NASHVILLE — Soon after we moved to Nashville in 1987, I started hearing stories about a brilliant Belle Meade man who didn’t exactly behave according to Belle Meade norms.
Neil Cargile was the president of a Nashville-based dredging company with business the world over. Born into wealth in 1928, he played football for Vanderbilt, flew planes for the Navy, married and divorced — twice — and fathered three children.
He was a small-government conservative. He was also famous in Nashville for his pleasure in wearing women’s clothes on social occasions.
Mr. Cargile called his alter ego “SheNeil.” Just before he died, Mr. Cargile was the subject of a 1995 New Yorker profile by John Berendt titled “High Heel Neil.” Mr.