By Chris EvansEver had a brush with fame? Got to asking around town recently about folks who’ve been near famous people or famous events. The following is what I came up with. If you’ve had a brush with fame, let me know as I may pile up another set of these interesting tidbits for a later column.
Stan Hoover is now the director of the Crittenden County Economic Development Corporation. In years past he was an auditor and investigator for the Ineternal Revenue Service. Hoover was part of the IRS team that investigated the federal tax evasion case against Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in South Carolina.
From a visit this week to the dentist office, I got this tidbit of info. Dr. Crider’s son, Marion native Corey Crider, recently had a brush with a big time performer that didn’t go too well. Crider, a very successful opera singer, runs with famous musicians in Nashville quite often. Recently, he and former college buddy Chris Thile of the band Nickel Creek were at award-winning artist Alison Krauss’s home. Thile was practicing with her as a backup performer. Crider and Krauss’s boyfriend were cutting up and apparently disturbing the practice session so Alison asked both to leave.
Chantel Benton Millikan and Hutch Goad had parts in Madonna’s big movie, a League of Their Own, about a woman’s baseball team in the early 1900s.
The late Forrest Pogue wrote the only authorized biography of Gen. George Marshall (pictured), who Winston Churchill called the organizer of victory in World War II.
One of our newest residents, author and marathoner Bob Yehling has written articles on Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Jefferson Starship musician Marty Balin and singer Carrie Underwood.
Rip Wheeler and Roy Little of Marion were actually at the Battle of the Bulge, which basically broke the Germans’ final offensive and their will in World War II.
Gordon Guess, retired president of Peoples Bank, was treasurer for the Kentucky Republican Party during the Watergate Scandal in the early 1970s. His records were subpeonaed as part of a federal investigation of CREEP (the Committee to Re-Elect the President). All of Guess’s records were clean, but CREEP’s tactics eventually led in-part to Nixon’s resignation.
Jeremy Wheeler, a former Marine from Marion, was part of the team that protected the president at Camp David.
Down around Sheridan is a farmer named Alben Barkley III, the grandson of former United States vice president Alben Barkley.
Chris Evans is editor and publisher of The Crittenden Press. You can reach him at chrisevans@the-press.com.
