Dan Conaway
Conaway: The welcome reality of whimsy
“It doesn’t matter how far-fetched it might seem, or whether or not anybody else sees it. Just look. Just see.”
Dan Conaway
Columnist
Dan Conaway is a lifelong Memphian, fascinated and frustrated with his city, but still in love. A columnist since 2010, his distinguished advertising career has branded ribs in the Rendezvous and ducks in The Peabody, pandas in the zoo and Grizzlies in the NBA. Stories in Memphis tend to write themselves. He’s helped a few along. Two book collections of his columns have been published.
There are 350 articles by Dan Conaway :
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August 2025
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Dan Conaway
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July 2025
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Dan ConawayConaway: I’m willing to let this masterpiece slide
“We need to start clawing back, kicking and screaming, that which was given and guaranteed by the bodies who stole it from us in the night — literally.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: It’s not this side, it’s what’s over the garden wall
“Today, more than anytime in my life, truth and trust are fleeting things, and once lost seemingly impossible to find again.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: This is my backyard, and now — all of now — has no place in it
“Like much of what I learned in the backyard of my childhood, honor has become a quaint deceit.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: The Fourth is in all of us
“July Fourth is in you. Look for it, and realize you’re a revolutionary.”
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June 2025
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Dan ConawayConaway: After 25 years, it’s time to put some local teeth in our game
“We don’t need to borrow an identity. Nashville has been borrowing ours for decades. When my ad agency handled the NBA Grizzlies introduction to Memphis, I tried to make that point.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Wide-eyed wonder, our town discovered
“He got out of the car knowing his grandfather better, and his grandfather found his own hope in the wide eyes beside him.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Don’t play a game in Nashville. Don’t give Nashville a dime.
Nashville — home to neither team — will benefit as much as either Memphis or Louisville. Who thought this was a good idea?
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Dan ConawayConaway: Assault by packaging is open and shut case
“The top of the medicine packet didn’t give, but the edge julienned his fingers like Julia Childs over a pair of carrots.”
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May 2025
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Dan ConawayConaway: The man behind it all, out loud and clear, and all ours in Memphis
“Civil rights remain a movement, and that movement is more at risk now than any time in a generation. Diversity and inclusion have been declared illegal.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Our ghosts are calling this Memorial Day
“On Dec. 2, 1943, USS LCT-242 was sunk by a circling torpedo off Naples, Italy. In a little more than a year of service, she earned two battle stars. She was a Memphis girl.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: We are Warriors, every one
“It’s the city, man,” the band’s leader, Ollie Liddell, answered when asked where that joy comes from, “the soul.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: We are the target; we are the catch
“Like a .30-06 Springfield with a buck in the sights, the curricula in our schools have become a target, and our history has become fair game.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Struggle and sacrifice, set in stone, set afire, set to rise again
“We cannot escape our responsibility to our place in history any more than a fire can burn down what happened at Clayborn Temple.”
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April 2025
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Dan ConawayConaway: A journey to my tomorrow and the path of my yesterday
“As you read this, I’m headed east on Interstate 40 to a reading and book signing of ‘Never Over The Hill,’ a memoir I coauthored with Bill Haltom about our time in college.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Everybody in the golf world knows every King-Collins course, except here, of course
“Should you like to play a King-Collins course, still rare but growing in number, there’s one right smack dab in the middle of your city.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: First-period civics – the school board mess
“Whatever happens next, however ill-conceived, will largely be the result of the hubris and selfishness of the majority of that school board, and the losers will be our city’s kids and our tomorrow.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: You can’t sell Summer Drive-In memories; they’re priceless
“If the drive-in was mine, what would I do with it?"
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March 2025
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Dan ConawayConaway: A life, and this one comes cubed or crushed
And the photo fell away, while the magnet crashed to the floor between my feet, depriving the meerkat of its left ear. There’s something to be said for sloppy, arbitrary, impetuous, and rough around the edges. Right in front of you. You know, like life in the moment.
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Dan ConawayConaway: If we don’t do Memphis over, others will, and soon
“We have to get our act together. The city and county mayors need to sit down together for a cup of coffee. Strong coffee. A pot of it.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: A time for reflection — and mayonnaise
“For me, Lent is a time for reflection. The journey so far, the journey at present, and the journey to come. That’s what I feel called to do these 40 days.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Of Katz and rats, dads and doughnuts, then and now
“Even though we were in those same places at the same time, we were not the same. My public pool was in the Fairgrounds; Howard’s was in Orange Mound. At Katz, he’d have his water fountain, and I’d have mine.”
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February 2025
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Dan ConawayConaway: Eight Tennessee volunteers could save us — but we only need four
No core principles would be abandoned. In fact, those four would become the most important members of Congress, and their tiny caucus the most impactful in the entire body.
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Dan ConawayConaway: They should wear ‘This Shirt Kills Kids’
“Numbers are cold, numbers don’t bleed. Numbers don’t silently cry in a waiting room or crumble to the floor when the news arrives. Numbers don’t comfort or explain or justify when a child dies.”
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Dan ConawayConaway: Bottled arrogance, just in time for Valentine’s
Dan Conaway writes, “We’ve been chosen as the test market for a new men’s cologne just in time for Valentine’s Day: Elon Musk.”
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