Douglas Irving Maxwell Jr.

Douglas I. “Doug” Maxwell, Jr., Nashville, TN, 85, died October 22, 2015, at Richland Place Health Center in Nashville. Doug was born in New Orleans, November 22, 1929, the only child of Lois Sprowls Maxwell and Douglas I. Maxwell, Sr.

Doug attended his first years in grade school from 1935 to 1939 in Ploesti, Romania where his father had been transferred in the oil business. The families of the men who worked in Romania, were sent home in 1939 when WWII began brewing at which time Doug returned to Evanston, IL, where he attended the Todd School in Woodstock until 1943. He then joined his parents for two years who had transferred to Aruba, and attended the Lago Colony High School. When his father became the Chief Operating Officer of Esso’s (later Exxon’s) European production facilities and moved to London, Doug moved back to the states and finished high school in Evanston.

He attended Vanderbilt University and graduated in 1951 with a degree in chemistry and biology. He was also on the Vanderbilt track team, intramural football and basketball teams. From 1951 to 1955, he was a staff announcer doing sports play-by-play at stations in Jackson, Knoxville, and Nashville. He joked that his dream was to “become the next great Bill Stern or Ted Husing but that it hadn’t worked out.” Later followed a thirty-year career in pharmaceutical sales.

He was a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs, Bears, and Blackhawks. Also, a devotee of tennis from youth until recent years, and a fifteen-year volunteer at the Nashville Talking Library, broadcast reading newspapers for the blind.

Doug will be remembered for his kindness, his amazing memory of sports statistics, his extensive vocabulary, his wonderful sense of humor and eloquent way of expressing it. He loved to listen to classical and big band music, read the newspaper, and watch the news. He had a way of making people feel good; one friend stated: “It was uplifting to be around him.”

He was a member of Johnson’s Chapel United Methodist Church in Brentwood, TN.

Doug is survived by children, Douglas I. Maxwell, III, and Elizabeth Maxwell Welch (Whit); grandchildren, Layton Maxwell Byrd (Cody), Douglas Maxwell, IV; dear friend and companion, Dee Richards; cousins and their families, Ron Erland and Paul Erland, Coral Maxwell and her children, Hal Maxwell, II, and Laura Maxwell Barnes, and their children.

A Memorial Service will be held at Johnson's Chapel United Methodist Church in Brentwood, TN, on Friday, November 6, at 1:30.