In celebration of Beacon’s 20th Anniversary, Beacon President and CEO Justin Owen wrote a book called Modern Davids: Celebrating 20 Years with 20 Stories of Everyday Tennesseans Fighting Big Government. We will be sharing an excerpt from the book each month to tell you more about our heroes. The book is out now! You can secure your copy by clicking here.
Beacon didn’t always tell stories as part of our work. Like many think tanks, early on we focused almost exclusively on conducting research and publishing white papers. But it’s not enough to win over minds; to be successful, we must also win hearts.
One of our first forays into humanizing issues happened when we met Roger Blackwood, a farmer who was the first person featured in our “Faces of Freedom” publication. Roger’s mother deserted him when he was just ten years old, and three years later he borrowed $42 and ran away from his abusive, alcoholic father. For four months, he was a homeless teen on the streets of Nashville until he got a job painting football bleachers and re-enrolled in school. After finally learning to read, he went on to earn five college degrees despite suffering from dyslexia.
Roger started or owned nearly two-dozen businesses over his career. During that time, he also took to farming, which he says he enjoyed the most. “I’ve never had one cow ask for a raise,” he quips.
More than a half-century ago, Roger used his hard-earned savings to purchase a farm in Robertson County, Tennessee. According to Roger, his farm is “the only place I’ve ever considered home, having grown up without one.”
While Roger loves to farm, he shared that he was afraid that when he passes away, his children would have to sell off major portions of his land. His reasoning? Tennessee’s death tax, which would take a significant portion of Roger’s self-made wealth before he could pass it on to his family for whom he had worked for decades to leave a comfortable nest egg.
Roger’s story resonated widely across the state. Even liberal-leaning newspapers like the Jackson Sun embraced his story, publishing an editorial calling on the state legislature to “save our family farms” by repealing the death tax.
In 2012, legislators did just that, passing a bill to phase out the tax over four years. Now in his eighties, Roger not only gets to save his farm and pass it on to his loved ones, but he saved thousands of other farms just like his from facing the same fate.