Top Country Music Award Goes to Hank Williams Jr.

--The country music industry took note of its top performers at the 22nd annual Academy of Country Music Awards at Knott’s Berry Farm’s Goodtime Theater in Buena Park. Hank Williams Jr. was named entertainer of the year during the ceremonies broadcast on NBC. Randy Travis won awards for best album (“Storms of Life”), song and single record (“On the Other Hand”) and male vocalist of the year. Reba McEntire collected honors for female vocalist and video of the year for “Whoever’s in New England.” New vocalist honors went to Dwight Yoakam and Holly Dunn. The Forester Sisters were named top vocal group and The Judds won vocal duet honors.

--City Councilman Bill Kelsey was elected mayor of Crystal Beach, Tex., but he’s not celebrating because he won’t have a city to govern. Voters also decided to abolish the 15-year-old city. Kelsey warned that it would turn the community into “one of the dirtiest, most dangerous places in the state.” Henry (Hank) Marsh, who led the petition drive to put the issue to a vote, said he was “a little sad” about the outcome. But he said that people who ran the city previously ignored the will of the majority. Marsh finished last in the mayoral race.

--Confirming British newspaper reports, a mental hospital said that a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, listed in a leading social register as dying in 1961, is a long-term patient. It said Katherine Bowes-Lyon, 60, has been in Royal Earlswood Hospital in Redhill, south of London, since 1941. Her sister, Nerissa Bowes-Lyon, who died last year at the age of 67 after spending much of her life in the same hospital, also was listed as dead in every edition of Burke’s Peerage since 1963. The book lists her as dying in 1940. The two sisters were daughters of John Herbert Bowes-Lyon, brother of Queen Mother Elizabeth. Buckingham Palace said: “We have no comment about it at all. It is a matter for the Bowes-Lyon family.” Lady Elizabeth Anson, a niece of the two sisters, issued a statement on behalf of the family saying that “there was no attempt at a cover-up.” She said her grandmother was “a very vague person who often didn’t fill out the forms that Burke’s Peerage sent her, either properly or completely.” A Surrey health authority spokesman told reporters that three other women, sisters who are the queen’s second cousins, were admitted to the hospital at the same time as the Bowes-Lyon sisters. Two of them, Etheldreda and Idonea Fane, are still alive and sharing the same ward as Katherine Bowes-Lyon.