Frank Gorrell

Who was Frank Gorrell?

Frank Cheatham Gorrell was an American politician who served as the 47th Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee from 1967 to 1971, during Governor Buford Ellington's second term.

Born in 1927 in Russellville, Kentucky, Gorrell attended college and played college football at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. After college he attended law school at Vanderbilt, then joined the Nashville law firm of Bass, Berry & Sims.

In 1947, while a student at Vanderbilt, he married Bette Jamison, which connected him to the powerful Middle Tennessee Jamison family, whose interests included a mattress factory near downtown Franklin, Tennessee. In 1964, Governor Frank G. Clement decided that he desired Gorrell to be lieutenant governor to replace the outgoing James L. Bomar. The Tennessee General Assembly had begun to show a measure of independence from the executive branch of government in this era, but was generally still largely subject to it. However, a faction of the Democratic Caucus in the Tennessee State Senate, which in Tennessee elects the lieutenant governor from its own members, had decided to resist the selection of Gorrell.