by Randy Owen
And much like at the June Jam, the lineup of artists who have taken the time to participate in the radio effort or come to the hospital to visit kids and maybe sung them their own versions of “Angels Among Us” is lengthy: Kenny Chesney, John Michael Montgomery, Martina McBride, Lonestar, Jewel, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, and Vince Gill and Amy Grant. There are just too many to keep track of. Oh, did I mention Marlo and Tony Thomas, who have taken the reins from their dad and helped keep his dream alive? It’s a long list, believe me.
In 1997, ALSAC held a gala in Memphis to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of St. Jude and honor the man who started it all. Before over a thousand people, it was my very great honor when Tony Thomas, Danny’s son, presented me with the Founder’s Award because of Country Cares. My whole family was there to witness this, not to mention to hear Tony Bennett sing and Phil Donahue, husband of Marlo Thomas, tell jokes. It was a very special evening.
I’ll give John Moses the last word on the subject of St. Jude: “I think Randy is one of the people he sings about when he sings ‘Angels Among Us.’ I think he was sent by someone up above—as the lyrics say—‘to teach us how to live, to show us how to give, and to guide us in the light of love.’”
Gratifying words, John, and certainly words that could easily apply to you and the millions of people supporting the vital work of St. Jude.
I don’t spend all my free time working with St. Jude. I have many other passions that get me out of bed in the morning and put me in touch with the community at large, especially if it involves helping farmers and preserving the family farm. I’ll never forget the time we performed for Willie Nelson’s inaugural Farm Aid benefit concert at the University of Illinois in Champaign on September 22, 1985. Now a twenty-three-year institution, the first Farm Aid was a seminal event in raising national awareness about the plight of thousands of family farmers, and we were proud to be there alongside Johnny Cash, Charlie Daniels, Bob Dylan, and a dozen other major artists.
What has forever stayed with me from that day is a handwritten letter I read on national television from a woman named Sue Massey of Hollandale, Wisconsin. The Massey family—Sue, her husband, Kenny, and their five children—was about to lose its dairy-farm-turned-egg-farm to foreclosure, a common story among family farmers in those times. Sue’s words struck a chord with every person in that crowd in Champaign: “My husband, Kenny, is a third-generation farmer, but we are faced with an approaching forced farm sale. Words can’t relate how destructive this can be. One’s self-esteem drops to rock bottom, and feelings of failure move in. The stress can be hard on a marriage and devastating to the kids.
“In 1968 the farm was debt free…. Then suddenly prices dropped drastically and stayed down way too long…. Now all that’s left are the bills…. Farmers aren’t looking to get rich. It’s the simple things they love and understand…. Raising crops and watching the children grow…being close, being together with the family as fruits of our labor….
“This is a plea for help from our young family in its struggle to hang on. Please forgive us for asking, but we are at the point of desperation. The forced sale is within 8 to 12 weeks and time is of the essence…”
There was really nothing we could do to save their farm—after a four-year struggle to hold on to it, they finally gave it up. The farm that had been in Kenny’s family for more than eighty years was sold at auction on the steps of the courthouse in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. The Masseys went on to find a new life for themselves. We couldn’t work a miracle at Farm Aid, but we put a human face and a family name to the plight of struggling farmers everywhere, to praise their efforts to fight to the very end, even as they failed.
The story of the Massey family and their deep love of farming and the land simply reaffirmed my commitment to devote as much time as possible in helping rural kids get off to a good start in the agricultural and cattle businesses. I was raised on a farm, I still live and work on a farm, and I think farming is vital to our economy and is a healthy, productive way of life. As I’ve said before, it’ll be a sad day in America if and when we become as dependent on foreign food and fiber sources as we are on foreign energy sources today.
My goal is to encourage young people to stay in the field of farming. One of my efforts has been to lobby the legislature of the state of Alabama to actively promote family farming as a career choice. To this end, I helped create a $50,000 annual scholarship fund that would be awarded to kids who participate in state livestock competitions and show lambs, goats, steers, and the like. The recipients would receive scholarship money for college, but not necessarily as agriculture majors. Unfortunately, given the shifting winds of state politics, the program has since been shuttled for other priorities.
Farming has an increasingly bad image in this hi-tech age. I walk into a classroom in Alabama, or anywhere probably, and the majority of kids and teachers kind of look at you funny when you start talking about the joys of growing food or raising cattle. You even mention planting corn or picking cotton, and they smirk.
At this point I usually look at them and ask, “So, what are you going to do when no one you know can raise potatoes or run a milking operation? What are you going to do when someone in a foreign country sets the price and the availability of your most basic foodstuffs? Are you going to eat that computer you have in your hands? Are you going to milk that iPod?”
In the long run, family farming is a way of maintaining control over our lives, to be independent and self-sustaining. In the short run, it is a great way to teach youngsters the value of dedication and hard work. Because of my work with programs like the scholarship fund that took me all over the state, I’ve met a lot of kids who are enthusiastic about rural life. For the most part, no matter their circumstances or backgrounds, they are courteous, respectful of others, self-starting, and hardworking. I heard one judge in a livestock competition sum it up nicely. He said, “I want you kids to look around at all of you who are showing today. Because, believe it or not, you’re probably looking at your future governor, or future senator, or the guy or gal who will be running the factory you’ll be working in. If you go back and check the backgrounds of many of our social leaders, you’ll see that many were raised in the country and participated in events just like this.”
I know this firsthand. I have a daughter who loves living on a farm and working with livestock and is also the salutatorian of her high-school class and played Lydia the Gypsy in the student production of Hansel and Gretel. (Her sister, Alison, also starred in a number of school productions and was valedictorian.) There is no contradiction between being a well-rounded, educated person and getting your hands dirty.
Among my duties in this area, I am the chairman of youth efforts at the Alabama State Junior Heifer and Steer Show, held annually in Montgomery. I helped start the rookie divisions, five or six in number, areas where kids who have never shown before get a chance at some recognition. We came up with this inexpensive medallion to give to all the competitors, no matter where they place. The truth is, kids who have never been in an event like this most likely will do a poor job of showing animals they have raised. But they get a chance to be judged fairly and encouraged to come back next year in better shape.
Whenever I’m with these first-timers, I remember how shy and withdrawn I was when I was their age. Like me, they may go to school and sit in the corner, and no one pays any attention to them. They may feel self-conscious because they’re from the country, don’t have much money, or even have cotton dust on their hands. But at the show there is this one brief moment when a judge, probably from Auburn or some other august institution, is looking at them and taking both them or their work seriously. They are the center of attention, and, win or lose, they can’t help but feel good about it. The next year, those kids won’t be the rookies at the show. Their moments with the judge could affect their whole lives.
Sometimes they’re a little confused but still as straight and honest as they come. One judge told me about a
brief conversation he had with a very young competitor with a pained look on her face.
“So, young lady,” he said, admiring her entry, “what do you think about your heifer?”
“Right now,” she said, “I don’t like her much.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, “because she’s stepping on my toes.”
A memorable encounter with one young farmer-to-be has stayed with me since the day I met him. I was walking through the aisles of the show, and this kid, probably about twelve years old, walks up to me boldly and sticks out his hand. I shake it and ask him how he’s doing. He says, “I’m doing fine, sir. I’m from Crenshaw County. The only people in my 4-H Club are me and my sisters and brothers.”
Impressed, I couldn’t wait to see how he did in the competition. I watch as he and his brother walk into the showring and show a cow and a calf. And they finish dead last! Upon the announcement, both my friend from Crenshaw County and his little brother walk over to the judge, shake his hand, and walk out of the ring with their heads held high. It was very classy.
And I thought, Watch out for those two.
I meet a lot of genuinely good kids like this who only want a chance to excel in an area they know and love. Some come from divorced families where one parent moves away and they lose the support they need to prepare a new animal for the show. We then try to find volunteers who can help that kid break a steer and keep competing. We don’t want to lose that kid.
Many of the great farmers in Alabama, I’ve come to learn through this work, are African Americans, long marginalized by prejudice and inability to get the support of lending officers at the banks, people who can determine the life or death of a family farm. Now, at our statewide steer show, the proportion of black kids participating is ever increasing, great news for farming in Alabama. These kids will be successful—they’ll put their talent with animals on display and learn and grow—and I think any parents, teachers, or coaches, no matter how they might smirk at the future of farming, would see this if they came to a show.
As you no doubt have gathered, I have very strong feelings about this. I feel it is critical, especially for the state of Alabama, that we stand up for these kids. Whatever it takes, we need to keep them on the farm and get the farm strong and prosperous. Having gained so much from growing up in the country, from the music I make to the Herefords and Angus I raise, I think it would be criminal to see Alabama farmland turned into subdivisions and shopping malls. Even up here on this relatively isolated mountain, I can feel the houses getting closer and closer. The farms need to be left alone.
If there’s not a future in farming, you might say, then we ain’t got a future.
I have met many fine people outside of music since Alabama first began to perform, from John Moses to that twelve-year-old future farmer who was perfectly happy to come in last at the Heifer and Steer Show, but a man whose name I must add to this chronicle is my late, dear friend Dale Earnhardt. Dale and I had careers that almost perfectly paralleled each other’s. We both got going around 1980 and grew from there. I think we were alike personally as well, both of us being quiet and introspective when we were performing for the public. When Kelly said that “it’s hard to hide real people,” I think she must have had Dale in mind. He was one of the most real I ever knew.
Ever since I listened to races on the radio with my daddy, I have always loved NASCAR. At one point, long before NASCAR was a major sport on TV, I tried to get racing and TV together. I hosted a TNN show and invited a bunch of greats like Bill Elliott and Sterling Marlin to appear, as well as the great Bobby Allison, after his career-ending accident at the Pocono Raceway in 1988. My first question to him was, “So, Bobby, what was the highlight of your career?” He said, “I can’t remember.” He couldn’t remember because that wreck had wiped out his memory. I had just asked a really stupid question.
I met Dale Earnhardt for the first time in 1981 when neither of us was all that well known. He had been NASCAR Rookie of the Year in 1979 and won the Winston Cup Championship in 1980, about the same time Alabama was starting its string of twenty-one straight hits. A friend of mine named Ralph Seagraves, who liked to refer to himself as “just a little old cigarette salesman from Winston-Salem, North Carolina” but was in fact the man who created the NASCAR Winston Cup, called one day to say he had someone he wanted me to meet. Ralph had always helped out Alabama charities whenever he could. I called Kelly, who was shopping down at the grocery store at the time, and she rushed home in time to meet Ralph and his guests—Dale and Teresa Earnhardt.
We had just moved out of the little brown house and into our big house across the road. I remember Dale’s saying, “Man, I love this house.” Then he sat down on the hearth of the fireplace and said, “You know, I hope I can build my wife a house like this someday.” And this was after he’d won his first NASCAR Championship. He never took his success for granted, which is why he worked so hard and was one of the most hard-charging drivers in the sport, if not the most, until the day he died at Daytona. He was the kind of driver my daddy always liked to cheer on while listening to races on the radio, and when I went to a race at places like Talladega or Charlotte, it was basically to see Dale.
I’d see him whenever both of our insane schedules allowed—he came to the Alabama employee-and-friends Christmas Party one year—and in 2000 he invited Kelly and me to his big New Year’s party in North Carolina. It was the millennium New Year’s, the craziest one of them all. I said, “Dale, you know, they’re telling me stuff like all the clocks are going to stop, all the computers are going to mess up, it’s going to be Armageddon, the end of times, plus, I don’t really like to fly.” I was completely exhausted at the time and planned to sleep in my own bed on New Year’s.
He wouldn’t give up. I tried another tack, completely true, in fact. “You know, Dale, I don’t know what kind of parties you throw, but when Kelly and I go to a party, we don’t drink and act crazy, so it might not be a lot of fun for us.” He said, “I guarantee you this is not going to be like that.” So we went.
He was exactly right. It wasn’t a wild and crazy millennium party. It turned out to be one of the happiest, most relaxed times he and I ever spent together. The next morning, he got me up early, and we went for a long drive on his farm, looking at the deer and just talking about our lives. Dale was like I am today. He cared more about raising deer and other wildlife and admiring them than shooting them. Kelly and I ended up staying a couple of days in his place, spending the kind of time together we never could at a racetrack. At a race, the minute Dale walked out of his trailer, he belonged to everybody, friends and strangers alike.
I’m so eternally grateful that I spent that holiday with him. It was the last time, it turned out, that I would see him alive.
On the Saturday before the Sunday of the 2001 Daytona 500, our son, Heath, then in college, had a baseball game we were looking forward to. Given my road schedule while my kids were growing up, if I could figure a way to go to one of their sports events or plays or livestock shows, I wouldn’t miss it. Kelly had never been to a Daytona 500. We were all ready to go until Heath’s Saturday varsity baseball game at Samford University got rained out and postponed until the next day, the day of the race. So we made the decision not to go to Daytona. We wanted to watch our boy play ball.
I had the radio to listen to the race, and early on Dale was running second or third and seemed to be in great shape. So I said to myself, Well, he’s running good, and I shut it off when the game got going. The game lasted awhile, and so when I finally got back to the car, I called our bus driver, Jeff Rucks, because I knew both he and his daddy loved Dale and he’d tell me how the race went. When I got him, he just started crying. He said, “Man, we lost Dale.” I said, “What do you mean, ‘we lost Dale’?” He then told me the whole story of the crash on the last lap of the race that had killed Dale. Kelly and I both burst into tears. It was such a shocking, unbelievable loss.
; In a way, I’m happy that I wasn’t there that day, that fate had made it so we were with Heath instead. I wouldn’t want to keep on seeing that crash in my mind. I wouldn’t want that to be my last memory of Dale. I’d much rather remember the time we had together at New Year’s when I think of him. I’d much rather remember the guy who loved to hunt and fish and simply be outdoors, not The Intimidator, but the reserved, soft-spoken friend of mine.
Teresa called Kelly a day or two later and asked me to sing at Dale’s service. So Kelly and I went back to North Carolina, and I sang at the private family service. The same day, I sang again at the big public service. That day was one of the most gut-wrenching days I’ve ever experienced. I don’t really know how I got through it.
I sang two songs: “Angels Among Us” and the song I had written for Kelly almost thirty years earlier when she was leaving South Carolina to go join her dad in Germany: “Goodbye,” otherwise known as “Kelly’s Song.”
That one word hurts so bad
When you lose the best you’ve had
But you keep the faith and pray to return…
Sometime after the service, some of the record people said, “You know, if we release those two songs sung live like that, we could probably sell six or seven million copies. That’s what happened when Elton John’s people released ‘Candle in the Wind’ after the death of Lady Di.” I said, “No, I don’t care if we’d sell a hundred million, I’m not going to make money off of my friend.” And that was that.