Earl Dean Tackett, 1945 to 2027

October 14, 2027

Earl Dean Tackett, 82, of Goodlettsville, died Tuesday morning at home on Dry Creek Road. Arvella was with him. The percolator was still going.

He was born March 9, 1945, in Celina, the third of five children of Vernon and Opal Tackett. He left school in the eleventh grade to work at his uncle's sawmill and finished his diploma at night two years later, which he mentioned rarely and was proud of always.

He served in the Army from 1965 to 1968, motor pool, Fort Campbell and then Kaiserslautern. He never saw combat and said so plainly whenever anyone assumed otherwise.

He hired on with the electric co-op in 1969 and climbed poles for thirty-six years. During the ice storm in February 1994 he worked twenty-two hours straight, came home, and fell asleep in the chair with his boots on. Arvella took them off.

He married Arvella Sims on June 3, 1967, at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. There was ham and a sheet cake in the fellowship hall afterward. They were married sixty years.

He kept eleven hives behind the house and sold clover and sourwood honey at the Saturday market, three dollars the half pint, the jars labeled in masking tape in Arvella's handwriting. He spent eleven years restoring a 1962 Ford F-100, green, and drove it to church and nowhere else. He taught the men's Sunday school class for nineteen years. One January he fixed Dwight Petrie's alternator in the church parking lot with his coat off and would not take money for it, and Dwight brought him a cooler of crappie every spring after that.

He was a quiet man in a room and a talker in a truck. He could not carry a tune. He ate his supper at five o'clock.

He is survived by his wife, Arvella Sims Tackett, of the home; his daughter, Renée Tackett Broom, and her husband, Cal, of Hendersonville; his son, Danny Tackett, of Portland; five grandchildren, Josh, Whitney, Cole, Baylee, and Emmett; two great-grandchildren; his brother, Hollis Tackett, of Celina; and a great many nieces, nephews, and men he trained on a bucket truck.

He was preceded in death by his parents; his brothers, Vernon Jr. and Cleatus; his sister, Faye Tackett Willard; and his grandson, Aaron Broom, in 2011.

Visitation will be Thursday from four until eight at Hollow-mere Memorial. The funeral will be Friday at eleven o'clock at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, with Brother Dewey Sparks officiating. Interment will follow in the church cemetery, on the slope, near the cedar.

Pallbearers will be Josh Broom, Cole Tackett, Emmett Tackett, Dwight Petrie, Ronnie Sims, and Lamar Gilley. Honorary pallbearers are the Thursday morning coffee table at the hardware store on Long Hollow Pike.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Pleasant Grove cemetery fund or to the backpack program at the elementary school.

The hives have been moved to his son's place in Portland. Danny has the smoker and the veil and has been shown what to do.

Anyone still holding a tool of his is welcome to keep it. The family will receive friends at the house on Saturday. There will be food.