By Ray Hill This column is written for my friend Alexander Waters and his family.  I knew Alexander’s grandfather, John B. Waters, Jr.  Mr. Waters was one of those young Republicans, like Jim Haslam, who helped elect Howard Baker, Tennessee’s first popularly elected...

By Ray Hill It seems like so many folks my age are experiencing raising their grandchildren or having their own children return home to live. All too often, my generation has seen their children and grandchildren afflicted by drug addiction. Back in the day, the...

By Ray Hill Patrick Jay Hurley was one of those who exemplified the promise of America, coming to the United States as an infant with his parents the same year he had been born in County Waterford, Ireland. During his eighty years, Patrick J. Hurley was a highly...

  By Ray Hill Cate was a familiar name to voters in Knox County, especially when they were picking a sheriff.  William T. Cate had been sheriff and J. Carroll Cate was sheriff from 1936 – 1940.  In 1946, six-foot-five, 350-pound Hazen Kreis was leaving the...

  By Ray Hill Cordell Hull, Secretary of State under Franklin D. Roosevelt, had simmered for years with resentment due to having been marginalized by the president.  Yet Roosevelt depended upon Hull’s reservoir of good will with both the Congress and the American...

By Ray Hill Tennessee has been quite fortunate to produce any number of political figures of national importance, as well as those who have wielded enormous influence in Congress.  Aside from Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk (a political protégé of Jackson’s), and Andrew...

By Ray Hill The two most enduring political figures in Tennessee’s modern history are Kenneth McKellar and Cordell Hull.  McKellar holds the record in Tennessee for the longest tenure in Congress at forty-two years; K. D. McKellar remains Tennessee’s longest-serving...

By Ray Hill I am oftentimes asked about Tennessee’s most enduring statesmen or politicians. Without a doubt, the two most enduring political figures in Tennessee’s modern political history are Kenneth D. McKellar and Cordell Hull. McKellar and Hull were contemporaries...

  By Ray Hill It was James A. Fowler who helped to send a murderer to prison for an unusual and spectacular crime in 1906. One of the most prominent cases in Fowler’s long legal career involved a young lawyer, Sam Parker, who had been a stand-out athlete at the...