Sources |
- [S104] Cocke County, Tennessee, and its People, Cocke County Heritage Book Committee, (Walsworth Publishing, 1992), 71, 369.
- [S113] Manes Funeral Home, (http://www.manesfuneralhome.com), 21 Mar 2010.
Sallye Elizabeth "Libbye" Norris McMahan
- [S24] The Newport Plain Talk, (http://www.newportplaintalk.com), 8 Mar 1999.
Mc Mahan, former clerk and GOP official dies Saturday after surgery, heart attack
By: David Popiel
Source: The Newport Plain Talk
03-08-1999
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Former Cocke County Circuit Clerk, local Republican Party leader and retired United State Department of Labor official Iliff McMahan Sr., 83, died Sunday about noon.
He underwent surgery about a week ago in Baptist Hospital of East Tennessee in Knoxville because of complications from diabetes and apparently suffered a heart attack shortly before noon.
The Newport native had been hospitalized late last year when he suffered congestive heart failure, and he had been in declining health since December.
During a political and federal government career that spanned half a century, he met every president from Harry Truman to George Bush, with the exception of John F. Kennedy.
Born near Second Street, the son of Creed and Evie (Hill) McMahan, he was one of four children and was preceded in death by his brother, Everette "Jigs" McMahan, and his sister, Mary Margarete (Mrs. Ois Seay). His brother, J.M. McMahan, survives him.
Creed McMahan operated a restaurant on the northwest corner of Broadway and later was a produce trucker with Burl McGaha. Creed McMahan served as a Newport police officer during the 1930s.
Iliff McMahan attended Newport Grammar School and Cocke County High School. Some of his classmates were Hazel Thornton, Ida Ford, Lucille Cureton, and Katherine Franks Ottinger.
He graduated in 1936 after serving as captain of the high school baseball team and playing second base. His favorite subjects were history and English and he credited Luzell Babbs for his interest in history.
At Mars Hill College, he continued playing baseball and prepared to be a school teacher thanks to a scholarship he obtained with the help of the late Dr. Hobart Ford.
The Mars Hill Mountain Lions baseball team, which included McMahan, went on to win the conference and was national junior college champions.
As planned, he returned to Cocke County and taught first at Rock Hill School and other one-room school houses including Unity and Saint Tide Hollow.
By about 1940, he decided to change careers and went to work for Alcoa Aluminum Company as a machinist along with his friend, Cecil McGaha.
The War Years
McMahan said he recalled when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, he and McGaha had gotten off the "graveyard shift" and went for breakfast that morning. They read the headlines in the Knoxville Journal.
Because he was in a strategic war-related industry, he was able to continue working at Alcoa. Thirty-five percent of the workforce at Alcoa was exempted. In early 1944, he joined the Navy and went for training at Camp Wallace, Texas. Later he was transferred to San Diego for duty on an aircraft carrier.
One of his jobs was helping to load war planes which were transported to larger Pacific fleet carriers. At Pearl Harbor, he transferred to a fleet tug, which had earned a presidential citation for duty during the surprise attack.
Because of an ulcer, the Navy sent him back to California where he recuperated and was released from service, and then hitchhiked to Tennessee–the long route through Montana.
McMahan wanted to meet as many state governors as he could and also visit families of soldiers still on duty in the Pacific to bring news of them to the families.
Enters Politics
Unsure of which road to take next, he considered attending the University of Tennessee School of Law and was accepted. He attended one year.
Dave Ottinger suggested in early 1946 that McMahan consider running for public office.
He was living in Knoxville at the time, but entered the GOP primary in Cocke County unopposed for circuit court clerk. The office had become vacant after the death of Perry Valentine.
After his first year in office, he married Libbye Norris, of Lenoir City, on November 2, 1947.
They lived in Newport off Filbert Street when their only child, Iliff "Dick" McMahan Jr. was born in 1951 in Valentine-Shults Clinic.
The pay was low as circuit clerk–about $2,000 a year–so McMahan decided to make a bid for Cocke County Sheriff and opposed Doc Smith.
In the GOP primary in 1952, McMahan came within 123 votes of beating the incumbent who had the support of Circuit Judge George Shepherd.
McMahan continued as circuit clerk until 1956, and during those years, he and his wife operated the Jefferson County Standard Banner, the Dandridge Banner, and Grainger County News.
He developed a strong interest in journalism, which was natural to him through his schooling in English and history.
While Libbye McMahan managed the newspaper office in Jefferson City, he wrote and sold advertising. In 1956, they sold the newspaper to the Gentry family, which operates it today.
Federal Office
In February 1956, the McMahans left Newport and moved to Nashville, where he worked as a regional information officer with the US Department of Labor.
It was in Nashville that he met a young state legislator, Jimmy Quillen, who went on to become a US congressman and life-long friend of the McMahans.
Working in the federal building in Nashville, it was his duty to prepare labor news and information for Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, and Michigan.
Many of his articles were published in leading newspapers including the Louisville Courrier and Cleveland Plain Dealer. This caught the attention of Washington officials who invited him to accept a post in the District of Columbia in 1960.
As director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) division of information, he traveled extensively and eventually visited every state.
One of his jobs was to provide news releases about the NLRB members and NLRB chair, all of whom were presidential appointees.
His work with the labor department and NLRB gave him the chance to meet presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Carter, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and George Bush.
McMahan was at one time associate director of the WIN program on the White House staff of President Ford.
When he retired in 1988, he was executive assistant to the chairman of the NLRB, Donald Dotson, a Reagan appointee. This was one of the highest offices in the NLRB.
Although retired after working for more than 40 years, he continued to write as a columnist for the Newport Plain Talk. His weekly column, "Browsing," was filled with local history and humor.
Politics remained in his heart and he became "parttime everything and fulltime Republican," and still followed his ambition to help as many people as he could.
His inspiration in life was "to be a friend of man," which he did as a member of the Newport Kiwanis Club. He served as club president in 1951.
His work for the GOP reached back to the days when he campaigned for Carroll Reece in the first district and later Quillen as a campaign manager.
He served as chair of the Cocke County Republican Party and managed the Sundquist for Governor campaign locally. He also worked for the election of US Senators Fred Thompson and Bill Frist.
No one was a stranger to him, and he often shared stories from Cocke County, Tennessee, and US history with a keen memory for details.
Just days before his death and birthday on March 1, when interviewed by the Plain Talk, he said the two most important things in his lifetime were his marriage and birth of his son.
His funeral is on Wednesday at 2 p.m. at Manes Funeral Home with Dr. David Green and Dr. Castro Smith officiating. Burial will be in Union Cemetery.
© 1999 The Newport Plain Talk
- [S1] U. S. Social Security Death Index, 409-14-5416.
Issued in Tennessee, last residing in Newport, Cocke County, Tennessee
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