The Glamour Shot Guy showed up in the Knoxville Journal newsroom one afternoon in late spring, 1990. It must have been a slow news day because most everybody in the building seemed to find time to talk to him. Everybody but me. I stayed glued to my desk while my co-workers drifted over to shake and howdy as he waited to be summoned to the editor’s office to try to wrangle an endorsement in the upcoming county primary election.

His name was Dennis Francis and he was an Irishman from Buffalo, New York, who came to Knoxville for law school and never left.

He was running in the Democratic Primary for a General Sessions Court judgeship. I don’t remember whether he got the endorsement (he probably didn’t), but he was popular in the newsroom. Everybody but me wanted to talk to Glamour Shot, who actually did resemble the too-pretty yard sign photo.

There were rumors of teenaged girls stealing those signs and hanging them in their bedrooms. Cigar-chewing ward-heeler Bobby Toole declared the picture so pretty that he didn’t know whether to vote for the guy or kiss him. It was a simpler time. Nobody else around here was putting their mugs on political signage early 1990. Years later I would learn the photo was the work of photographer Gary Heatherly.

I have no memory of the details, but later figured out that the real issue was Glamour Shot’s boss: Aubrey Jenkins, a wily old lawyer and former chair of the Knox County Republican Party who’d gotten his son elected sheriff a few years earlier. Jenkins dabbling in a Democratic primary was a pretty big deal to those who cared about such things, which I didn’t.

I wasn’t assigned to cover judicial races that year and planned to vote for Glamour Shot’s primary opponent, whom I’d known in college, although I wasn’t particularly invested in General Sessions Court judgeships.

But that photo aggravated me. I finally gave in to my vexation and stalked over to the corner of the newsroom where he was holding court and demanded to know what the hell made him think he could get elected.

He looked amused, and said, “I’m not going to get elected.”

I didn’t expect that answer, and was suddenly bumfuzzled. Candidates didn’t say things like that, and still don’t. Regardless of party affiliation, they always see a path to victory. Even obvious losers. Why else do it?

Everybody laughed. I slunk back to my desk.

A few days later, I ran into him on Gay Street and asked him why the heck he was running if he didn’t think he could win.

He grinned, leaned in and said, “To boost my name recognition. It’s good for business.”

I felt like Diogenes stumbling over the Last Honest Man.

I kept running into him at political events and, against my will, that quirky humor and brusque honesty won me over. He won his primary and by the time he lost the general election I’d quit calling him Glamour Shot (although he told me his father had nicknamed him “Hairdo”).

Later, I decided that what made that general election battle interesting was that it pitted Jenkins’ candidate (Dennis) against Richard Bean’s (Gail Jarvis), setting up a behind-the-scenes battle between two local GOP heavyweights.

Losing seemed to bother Dennis not at all, and some time afterward, he told me the publicity had doubled (or maybe tripled) his client load.

By this time, we had become friends, a condition that lasted for more than 30 years, although we did have the occasional knock-down, drag-out over some obviously guilty client he was trying to get sprung. We occasionally collaborated, too, which generally ended up with him representing some unfortunate battered woman turned killer I’d written about, and always required him to go into his own pocket to get them court-ready. (I have a vivid memory of a murder client complaining that the court clothes Dennis’s law clerk picked out made her look like Granny Loomis.)

In recent years, his major preoccupation has been raising two young grandsons, to whom he and his wife, Theresa, were devoted. He got involved in a group called Grandparents as Parents and I wrote a story about that, too. He was my go-to for more great yarns for three decades.

He hadn’t been feeling well for most of this year, and although he didn’t avoid doctors, the ones he saw regularly were specialists who checked out his heart or his skin or his nerve-damaged hand. By the time he was diagnosed with cancer it was too late. When I asked him where it was, he said “Everywhere.”

A couple of weeks ago after a trip to the emergency room, he called me to say goodbye:

“It’s been a ride, Bean.”

I was stunned. I visited him at his home on the lake and looked out at the beautiful view from his bedroom, knowing it would be the last thing he would ever see.

Two weeks later I was writing his obituary.

On Tuesday, I will be among those who will stand at his graveside. We will say goodbye to Dennis Francis on his favorite holiday – Election Day.

(Full obituary is here)