Thomas Peyton Chaney, 85, died Saturday, November 26, 2022 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was born December 1st, 1937 to the late BT “Boots” and Corinth Catherine Taylor Chaney, Horse Cave. He graduated from Caverna High School in 1956 and from Georgetown College in 1958, where he was student manager for the athletic teams. Tom attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for two years before enrolling at Baylor University in their Masters program in speech.
He taught literature, theater, and speech at Lee’s Junior College, Jackson, Kentucky; Caverna High School, Horse Cave, Kentucky; Southern Arkansas University, Magnolia, Arkansas; and Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa. He left Simpson College to become a reporter for the Northern Kentucky Post in Covington.
In the mid-1970s he took up farming with his Aunt Daisie Carter, Legrand, Kentucky. The story of the end of his farming days was documented in the New Yorker magazine’s “Telling a Kentucky Story,” by Calvin Trillin.
Tom worked with his friends Bill Austin and Warren Hammack to establish Horse Cave Theater, which opened on June 10, 1977. It was a dream of Tom’s from his youth, when there was no theater available to the children of Horse Cave. The theater survived for 30+ years, and it was Tom’s singular delight that it served more than 10,000 students each year.
After five years in Philadelphia as a construction manager and a hawker of trinkets to “flatland touristers,” he returned to Horse Cave to open The Bookstore and The Bookstore Cafe with his sister and brother-in-law Ann and Jerry Matera. He sold books to people from every continent and continued his decades-long service as a marriage officiant. Among the hundreds of weddings he conducted were the first same-sex marriages in Hart County, Kentucky.
The Bookstore Cafe was a fixture on Water Street for ten years, with Tom as head cook. His specialty was Tuesday fried chicken in honor of the old Midway Cafe. He fried chicken in France, furnished a country ham and his mother’s recipe to Julia Child, and cooked for a choir of Tibetan monks.
At the Bookstore, he hosted the daily Philosophical Society, the weekly Jammin’ on the Porch, and readings by many authors. He retired and moved with his sister and brother-in-law to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in August 2021.
He is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Ann and Jerry Matera; his niece Corinth Matera and her spouse Mary Manor of Minneapolis, Minnesota; his niece Dr. Elizabeth Matera of Morehead, Kentucky; and his faithful friend, Keith Martin of Calvert City, Kentucky. He was the patriarch of both the Taylor and Chaney families and is survived by first cousins Barbara Appleton Paulson of Washington, D.C.; Susan Appleton Howell of Roanoke, Virgina ; Bill Chaney of Hilton Head, South Carolina; Sue Gilmore of Nashville, Tennessee; Laura Stonestreet of Richmond, Virginia; Ellen Stott of Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Francis Parker of Frankfort, Kentucky. He is also survived by extended family and hosts of friends from Alaska to Istanbul.
Cremation was chosen, and a service in the Horse Cave Municipal Cemetery will be held sometime in 2023. Condolences may be sent to Ann Matera at 3733 23rd Ave S, Apt 431, Minneapolis, MN 55407. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Tom’s honor to the American Cave Conservation Association, P.O. Box 409, Horse Cave, KY 42749
