Day: November 19, 2017

Mel Tillis, the affable longtime country star who wrote hits for Kenny Rogers, Ricky Skaggs and many others, and overcame a stutter to sing on dozens of his own singles, has died.

A spokesman for Tillis, Don Murry Grubbs, said Tillis died early Sunday at Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Florida. He was 85.

Grubbs said Tillis battled intestinal issues since 2016 and never fully recovered.  The suspected cause of death is respiratory failure.

Tillis, the father of country singer Pam Tillis, recorded more than 60 albums and had more than 30 top 10 country singles, including  “Good Woman Blues,”  “Coca Cola Cowboy” and “Southern Rain.” Among the hits he wrote for others were “Detroit City” for Bobby Bare; “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” by Rogers and the First Edition; and “Thoughts of a Fool” for George Strait.

Country music stars Charlie Daniels, Crystal Gayle and Blake Shelton offered their condolences on Twitter.

“He once spent an entire day at his place in Tennessee showing me all the memorabilia he’d gathered over the years where he gave me a pair of his stage boots,” Shelton’s account said.  “He even took time to talk me through some hard times in my life on a couple phone calls.”

Although his early efforts to get a record deal were rebuffed because of his stutter, he was a promising songwriter in Nashville in the 1950s and 1960s, writing tunes for Webb Pierce and Ray Price.

In all, the Country Music Hall of Fame member wrote more than 1,000 songs and in 2012 received a National Medal of Arts for bringing “his unique blend of warmth and humor to the great tradition of country music.”

He also dabbled in acting, appearing in such feature films as Clint Eastwood’s “Every Which Way But Loose,” and the Burt Reynolds movies “Cannonball Run I and II” and “Smokey and the Bandit II.”  He starred in several television movies and briefly had a network TV show, “Mel and Susan Together,” with Susan Anton.

In 2007, Tillis became a regular performer on the Grand Ole Opry country music show.

“You know what?  Another part of the dream has been fulfilled,” he said at the time. “It’s been a long, hard road.”

Tillis was raised in Pahokee, Florida, and developed his stutter as a child while being treated for malaria.  He dropped out of the University of Florida and instead served in the Air Force and worked on the railroad before relocating to Nashville in 1957.

Musical from an early age, he started performing in the early 1950s with a group called The Westerners, while stationed in Okinawa and serving as a baker in the Air Force.

He held a variety of odd jobs before breaking out, including being a truck driver, a strawberry picker, a firefighter on the railroad and milkman, which inspired his breakthrough song.  Feeling down one day he began singing to himself, “Oh Lord, I’m tired.  Tired of living this ol’ way.”  He turned his lament into “I’m Tired,” which became a hit for Webb Pierce.

Price, Skaggs, Brenda Lee and hundreds of others would cover his songs.

Tillis, meanwhile, became a major success on his own in the late 1960s and toured for decades, often using his stutter as a source of humor – though his stutter disappeared when he sang.

“One of the reasons I worked it into my show is that it’s my trademark,” he once told The Associated Press.

He said that when he was in the Air Force as a flight leader, he marched airmen right into a wall.

“I couldn’t get out the word `halt,” he said.

Grubbs says the Tillis family will release information about funeral services in Florida and Nashville.
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When Britain’s 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth married 26-year-old Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in 1947, the wedding sparked joy and celebration in a country just recovering from World War II. 

Seven decades on, the couple who would become Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, both now in their 90s, are still going strong, their marriage a bedrock in British public life amid a world of change.

On Monday, they mark their 70th wedding anniversary, though officials say the milestone will be celebrated privately and no public events are planned. The royal family is reportedly marking the date with a gathering at Windsor Castle. 

The queen is the first monarch in British history to celebrate a platinum wedding anniversary. 

At their 50th wedding anniversary, Elizabeth praised her husband as “quite simply… my strength and stay all these years.”

Elizabeth first met Philip, a naval officer and the son of Prince Andrew of Greece, as they attended the wedding of Philip’s cousin in 1934. 

The pair wed at Westminster Abbey in London on Nov. 20, 1947. It would be nearly another six years before Elizabeth would be crowned as monarch, also at Westminster Abbey. 

In the decades that followed, Philip, who also holds the title Duke of Edinburgh, spent almost the entire duration of their marriage supporting his wife in her role as head of state. Both have cut back on their public engagements in recent years, and Philip retired from official duties earlier this year. 

The royal couple has four children, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
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Afghanistan defeated Pakistan Sunday, winning their first under-19 cricket Asia Cup final in Kuala Lumpur, offering a rare opportunity for celebrations in a country desperate for a break from relentless rounds of deadly violence.

Batting first, the Afghan team scored 248 runs in their allotted 50 overs. The opposition Pakistani side while chasing the target was dismissed within 23 overs for just 63 runs, enabling Afghans to win the match by a massive margin of 185 runs to lift the championship trophy.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani tweeted his pride in the team, posting to his official Twitter account: “Indeed, our young colts showed that our future in cricket is bright.”

And Afghanistan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah tweeted, though he is out of Afghanistan on an official trip, “I feel proud to congratulate our nation on this very unique, rare and prideful occasion of our country’s cricket as Afghanistan’s U19 clinches historic win over Pakistan at the ACC U-19 Asia Cup and lifts the trophy for the first time in the history.”

The win demonstrated significant improvement in Afghan cricket, which spread in the war-torn country from refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan and has become one of Afghanistan’s most popular sports in recent years.

The International Cricket Council in this year inducted Afghanistan as its 12th full member, recognizing the strides the Afghan national side has made in the game.

The other full ICC members, are traditional cricket-playing nations: England, Australia, Bangladesh, South Africa, New Zealand, Pakistan, the West Indies, India, Ireland, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.
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A group dedicated to preserving and promoting the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail has purchased private land in western Washington state to prevent a break in the path.

The Pacific Crest Trail Association bought more than 400 acres (162 hectares) in the Stevens Pass area this week from a private landowner for $1.6 million, The Seattle Times reported.

The association says the landowner had considered putting up a fence and cutting off public access to the trail.

“Given the topography, we found it very difficult to loop around that piece of private property,” said Megan Wargo, the group’s director of land protection. “There’s only a short window you can be out there building trail. It would have meant several years of access to the PCT as a through-hike would have been closed.”

The 2,600-mile (4,200-kilometer) trail from Mexico to Canada generally follows the crests of several mountain ranges, including the Cascades in Washington state and Oregon.

Wargo said the U.S. Forest Service manages the trail and has easements where it crosses private land. However, no one got an easement for the private land on the section of trail at the Stevens Pass Trailhead, she said.

“In most likelihood, it was just an oversight,” Wargo said. “Somebody thought there was an easement there, but the easement was not recorded.”

In 2015, the property owner was looking to sell and fence off the trail, so the association borrowed money to buy the land. It says the next step is to sell the land to the Forest Service at market value so it can repay the loan.
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