By Focus Staff
Author, historian and columnist Ray Hill spoke to a gathering of the McMinn County Historical Society about his prize-winning biography of Senator Kenneth McKellar. “Senator Kenneth McKellar: Feudin’ Son of Tennessee” is published by the University of Tennessee Press and is considered the definitive biography of Tennessee’s longest-serving member of Congress.
Hill spoke to the members of the McMinn County Historical Society in the meeting room of the county commission in the historic county courthouse in downtown Athens. Hill gave the highlights of Senator McKellar’s career and discussed McKellar being the first person ever elected to the US Senate in the Volunteer State by popular vote. Prior to that time, US senators were elected by the state legislature.
Hill, who has authored one of the most widely read and popular columns in The Focus for the past 16 years, stated Tennessee has had many consequential US senators, including Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Howard Baker and others. The Knoxville author said he believed there is a very powerful case to be made for Kenneth McKellar being the most consequential US senator ever to represent the Volunteer State. Hill pointed to the fact that McKellar served a then-record-breaking 36 consecutive years in the Senate, which coincided with some of the momentous challenges faced by Americans in our country’s history. McKellar was in the Senate during both the First and Second World Wars, the Great Depression, the Atomic Age and the Korean War. Hill discussed McKellar being the father of America’s federal highway system, as well as the senator’s having been “a one-man cottage industry in bringing the equivalent of billions of dollars to Tennessee in projects and improvements.”
Hill discussed the senator’s friendship and political partnership with Edward H. Crump of Memphis, the details of McKellar’s devotion to the people of Tennessee and the extraordinary lengths to which he went to be helpful to individuals.
Hill’s presentation was extremely well-received and the author expressed his delight and enjoyed meeting the people who attended personally.
“Ray Hill delivered an excellent program about U.S. Senator Kenneth McKellar at our October 6 meeting. Our members and guests learned so much about McKellar’s contributions to our state, and East Tennessee in particular. Hill shared several fascinating stories about McKellar and certainly left the audience wanting more. That is the mark of a great storyteller,” said Tyler L. Boyd, the president of the McMinn County Historical Society.
Boyd had invited Hill to speak and is himself the author of several books. Boyd has written a book about state legislator Harry T. Burn, who was the deciding vote in the legislature ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. Boyd also wrote a book about the notorious political machine of Sheriff Burch Biggs, detailing the extensive corruption of one courthouse machine. Tyler Boyd has also completed a book entitled, “The Good Government League of Polk County, Tennessee.” Boyd tells the story of the veterans returning from the Second World War and running the local government after having taken it back from the Biggs machine.
Hill’s biography of Senator McKellar can still be purchased at Amazon.com and better bookstores everywhere. The University of Tennessee Press is preparing to release Hill’s second book, “Cordell Hull: Tennessee’s Nobel Prize Winning Statesman.” Ray Hill’s biography of Hull is the first to really cover Hull’s long career in Tennessee government and politics before serving as Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of state.
