A Life Well-Lived: In appreciation of Ridley Wills II

Author and historian W. Ridley Wills II at Belle Meade Country Club, Nashville, Tennessee, 2019. Image courtesy of Eagledj.

Did you know a horse-racing track used to be where Centennial Park now stands? How about that pond built as a steam locomotive watering station? It’s beloved today as Radnor Lake. Then there’s Good Springs, which we today know as Brentwood.

Ridley Wills (1934-2025) had a natural curiosity. With ambition and high intellect, he researched and explained Nashville’s background to us. Ridley took early retirement from the insurance industry to become a full-time historian in 1983. With support from his wife Irene, he never looked back, and produced an avalanche of books about Nashville’s history, documenting many of its institutions, such as the YMCA, the Hermitage Hotel, and Montgomery Bell Academy.

Ridley once said, “History is all about people,” and his biographies chronicled Nashvillians from distinguished bankers to eccentric millionaires with dignity and humor. He authored Nashville Pikes, an eight-volume series, which tells the stories of the early settlers and our city’s early prominent citizens who helped shape the fabric and character of today’s Nashville.

He truly made a difference in many ways. Take, for example, the roof on the magnificently restored Glan Leven mansion, now home of the Land Trust for Tennessee. With Irene, he was instrumental in transforming the carriage house and mansion of the Belle Meade Historic Site & Winery. The good deeds are numerous, and the legacy will be lasting. To learn more about his extraordinary contributions, visit his Wikipedia page. We send our deepest condolences to the Wills family. Thank you, Ridley, for preserving the stories that define our city.