There was another time when I discovered that one of my boat paddles was broken. None of my boys would fess up to doing it, so I gave each of them three licks. It was kind of a military-style group punishment. It turned out that one of their buddies actually broke it, but he didn’t confess to the crime until several years later. I’m sure he realized that if he’d confessed when the boys were younger, they all would have whipped him!
As hard as Kay and I worked to instill morals, principles, and a belief in what’s right and wrong in each of our sons, it wasn’t always easy. People might watch Duck Dynasty and sometimes think we’re the perfect family. They see how much we love and respect each other. But the reality is that it wasn’t always easy. We had our trials and tribulations like every other family out there, and there were actually times when Kay and I believed we would lose more than one of our sons. They were the scariest times of our lives.
As hard as Kay and I worked to instill morals, principles, and a belief in what’s right and wrong in each of our sons, it wasn’t always easy.
Alan, our oldest son, probably had the roughest childhood because he was the oldest boy when I was having all of my problems. Kay was essentially a single mother for a long time, so Alan was given a lot of responsibility when he was only a young boy. When Kay started working at Howard Brothers Discount Stores, Alan was only seven but was left at home to care for Jase and Willie. Alan had to grow up really fast and didn’t get to enjoy his childhood or play baseball and other sports like his brothers did, at least not until I turned my life around. Alan also attended four or five different schools because we moved around so much, which I’m sure wasn’t very easy for him either.
Alan was a very popular kid in high school, and before long he was hanging out with the wrong crowd. I can remember one time when he and some buddies were camping at a spot down the road from our house. They were drinking beer and did some foolish things, like knocking down mailboxes along the road. Some neighbors came to our house the next morning to complain about it, and I jumped in my truck to find them. I brought Alan and his buddies back to our house and lined them up against my truck. I gave each of them three licks. There was one boy I didn’t even recognize, but I told him if he ever wanted to come back to the Robertson house, he was getting three licks like the rest of them!
After Alan graduated from high school, his behavior was so wild and out of control that Kay and I didn’t want him around his younger brothers anymore. He was the oldest boy and his brothers looked up to him, but he wasn’t setting much of an example for them. So we threw Alan out of our house, which certainly wasn’t an easy thing to do. My sister Judy was living in New Orleans at the time, and Alan moved there to live with her. You want to talk about going from the frying pan to the fire!
Alan lived in New Orleans for about two years, and he started dating a woman. She told Alan she was divorced, but she was really only separated from her husband. The husband followed Alan home from work one day and beat him really bad with an iron tire tool. When a policeman showed up at the scene and talked to Alan, he could sense there was something different about him.
“Son, where are you from?” the policeman asked Alan.
“West Monroe, Louisiana,” Alan told him.
“I don’t know what went wrong in your life and how you ended up here, but go back to wherever you’re living. Pack up everything you’ve got, and go back to your mom and dad. I can tell you’re a good boy and just got off track.”
Alan told me he looked up at the police officer, as the sun was shining behind him, and he looked like an angel. Alan believed the police officer was sent by God to help him turn his life around.
Alan came home and we greeted him with open arms. We cooked a big meal and celebrated his homecoming. It was like the Parable of the Lost Son in the Bible. In Luke 15:11–24, Jesus tells us that there was a wealthy man with two sons. When the younger son asked for his share of the estate, the man divided his property between his two sons. Before too long, the younger son left for a foreign country and squandered his wealth through unrighteous living. Then a severe famine wiped out everything, leaving the younger son homeless and hungry. After briefly working as a swine herder, the boy repented and returned home to his father:
While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
The incident in New Orleans helped Alan turn his life around. He worked for Duck Commander for a few years, then attended seminary and worked as a pastor at White’s Ferry Road Church in 1988, eventually becoming a senior pastor there. While Alan is still heavily involved in the church and often preaches on Sunday, he rejoined the family business in 2012. He helps maintain our schedules and travels with me to speaking engagements and other appearances around the country. Alan has a calming effect on everyone around him, and he’s really good at defusing situations. He’s the one who rides herd around his brothers and is the voice of reason and wisdom among them. Alan and his wife, Lisa, have two daughters. His oldest daughter, Anna, has been working with Duck Commander since high school. Her husband, Jay, who was a teacher and coach at a high school, started working with us building duck calls during the summer, but now he’s with us full-time.
Unfortunately, we also had to go through some of the same struggles with Jep as he grew older. When Jep was in high school, he was the only boy living at home because his brothers were married and living on their own. The older boys like to say Jep had it a lot easier than they did growing up. I was still pretty strict on the boy, but our business was doing a lot better, so he probably had a few more luxuries than the older boys did.
I’ll never forget one night Jep was coming home late and got his truck stuck in a muddy road close to where we live. It was in the late 1990s, so Jep had one of the early cell phones in a bag in his truck. It was after midnight, and he called home and Kay woke me up to get Jep out of the mud. I had a Jeep that I bought brand-new in 1974, but it was pretty old by then, and the lights didn’t work anymore. I usually only drove the Jeep to my duck hole and back. So I had Kay follow me in her car to provide lights for me to see. It was still raining pretty heavily when we got to the field where Jep’s truck was stuck. I jumped out of my Jeep to winch his truck out, but then Kay pulled up right next to me, not realizing she’d driven into the soft mud! Now Jep was stuck in front of me, and Kay was stuck behind me. “I am surrounded by idiots!” I screamed.
Jep went all the way through middle school without having any problems, and then we sent him to Ouachita Christian School, which was pretty expensive. We figured if he went to high school there, he wouldn’t get into any wild stuff. But with only four or five months of high school left, Jep broke up with his girlfriend. And then he started sailing backward. I couldn’t believe it and didn’t want to believe it, to be honest. He moved into an apartment in West Monroe with his cousin, who was attending college at the University of Louisiana–Monroe. Just like Alan, Jep started drinking, cutting up, and using drugs. We knew Jep was drinking because we could smell alcohol on his breath at church on Sunday if he’d been out drinking the night before. Kay would always ask me, “What’s that smell?” I’d tell her, “That’s whiskey on Jep’s breath.”
Just like Alan, Jep started drinking, cutting up, and using drugs.
Willie was actually the one who brought the seriousness of Jep’s problems to our attention. Willie was working with the high school youth group at White’s Ferry Road Church, and he found out Jep had asked one of the kids to go to a bar with him. Willie came to our house and said, “I’m done. We’ve
got to do something right now. I’m just tired of it.” We called Alan and decided to have a family intervention. Alan lined everything up, and we were all waiting for Jep when he came to the house one night. Kay was terrified because she was certain I was going to throw Jep out of the house, like I’d done with Alan.
I told Jep, “Give me the keys to your truck—the one I’m paying for.” He pulled the keys out of his pocket and handed them to me. I told Jep what his brothers had told me about his behavior.
“Son, you know what we stand for,” I told him. “We’re all trying to live for God. We’re not going to let you visit our home while you’re carrying on like this. We’re paying for your apartment. We’re paying for your truck. You’ve got a decision to make. You’re either going to come home and basically live under house arrest because we don’t trust you, or you can hit the road—with no vehicle, of course. Somebody can drop you off at the highway and then you’ll be on your own. You can go live your life; we’ll pray for you and hope that you come back one day. Those are your two choices.”
Jep looked at me, lowered his head, and started pouring out his sins to me. He said he’d been taking pills, smoking marijuana, getting drunk, and on and on. He was crying the whole time, as he confessed his sins to us and God.
I’ll never forget what Jep said next. He looked up at me and asked, “Dad, all I want to ask you is what took you so long to rescue me?”
After Jep said that to me, everyone in the room was crying.
“You still have a choice,” I told him.
“Well, my choice is I want to come home,” he said.
Jase has always been our most straitlaced son, so he was the hardest on Jep when he strayed.
“Son, you can’t hang out with those people,” Jase told him.
“Daddy won’t let ’em get to me,” Jep said.
“Daddy won’t and we won’t, either,” Jase promised him. “But you have to come to all the good things to help you. You’ve got to find better friends. You can’t be running around. You have to break it off with the bad influences.”
Thankfully, our second prodigal son was coming home. It was a heart-wrenching episode for all of us. Alan was so distressed by his little brother’s struggles that he left our house, drove down the road, and then stopped and dropped to his knees and wept in a field.
Alan was so distressed by his little brother’s struggles that he left our house, drove down the road, and then stopped and dropped to his knees and wept in a field.
Like Alan, Jep turned his life around after overcoming the struggles of alcohol and drugs. He came to work for Duck Commander and found his niche as a videographer. He films the footage for our Duckmen videos and works with Willie on the Buck Commander videos. Jep is with us on nearly every hunt, filming the action from a distance. He knows exactly what we’re looking for in the videos and films it, downloads it, edits it, and sends it to the duplicator, who produces and distributes our DVDs.
Having worked with the crew of Duck Dynasty over the last few years, I’ve noticed that most people who work in the film industry are a little bit weird. And Jep, my youngest son, is a little strange. It’s his personality—he’s easygoing, likable, and a lot more reserved than his brothers. But he’s the only one who will come up to me and give me a bear hug. He’ll just walk up and say, “Daddy, I need a hug.” The good news for Jep is that as far as the Duck Commander crowd goes, one thing is for sure: weirdos are in! We covet weirdos; they can do things we can’t because they’re so strange. You have to have two or three weirdos in your company to make it work. It’s truly been a blessing to watch Jep grow and mature and become a loving husband and father. He and his wife, Jessica, have four beautiful children.
Like I said earlier, Jase was the only one of our four sons who stayed the course and never deviated to the right or left. He always looked straight ahead; he never drank, never cursed, and always lived his life the way God wanted him to live. I think one of the reasons Jase and Willie never strayed too far is because they were so involved in the youth group at White’s Ferry Road Church. Willie’s only problem was that he believed he was a ladies’ man until he met Korie. He was always jumping from one girl to the next until he settled down. It really made an impact on both of them. Jase was always looking out for his brothers. Even though Jase and Willie were very competitive growing up, Jase always had Willie’s best interests at heart. One time, Willie and Jase were at a friend’s house in high school. Jase walked into the basement and found Willie playing strip poker with some other kids.
“What are you doing?” Jase asked him.
“Playing strip poker,” Willie replied.
“You’ve stripped enough,” Jase told him. “Let’s go.”
The thing I really like about Jase is that he’s as obsessed with ducks as I am. I rarely took my boys hunting with me when they were very young. In fact, I never took them when I was still an outlaw. “Not this time, boys, we might be running from the game warden,” I’d tell them. But after I repented and came to Jesus Christ, I started taking my sons hunting with me, beginning with Alan. Before we moved to where we live now, it was a pretty long haul from town to the Ouachita River bottoms. Alan got carsick nearly every time I took him hunting, but he didn’t think I knew. We stopped at the same gas station every time, and he’d walk around back and lose his breakfast before he climbed back into the truck. I was proud of him for never complaining.
I took Jase hunting for the first time when he was five. He was shooting Pa’s heavy Belgium-made Browning twelve-gauge shotgun, which he could barely even hold up. It kicked like a mule! The first time Jase shot the gun, it kicked him to the back of the blind and flipped him over a bench.
“Did I get him?” Jase asked.
I knew right then that I had another hunter in the family, and Jase is still the most skilled hunter of all my boys. I trained Jase to take over the company by teaching him the nuances of duck calls and fowl hunting, and he is still the person in charge of making sure every duck call sounds like a duck. Not only did Jase design the first gadwall drake call to hit the market, he also invented the first triple-reed duck caller. Jase and I live to hunt ducks. We track ducks during the season through a nationwide network of hunters, asking how many ducks are in their areas and what movements are expected. Then we check conditions of wind and weather fronts that might influence duck movement. We talk it all over during the day and again each morning, before the day’s hunt, as we prepare to leave for the blind.
When Kay and I began to ponder becoming less active in the Duck Commander business, we offered its management to Jase, who had been most deeply involved in the company. But he had no desire to get into management. Jase likes building duck calls and doesn’t really enjoy the business aspects of the company, like making sales calls or dealing with clients and sponsors. Like me, Jase is most comfortable when he’s in a duck blind and doesn’t care for the details that come with running a company. Jase only wants to build duck calls, shoot ducks, and spend time with his family (he and his wife, Missy, have three kids).
So then we offered the company’s management to Willie, who seemed to have the most business sense among our sons. I knew from the time Willie was only a little boy that he could sell beachfront property in Iowa if he put his mind to it. When I was a commercial fisherman, Willie sold fish on the side of the road with Kay or me. Willie can still quote some of the sales pitches: “Yes, sir, these are golden buffalo, the pride of the Ouachita River.” Willie was even selling carp, a worthless fish you couldn’t sell at the fish market, but he was able to unload quite a few of them with his salesmanship and charm. Willie always said if you can sell fish, you can sell anything. He sold candy from his locker while he was in elementary school and sold worms from an old wooden boat on our river dock. The boy always knew how to make a dollar.
Willie attended college at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, and then finished up at Louisiana-Monroe. He gained some management experience from working at
Camp Ch-Yo-Ca, a Christian youth summer camp, where he met his wife, Korie, whose family owned the camp. They were married shortly after Korie left for college and now have four children.
Willie, at age thirty, agreed to take over Duck Commander. For the first few months, he cleaned the yard around my house and did other odd jobs while he learned the business. Before too long, Willie convinced me he was capable of doing a lot more. He became involved in the business side of the company, expanding our Internet operations (Korie’s dad, Johnny Howard, was selling our merchandise through a catalog and online before she and Willie bought the operation) while also landing us new sponsors and endorsement deals. Willie also landed the company its TV deals with Outdoor Channel and then A&E, which really put Duck Commander in the fast lane.
Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander Page 13