TOP PHOTO: The small town boy does good, and Dean Dillon encourages youth that the sky is the limit; dreaming is still alive.

Dean Dillon motions for other family members to join the photo. Sister Faith and her husband Danny are in the back with other sister Hope in the front.

By Jim Freeman

LAKE CITY, TN (WLAF) – The old house that sat along Highway 116, a couple of miles north of Lake City, is gone. That’s the house where legendary singer-songwriter Dean Dillon first remembers as home. It was just up from the Cherry Bottom split.

See the full photo gallery HERE from WLAF’s Charlie Hutson.

“I like to think my accomplishments were seeded here as I look back on my days,” said Dillon between draws on a cigarette late Friday morning. For a man who is so good with words, Dillon called it hard to put into words, this special honor about to be bestowed upon him.

Dean Dillon spoke before a large turnout on Friday afternoon outside the Coal Creek Miners Museum.

A Tennessee Music Pathways marker was a few minutes away from being unveiled as Dean and I visited in what was the parking lot of the White Stores when we were childhood pals. He said his memories of growing up were here, here in Lake City where the marker will forever stand along U-S Highway 25W/Main Street honoring his life and legacy.

The marker sits not too far from where Brass Field McGhee, the grandfather he called Dad, took him for his first haircut. The butch haircut didn’t stay short for long, because Dean vowed, when he got the chance, that he wouldn’t cut his hair again.

Sisters Hope and Faith listen with their older brother Dean as Friday’s program began.

Though that old house Brass Field built is long gone, the wonderful memories are forever long on Dean Dillon’s mind. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 09/25/2023-6AM-PHOTOS COURTESY OF WLAF’S CHARLIE HUTSON)

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