John S. Wilder
Encyclopedia
John Shelton Wilder was an American politician who was a Tennessee state senator
from 1959 to 1961 and again from 1967 to 2009 and the 48th lieutenant governor of Tennessee
from 1971 to 2007, possibly the longest time anyone has served as Lieutenant Governor or a similar position in the history of the United States.
. He was from an affluent family with extensive agricultural and agribusiness interests. He attended Fayette County Public Schools and received an undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee
College of Agriculture and a law degree from Memphis State University, now the University of Memphis
.
He and his family were known for fairer dealings with black
farm employees and tenants than was typical of the area during the segregation
era. This fact served him very well upon entering into elective politics at about the time that Tennessee blacks in rural areas were first being allowed their constitutional rights to participate in political decisions which had been guaranteed under the Tennessee and federal constitutions but previously unenforced. Wilder was also a prominent attorney in Somerville
, the county seat of Fayette County.
Wilder married his wife Marcelle in 1941 and served in the U.S. Army
during World War II. He was a member of the former Fayette County Quarterly Court (now the County Commission) for 18 years. A Democrat
, he was first elected to the Tennessee Senate
in 1958, serving until January 1961.
Wilder did not run for reelection in 1960, but returned to the state Senate in 1967. After this time, a state constitutional amendment extended the length of terms in the state Senate to four years. Wilder was elected to a four-year term in 1968 and was reelected every four years thereafter until 2004. He represented Senate District 26, which currently included Chester, Crockett, Fayette, Hardeman, Hardin
, Haywood, McNairy, and Wayne
counties.
Wilder was elected Speaker of the State Senate by his fellow Senators in January 1971, which made him the state's Lieutenant Governor
. Under the Tennessee state constitution
, the Speaker of the Senate is first in line of succession to the governorship. The title of Lieutenant Governor was granted to the Speaker of the Senate by statute in 1951.
He was the first Tennessee Lieutenant Governor in almost half a century, and only the second since Reconstruction, to serve under a governor of a different political party, Republican
Winfield Dunn
, who had been elected the previous November.
Prior to this time, the General Assembly
had never had its own independent staff, or even its own offices, frequently working out of hotel rooms. Wilder now oversaw a massive building project (which somewhat ironically entailed the demolition of one of the hotels that many legislators had previously favored) was undertaken to correct this and make the legislative branch of state government more co-equal to the other two.
Wilder defied precedent by seeking to serve as lieutenant governor for an extended period. Previously, no one had served more than three consecutive terms as Speaker of the Senate since Tennessee's current constitution was adopted in 1870. He faced little opposition until the mid-1980s. By then, many of the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus had tired of his leadership. There were also regional issues at stake – by this time the speakers of both houses of the legislature had been from West Tennessee
for almost two decades.
The dissident faction coalesced around the leadership of State Senate Majority Leader Riley Darnell
from Clarksville
in Middle Tennessee
. When Darnell received the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor in 1987, Wilder's long tenure as Lieutenant Governor appeared to be over.
However, in a surprise (but not entirely unprecedented) move, Wilder was then nominated by the Republican Caucus for Lieutenant Governor. With the support of all 15 Republicans in the chamber, and six dissenting Democrats, Wilder won the vote 21 – 15 and then proceeded to organize the Senate on a "bipartisan" basis, awarding a majority of the committee chairmanships to his Democratic loyalists with the remainder going to the Republicans. This was not out of character for Wilder; in 1979 he had acquiesced in the ouster of Governor Ray Blanton
three days before his term was supposed to end after a series of controversial pardons. The state constitution is somewhat ambiguous on when a governor is supposed to be sworn in, so Wilder and his counterpart in the State House, Ned McWherter
, supported the early swearing-in of his Republican successor, Lamar Alexander
. Wilder called the move "impeachment
, Tennessee style."
After this, Wilder, until 2005, continued to be reelected "unanimously" and to award chairmanships to his supporters in both parties, making the Tennessee Senate one of the few legislative bodies in the world to be elected on a partisan basis, but organized on a more-or-less nonpartisan one. Even when two outgoing state Senators switched parties
in the mid-1990s, giving the Republicans a short-lived one-seat Senate majority, nothing of consequence changed.
This coalition had made Wilder one of the longest-serving (reputedly the longest) freely-elected legislative leaders in the world. Given his support among many Republican state senators, he long faced little opposition in holding onto his State Senate seat, even though the Memphis suburbs were becoming increasingly Republican.
Unlike many lieutenant governors, particularly in other states, Wilder never ran for governor. In 2009 he said that he had wanted to run for governor in 1974, but had been talked out of it by his family, and was "glad I stayed where I was because the Senate is the Senate."
In a now almost-vanished Southern style, he often referred to himself in the third person, as in, "The Speaker likes being Speaker."
Wilder was a cycling enthusiast and was a licensed private pilot for over a half-century, continuing occasionally until the end of his legislative career to fly himself 200 miles (320 km) from Fayette County to Nashville for legislative meetings.
When Republicans attacked him for this during his 2004 reelection campaign, claiming that the partial reimbursement that he receives for this has cost the state over $250,000 over the past ten years, his campaign's reply was that much of this travel was to enable him to both to attend to his Senate duties and still be involved in the giving of care to his wife of 63 years, Marcelle, who died in the summer of 2004.
On November 2, 2004, Wilder was elected to his 11th consecutive term (and 12th overall) in the Tennessee Senate. However, the Democrats lost control of the Senate, albeit by only a one-seat margin. This meant that if the Republicans could have established true party discipline, they could have chosen either to retain Wilder or replace him; however, since several incumbent Republicans who were either reelected or whose terms did not expire in this election cycle were known to be allies and close friends of Wilder, the outcome that was considered to be most likely by most close observers was that these Republicans would join with the Democratic minority to continue Wilder's working majority and that he would be reelected Lieutenant Governor.
At least one Nashville television station had speculated that Wilder would become a Republican before or at the start of the next session in order to maintain his power.
This was not an unreasonable possibility, as Republicans have done very well in much of his district at all levels. However, others suggested that this was unlikely and that he would probably remain a nominal Democrat but would appoint Republicans to all or most of the committee chairmanships; by mid-November 2004 this was regarded to be by far the most likely outcome, despite some telephone calls to Wilder's Republican supporters from United States Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
.
In December 2004, the executive committee of the Tennessee Republican Party announced that sanctions were possible for Republican legislative members who cast votes for Democrats for organizational purposes. (These votes are open, not secret ballots). These were potentially to include party endorsement of opposing candidates in future primaries. This was a major policy change, as traditionally the Tennessee Republican Party has made no endorsements in contested primary elections. Nonetheless, two Republican members of the Tennessee State Senate – enough to assure Wilder's reelection provided his traditional unanimous Democratic support in recent years – voted for Wilder on January 11, 2005, and he was sworn in for his 18th term as lieutenant governor. (One of them, Micheal Williams
, was then rewarded with the post of Speaker pro Tempore.) Wilder then appointed Republican majorities to seven of the nine committees but left the five existing Democratic chairmen in place; this resulted in Democratic majorities and chairs on two committees, including what is regarded as the most important one, the Finance Committee, which left many Republicans very upset.
Following the November 2006 elections, the Republican Party retained a one-seat majority in the Tennessee Senate. However, Republicans who had supported Wilder in the past, particularly Williams, found themselves under severe pressure to adhere to party discipline, with even the threat of officially-endorsed primary opponents, unprecedented for Tennessee Republicans, for those who failed to comply with the party line, according to a series of columns by Tennessean
columnist Larry Daughtrey. Wilder was challenged within the Democratic caucus for nomination as speaker by State Senator Joe Haynes of Nashville. Later articles in The Tennessean and the Nashville City Paper cited the possibility that all 16 Republicans might vote for Senator Ron Ramsey
and that 16 Democrats, including Wilder himself, would vote for Wilder, with Democratic State Senator Jerry Cooper, accused of wrongful business dealings with a bank controlled by Wilder, abstaining to prevent any appearance of conflict of interest. Under Senate rules, a 16–16 tie would result in Wilder's retention of the speakership.
However, in the vote held on January 9, 2007, all 17 Republicans voted for Ramsey and were joined by Democratic Senator Rosalind Kurita
of Clarksville, ending Wilder's tenure as Speaker of the Senate and Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee.
On March 8, 2007, the Tennessee news media reported that Wilder had been seriously injured in a fall and was in intensive care in a hospital in Memphis. He was released from the hospital on March 11, 2007, and returned home to finish his recuperation.
In February, 2008, the 2007-08 edition of the Tennessee Blue Book
was dedicated to him.
On March 20, 2008, Wilder announced his decision not to run for re-election later that year.
Wilder died early on the morning of January 1, 2010 at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis following a stroke on December 28, 2009. He was survived by his younger brother Wiggins Wilder; his two sons: Shelton (John Jr.) and David; his four grandchildren: John III, Joseph, Jarod, and Whitney; and his five great-grandchildren: Jess (John IV), Suzie, Russell, Ansel, and Marcel.
.
Tennessee Senate
The Tennessee Senate is the upper house of the Tennessee state legislature, which is known formally as the Tennessee General Assembly.The Tennessee Senate, according to the state constitution of 1870, is composed of 33 members, one-third the size of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Senators...
from 1959 to 1961 and again from 1967 to 2009 and the 48th lieutenant governor of Tennessee
Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee
The Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee is the Speaker of the Tennessee Senate and first in line in the succession to the office of Governor of Tennessee in the event of the death, resignation, or removal from office through impeachment and conviction of the Governor of the U.S...
from 1971 to 2007, possibly the longest time anyone has served as Lieutenant Governor or a similar position in the history of the United States.
Biography
Wilder was from Fayette County, near MemphisMemphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
. He was from an affluent family with extensive agricultural and agribusiness interests. He attended Fayette County Public Schools and received an undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...
College of Agriculture and a law degree from Memphis State University, now the University of Memphis
University of Memphis
The University of Memphis is an American public research university located in the Normal Station neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee and is the flagship public research university of the Tennessee Board of Regents system....
.
He and his family were known for fairer dealings with black
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
farm employees and tenants than was typical of the area during the segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
era. This fact served him very well upon entering into elective politics at about the time that Tennessee blacks in rural areas were first being allowed their constitutional rights to participate in political decisions which had been guaranteed under the Tennessee and federal constitutions but previously unenforced. Wilder was also a prominent attorney in Somerville
Somerville, Tennessee
Somerville is a town in Fayette County, Tennessee, United States. It is part of the Memphis metropolitan area. The population was 3,094 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Fayette County.-History:...
, the county seat of Fayette County.
Wilder married his wife Marcelle in 1941 and served in the U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
during World War II. He was a member of the former Fayette County Quarterly Court (now the County Commission) for 18 years. A Democrat
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
, he was first elected to the Tennessee Senate
Tennessee Senate
The Tennessee Senate is the upper house of the Tennessee state legislature, which is known formally as the Tennessee General Assembly.The Tennessee Senate, according to the state constitution of 1870, is composed of 33 members, one-third the size of the Tennessee House of Representatives. Senators...
in 1958, serving until January 1961.
Wilder did not run for reelection in 1960, but returned to the state Senate in 1967. After this time, a state constitutional amendment extended the length of terms in the state Senate to four years. Wilder was elected to a four-year term in 1968 and was reelected every four years thereafter until 2004. He represented Senate District 26, which currently included Chester, Crockett, Fayette, Hardeman, Hardin
Hardin County, Tennessee
Hardin County is a county located in the U.S. State of Tennessee. As of 2010, the population was 26,026. The Hardin County seat is Savannah. The county was named posthumously for Col. Joseph Hardin, a Revolutionary War soldier and a legislative representative for the Province of North Carolina and...
, Haywood, McNairy, and Wayne
Wayne County, Tennessee
As of the census of 2010, there were 17,021 people, 5,822 households, and 4,321 families residing in the county. The population density was 23 people per square mile . There were 6,701 housing units at an average density of 9 per square mile...
counties.
Wilder was elected Speaker of the State Senate by his fellow Senators in January 1971, which made him the state's Lieutenant Governor
Lieutenant governor
A lieutenant governor or lieutenant-governor is a high officer of state, whose precise role and rank vary by jurisdiction, but is often the deputy or lieutenant to or ranking under a governor — a "second-in-command"...
. Under the Tennessee state constitution
Tennessee State Constitution
The Constitution of the State of Tennessee defines the form, structure, activities, character, and fundamental rules of the U.S. State of Tennessee....
, the Speaker of the Senate is first in line of succession to the governorship. The title of Lieutenant Governor was granted to the Speaker of the Senate by statute in 1951.
He was the first Tennessee Lieutenant Governor in almost half a century, and only the second since Reconstruction, to serve under a governor of a different political party, Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
Winfield Dunn
Winfield Dunn
Bryant Winfield Culberson Dunn was the 43rd Governor of Tennessee, from 1971 to 1975.-Biography:Dunn was born in Meridian, Mississippi. He graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1950 with a B.B.A., and from the University of Tennessee Medical Units in Memphis in 1955 with a D.D.S. Dunn...
, who had been elected the previous November.
Prior to this time, the General Assembly
Tennessee General Assembly
The Tennessee General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Tennessee.-Constitutional structure:According to the Tennessee State Constitution of 1870, the General Assembly is a bicameral legislature and consists of a Senate of thirty-three members and a House of Representatives of...
had never had its own independent staff, or even its own offices, frequently working out of hotel rooms. Wilder now oversaw a massive building project (which somewhat ironically entailed the demolition of one of the hotels that many legislators had previously favored) was undertaken to correct this and make the legislative branch of state government more co-equal to the other two.
Wilder defied precedent by seeking to serve as lieutenant governor for an extended period. Previously, no one had served more than three consecutive terms as Speaker of the Senate since Tennessee's current constitution was adopted in 1870. He faced little opposition until the mid-1980s. By then, many of the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus had tired of his leadership. There were also regional issues at stake – by this time the speakers of both houses of the legislature had been from West Tennessee
West Tennessee
West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of the State of Tennessee. Of the three, it is the one that is most sharply defined geographically. Its boundaries are the Mississippi River on the west and the Tennessee River on the east...
for almost two decades.
The dissident faction coalesced around the leadership of State Senate Majority Leader Riley Darnell
Riley Darnell
Riley C. Darnell was the Tennessee Secretary of State.Defeated for reelection to the state Senate in November, 1992, Darnell's political comeback was immediate...
from Clarksville
Clarksville, Tennessee
Clarksville is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Tennessee, United States, and the fifth largest city in the state. The population was 132,929 in 2010 United States Census...
in Middle Tennessee
Middle Tennessee
Middle Tennessee is a distinct portion of the state of Tennessee, delineated according to state law as the 41 counties in the Middle Grand Division of Tennessee....
. When Darnell received the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor in 1987, Wilder's long tenure as Lieutenant Governor appeared to be over.
However, in a surprise (but not entirely unprecedented) move, Wilder was then nominated by the Republican Caucus for Lieutenant Governor. With the support of all 15 Republicans in the chamber, and six dissenting Democrats, Wilder won the vote 21 – 15 and then proceeded to organize the Senate on a "bipartisan" basis, awarding a majority of the committee chairmanships to his Democratic loyalists with the remainder going to the Republicans. This was not out of character for Wilder; in 1979 he had acquiesced in the ouster of Governor Ray Blanton
Ray Blanton
Leonard Ray Blanton was the 44th Governor of Tennessee from 1975 to 1979. Blanton's administration was rife with corruption.-Early life and Congress:...
three days before his term was supposed to end after a series of controversial pardons. The state constitution is somewhat ambiguous on when a governor is supposed to be sworn in, so Wilder and his counterpart in the State House, Ned McWherter
Ned McWherter
Ned Ray McWherter was an American politician who served as the 46th Governor of Tennessee from 1987 to 1995. He was a Democrat.McWherter was born in Palmersville, Weakley County, Tennessee...
, supported the early swearing-in of his Republican successor, Lamar Alexander
Lamar Alexander
Andrew Lamar Alexander is the senior United States Senator from Tennessee and Conference Chair of the Republican Party. He was previously the 45th Governor of Tennessee from 1979 to 1987, United States Secretary of Education from 1991 to 1993 under President George H. W...
. Wilder called the move "impeachment
Impeachment
Impeachment is a formal process in which an official is accused of unlawful activity, the outcome of which, depending on the country, may include the removal of that official from office as well as other punishment....
, Tennessee style."
After this, Wilder, until 2005, continued to be reelected "unanimously" and to award chairmanships to his supporters in both parties, making the Tennessee Senate one of the few legislative bodies in the world to be elected on a partisan basis, but organized on a more-or-less nonpartisan one. Even when two outgoing state Senators switched parties
Party switching
Party-switching is any change in political party affiliation of a partisan public figure, usually one currently holding elected office.In many countries, party-switching takes the form of politicians refusing to support their political parties in coalition governments...
in the mid-1990s, giving the Republicans a short-lived one-seat Senate majority, nothing of consequence changed.
This coalition had made Wilder one of the longest-serving (reputedly the longest) freely-elected legislative leaders in the world. Given his support among many Republican state senators, he long faced little opposition in holding onto his State Senate seat, even though the Memphis suburbs were becoming increasingly Republican.
Unlike many lieutenant governors, particularly in other states, Wilder never ran for governor. In 2009 he said that he had wanted to run for governor in 1974, but had been talked out of it by his family, and was "glad I stayed where I was because the Senate is the Senate."
In a now almost-vanished Southern style, he often referred to himself in the third person, as in, "The Speaker likes being Speaker."
Wilder was a cycling enthusiast and was a licensed private pilot for over a half-century, continuing occasionally until the end of his legislative career to fly himself 200 miles (320 km) from Fayette County to Nashville for legislative meetings.
When Republicans attacked him for this during his 2004 reelection campaign, claiming that the partial reimbursement that he receives for this has cost the state over $250,000 over the past ten years, his campaign's reply was that much of this travel was to enable him to both to attend to his Senate duties and still be involved in the giving of care to his wife of 63 years, Marcelle, who died in the summer of 2004.
On November 2, 2004, Wilder was elected to his 11th consecutive term (and 12th overall) in the Tennessee Senate. However, the Democrats lost control of the Senate, albeit by only a one-seat margin. This meant that if the Republicans could have established true party discipline, they could have chosen either to retain Wilder or replace him; however, since several incumbent Republicans who were either reelected or whose terms did not expire in this election cycle were known to be allies and close friends of Wilder, the outcome that was considered to be most likely by most close observers was that these Republicans would join with the Democratic minority to continue Wilder's working majority and that he would be reelected Lieutenant Governor.
At least one Nashville television station had speculated that Wilder would become a Republican before or at the start of the next session in order to maintain his power.
This was not an unreasonable possibility, as Republicans have done very well in much of his district at all levels. However, others suggested that this was unlikely and that he would probably remain a nominal Democrat but would appoint Republicans to all or most of the committee chairmanships; by mid-November 2004 this was regarded to be by far the most likely outcome, despite some telephone calls to Wilder's Republican supporters from United States Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
Bill Frist
William Harrison "Bill" Frist, Sr. is an American physician, businessman, and politician. He began his career as an heir and major stockholder to the for-profit hospital chain of Hospital Corporation of America. Frist later served two terms as a Republican United States Senator representing...
.
In December 2004, the executive committee of the Tennessee Republican Party announced that sanctions were possible for Republican legislative members who cast votes for Democrats for organizational purposes. (These votes are open, not secret ballots). These were potentially to include party endorsement of opposing candidates in future primaries. This was a major policy change, as traditionally the Tennessee Republican Party has made no endorsements in contested primary elections. Nonetheless, two Republican members of the Tennessee State Senate – enough to assure Wilder's reelection provided his traditional unanimous Democratic support in recent years – voted for Wilder on January 11, 2005, and he was sworn in for his 18th term as lieutenant governor. (One of them, Micheal Williams
Micheal R. Williams
Micheal R. Williams, born February 6, 1955 in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a Tennessee politician who formerly served in the Tennessee State Senate and was elected county mayor of Union County in August 2010....
, was then rewarded with the post of Speaker pro Tempore.) Wilder then appointed Republican majorities to seven of the nine committees but left the five existing Democratic chairmen in place; this resulted in Democratic majorities and chairs on two committees, including what is regarded as the most important one, the Finance Committee, which left many Republicans very upset.
Following the November 2006 elections, the Republican Party retained a one-seat majority in the Tennessee Senate. However, Republicans who had supported Wilder in the past, particularly Williams, found themselves under severe pressure to adhere to party discipline, with even the threat of officially-endorsed primary opponents, unprecedented for Tennessee Republicans, for those who failed to comply with the party line, according to a series of columns by Tennessean
The Tennessean
The Tennessean is the principal daily newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Its circulation area covers 39 counties in Middle Tennessee and eight counties in southern Kentucky....
columnist Larry Daughtrey. Wilder was challenged within the Democratic caucus for nomination as speaker by State Senator Joe Haynes of Nashville. Later articles in The Tennessean and the Nashville City Paper cited the possibility that all 16 Republicans might vote for Senator Ron Ramsey
Ron Ramsey
Ronald Lynn "Ron" Ramsey is the Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee and Speaker of the State Senate. A Republican from Blountville in East Tennessee, Ramsey succeeded long-term Democratic Lieutenant Governor John S...
and that 16 Democrats, including Wilder himself, would vote for Wilder, with Democratic State Senator Jerry Cooper, accused of wrongful business dealings with a bank controlled by Wilder, abstaining to prevent any appearance of conflict of interest. Under Senate rules, a 16–16 tie would result in Wilder's retention of the speakership.
However, in the vote held on January 9, 2007, all 17 Republicans voted for Ramsey and were joined by Democratic Senator Rosalind Kurita
Rosalind Kurita
Rosalind Kurita is a Tennessee politician who was formerly Speaker pro tempore of the Tennessee State Senate, representing State Senate District 22 , centered on Clarksville...
of Clarksville, ending Wilder's tenure as Speaker of the Senate and Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee.
On March 8, 2007, the Tennessee news media reported that Wilder had been seriously injured in a fall and was in intensive care in a hospital in Memphis. He was released from the hospital on March 11, 2007, and returned home to finish his recuperation.
In February, 2008, the 2007-08 edition of the Tennessee Blue Book
Tennessee Blue Book
The Tennessee Blue Book is an official government manual for the U.S. state of Tennessee, published by the Secretary of State of Tennessee.The Blue Book is typically published on a biennial basis...
was dedicated to him.
On March 20, 2008, Wilder announced his decision not to run for re-election later that year.
Wilder died early on the morning of January 1, 2010 at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis following a stroke on December 28, 2009. He was survived by his younger brother Wiggins Wilder; his two sons: Shelton (John Jr.) and David; his four grandchildren: John III, Joseph, Jarod, and Whitney; and his five great-grandchildren: Jess (John IV), Suzie, Russell, Ansel, and Marcel.
General
Much of the information contained in this article is from the Tennessee Blue BookTennessee Blue Book
The Tennessee Blue Book is an official government manual for the U.S. state of Tennessee, published by the Secretary of State of Tennessee.The Blue Book is typically published on a biennial basis...
.
- The Tennessean, December 24, 2006; December 31, 2006, January 8, 2007
- Nashville City Paper, January 3, 2007, January 8, 2007