This city of ours offers fertile storytelling soil, and as 2023 draws to a close, we're taking a moment to reflect on some of the stories we have been fortunate to share with you. When assembling this list, we considered both “metrics” — how many of you navigated to our web posts — and the more ineffable qualities of endurance, depth, and that Memphis feeling.
As you settle in for the holiday rest and reset we know you deserve, please take a few moments (or hours, even!) reading some of the best work our writers, editors, designers, and artists created in 2023.
Thank you so much for being here, for spending time with our work, and for caring about Memphis as much as we do. We’ll see you in 2024.
photograph by houston cofield
An Afternoon with Barbara & Pitt Hyde
Words by Anna Traverse | Images by Houston Cofield
If you’ve lived in Memphis for any length of time, or even paid attention to the city from afar, chances are that you’ve interacted with an amenity that bears the Hydes’ fingerprints. J.R. “Pitt” Hyde III, of course, is the founder of AutoZone, a Fortune 300 company which today employs more than 100,000 people, roughly 2,000 of those in Memphis. Barbara, his wife of 32 years, is the CEO of the Hyde Family Foundation, and someone who knows how to make things happen. But what are they like as humans, as a couple? And what is at the heart of their vision for Memphis? In our December cover story, we aimed to find out.
photograph courtesy Tennessee Department of Conservation Photograph Collection, 1937-1976, Box 15, File 10, 15738, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Tennessee Virtual Archive
The Sterick Building, Then and Now
Words by Michael Finger and Samuel X. Cicci | Images by Justin Fox Burks and from archival resources
As you’ve probably heard, once again the Sterick Building has new owners. This time, though, the story may have a happier ending. The mustard-yellow (for now) 29-story skyscraper that has towered over Downtown Memphis for the better part of a century, looking rather forlorn in recent decades, might finally move into the modern era. On the occasion of the building's next transformation, we explored the history (literally, ascending to the top story with the aid of cell-phone flashlights) and future of the historic “Queen of Memphis.”
photograph by karen pulfer focht
Tom Lee Park — Renewed
Words by Jon W. Sparks | Images by Karen Pulfer Focht
The day before Tom Lee Park officially reopened in September after a complete makeover, Carol Coletta met with the media on the site, poised and prepared. The stakes were high, the results dramatic, and the road to realization bumpy. For several years she’d been pushing to get the 31-acre riverfront park changed from a flat pasture to a vibrant destination with attractions galore. Now the moment was here. But while spirits were high, opinions remained mixed. For our October cover story, we discovered how and why the park was reimagined. As part of the narrative, we secured an exclusive interview with Jim Holt, outgoing leader of Memphis in May.
renderings courtesy the metal museum
Metal Move
Words by Chris McCoy | Rendering courtesy the Metal Museum
In May 2020, the last students graduated from the Memphis College of Art. The 84-year-old institution suffered the fate of many private American arts colleges, a victim of declining funding and enrollment. Rust Hall, designed by noted Memphis architect Roy Harrover, and which housed the college since 1959, was left empty.
With the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art set to leave its longtime home in the park for a new facility on Front Street, it looked like Overton Park would soon be without art institutions for the first time in a century. That is, until the Metal Museum announced it would move to Rust Hall.
photograph by jon w. sparks
Local Treasures: Michael Donahue
Words by Chris McCoy | Images by Jon W. Sparks
We don’t usually publish stories about our own writers. But when a certain curly-haired columnist is on your staff, you make an exception, and this profile of beloved, instantly recognizable local reporter Michael Donahue got a lot of love. Among many, many other charming and quirky anecdotes, you’ll learn what Donahue keeps in his safety-deposit box.
photograph © tommy kha
Tommy Kha’s Memphis
Words by Chris McCoy | Images by Tommy Kha
Tommy Kha is having a banner year. His art was featured in group exhibitions at Kingston, New York’s Center of Photography at Woodstock; the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida; and as part of the 20th anniversary exhibition of New Orleans’ Ogden Museum of Southern Art. In New York City, where Kha has lived for the better part of a decade after earning his MFA, he was in Queer Love: Affection and Romance in Contemporary Art at The Bronx’s Lehman College Art Gallery and the East Village’s La MaMa Galleria. And he opened his solo show Ghost Bites at the Camera Club of New York with a book launch party for Half, Full, Quarter. But when our writer caught up with Kha, the photographer was recumbent on a patch of green carpet in the middle of the Brooks Museum's rotunda, where he wanted folks to lie down for a spell.
photograph by jon w. sparks
FedEx at 50
Words and images by Jon W. Sparks
Just days before last September’s annual stockholders’ meeting, FedEx said its quarterly revenue fell below expectations. Few packages were moving worldwide and the company was closing offices, freezing hiring, and parking cargo aircraft. It was a bumpy time with companies having a glut of inventory and the scourge of inflation hitting pocketbooks. But the situation was also a golden opportunity for president and CEO Raj Subramaniam — or maybe a purple one for the boss who had been working his way up the ranks since joining the company in 1991.
On the occasion of FedEx’s first half-century in business, we looked back at its effect on Memphis and beyond, and discussed the future in an exclusive interview with Subramaniam.
PHOTOGRAPH © KAREN PULFER FOCHT
Heroes: Lt. Robert Bedford, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Words by Michael Finger | Image by Karen Pulfer Focht
He took part in two Allied invasions of Europe during the Second World War, then came to Memphis and helped establish one of this city’s best-known interior design firms.
This story was originally published in November 2022, but reached many of you in February 2023 after Lt. Bedford died at age 103.
Overton Park Is Not One Single Thing
Words by Toby Sells
In 1901, city leaders purchased 342 acres to lay out the city’s first public park, and hired George Kessler, a noted city planner and nationally acclaimed landscape architect, to transform the property into a thing of beauty. The park in the heart of Midtown Memphis is not one thing. But it is one place. It’s a blend of organizations with a blend of features. In March, we explored the singular (but not single) place that is Overton Park.
“Double High-Step” by Derek Fordjour / courtesy Brooks Museum
Derek Fordjour, Highstep Double, 2019, oil pastel on newspaper, mounted on canvas, 64 × 84 in. Collection of a Friend of the Brooks, © Derek Fordjour.
From Hatred to Hope: Black American Portraits
Words by Abigail Morici | Artwork courtesy Brooks Museum
Full of portraits of Black sitters, spaces, and subjects, the exhibit, “Black American Portraits,” has made its way to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, having opened in August. As a majority-Black city, Memphis needs this, says Brooks executive director Zoe Kahr. “It’s so important to see every Memphian reflected back in the museum.”
photograph by karen pulfer focht
For Michelle Taylor, Public Health Is Personal
Words by David Waters | Image by Karen Pulfer Focht
Taylor’s life has been mapped out since her parents gave her a toy doctor’s kit when she was 5. She told her mother she wanted to be a nurse. “Yes, baby, you can be a nurse. That’s a worthy profession,” her mother told her. “But have you thought about being a doctor?”
Taylor, who became director of the Shelby County Health Department in 2021, has been thinking about, and asking questions about, medicine and public health ever since.
photograph by alex greene
Local Treasures: Kurl McKinney
Words and image by Alex Greene
You wouldn’t guess it if you heard him playing the grand piano in the lobby of The Peabody every Monday and Tuesday, but the chief lesson from hearing tales of Kurl McKinney’s childhood is that “life is tough.” He’s looking dapper these days, and can tickle the ivories with remarkable dexterity, given the 86 years behind him.
Ask Vance: Shakey’s Pizza
Words by Vance Lauderdale | Photo from a vintage Hillcrest High School yearbook
E.G. from Germantown asked Vance Lauderdale if he ever dined at Shakey’s pizza parlor. Not only did Vance and family darken the doors on occasion, our history columnist, it turns out, actually worked at Shakey’s for a year in his younger days, and has the stories to prove it.
photograph courtesy special collections, university of memphis libraries
Flashback: Pappy Sammons
Story by Vance Lauderdale | Image courtesy Special Collections, University of Memphis Libraries
His full name was Lehman C. Sammons, but everybody knew him as Pappy. He was also known as “The Lobster King,” “The Mayor of Overton Square,” and even “The Oldest Chef in the World.”
This remarkable fellow was born in 1879 in Dancyville, Tennessee, and came to Memphis at the age of 10 because, as he later told a reporter, “My family couldn’t afford to feed me.” In 1947, along with a friend, he opened Pappy and Jimmy’s Lobster Shack, on Madison, which lasted for more than three decades.
photograph by pat rainer
#1 Fan: Jody Stephens
Words by Alex Greene | Image by Pat Rainer
Seemingly ageless, as the last living original member of the seminal band Big Star, Jody Stephens is the ultimate appreciator. Alex Greene spent time with Stephens for this profile, published in our January 2023 issue.
