How about a marker at the hospice facility where you pass away? Or the roadside where you're killed in an auto accident? Great memorial huh?
What is a shame is that there is nothing in Nashville to commemorate Jim having been there, except for a picture at Studio B.
Mary made a mistake burying him in an out-of-the-way place like Carthage, Texas, in a county where Tex Ritter also grew up, and with one of Ritter's kinfolks running the place. Tex's wife even objected to Jim being included in the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame (!) though she sure liked the huge bronze statue of old Tex on his steed out front, that cost a fortune. She remarked Jim already had a monument two miles out of town so why did he need to be remember in the Texas Hall of Fame?
But Carthage has sure benefitted by thousands of Reeves fans traveling from all around the world to come to that little town to pay their respects to Jim. How many Tex Ritter fans have done the same?
That's the mentality of some of the powers that be there. They have always been jealous of Jim's fame and NOT been receptive to honoring his life. Mary Reeves was so "out of it" right after Jim's death that Tom Perryman made the arrangements for Jim's burial there. I'm not blaming Perryman (who has a lot to answer for in putting together the deal years later to sell Jim's estate to a carney and convicted con man). But the arrangements were so hasty and Tom should have talked Mary out of this very bad idea.
Carthage is an out of the way little place that hides Jim. If he had been buried in Nashville and immortalized there, people might still remember him.
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