashville) was considering a bid to statewide office. West ultimately decided against running and the seat was won by Democrat Jim Cooper.
West had a flair for the bombastic when he was at the Statehouse, sometimes quarreling publicly with is colleagues but often defusing tension with a joke. He angered then-House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh (D-Covington) through his vocal opposition to a state income tax in the early 2000s — and his embrace of protesters who circled the Capitol beeping their horns. But Naifeh kept West on as a committee chairman until he asked to step down from leadership in 2007.
Bill Hobbs, onetime Tennessee GOP spokesman and provocateur, dies at 54
Bill Hobbs, a onetime spokesman for the Tennessee Republican Party and income tax protester, has died. He was 54.
The cause was cancer, according to Jeff Hartline, the vice chairman of the Wilson County Republican Party.
Hobbs specialized in viral political attacks on then-presidential candidate Barack Obama (and his wife, Michelle) while he was communications director at the state Republican Party. Before that, Hobbs was a prominent figure in the protests surrounding Republican Gov. Don Sundquist’s efforts to impose an income tax.
Former journalist and Tennessee GOP party spokesman Bill Hobbs dies at 54 years old https://t.co/GwhAA53A0J via @tennessean
— Joel Ebert (@joelebert29) March 2, 2019
Hobbs, a former Tennessean reporter, was also forced out from his job as a spokesman for Belmont Unversity in 2006 after publishing a caricature of the prophet Mohammad on his person blog after the Islamic world condemned provocative cartoons published in a Danish newspaper.
On the passing of political reporter Rebecca Ferrar (aka ‘Lucifer’ and ‘Becky Bear’)
Rebecca Lynn Ferrar, who died of a heart attack this week at age 72, was given the joshing nickname ‘Lucifer’ during 11 years in Nashville as a reporter on state government and politics for the Knoxville News Sentinel.
She was my professional colleague for those years and a friend both before the newspaper’s management sent her to the state capitol to beef up reporting on state-level government and after they sent her back to Knoxville to shrink such coverage in accord with nationwide media downsizing trends (and, it’s fair to add, to enhance coverage of East Tennessee government and politics).
