Image:WrightDiesKingsportNews.png

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28 MAY 1954
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Thomas Jefferson Wright, II1915 - 1954
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Kingsport News

Kingsport News - Front page Kingsport, Tennessee Friday, May 28, 1954

TRUCK KILLS TOMMY WRIGHT IN TEXAS Driver Says Golfer Fell into Path Ridgefields Pro Thought To Have Suffered Amnesia

DALLAS-Thomas J. (Tommy) Wright Jr., Ridgefields Country Club pro, was killed here Thursday about 7:30 p.m. (8:30 p.m. Kingsport time) when struck by a tractor-trailer truck.

Wright, 38, who had been missing from Kingsport since Sunday, May 16, was believed to have been suffering from amnesia.

Sgt. Roy Scandifers told the Times-News the driver of the truck said he saw the man standing near the road.

The driver told officers as he approached, Wright either jumped or fell into the path of his vehicle and he was unable to stop in time to avoid him. The truck was en route to Ft. Worth.

Scandifers said Wright was pronounced dead on arrival at a Dallas hospital. He said be had only 18 cents in his possession at the time of the mishap.

Wright had taken his family to church on May 16 and had not been heard from since.

He came to Kingsport in 1948 after the Ridgefields golf course was completed. He was a former Tennessee Amateur golf champion and was known to all golfers in the South as one of the top pros in this section.

The only other possessions found on Wright after the mishap were a bus ticket from Kingsport to Dallas, a razor, and a shaving brush.

Wright, who turned pro in the late '30s and served as club pro at Knoxville's Holston Hills and Whittle Springs courses before going to Ridgefields in 1948, was voted Knoxville's outstanding native golfer for the first 50 years of the century in a poll conducted in 1950.

He won the state amateur championship -- the only Knoxvillian to do so -- by defeating Tom White of Memphis in the finals at Nashville's Belle Meade Country Club course. He was city champion several times in Knoxville.

He was a veteran of World War II and a member of the Arlington Baptist Church in Knoxville.

The body is being returned to Knoxville where funeral services will be held.

Surviving are his widow. Mrs. Virginia Mary Wright; four daughters, Margaret, Evelyn, Virginia Mary and Cecili Wright; one son, Thomas J. Wright, III; parents, Mr. and Mrs. T. J. Wright Sr., of Knoxville.

**CORRECTION: The article has the four daughters names wrong. They are Margaret, Virginia, Cecilia and Linda.**

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