The Tennessean's Andy Humbles talks Pickett Chapel, baseball, a decades-long love of news
In his newest piece for The Tennessean, Wilson County Reporter Andy Humbles took a deep, long look at Pickett Chapel, a Lebanon church with plenty of history and ties to the Civil Rights Movement in Middle Tennessee.
Mary Harris, chair of the Wilson County Black History Committee, and her husband, Harry, are working to restore the chapel, which Humbles learned during his reporting has the fingerprints of the enslaved who built the church permanently etched into the building's outer bricks.
It's just one of the many stories Humbles has had the privilege to tell during his nearly 40-year career with the newspaper.
Originally from Wheaton, Illinois, Humbles came to Middle Tennessee in 1983 to play baseball at Trevecca Nazarene University. He says he stumbled into his role as a journalist while aspiring to make it as a pitcher in professional baseball.
He has served in his current role as the Wilson County reporter for almost 13 years now.
We talked to Humbles more about his job and journalism.
Humbles: Honestly, I didn't pursue a career in journalism ... When I realized I wasn't going to be a pro player, I thought coaching or writing about sports would be my plan. I got a job taking high school scores and stats at The Tennessean in 1985 while still in college needing an extra year to graduate after my baseball eligibility ran out. I kept showing up and grew to love it, and after 39 years, I'm still here.
Humbles: There was an opening in news, and I asked an editor about it, and I was quickly encouraged to think about it. I was initially told I could try it with an understanding I could go back to sports. I tried it, and despite feeling nearly completely lost, I enjoyed doing something new and felt it opened up a new world for me. That said, it was challenging. I didn't understand the lingo nor much of the basic terminology of so many news topics. But I always remember former Managing Editor Dave Green telling me it's okay not to understand all these topics – we're entering these foreign worlds with their experts, and we need to make them understandable.
Humbles: Obviously the 2020 tornado that included the deaths of Jim and Donna Eaton side-by-side on their mattress, thrown from their home, and a couple I knew from church. Stories that involved the journey of Lawrence McKinney, who spent 31 years in prison before being cleared of crimes based on DNA evidence, leading to a $1M award. And, of course, the stories I know could or should have been better or better-directed. Like games you lose as an athlete, sometimes those stick out more than the wins.
Humbles: I would probably have to revert back to my sports days and say Michael Jordan. (It's) the dominance he had as a player, and all the things he experienced from living a life with that much celebrity, baseball, gambling (and) his father's death.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How Andy Humbles turned baseball into 39-plus years at The Tennessean
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
Passengers airlifted to hospitals after Tullahoma plane crash
Officials are working the scene of a plane crash about an hour and 20 minutes southeast of Nashville, which reportedly left several passengers injured. Troopers with the Tennessee Highway Patrol were on the ground at the scene of the crash — Old Shelbyville Road in Tullahoma — by 1:19 p.m. Sunday, according to a social media post from the agency. According to the Tennessee Highway Patrol, initial reports suggested that 16 to 20 people were on board the plane — and some of them were airlifted to nearby hospitals following the crash. Lyle Russell, a spokesperson with the city, confirmed for The Tennessean that there were 20 passengers on the plane, including the crew. Of that group, three were sent to receive medial treatment via helicopter and a fourth passenger with "more serious injuries" was transported by ground, all of them to local hospitals. According to Russell's statement, the plane involved was a skydiving plane, which departed from Tullahoma Municipal Airport at approximately 12:30 p.m. Besides the injured passengers, the crash didn't cause any damage to ground or airport facilities, nor were any additional injuries reported from the ground. Russell's statement notes that the scene remains under investigation. Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him at ahornbostel@ Get Davidson County news delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee plane crash: 16-20 aboard flight that wrecked in Tullahoma
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Longtime parenting columnist and editorial writer Annette Clifford passed away this week
It's always sad when you receive news that a former coworker has passed away. It's so much worse when that coworker was a kind, gentle, compassionate soul who spent her life fighting against social injustices the best way she knew how: with her writing. And she was a hell of a writer. The entire FLORIDA TODAY community was saddened to learn that Annette Clifford, who regaled Brevard County for more than a decade with her parenting column that started in the late 1990s and later with her biting editorials holding government officials accountable, died this week after a long illness. She was only 69 years old. Born in Asheville, N.C, in 1956 and raised in Raleigh, Annette lived an adventurous life before settling down in Satellite Beach with her husband Tom ― whom she married in 1978 ― and their three sons. She spent time living in Algeria, Paris, and on New York's Bleecker Street in the heart of Greenwich Village and earned degrees from The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, New York University and a master's in literature from William & Mary. "She was very private but had a wild, adventurous spirit," her heartbroken husband, Tom, told me this week over a cup of coffee. "I was blessed to have found this partner." But it wasn't her world travels or educational experiences that touched the hearts of so many here on the Space Coast. It was the unique, beautiful, poignant and often comical way she wrote about what it was like to raise three boys in Brevard County. Tom Clifford was the FLORIDA TODAY features editor in 1998 when the reporter writing a weekly parenting column wanted to take a break. He offered Annette an opportunity to give it a try and she took to it immediately. "She was naturally funny in a benign, lowkey, unassuming way and she managed to chanel that into a column talking about being a parent raising three young boys in this day and age," Tom said. "She managed to come up with a great style that was personable, funny and something that everybody could relate to whether you had kids or not. It became an instant hit." After four to five years of writing the column, Annette joined the newspaper's editorial page as a part-time editorial writer and before long was hired full-time. It was her experience growing up in the South during the Civil Rights Movement and seeing racism and social injustice that informed all of her editorial writing. She published a collection of her columns in a book called: "World's Toughest Job: Tales of Modern Motherhood", that is still available on Amazon. It was a sad day in 2010 when Tom and Annette left Brevard for job opportunities in Charleston, S.C. The couple returned to Brevard in recent years and Annette continued writing all the time. She wrote poetry, short stories, a novel and even won the Florida State University 'World's Best Short Short-Story contest' one year. Longtime FLORIDA TODAY columnist Billy Cox stayed in touch with Annette through a writer's group hosted by another former FLORIDA TODAY staffer, Pam Harbaugh, who covered theater and the arts. "I knew Annette best through her personal writing. The columns she wrote for the paper were just the surface material," Cox said. "I'd drive over there every six months or so and we'd all get together and share what we'd been working on. Annette's best work was her fiction, short stories, poetry, at least one novel. I tend to think the South was the source of so much inspiration. Her insights and observational skills could be ferocious and downright scary in their precision. She was probably the best of us, and we were all hoping she might publish and get the wider audience she deserved." "I'm very sad today," he added. Harbaugh remained close to Annette right up until the end. She said Annette, though a serious person, wasn't afraid to show her silly side. She recalled a time when they attended a Crosby, Stills and Nash concert at the King Center in Melbourne and how Annette screamed "at the top of her lungs like a teenage girl" when Stephen Stills walked on stage. "She later told me she had a massive crush on him," Harbaugh said. "I'm sure that found its way somewhere into a poem." To call the last year of her life a difficult one would be a massive understatement. In September, Tom and Annette suffered every parent's worst nightmare when their first-born child, Nick, died in a car accident on US 1. It was a loss she never recovered from. One of the last poems she wrote came months after that devastating loss. She wrote: 'And just now, today, the noise of life came again my way. I listened. What was said? I don't even know. Just that I heard hope murmuring.' Annette is survived by her husband Tom, sons Declan and Graham and four ― soon to be five ― grandchildren. Despite all her writing achievements, it was clear that her family was the center of her universe. "Annette held dear the essence of life, family and friendships," Harbaugh said. "She saw nobility in the humble and resonance in the mundane. That showed in her poetry and prose. It remains sophisticated, smart, filled with wit, sly observation and appropriately melancholy given her French heritage (which also informed her penchant for spitting into the eye of a king)." Arrangements are still being made for a memorial and celebration of Annette's life. "She was so kind, so pleasant, so compassionate, so helpful. She was all these things naturally," Tom said with a sad smile. "Thank God she was there raising these boys with that sensibility." Contact Torres at jtorres@ You can follow him on X @johnalbertorres or on Facebook at Support local journalism and become a subscriber. Visit This article originally appeared on Florida Today: FLORIDA TODAY Parenting Columnist Annette Clifford will be missed
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Yahoo
Ali Velshi: How Americans can defend our democracy against Trump
This is an adapted excerpt from the May 24 episode of 'Velshi.' In the wake of Donald Trump's second term, more and more Americans are asking a critical question: 'What can I do to defend democracy in America?' That question marks a shift away from the comforting illusion that courts, politicians or institutions will save America's democracy on their own. They won't. Institutions have failed us repeatedly, as we have learned that what we thought were guardrails are merely suggestions, reliant on goodwill, decency and the honor system. Real political change in America doesn't come from the top; it never has. It comes from the bottom, from ordinary people resisting in big and small ways. That's the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. The political scientist Gene Sharp, nicknamed the 'dictator slayer,' wrote something of a playbook for resisting authoritarian regimes. He didn't invent these strategies, but he observed them. For decades, Sharp studied how ordinary people challenged brutal regimes around the world, and what he found was simple, yet powerful: All rulers — even the most oppressive — rely on the cooperation of the people. Through fear, apathy or consent, they maintain power. But when people refuse to cooperate, when they disobey, that's when authoritarian systems begin to crack. That's why historian Timothy Snyder begins his book titled 'On Tyranny' with this warning: 'Do not obey in advance.' Because it's in those first, often invisible, acts of surrender that authoritarianism takes root. As we face creeping authoritarianism here at home, Snyder's advice stands as a call to action for Americans confronting Trump. History shows that the courage to stand up to authority and hold power to account has helped sustain our democracy and other democracies around the world. The historian Drew Gilpin Faust, a former president of Harvard University, captured that spirit in a powerful essay for The New York Times about the Union soldiers of the Civil War. She wrote: I have read dozens of these men's letters and diaries, windows into why they fought, into what and whom they loved and what they hoped for at the end of a war they knew they might not survive. Together they did save the Union … These men made our lives possible. They were impelled to risk all by a sense of obligation to the future. We possess a reciprocal obligation to the past. We must not squander what they bequeathed to us. We owe it to them, and every generation that came after them: women who won the right to vote, students who walked into newly desegregated schools under armed guard, trade unionists who faced violence for fighting for the rights of workers, those who fought for voting rights, reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ dignity. They didn't wait for permission. They disobeyed in advance. They withdrew their cooperation from injustice. Oftentimes, they blatantly and openly broke the law, as TV cameras rolled. Which brings us back to Sharp's basic premise, a very Gandhian premise. He believed that noncooperation, the deliberate refusal to obey or comply, is one of the most powerful ways to disrupt oppressive systems. Because when enough people stop participating in the machinery of control, that very system begins to break down. So, if you're wondering what you can do, here are some ideas that draw from proven strategies of resistance — adapted for today's world. In Missouri, a government-run tip line targeting the trans community was flooded with thousands of fake reports, including the entire movie script of 'The Bee Movie' submitted over and over again. The result? Total system collapse. Utah and Texas faced similar backlashes, with Utah shutting down its own surveillance hotline under the weight of memes and mass trolling. This, of course, is what undergirded the Civil Rights Movement in America, but here's a more recent example: In Idaho, a middle school teacher refused to remove a sign that read 'Everyone Is Welcome Here.' It didn't mention politics, race or gender, but was still deemed too controversial. After a monthslong battle, she resigned two weeks ago in protest. This can include using the opposition's own tools against them. In 2024, Oklahoma's Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law allowing parents to opt their children out of 'harmful' educational material. Now, a group of parents has turned that law on its head. In response to Superintendent of Public Education Ryan Walters' new curriculum, which includes conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and Christian nationalist ideology, a parent group called We're Oklahoma Education, or WOKE, is fighting back. They've created an opt-out form allowing families to withdraw their children from lessons on 'Judeo-Christian concepts of ethics and government' and 'discrepancies in 2020 election results.' Their approach is not only bold but legally savvy since the group is using the very law that conservatives passed, which was designed to shield students from so-called progressive content. The opt-out letter warns schools that failure to comply could result in legal action. This one, of course, is close to my heart. When Target pulled Pride merchandise and scaled back diversity, equity and inclusion commitments, thousands of Americans launched a boycott campaign on TikTok, Facebook and other platforms. The result? Target's quarterly profits dropped and the company admitted that backlash from both sides had harmed its bottom line. In Worcester, Massachusetts, viral footage of an aggressive U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid showed federal agents detaining a woman as her daughters clung to the car, one of them holding a baby. Bystanders, including a city councilor and a school board candidate, intervened. The video sparked immediate outrage and protests across the state. In response, Worcester officials released bodycam footage and then took action: The city issued an executive order barring city employees from cooperating with ICE or inquiring about immigration status. This is the final, and perhaps my favorite, form of disruption. Civil rights activist Bruce Hartford noted that humor and audacity go hand in hand: 'You can weaken, unbalance, and ultimately overthrow the king quicker by laughing at him than by futilely screaming fury at him.' Groups like the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and The Satanic Temple have used satire to expose religious favoritism in public institutions. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose adherents refer to themselves as 'Pastafarians,' mocked efforts to teach intelligent design in public schools by proposing a noodle-based deity, highlighting the dangers of blurring church and state. The Satanic Temple, which is not to be confused with the Church of Satan and does not promote devil worship, took similar action, demanding equal representation when governments promoted religious symbols like Ten Commandments monuments or sanctioned prayer in public schools. Their logic forced officials to either accommodate all religions or retract their policies altogether. So if you're asking yourself what one person can do, these are ideas to hopefully get you thinking. And remember this final piece of advice from Snyder: 'Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.' This article was originally published on
