{"id":484,"date":"2011-12-29T16:22:26","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T16:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whisnews21.wordpress.com\/?p=484"},"modified":"2011-12-29T16:22:26","modified_gmt":"2011-12-29T16:22:26","slug":"two-gs-now-officially-tennesseans-of-the-year-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/2011\/12\/29\/two-gs-now-officially-tennesseans-of-the-year-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Two G’s Now Tennesseans Of The Year 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

As a child in the 1960s, Amy Grant<\/a> remembers a single pregnant woman staying with her family.Through a church-run program, \u201cunwed mothers were just put in homes. That was a different time,\u201d said the lifelong Nashvillian. Grant saw her parents\u2019 care and concern for others from a young age. She also remembers her family bringing in a foster child when the girl was only 7, a girl the family tried, but failed, to adopt. \u201cMy mother loved people,\u201d Grant said simply.<\/p>\n

Grant\u2019s husband Vince Gill<\/a> loves his mother, but he concedes he might\u2019ve been a bit more self-centered as a child than his bride. \u201cMy mom tells the story \u2014 I was a typical kid and she was harping on me all the time to cut the grass, cut the grass. And I never would,\u201d Gill said. \u201cAnd she said, \u2018One day, I\u2019m minding my own business and I hear the lawnmower start. And I thought, it\u2019s finally got to him. He\u2019s going to go cut the grass.\u2019 She said the lawnmower was on for about two minutes and it was off again. \u201cI went out and cut about three strips in the yard to hit golf balls, so I could have a tighter lie,\u201d said the avid golfer, laughing.<\/p>\n

No matter their starts, the country star and the Christian music icon \u2014 before and after they got married to each other \u2014 have grown into a couple on a lifelong mission to look for ways to help others, here in Middle Tennessee and around the world.<\/p>\n

For this, The Tennessean<\/em> has recognized Gill and Grant as the 2011 Tennesseans of the Year. Whether it\u2019s Grant hosting the Lipscomb University tree-lighting for the local food bank, Gill and Grant playing a fund-raiser show to battle depression, or the two meeting Make-A-Wish kids before the couple\u2019s annual Christmas concert, an Amy Grant-Vince Gill charity event is as ubiquitous here as Moon Pies. \u201cMy vote for Tennessean of the Year is Vince Gill because of his big-hearted altruism,\u201d newspaper reader Ann Frazier West wrote of the nomination. \u201cHe gives so much of himself and his talent to our community, raising funds for the betterment of those who might not have much quality of life otherwise, and just generally spreading happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

In choosing the couple for the annual award, The Tennessean editorial board notes, \u201cAmy Grant and Vince Gill not only make a meaningful impact on the global stage through their music, but their philanthropy also helps people throughout Tennessee.\u201d \u201cTheir years of charity work reached a crescendo in 2011, from St. Jude Children\u2019s Research Hospital and American Red Cross to the Mental Health Association of Middle Tennessee and many, many more causes. That crescendo peaked this year when one of Nashville\u2019s largest charity umbrella groups, the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, gave Gill and Grant its 18th annual Joe Kraft Humanitarian Award.<\/p>\n

The awards presentation happened at a typical Nashville hotel-hosted banquet, but it wasn\u2019t typical at all. \u201cAt the beginning, Vince walked out and he was already crying after going through the well-wishers in the lobby,\u201d foundation president Ellen Lehman said. A powerful video presentation moved the couple \u2013 and many in the audience \u2013 to tears. The breadth of the couple\u2019s work was represented in a quilt given to them that featured the 60 nonprofits and organizations they have supported. \u201cNot a soul left early that day,\u201d Lehman said. \u201cNot a soul. And that never happens.\u201d The honorees were also deeply moved. \u201cI loved everybody in that whole room. That\u2019s how I felt. It made me so glad to have lived in the same town for all of my life,\u201d Grant said. \u201cI knew we were not in New York or Chicago, because it was a whole room of people visiting, telling old stories, not in a rush.\u201dGill added: \u201cI\u2019m proud to be a part of that [philanthropic] community. I\u2019m proud that there\u2019s a whole side of Nashville that doesn\u2019t have anything to do with music at all that likes us. \u201cNashville, it\u2019s my hometown. It has a giving personality, and for a lot of people, [serving others] is a way of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gill said that way of life started for him when his career took off in the 1980s, and he began to get invitations to play and host fund-raisers. \u201cI think the very first thing I did was host a little golf tournament for Mercy Homes because somebody asked me. \u2018Really? You want me to host this? OK!\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIf somebody thinks you can help, that\u2019s such a great feeling.\u201d And Gill, a Country Music Hall of Famer, hasn\u2019t stopped chasing that feeling. Longtime manager Terry Elam said that early on, he had to train Gill to ask folks who approached him about charity events to call his management office. But Gill went ahead and did plenty of events without managers ever knowing. \u201cI\u2019d get a call from Hendersonville or Madison: \u2018I just wanted to get a message to Vince, thanks for helping at our school or our event or charity,\u2019\u201d Elam said. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll think, \u2018I didn\u2019t realize he did that Thursday night.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For Grant, every career move starts with serving others, her longtime manager Jennifer Cooke says. \u201cWhen I bring her something that\u2019s a good financial deal, one of the first questions she asks is, \u2018What charity can we involve?\u2019\u201d Cooke said. One of the biggest is Compassion International, a worldwide Christian-based child-sponsorship program with which Grant has been affiliated throughout her career. Grant pays more than lip service to Compassion: She and her children went to Uganda for a week to see the program in action. And Grant often keeps up with the kids she meets on such trips, whether she\u2019s directly sponsoring them or not, Compassion senior vice president Mark Hanlon said. \u201cIt\u2019s more of a heart thing and not so much about \u2018just a charity\u2019 of some sort,\u201d Hanlon said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen it in Amy and Vince in their generosity with people, anonymous or not.\u201dThat\u2019s an easy lifelong choice for Grant. \u201cMy mom used to tell me, \u2018If you\u2019ll get in the flow of listening to things around you and finding an honest way to be inspired, your life will be more interesting,\u2019\u201d she said. And it\u2019s an easy choice for Gill in his new hometown.\u201cNashville. It\u2019s just my home. Why wouldn\u2019t you want to do everything you could to make your home better?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Community Foundation\u2019s Lehman says Grant and Gill do charity work with \u201cthe purest motivations.\u201d \u201cThey are not in it for credit; they\u2019re not in it for fame; they\u2019re not in it for what it can do for their careers,\u201d Lehman said. \u201cThey\u2019re grateful for the lives they have and want others to have better futures.\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes service work even more rewarding is doing it with each other, the couple said. \u201cIt\u2019s always an honor for me to stand next to Vince,\u201d Grant said. \u201cI feel that way in a movie line, I feel that way at an awards ceremony. I have so much respect for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Partipilo\/The Tennessean<\/p>\n

By Brad Schmitt, For The Tennessean <\/strong><\/p>\n

This article sent in by Marty Martell Promotions\u00a0email martymartel@earthlink.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a child in the 1960s, Amy Grant remembers a single pregnant woman staying with her family.Through a church-run program, \u201cunwed mothers were just put in homes. That was a different time,\u201d said the lifelong Nashvillian. Grant saw her parents\u2019 care and concern for others from a young age. She also remembers her family bringing in a foster child when the girl was only 7, a girl the family tried, but failed, to adopt. \u201cMy mother loved people,\u201d Grant said simply. Grant\u2019s husband Vince Gill loves his mother, but he<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}