Billy Walker was a legend in the Grand Ole Opry
Published 9:00 pm Sunday, May 21, 2006
FORT DEPOSIT, Ala. – Billy Walker, the Grand Ole Opry legend whose hits included “Charlie’s Shoes” and “Cross the Brazos at Waco,” died in an accident along an Alabama interstate on Sunday. He was 77.
Walker was killed along with his wife and two of his band members when a van they were riding in ran off Interstate 65 south of Montgomery and overturned, state troopers said.
Killed in the wreck were Bettie Walker, 61; and Charles Lilly Jr. 44, both of Hendersonville, Tenn., and Daniel Patton Sr., 40, of Hermitage, Tenn.
Walker’s grandson, Joshua Brooks, 21, also of Hendersonville, was injured in the accident. He remains in critical condition at an Alabama hospital, officials said.
The group was on their way back to the Nashville area after performing at a show near Gulf Shores, according to Tom Bowers, manager of the Hendersonville Funeral Home.
Walker joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1960.
Robert Heinecken used photos in innovative ways
Robert Heinecken, an artist who was instrumental in changing the way photographs are considered in the American cultural landscape, died Friday at a nursing home in Albuquerque, N.M. He was 74.
Heinecken, who had relocated to New Mexico after living and working principally in Los Angeles for more than 50 years, suffered from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease since 1994, said his wife, Joyce Neimanas.
In the 1960s Heinecken began to develop an approach to photographs that was distinctive in the history of the medium.
Essentially, the artist decided that in the wake of the media explosion that had come to characterize contemporary life, enough photographs existed in the world. Rather than make more, he would manipulate existing ones. His art became an attempt to clarify, reveal and sometimes confound the subliminal social, political and artistic codes they contain.
Heinecken was among the first to consider himself an artist who used photographs, not a photographer who made them.
From Herald news services
