'Hee Haw' performer Jon Hager dies at 67

The Tennessean

Jon Hager, a member of musical comedy duo The Hager Twins, was found dead Friday morning in his Nashville home. He was 67, and had been in declining health for months.

Mr. Hager and his identical twin brother, Jim, were featured performers on the country music show Hee Haw from 1969 until 1988. The brothers were known for their quick wits and for their harmony blend. In the 1970s and '80s, the duo was billed as "The World's Most Famous Twins."

The brothers were playing at Disneyland in Southern California when country star Buck Owens saw their show and quickly signed them to a management and recording contract. For years, the Hagers opened shows for Owens, but Owens' biggest contribution to the brothers' career came when he brought them to the attention of Hee Haw's producers. The twins were original cast members of Hee Haw, which became a top-rated syndicated show.

Mr. Hager was devastated by his brother's death in May of 2008. "I can't imagine anybody being closer than Jim and I were," Mr. Hager told The Tennessean's Beverly Keel last year. "We loved each other. Sometimes we had little (petty) contests, but we were there for each other."

At the time of Jim Hager's death, the brothers lived together in a Hillsboro Village house.

Friend and Metro Councilman Adam Dread said the brothers were two of the more outgoing members of the Nashville community.

"Neither one of them ever met a stranger," Dread said. "They made everybody they met feel special."

In a 2003 article, The Tennessean's Misty Emery visited with Mr. Hager at an area coffee shop, where he conversed with most of the patrons.

Memorial service plans and other details have not been announced.

 

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Goody's to liquidate all stores, 11 in Tennessee

Nashville Business Journal

Discount clothing retailer Goody's Family Clothing is set to liquidate its stores, including 11 in Middle Tennessee, only months after emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Cathy Hershcopf, a partner at Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, the California law firm that represented Goody’s unsecured creditors in its June bankruptcy reorganization, says the chain will begin liquidating its shops soon. Goody’s has 287 stores.

Gary Yiatchos, a spokesman for the Knoxville, Tenn.-based discounter, wouldn’t confirm the liquidation and declined to comment further.

The retailer employs 9,800 workers.

Goody’s plans for liquidation come after it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October and closed 69 underperforming stores, including five in Tennessee.

During its reorganization, the company said it cut operating costs, shut a distribution center and New York corporate office and pulled the plug on its e-commerce business. Goody’s sought protection under Chapter 11 as a response to credit and merchandise problems.

Hershcopf says the reason behind the company’s latest move is simple: “The economy’s awful.”

Goody’s, which had about $1 billion in revenue last year, runs stores in 20 states, mainly in the Southeast and Midwest. The privately held company is owned by PGDYS Lending LLC.

Customers Shocked By NES Bills

MSNBC.com

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Some Nashville residents are shocked by their latest electric bills after the figures doubled and tripled from last month.

Video: Electric Customers Shocked By Bills

The Nashville Electric Service is hearing large amounts of complaints on their customer service lines. One Nashville resident who lives in a small condo received an electric bill this month for $600. The previous month it was $200.

The utility company said there are three reasons for the increase.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has raised its rates 10 percent since April. Also, the TVA fuel cost adjustment has increased almost 24 percent since April, which could easily add up to $70 to a bill.

"What people don't realize is that we are paying for fuel the TVA had to purchase like $4 a gallon for the months of July, August and September. That's what we've been paying for in the months of October, November and December," said Tim Hill of NES.

Because of the holidays, NES meter reading cycles for December also added two to three billing days.

Temperatures for November were three degrees cooler than normal. That may not seem like a large difference, but NES said turning up a home thermostat from 68 to 70 on a regular basis can increase a bill 15 percent.

"So, if somebody wants to have their home at 78 degrees, they could increase their bill very easily 40 percent," said Hill.

A representative from the Middle Tennessee Electric Cooperative, which serves Williamson, Wilson and Rutherford counties, said their customers saw on average a 39 percent increase in electric bills.

See ancient fossils in East Tennessee

Gray, Tenn. — When highway construction workers shoveled into a dark, mucky deposit amid the red clay fields of East Tennessee, they knew they’d unearthed something unusual.

Maybe not unusual enough to stop the expansion of the state highway that winds just past the discovery but worth calling in specialists to evaluate.

The specialists dug up an alligator skull. In the southern Appalachians. And the new road took a detour.

What the experts found was evidence of a site estimated to be 4.5 million to 7 million years old, filled with thousands of animal and plant fossils preserved in a series of sinkholes. The Miocene-era fossils included a red panda, only the second found in the United States; a saber-toothed cat; a camel; and a shovel-tusked elephant. The Gray Fossil Site is the largest Miocene discovery in the eastern United States.

The past is never far away in this part of northeast Tennessee, where Daniel Boone blazed a trail that carried hundreds of thousands of settlers into the Western frontier and an annual storytelling festival celebrates generations of folklore and tall tales. The fossil find adds another dimension. It will take about 100 years to excavate the 5-acre site, with its fossil-rich clay deposit that’s 100 feet deep.

A natural history museum that opened in 2007 lets visitors get close to prehistory. Just a tiny portion of the site has been explored, and in warmer months East Tennessee State University paleontology students and staff excavate a pit that’s already produced several rhinoceroses. Visitors can help sift soil for small fossils, a process much like gem mining.

Inside, the museum is filled with interactive exhibits at which younger children can explore a faux fossil pit and older visitors can listen to prehistoric weather and traffic reports from the sinkhole. Casts of the animal finds populate a forest setting. The real bones are stored upstairs, where a guided tour lets visitors peer through windows at workers painstakingly cleaning and piecing together bone fragments and skeletons.

An exhibit that runs Jan. 24-May 17 focuses on extinction, from dinosaurs to currently endangered species, including the tapir. That animal, an ungainly piglike creature with a short trunk for a nose, is still found in Asia and Central and South America. It once roamed extensively over this part of Tennessee; the remains of some 100 tapirs have been dug up at Gray.

The museum was built on top of some of the fossil-rich clay, which was quickly excavated before construction. In the spring, construction starts on a cafe and indoor and outdoor classrooms.

The Gray site is about an hour west of Asheville and just a few miles from Tennessee’s Tri-Cities: Johnson City, Bristol and Kingsport.

ajc.com

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Orgeron joins Tennessee as assistant coach

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — New Orleans Saints assistant and former Mississippi coach Ed Orgeron is returning to the Southeastern Conference as part of Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin's staff. Tennessee announced Friday that Orgeron will work as an assistant head coach, recruiting coordinator and defensive line coach.

The Larose, La., native spent the last season as the defensive line coach for the Saints after being fired as Mississippi coach after three seasons. He has also worked as an assistant at Miami, Syracuse and Southern California.

Orgeron and Kiffin worked together as assistants under USC coach Pete Carroll from 2001 to 2004.

Orgeron worked as recruiting coordinator for the Trojans, with several classes ranked in the nation's top five by analysts.

Associated Press

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