Frank Daniels III

fdanielsiii@tennessean.com

John Jay Hooker, who was perhaps Nashville’s most recognizable and charismatic political figure, and one of its most controversial, died Sunday morning.

He was 85.

Mr. Hooker, who had been battling cancer since January 2015, died peacefully with family and friends at Alive Hospice in Nashville.

“John Jay Hooker was a man of big ideas, big dreams,” said former Congressman Bob Clement, whose father, Frank G. Clement, was governor of Tennessee for 10 years “and though he never held public office, he was always fighting for important causes.”

“Our family has lost a brilliant and remarkable member whose compassion for those less fortunate and efforts for all humanity will be long remembered,” said Henry Hooker, his brother. “His smile, charm, and love of people brightened our lives.

“We loved him and will miss him.”

“We have lost another legend,” said Tom Ingram, who, as a reporter for The Tennessean, covered Mr. Hooker’s first campaign for governor in 1966. “Seig (former Tennessean editor John Seigenthaler), George Barrett, and now John Jay. They were giants …”

Remembering John Jay Hooker Jr.

Mr. Hooker, like Seigenthaler, became close friends with Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy, when he was working as legal counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (often called the “Rackets Committee). Both Nashvillians went to Washington, D.C., to work in President John F. Kennedy’s administration in 1961. Mr. Hooker served as special assistant to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, and lived with his family in Washington, riding to and from the office with him each day.

The close relationship with Kennedy allowed Mr. Hooker to convince the Attorney General that the Justice Department should intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by Shelby County resident Charles Baker in 1960 against the State of Tennessee and its Secretary of State, Joe Carr, over legislative redistricting.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Baker it established the “one person, one vote” standard that held every person had to be considered equally in legislative redistricting. The ruling helped fuel the civil rights movement and gave political power to cities over rural areas and to African-Americans.

Chief Justice Earl Warren called Baker v. Carr the court’s “most vital decision” during his tenure.

Chronology of John Jay Hooker Jr.'s life

“Without the influence of John Jay Hooker and John Seigenthaler,” said James D. Squires, who as a Tennessean reporter covered Mr. Hooker and became an intimate observer of the charismatic politician, “Baker v. Carr may have never have gotten the attention of the justice department, we would not have ‘one man, one vote,' and the civil rights movement would have been very different.” Squires recently published “West End,” a fictional account of growing up in Nashville in which one of the lead characters is clearly modeled on Mr. Hooker.

“Without ever serving in elected office, John Jay had a profound influence on public policy,” Squires said.

“He was in the middle of Baker v. Carr, the prosecution of Jimmy Hoffa and organized crime, and instrumental in getting Ross Perot to run for president in 1992.” Squires, who had recently retired as editor of The Chicago Tribune, was the media advisor to Perot’s campaign.

“John Jay was one of the most extraordinary people I’ve known in my 73 years,” Squires said.

Born to the law

Mr. Hooker was born into the law, and he loved to remind audiences that his great-great-grandfather William Blount, who was a signatory to the U.S. Constitution, convened the constitutional convention that formed the state of Tennessee. Thomas Jefferson considered the constitution that resulted from that convention to be best of any of the state constitutions.

Mr. Hooker was born Aug. 24, 1930, in Nashville to John Jay Hooker Sr., one of Nashville’s best-known attorneys, and Darthula Williamson Hooker

The senior Mr. Hooker was a fabled courtroom orator, and his son inherited that skill. But Mrs. Hooker was responsible for forging her son’s prodigious vocabulary. Everyday, she made her children pick three words from the dictionary and write sentences using the words.

John Jay Hooker: Family life to political aspirations

Mr. Hooker graduated from Montgomery Bell Academy in 1948, and The University of the South in Sewanee in 1952.

After finishing at Sewanee, he served two years in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps as an investigator, and then attended Vanderbilt University Law School. He was a member of the law school’s celebrated class of 1957.

Mr. Hooker joined his father’s law firm, Hooker, Keeble, Dodson, and Harris, one of the most prominent law firms in Tennessee.

In 1958, Gov. Frank G. Clement asked Mr. Hooker to assist Jack Norman Sr. in the corruption investigation of Judge Raulston Schoolfield of Chattanooga, who was accused of accepting an $18,500 bribe from the teamsters union to fix a case when he was a Hamilton County Criminal Court judge.

Based on the investigation, the state House of Representatives voted to impeach Schoolfield. Norman and Mr. Hooker were chosen to prosecute the judge before the state Senate, which convicted Schoolfield on several counts. One of the witnesses testifying against Schoolfield was Bobby Kennedy, then a counsel to the U.S. Senate committee investigating labor union corruption.

After testifying, Kennedy asked Mr. Hooker to take him to Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. They lingered at the president’s home so long that Kennedy missed his flight back to Washington, D.C.

“I took him to dinner at the Hermitage Hotel,” Mr. Hooker said, “and we ended up drinking until 2 a.m.”

The two men forged a friendship that night, Mr. Hooker said in an interview in 2014, that changed his life.

John Jay Hooker is Tennessean of the Year

In a December interview, he recalled the decision to strike out on his own. “After working for a couple of years,” Hooker said, “I met with my father in his office and told him, ‘I am leaving you.’

“‘Why?’ he asked. And I said, ‘Because I’m tipping more than you’re paying me.” Mr. Hooker laughed.

That was the best decision of his life, Mr. Hooker said, because soon thereafter his brother, Henry, joined him as a partner in their new firm. “Henry was a fabulous lawyer, and the best partner I could have.”

William R. Willis later joined the law firm, Hooker, Hooker and Willis, which counted The Tennessean among its many clients.

Political life

In 1959, Mr. Hooker married Eugenia Wimberly “Tish” Fort, daughter of Rufus E. and Agnes Stokes Fort, a partnership that became a key aspect of his political career. Ms. Fort came from one of Nashville’s most prominent families; her grandfather Dr. Rufus E. Fort was a co-founder of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company, which was the parent company of WSM radio and its Grand Ole Opry program.

The couple had three children, daughters Dara and Kendall, and son John Blount.

A 1996 The Tennessean profile of Ms. Fort captured the anticipation in their marriage. He told her, she said, that not only would he become governor, but that’d he become president one day, too.

Mr. Hooker was able to create thousands of believers in that future.

In 1966, Amon Evans, owner and publisher of The Tennessean, and Seigenthaler, the newspaper’s editor, convinced Mr. Hooker to run for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Mr. Hooker and Ms. Fort launched the campaign on the steps of the county courthouse in Lebanon.

“I’ll never forget that day,” said Ingram, who was assigned by The Tennessean to cover the announcement.

“John Jay and Tish were standing on the steps of the courthouse. He was in that impeccably-tailored blue suit, shirt and red-striped tie. It was a warm day, and the square was packed.

“His speech kept hitting crescendo after crescendo, the crowd was in a lather, and so was John Jay … his coat came off … and he kept going; he pulled his tie down; he rolled up sleeves; and he was on that roll that he could get on,” Ingram said.

“When he was finished, the crowd was roaring, and he stepped back into the courthouse. He sort of collapsed into a chair and said ‘Somebody get me a Coca-Cola.’

“He had given everything he had,” Ingram remembered, “He always did. Whatever he did, he gave it his all.”

Nashville attorney Hal Hardin, who served as U.S. Attorney from 1977-1981, was attending the Tennessee College of Law in 1966 when Mr. Hooker made him his personal assistant during the campaign. Like many, Hardin has distinct memories of that campaign.

“We were like the Beatles when we arrived at a campaign event,” Hardin recalled. “People would mob him … they had to touch him.”

“You had the feeling that he could accomplish anything.”

It is remarkably common to hear Tennessee politicians say that their first job in politics was working on a Hooker campaign, or that he inspired their interest in politics.

"When I was just a kid, I cut my political teeth campaigning for John Jay Hooker,” said Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley. “He was a Kennedy man and since the slain President was and is my political hero, John Jay has occupied a special place for me.”

Gov. Bill Haslam harkened to the 1966 campaign when asked about Mr. Hooker. “Tennessee has lost one of its most colorful and unique citizens. No one who was alive and in Tennessee can forget his campaign jingle from his race for governor, and no one who ever met John Jay could forget him either.”

Ask older Tennesseans about the Hooker jingle and an amazing number will start singing … “John Jay Hooker, he’s our man.”

But even with the backing of The Tennessean and a group of business leaders spearheaded by his father-in-law campaigning for him, Mr. Hooker could not overcome the power of The Nashville Banner’s opposition and the “establishment” support, including President Lyndon Johnson and incumbent Gov. Frank Clement, for Buford Ellington, who was running for a second term as governor. He was governor from 1959 to 1963, between two Frank Clement administrations. Ellington won the August primary and was the easy winner (81 percent of the vote) in November over three independents.

It was a bitter campaign, and in 1970, when Mr. Hooker won the Democratic nomination, Ellington refused to endorse him and supported Winfield Dunn, a Memphis dentist.

The 1970 gubernatorial election was widely seen as a coronation for Mr. Hooker, and a necessary step to his bid to become president of the United States. But Dunn beat Mr. Hooker. Gov. Dunn was aided by late campaign allegations of business impropriety against Mr. Hooker, a split in the Democratic Party, and a newly resurgent Republican Party, which had elected Howard Baker to the U.S. Senate over Frank Clement in 1966, and staged a dramatic upset. Dunn became the first Republican governor in over 50 years and ended the Democratic dominance of Tennessee politics.

The ever affable Gov. Dunn and Mr. Hooker ended up becoming fast friends.

“We have a strong bond between us,” the former governor said recently. “And I have nothing but wonderful memories of John Jay.”

Mr. Hooker loved to joke with Gov. Dunn that he, Hooker, was the founder of the modern Republican Party in Tennessee. “So many Democrats were mad with me in 1970,” he said at a lunch with Gov. Dunn in 2014, “that they became Republicans.”

Mr. Hooker, a champion of progressive policies and civil rights, appealed to a new kind of Democrat.

“He was, and is, a gallant man, who has always been a fighter … a fighter to the end,” Gov. Dunn recalled.

Though Mr. Hooker appeared on the ballot many times after 1970, he never re-captured the fervor of voters.

He lost to Jim Sasser in the 1976 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, and in 1998 was the surprise Democratic gubernatorial nominee against incumbent Gov. Don Sundquist, who easily defeated Mr. Hooker, whose campaign focused on the corruption of election finances.

His last gubernatorial bid was 2014, when he ran as an independent and finished third behind Gov. Bill Haslam and Democratic nominee Charlie Brown.

Entrepreneur and businessman

After failing in his 1966 gubernatorial bid, Mr. Hooker and his brother, Henry, became active entrepreneurial attorneys, working with clients to form some of Nashville’s iconic businesses, including Hospital Corporation of America and LIN Broadcasting.

Mr. Hooker’s most famous entrepreneurial endeavor, Minnie Pearl’s Chicken, sowed the seeds of undoing as a businessman.

The Hookers saw an opportunity to emulate the franchise success of Kentucky Fried Chicken and engaged Sarah Cannon (Minnie Pearl) as the face of the business. Initially, it was a runaway success, attracting franchisees and selling stock on the New York Stock Exchange.

When Mr. Hooker launched his 1970 campaign for governor, the Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation into the company’s accounting practices. The week after winning the Democratic nomination, the SEC subpoenaed Mr. Hooker to testify.

No wrongdoing was proved, but Mr. Hooker had to liquidate his other investments to support the fried chicken business. Like his political fortunes did not recover from the loss to Winfield Dunn, his business fortunes never fully recovered from the events of 1970.

In 1973, Mr. Hooker was recruited to become CEO of STP, the motor oil products company. He was primarily hired to help negotiate with the Federal Trade Commission over the governments’ challenges to STP’s claims of enhanced performance.

His commitment to the STP board precluded Mr. Hooker from running for governor when Gov. Dunn’s term expired.

“I could have beaten Ray Blanton,” Mr. Hooker was fond of saying, “but I had made a deal.”

He settled the claims favorably for STP, and resigned to return to Tennessee and, hopefully, rekindle his political ambitions.

His marriage to Tish Fort did not survive his commitment to STP, which had required him to live in Miami; they divorced in 1975.

He married Paula Lovell, who was a television producer and journalist, in 1976. They had one child, Lovell. They were divorced.

In 1979, Mr. Hooker partnered with Brownlee Currey and Irby Simpkins to buy his old nemesis, The Nashville Banner, which was going to be sold or closed as part of the deal Gannett, Inc. reached to purchase The Tennessean.

Mr. Hooker became publisher of The Banner, but the relationship with Currey and Simpkins deteriorated into a very public lawsuit and ended after two years.

A champion friend

Admirers, and critics too, cite Mr. Hooker’s ability as an orator, his ability to mesmerize a crowd, his charisma and his optimism, but it was his capacity to make friends that may have been his most admired trait.

In addition to forging a fast and lasting friendship with Bobby Kennedy, Mr. Hooker claimed many famous friends, perhaps his most recognizable are with actor Warren Beatty, and world champion boxer Muhammed Ali.

Mr. Hooker and Beatty became friends during the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries when the two were working for different candidates.

Mr. Hooker kept a portrait of Ali where he could be inspired by the only man who became world champion three times. The story that Mr. Hooker loved to tell was about when Ali lost his bid to be world champion a fourth time.

In 1980, Ali came out of retirement to fight Larry Holmes in Las Vegas. Mr. Hooker was ringside, and after the fight Ali asked him to come into his locker room.

“He was so beat up,” Mr. Hooker recalled in December. “I was in great pain just looking at him.

“I fell to my knees in front of him and cried,” Mr. Hooker said. “But Ali, he reached up with his hands, they were still wrapped with tape, and wiped my tears. He said, ‘John Jay, John Jay Hooker … don’t worry. I may be beat up, but I am still Ali!

“I will always remember,” Mr. Hooker said, “that no matter what, they can’t take away from you who you are unless you let them.

“Ali is my hero.”

During that same interview, Mr. Hooker lamented the friendships he allowed to lapse during the period after his bitter loss in 1970 and the troubles he endured with Minnie Pearl Chicken.

Though he eventually made up with many of his friends and supporters from those years, he regretted the years he lost.

“I became angry with the wrong people,” he said.

“I got mad at my brother Henry. I got mad at Seig,” Mr. Hooker said. “I don’t know why I pushed away the best people in my life.

“I guess my pride got too big.”

“Sometimes,” Tom Ingram observed, “being John Jay’s friend was like riding the world’s greatest roller coaster.

“But, I think, it always came out in the end. And nothing can replace having John Jay as a friend.”

Tilting against the establishment

After 1970, Mr. Hooker’s business and political fortunes never seemed to materialize, and he ended up financially broke. But he never lost his zeal for a fight.

Mr. Hooker took on the state’s political and legal establishment over election finance and the state’s adopted process of appointing and retention electing appellate judges, two complicated issues that often confused his former supporters.

He was loudly critical of the state’s political leaders and of his fellow lawyers, whom, he said, are not protectors of the very documents they swear to defend.

“I think that if you don’t guard the constitution, the constitution won’t guard you,” Mr. Hooker said.

On campaign finance reform, Mr. Hooker argued that those who can’t vote in the election of a candidate ought not to be able to give the candidate money, and he railed against the “bribery” of public officials that election finance represented.

His opposition to the “Tennessee Plan” for the selection and retention of judges ended up forcing two special Supreme Court panels and the eventual passage of a constitutional amendment to make the constitution conform to the process first adopted by the legislature in 1971.

His zeal resulted in a judge, former law school classmate Tom Higgins, enforcing a special rule for Mr. Hooker to limit his ability to sue public figures, and, in 2008, the Supreme Court suspended his law license for 30 days over his “frivolous” lawsuits.

“I know that many of my ‘friends’ thought that I was a foolish old man,” Mr. Hooker said. “But they attacked me personally because they knew in their hearts that I was right.”

And the attitudes he faced from the “establishment” legal community fueled his fire.

“My father often told me, ‘Don’t pick a fight with a man who has nothing to lose,’” Mr. Hooker said. “And I damn sure had little to lose at that point in my life.”

His final fight

Mr. Hooker was diagnosed with stage four metastatic melanoma in January 2015, which galvanized him to began his fight to get Tennessee to adopt a “death with dignity” law similar to Oregon, Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, agreed to sponsor the legislation and get it introduced while Mr. Hooker was alive to testify in its favor.

“When I came to the legislature, I lived in the same building as John Jay," Fitzhugh said. “We had many good morning chats on the steps of the old Watauga building. He struck me as articulate, brilliant, and right about almost everything. When he asked me to carry the Death with Dignity bill, I had my reservations, but like the old barrister he is, John Jay brought me around. I am honored that he placed his trust in me, but I am even more honored that he called me his friend.

“I found his love for our great state to be enormous, and unceasing. Until his last breath, he was committed to helping others, fighting for what he believed to be right, and being a voice for the voiceless.

“I'll miss my friend, and so too will his friends and adversaries."

Funeral arrangements

Funeral arrangements have not been announced yet.

Reach Frank Daniels III:fdanielsiii@tennessean.com, 615-881-7039, or on Twitter @fdanielsiii