JOHN SANDERS

SANDERS--John Stoll passed away in Nashville, TN on December 28, 2021, after a short illness, surrounded by his many family members. A longtime resident of Beechville, Williamson County, TN, John was born in Louisville, KY on December 8, 1947, and was preceded in death by his parents, Grover B. Sanders, M.D. and Lida Stoll Sanders, of Louisville, and his sister, Lynn Chenault Sanders Wilson of Lisle, IL. He graduated from Atherton High School in Louisville, and then attended Vanderbilt University where he graduated with a B.A., and M.A. in English Literature. John continued his graduate education at Kelham Theological College, Nottinghamshire, England, and then completed further doctoral studies in Mediaeval Religion at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto. He also studied in San Lorenzo del Escorial in Spain, and in Rome. In 1975, he co-founded the Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer. He was Publications Editor of the American Church Union in Pelham Manor, NY. Following this, he became a partner and Senior Editor of the Regnery Publishing company, then headquartered in Chicago. During his time working with Regnery he made deep relationships with the then conservative thought leaders, which he maintained throughout his life. He was founder and owner of the J.S. Sanders & Company, book publishers, which he sold to the National Book Network, in 2000. He served on the board of the Publishers Association of the South. He was a closely associated with and later became the publisher for many of the "Southern Agrarians," whose membership overlapped with the "Fugitives," poets and writers such as Andrew Lytle, Donald Davidson, Caroline Gordon, John Crowe Ransom, Alan Tate and Robert Penn Warren, having republished a series of important books about the Civil War and Southern Reconstruction in addition to multiple works of historical fiction. He was publisher for other contemporary Tennessee writers such as Walter Sullivan and Madison Jones. One of the novels he published, "Nashville 1864: The Dying of the Light," by Madison Jones won the T.S. Elliot Award for Creative Writing, Rockford Institute for the Ingersoll Foundation in 1998. He attended the 1992 Republican Convention in Houston as an elected delegate from the Fifth Congressional District. In addition to his formal education, John was an autodidact and was a voracious reader of literature, philosophy, and history such that John was an historian, with an enormous breadth of knowledge from the Classics to the current era. He converted to the Greek Orthodox Church in 1977 with his wife and eldest son and he was a member of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Nashville, having served for many years on the parish council, holding every council office and being largely responsible for the iconography of the Church. He belonged to a number of historical societies, including the Filson Club of Louisville. He was a sometime board member of the John Randolph Club, a member of the Friends of Mount Athos, John Hunt Morgan's Men, among many others. He was appointed a Kentucky Colonel by Governor John Young Brown, III of Kentucky. While he lived in Tennessee for most of his life, he was first a Kentuckian. He was a direct descendant of the first pioneer families of Maryland and Virginia in the 1600s. His direct ancestors founded both Fort Harrod in 1773 and the Fort at Boonesborough in 1775 with Daniel Boone, the first European settlements in Kentucky. As such, his heritage was steeped in bourbon whiskey and thoroughbred horses. His great-grandfather, Overton Harris Chenault, was the breeder and owner of the 1901 Kentucky Derby Winner, His Eminence, among other famous horses such as the sire of Man-o-War. One of his favorite family stories was that his maternal grandmother, Talitha Chenault Stoll, related to him that the happiest day of her life was that Derby Day in 1901 when her father's horse won. He was named after his maternal grandfather, John G. Stoll, Lexington business leader, and owner and publisher of the Lexington Herald Leader. He is survived by his devoted wife of 47 years, Jane Dancey Trabue Sanders, of Nashville, their four sons, John William Chenault Sanders (Gracie), of Nashville, Andrew Battle Sanders (Betsy), of Memphis, Sterling McCann Sanders (Alice Broughton), of Nashville, and David Trabue Sanders (Victoria), of Charlottesville, VA; and eight grandchildren, Elizabeth Callie McCann Sanders, Cecilia Frances Sanders, Virginia Chenault Sanders, Richard Harris Sanders, George Battle Sanders, Sterling McCann Sanders, Jr., Dancey Trabue Sanders and Eleanor Fort Sanders, of Nashville. He is also survived by his brother, William McCann Sanders, of Lexington, KY, and numerous nieces and nephews. John loved his grandchildren and did much in the years he had with them to instill in them his most important values, and to encourage in them a love of reading. They liked to gather around his chair while he read them Hillaire Belloc's children's books, such as The Cautionary Tales, including stories such as "Charles Augustus Fortescue, Who always Did what was Right, and so accumulated an Immense Fortune." He loved, as they all did, to have him read to them the Hollow Tree Stories, written by Albert Bigelow Paine in 1898, which had been passed down for four generations of his family. The whole family loved to hear him read about Mr. Possum, Mr. Coon, and the Old Black Crow and their many adventures in the Big Great Woods. John was a man of great wit, a vast vocabulary, and was known as a wonderful host to his many friends. The serious nature of his intellectual pursuits in no way diminished his sense of humor and his contagious laughter. He was a great friend to all the wild and tame animals of his Cricket Hollow estate, having had as many as 20 dogs over the years, many of whom were such privileged animals that they were allowed to sleep in the bed, including his surviving dog, Peccadillo, known as "Dilly." He also loved his many cats, each of whom in John's words "enjoyed sleeping on the stomach of a recumbent man". He spent many hours reading in his comfortable study at Cricket Hollow where he lived since the early 1980's and where he maintained, and constantly added to, one of the largest and finest private libraries in the state. He quoted Dante in his final hours. He was widely travelled, having taken numerous European travels from his childhood until very recent years. He loved southern France, Italy, Austria, and Greece. He had a very cultivated palate and was a very generous tipper. A gathering of friends and family will occur on Monday, January 3rd, 2022, with visitation and a funeral service to follow at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Nashville. The burial will take place on Tuesday January 4th, 2022 at the Overton Harris Chenault plot at the Lexington Cemetery, Lexington KY. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made The Friends of Mount Athos.