I never met Gail Kerr yet last Wednesday’s Tennessean still sits on my kitchen counter, unread. Unopened even. I’m not sure this city recognizes its loss yet. I’m not sure it will for a while, and what I fear most, is The Tennessean might never grasp the loss of its stories Nashville columnist.
Kerr’s passing hit me like a weight of bricks on my chest. It surprised me because I didn’t have a relationship with her, but upon reflection I realized why I felt such heartbreak. We shared a love, she and I. A love for Nashville and a love for Tennessee. For her, she’d recognized it early in her life. For me, I needed to run away to realize it. Last year, I returned to my birth place, to my home, to the land I feel most familiar being part of. This landscape has changed in the seven years I have been gone, but thanks to Kerr’s work, I caught up quickly.
She was an advocate and a fighter. She stood up to corruptness. She fought the bad, and sometimes, she fought the good but always believing it was the bad. She covered this city as no one else has done, and she did a superb job. She was vocal and she often said what was needed even if it wasn’t welcomed by open hearts or receiving ears. She was a journalist. She was a trailblazer. She was the institutional knowledge and history
inside a building I can only assume has hallowing walls thanks to print newspaper’s shrinking budgets.