COWAN, Tenn. (WTVF) — We are saying goodbye to a friend. The funeral was held Friday for Polly Caperton Hughes. Polly long ran a downtown business that changed lives. In fact, she played a role in local women's history.
"People were just drawn to Polly all her life," said Polly's niece, Rachel Thompson.
Actually, I can speak to that. I met Polly in August of last year.
"I was a sophomore in high school when I learned to knit," she told me in 2024, talking while her hands furiously knitted.
She was sitting in the lobby of the Franklin House hotel in Cowan. Rachel runs the hotel.
"Polly said, 'I just love to sit and watch the cars go by on the street,'" Rachel remembered.
Polly was 105, and she could tell this story like it happened yesterday of the interesting role she played in Nashville history.
It was 1960. Polly told her friends she had an idea for a business in downtown Nashville.
"I'm going to open this personnel agency," Polly told me in 2024. "They said, 'if you do, Polly, use your name. Polly Hughes Personnel Service.'"
At this moment in history, the number of women in the labor force was growing fast. In fact, the employment rate for women was increasing roughly three percent each year of the 60s.
"There's starting to be an equality, women gaining their independence, having an identity separate from belonging to a man," Rachel said.
Polly's office was long in the Sudekum Building downtown. She was getting jobs for those women.
"She wasn't afraid to break ground on behalf of these women," Rachel continued. "She believed in her girls, and she went to bat for them."
"You'd send them out on an interview, and you couldn't wait until they called to tell you if they got the job or not," Polly said in 2024.
In 1983, Polly returned to her home of Cowan. She worked for the Chamber of Commerce and ran an antique shop.
The day I met Polly last year, it was her 105th birthday party. A friend had found her a truly wonderful gift. It was an original matchbook for that trailblazing Polly Hughes Personnel Service.
"This is just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful," Polly said that day, looking out over all the guests who showed up for her party. "I never dreamed anything like this would happen to me."
With Polly's death, Rachel has so many grand memories of that aunt who would knit in the lobby and share amazing stories. At one point, Rachel even made buttons reading 'Aunt Polly adopted me in Cowan, Tennessee'.
"I feel like we had a lot of time to have Polly invest in us and sew seeds and endow us with good things to grow and be confident," Rachel said. "I don't really feel like she's gone."
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
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