Dennis Hathcock never believed the legend of Sheriff Buford Pusser – not for a second, he said.

In southwest Tennessee’s McNairy County, where he’s lived all his life, many hail the sheriff as a folk hero. But not Hathcock.

He never bought into the image of a fearless Pusser battling corruption and organized crime in this rural county near the Mississippi border. Nor did he buy the Hollywood version of Pusser as a righteous, club-wielding sheriff in the hit 1973 movie “Walking Tall” and its sequels.

“Never. Never,” said Hathcock, 75. “I knew Buford. A lot of things people say about him are movie fabrications. Well, except that he was big and tall.”

Over the years, the line between Pusser’s real life and the movie versions have blurred, making it difficult to separate fact from fictio

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