Edgar Gregory Jr., 66; Clinton Pardoned Him of Fraud

Edgar Allen Gregory Jr., a Tennessee businessman who, with his wife, was pardoned on federal bank fraud charges by President Clinton, has died. He was 66.

Gregory, who suffered from pulmonary lung disease, died Sunday at his home in Brentwood, Tenn., according to his son, Don.

Gregory and his wife, Vonna Jo Gregory, were convicted in the 1980s for irregularities at a small bank they ran in Alabama. They received probationary sentences.

Over the objections of the Justice Department, Clinton pardoned them in 2000. That sparked a congressional investigation into $240,000 in undocumented consulting fees that Gregory paid to Tony Rodham, the brother of former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Gregory, whose major business involved operating a series of state and regional fairs and carnivals, mainly in the Southeast, hired Rodham in 1998 as a consultant. That year, Gregory sent Rodham to the United Arab Emirates to pursue a carnival deal that never materialized.

Rodham acknowledged that he had asked the president to pardon the Gregorys, but said that he had received no money for his efforts. For his part, Gregory said that although he had asked Rodham to intervene, he had not paid him to do so.

“I can say to you unequivocally, he never got a dime for helping us in any pardon, nor did he ask for one,” Gregory told The Times in March 2001.

Raised in Pensacola, Fla., and Jackson, Miss., Gregory served in the Navy in the 1950s. He and his wife, whom he married in 1957, owned a series of businesses over the years, including car dealerships, motels, a propane gas company and small banks.

In the 1980s, they moved to middle Tennessee, where he operated United Shows of America Inc. and Gregory Entertainment, which owned memorabilia and royalty rights to songs by the late country music singers Jim Reeves and Faron Young. In August 2002, Gregory filed for bankruptcy protection for himself and those two businesses.

Gregory made entertainment contacts through his businesses and became close friends with former singing cowboy Gene Autry, and his wife, Jackie. Gregory sat on the board of Autry’s Museum of Western Heritage in L.A.

“Ed Gregory was a dear friend of Gene’s and mine for over 15 years,” Jackie Autry said in a statement this week reported by Tennessean newspaper.

The Gregorys were also leading contributors to the Democratic Party over the last three decades.

In addition to his wife and his son Don, Gregory is survived by another son, Daniel; two daughters, Faith Gentry and Jodi Anderson; and six grandchildren.