Bill Baxter, a Knoxville businessman who served as state economic development chief and chair of the Tennessee Valley Authority, died of cancer last week at age 71.

Republican Gov. Don Sundquist brought on Baxter, the head of family-founded Holston Gases, as his second commissioner of Economic and Community Development in 1997. Baxter’s time in state government coincided with Sundquist’s about-face on introducing an income tax in Tennessee. Baxter at the time said the state would have to restructure its incentive packages under the plan. But Sundquist’s tax reform efforts ultimately failed.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Tennessee Journal on Aug. 23. Read the full newsletter here.

When Baxter stepped down from his state government position in December 2000, it fueled speculation about whether he would run to succeed the term-limited governor. Despite the view that he could gather support among the deep-pocketed business community, Baxter was unable to break into double digits in early polls and announced he wouldn’t run the following May. U.S. Rep. Van Hilleary of Spring City went on to win the GOP nomination but lost to Democrat Phil Bredesen in the general election.

Baxter would get crossways with Sundquist in 2001 over a vacancy on the TVA board created by the retirement of Craven Crowell. Sundquist had wanted the job to go to attorney Justin Wilson, the deputy to the governor and a future state comptroller. Sundquist didn’t take kindly to Baxter jockeying for the job as conflict-of-interest questions began being raised about Wilson because of an indirect financial interest in the coal industry. 

After Wilson withdrew from consideration, Sundquist supported the appointment of his legal counsel Courtney Pearre. But President George W. Bush selected Baxter for a nine-year term on what was then a three-member panel. Sundquist nevertheless declared he was “pleased that the nominee is a Tennessean.” The following year, Baxter paid his own way to join Sundquist and Wilson on a nine-day trade mission to Europe. 

Baxter was the TVA chair when Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Frist of Nashville championed a move to expand the TVA board to nine part-time members. Baxter left the board in 2007, saying he had “self-limited” himself to serving five years in the spirit of modernizing TVA governance.

Baxter was questioned in a land deal that led to federal charges against state Sen. Jerry Cooper, D-Morrison, in 2006. As head of the economic development agency, Baxter had approved a $290,000 state grant to improve a property owned by Cooper. Baxter said Cooper had not mentioned he had a stake in the land and that the grant had been approved in the “ordinary course of business.”

Cooper’s indictment said the lawmaker had been “deep in debt and trying to avoid bankruptcy” when he exerted his political influence to get financing for the sale of a lumber mill by showing that it had landed a commitment from the state to fund a rail spur on the property. Federal prosecutors in 2007 designated Baxter as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Cooper. 

After Cooper was acquitted, Baxter said he had been blindsided by prosecutors’ characterizations, saying they had unfairly damaged his reputation after not speaking with him since an initial interview. “I have spent 25 years as an ethical businessman and honorable public servant,” he told The Associated Press at the time. The allegations could make people like him “very reluctant to think about public service,” he said. Cooper died in 2020.

The attention didn’t keep Baxter out of the public eye, as U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp signed him on as state finance chair for his 2010 gubernatorial bid. Wamp ended up finishing second in the Republican primary to former Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam. 

After playing basketball on the freshman team at Duke in the early 1970s, Baxter became something of a super fan. The basement at his home was so decked out in Blue Devils paraphernalia that legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski in a letter called it “Cameron Indoor Arena West.” In 2004, Baxter bought the Wort Hotel in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Baxter was an early adopter of stand-up desks, arranging five waist-high drafting tables in a horseshoe as he moved offices between his company, the state Capitol complex and the TVA headquarters. Baxter displayed a plaque inscribed with his favorite James Taylor lyric: “Since we’re only here for a while, we might as well show some style.”

Crime reporter

Mary Jo Denton, the reporter who broke the news of the slaying of longtime state Sen. Tommy Burks, died on Aug. 15 at age 80. Denton covered crime for the Herald-Citizen of Cookeville from 1975 until her retirement in 2014, a span in which more than 20,000 stories carried her byline in the afternoon newspaper. 

Denton first caught wind that something major had occurred when she made a routine call to the Putnam County sheriff on the morning of Oct. 19, 1998, only to be told he was away at a crime scene. A law enforcement source tipped Denton off that Burks had been shot and that his prospects for survival weren’t looking good. While awaiting word on Burks’ fate, Denton dashed off two other stories about a hit-and-run crash and a chemical spill before finally getting a call from the sheriff to confirm Burks had died of a gunshot wound. She turned the story within an hour to meet the paper’s deadline. “I write fast,” she told The Tennessean at the time. “I have to.”

The man eventually charged in the murder was Byron Looper, Burks’ Republican opponent in the Senate race that year. Looper, who had officially changed his middle name to “Low Tax,” tried to subpoena Denton to testify at trial about his tense relationship with local officials because of his penchant for sending out fax blasts alleging corruption in Putnam County. 

Denton and her attorney Hank Fincher asserted her privilege not to testify under Tennessee’s press shield law. Fincher, who went on to serve in the state House and is a current member of the Registry of Election Finance, said Looper’s effort was aimed at preventing Denton from reporting on the trial and his eventual conviction.

In 1994, someone fired a gun at the Denton home, with one bullet tearing through a wall just inches from where her son was sleeping. It didn’t stop her from covering the news. Former Herald-Citizen editor Charles Denning last week remembered Denton as having “the energy of a gymnast and the persistence of a bloodhound.”

Criminal appeals judge

State Court of Criminal Appeals Judge James Curwood Witt of Madisonville died on Aug. 18. He was 75. 

Sundquist appointed Witt to the new appellate seat in 1997. The former juvenile court judge had followed a family tradition to the bench. His father had been a Monroe County circuit judge, his grandfather was the district attorney general, and his great-grandfather was a county judge.

Witt ruled in a 2010 appeal that evidence collected from the decomposing body of a murdered man could be used at trial even though the victim’s whereabouts had been improperly obtained by police because they refused the suspect’s request for a lawyer. Witt wrote in his ruling that the body would have been found by nearby property owners before it had been consumed by maggots.

Witt also wrote a 2017 opinion upholding the right of star University of Tennessee linebacker A. J. Johnson and a teammate to obtain the social media history of a woman who accused them of rape. Witt disagreed with arguments that producing the communications was an invasion of the woman’s privacy and too difficult to assemble. “We hardly think this too onerous a burden when juxtaposed with the defendants’ constitutional trial rights,” Witt wrote. Johnson was later acquitted and went on to an NFL career.

Witt won his most recent retention election in 2022. Gov. Bill Lee will name a successor to serve out the remaining six years of the term.

Former presiding judge

Joe D. Duncan, a retired judge on the state Court of Criminal Appeals and a brother and uncle of congressmen, died Tuesday. He was 100.

Duncan was first elected to the Knox County Criminal Court in 1966 and named to the appeals court by Republican Gov. Winfield Dunn in 1975. He rose to become presiding judge on the panel before retiring in 1990. Duncan was the campaign adviser for his brother John J. Duncan Sr.’s successful bids for Knox County mayor and Congress. And he remained a confidant to John J. “Jimmy” Duncan Jr., a former criminal court judge who won the 2nd Congressional District seat after his father’s death in 1988.

Following Joe Duncan’s retirement from the bench, he was brought back as part of a three-member special appeals court to preside over John Jay Hooker’s legal challenge of the state’s yes-no retention system. Sitting judges had recused themselves. The panel found Hooker didn’t have standing to sue and ruled against another plaintiff’s effort to reinstate popular elections.

TBI director

Mark Gwyn, the first Black director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, died last week of what appeared to be natural causes. He was 61.

Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen named Gwyn as TBI director in 2004. He unexpectedly stepped down in 2018 saying in a memo to staff “I believe I have done all that I can do.” The agency had been the subject of both an audit and special report by the comptroller’s office that found the TBI had eaten into its reserves to avoid layoffs that otherwise would have been required by state budget cuts. 

The comptroller also looked into allegations Gwyn had used TBI aircraft for personal purposes. The agency refused to share details about flights with anyone outside of the bureau, but records and interviews found no evidence to substantiate any claims of abuse.

Gwyn began his career as a police officer in his hometown of McMinnville in 1985. He joined the TBI three years later as an agent in the criminal investigation division.