From where I sat, Etherage J. Parker was usually the smartest guy in the room.
Not as measured by years of education nor advanced degrees, but he was a wise man in the ways of our world. He just knew a lot of stuff about getting good results - like how the tobacco market worked, how to start a business and make it pay, how to take the measure of another man, and make a deal with him that got to some common ground where both of you could win.
Etherage died on Wednesday at age 84, in hospice care in Nashville. Today, over in his beloved hometown of Hartsville, he will be remembered and his life celebrated in a service at the Hartsville Baptist Church. He will then be laid to his final rest in the Hartsville Memory Gardens.
Indeed there is much to remember.
Etherage was a substantial man, not only as measured by his wealth nor the size of his house nor his physical stature, all of which were ample. (His size always reminded me of Ned McWherter most of all. Etherage stood 6 feet, three inches tall, and the business suit you would typically see him in was a size 48-long.)
I met Etherage in the summer of 1978 after he joined Lamar Alexander’s campaign for governor. He soon became an important part of it. He brought his own political connections. His brother-in-law was Tom Beasley, chair of the Tennessee Republican Party, but more than that he brought his own base of Democrats. In that turn-about time of transition in Tennessee’s politics and government (I have called it the “In-Between Time”), Alexander himself could not have been elected with Republican votes only.
Once inside the Alexander campaign, Etherage impressed me with his fundamental savvy about how to make it larger. In his heyday, he seemed always to be thinking - about the next friend he was meeting, or how to advance this or that cause, or deal. This, I concluded, was what had made him an astute businessman, too.
I remember his blue eyes were always focused straightforward and fixed on how to make things larger. He might fix you with an unflinching gaze in one moment, steady as an oak, then soften them in a blink when he would erupt in loud laughter - whichever best suited the moment.
Etherage Parker was also a proud family man and life partner to the lovely Alma Catherine Beasley Parker. (She passed in 2016.) Their prominent, fashionable home in Hartsville was the scene of many festive events over their many years together.
He brought all these gifts and talents to many businesses and industries, where he was always successful: Real estate, banking, gasoline distribution, tobacco merchant. And to his politics, too.
Governor Alexander recruited Etherage in 1980 to be the new Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, with the assignment to pay particular attention to what the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville would require. Time was short, and the looming fair would be fraught with huge opportunities for the state - but also political land mines for Alexander. (He had bested Knoxville mega-banker Jake Butcher in the 1978 general election, and in 1982 the next Democratic nominee would be Knoxville’s own mayor Randy Tyree.)
Etherage, as commissioner, followed Irving Waugh of Nashville; Waugh had run WSM-TV, and the contrast with Etherage was manifold. Waugh was as urbane and telegenic as Etherage was homespun and country, but each in his turn brought a career of strong results to this same Cabinet post.

Many strong personalities, from both sides of the political aisle, now share credit for making that World’s Fair a huge success.
On Friday, I caught up with Bo Roberts, who was the young president of the Knoxville International Energy Exposition, which managed the planning and financing of the Fair. I asked Bo for his memories of working with the man from Hartsville. He recalled how their first meeting began, at the KIEE office in Knoxville:
“What in the hell are we going to do,” was the first statement I heard from the big guy who sprawled across one of the chairs in my office. This was just after his appointment by Gov. Lamar Alexander was announced. Etherage had called and told me he was coming to Knoxville to meet with me (Note: He didn’t ask. He told me. That’s the Etherage I came to know and befriend.)
“Dealing with this rough, straight talking and brilliant character was a real treat, and we developed a personal and professional relationship that lasted throughout and for years after what became the largest tourism event in the Southeast's history at that time.”
In Bo’s own new book Forever Young, published this year, he credits Etherage for making an early statement that galvanized the aims of the Fair for lots of people:
“A World’s Fair is Opryland, Disneyland, the Smithsonian, the United Nations, a state fair, a country fair, and a marching band, all rolled into one.”
Soon after the fair ended, now celebrated as an astounding success far and wide, Etherage left the commissioner’s office altogether. The governor agreed that he had completed his assignment in Knoxville, with distinction.
The World’s Fair now accomplished, to international reviews praising Tennessee, Etherage said he needed to get back on home to Hartsville. There was the tobacco market, in its own season, that required his attention now.
Keel is the guy you want to write your eulogy. I didn’t know Etherage but now I wish I did.
Well done, a good man remembering a friend who deserves to be remembered.