Honky Tonk Angel (32 page)

“Patsy was still laying on the side of the road. I got real angry that they’d left her there. She’d cut an artery and was a bloody mess. Then I was told that, as bad off as she was, Patsy was more concerned about her brother and the others. She insisted that the ambulance drivers take them to the hospital first.

“I went in the ambulance with her to Madison Hospital. On the way I picked the glass out of her hair that she got when she was thrown through the windshield. It was amazing she was alive. I tried not to look at her because I didn’t want her to see me crying. She’d look at me and say, ‘Oh, Hoss.’ She made jokes all the way. There I was crying and laughing at the same time. I marveled at her strength. I thought, ‘My God! This lady’s absolutely amazing!’”

Mrs. Hensley stayed with her grandchildren, while Charlie, Dottie, and close friends kept vigil at the hospital.

Mrs. Ruby Nell Angell, thirty-two, was declared dead on arrival with fatal injuries to her head. She was riding in the car driven by her cousin, Mrs. Harold Clark, twenty-two, who was admitted with numerous cuts and bruises but listed in fair condition. Mrs. Angell’s son, Jimmy, six, was listed in critical condition with injuries to his chest. He died shortly thereafter.

Dr. Hillis Evans, the attending physician, told Charlie that Patsy’s injuries were so serious and life-threatening, it looked hopeless. As she was prepared for surgery, Patsy witnessed Mrs. Angell die. All through the long operation, Patsy’s prognosis was touch and go. Dr. Evans expected her to live only a few hours.

In a touching gesture of concern for their colleague, several hundred members of the Grand Ole Opry gathered en masse outside Madison Hospital immediately following the surgery. Patsy later extolled the fact that at least half of them stayed to keep watch from 7:00 P.M. to 2:00 A.M.

“They can’t believe she’s alive,” Charlie said over and over. The next day, he wasn’t optimistic. “The surgery went okay, but it don’t look good,” he told Dottie. She and close friends, such as the Dicks’ neighbors the Blairs, tried to build Charlie’s faith. “Patsy needs you now more than ever,” Dottie advised. “Don’t give up. You know she’s a fighter.”

That evening, as she lay in drug-induced semi-consciousness to relieve her pain, Charlie and Joyce Blair were startled when Patsy called out, “Charlie!”

“I’m right here, honey.” He and Mrs. Blair rushed to the bed.

“Jesus was here, Charlie. Don’t worry. He took my hand and told me, ‘No, not now. I have other things for you to do.”’

“Okay, honey. Okay.”

Patsy drifted off.

“God, Joyce, I don’t want to lose her.”

“Charlie, you heard Patsy. We have hope! You know Patsy and God are never wrong!”

On Friday, Charlie informed reporters Patsy was off the critical list. “She’s improving. Patsy’s got an awful bad cut on her forehead and one hip was dislocated. But she’s conscious and talks okay. The doctors say it’s going to take a lot of rest and time, but we think she’ll be all right.”

Dr. Evans described Patsy’s condition as “fair.” Charlie relayed that Patsy’s brother was already able to sit up and get in a wheelchair.

Flowers, telegrams, cards, and letters arrived from industry executives, the Opry, recording artists, deejays, and fans. The hospital switchboard was inundated with calls day and night. Attempting to get through were Winchester’s Joltin’ Jim McCoy and Patsy’s friends Fay Crutchley and Louise Seger.

“We appreciate everybody thinking of us,” Charlie told the press, “but the hospital’s not equipped to handle so many calls, and it’s slowing down other business.” He explained that, on doctors’ orders, Patsy was to have no visitors outside of the immediate family. He was now employed by the Nashville Printing Corporation (the
Nashville Tennessean
and
Nashville Banner
) but was able to take time off to be at Patsy’s bedside.

Saturday night at the Opry, announcer Grant Turner apprised the audience of Patsy’s weak condition and asked for their prayers. The Opry ended at 11:15, and the stars and fans would pass through Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, then cross Broadway to the Ernest Tubb Record Shop for the “Mid-Nite Jamboree.” “Just a little before midnight,” remembered Ernest Tubb, “this young couple came in. The husband approached me with his wife, this tiny little thing named Loretta Lynn. Mooney said they’d just moved from Indiana. We’d met at the Opry. Loretta, along with Jan Howard, Margie Bowes, and Connie Hall, had been named Most Promising Girl Singer at the 1960 Convention. He wanted to know if Loretta could sing her new single. It was on Zero Records, a small Canadian label nobody’d ever heard of. He and Loretta’d been driving from city to city across the country trying to get deejays to play it. So I put Loretta on.

“Before the show, we talked. She was a big fan of Patsy’s and asked about the car wreck. God bless her, Loretta was real upset. I tried to calm her down, ‘Now, Loretta, honey, don’t you cry. Patsy’s hanging on. She’s a trouper!’ She told me she wanted to let Patsy know how she felt and had an idea. I thought it sounded real nice and agreed.”

Tubb introduced Loretta, who sang “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” which she’d written. At the end, she said, “Friends, I’d like to do something special for someone I admire a great deal. This is the hit song by Miss Patsy Cline that’s a way up there on the charts. I guess y‘all know she’s over there in Madison in the hospital ’cause she’s been in a real bad car wreck. So I want to dedicate this to her. Patsy, if you’re a listening, this song’s for you, ‘I Fall to Pieces.’ I hope you get well real soon!”

Loretta later explained that before stepping to the microphone, she took an issue of
Country Song Roundup
, a magazine that printed lyrics to country hits. “I
loved ‘I Fall to Pieces,’ but I didn’t know it by heart. When it came to my turn, I did my song. Then I had Mooney hold up the lyrics to Patsy’s song and I read the words as the band played.”

At the hospital, Patsy was listening. Charlie sneaked in a radio so Patsy could hear the Opry. They stayed tuned for the “Mid-Nite Jamboree.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” exclaimed Patsy. “Can you believe that. She sang my song and dedicated it to me. That’s pretty nice of that gal. Charlie, go down to the record store and thank her and tell her I want to meet her.”

When Charlie arrived, he looked for Loretta amid all the well-wishers. “I saw this skinny girl in western clothes and went up to her.

“Are you Loretta Lynn?”

“Yes, sir, I sure am. Who are you?”

“I’m Charlie Dick. It’s nice to meet you.”

Loretta smiled and replied, “Well, it’s sure nice to meet you!”

There was a pause and Charlie suddenly realized that his last name wouldn’t mean anything to Loretta. He quickly added, “I’m Charlie Dick, Patsy Cline’s husband. She sent me to thank you.”

Charlie recollected, “Loretta threw her arms around me and nearly hugged me to death. Then she hollered out to her husband.”

“Doo!” called Loretta, “this is Patsy Cline’s husband, Charlie Dick. She sent him down here to thank me for singing her song on the broadcast.”

Mooney came over and they shook hands.

“Loretta, Patsy really enjoyed what you did and she wants to meet you.”

“Oh, my goodness, honey. I just can’t believe it. Patsy heard me on the radio and wants to meet me!”

Charlie related that Loretta nearly had a fit. He spoke to them a while and found them to be an interesting, hard-working, struggling couple.

“He introduced himself as Mooney,” said Charlie, “but Loretta kept calling him Doo and Dolittle. I wanted to ask what it meant, but didn’t have the nerve.” He found out later that his real name is Oliver and that Mooney was a throwback to Lynn’s moonshining days in the Kentucky hills, and his less familiar nickname was what Loretta liked to call him because he did so little.

“It was after one in the morning,” observed Charlie, “and the hospital was strict on the rules. Also, it was quite a distance from downtown. I asked Loretta and Mooney what they were doing in the afternoon and made arrangements to take them to see Patsy.”

Loretta discussed meeting Patsy: “Charlie took us up to the fourth floor and showed us in. The room was all bright and cheery. There were flowers all over the place. I remember thinking ‘My goodness, all the florists in this here town must be sold out.’ Patsy was all in bandages. Her face was bandaged up from up around her eyes to her hairline. Her leg was in a cast hanging from a pulley. It was just pitiful. I said, ‘Hello, Patsy. I’m Loretta Lynn.’ I was looking at her and trying to talk, but I could hardly keep from crying. I thanked her for her thoughtfulness in inviting Doo and I to see her. She thanked me for my thoughtfulness.

“Patsy quipped, ‘Hey, we sound like a love duet!’ As bad off as she was, she made jokes and asked about my career. We talked a good while and became close
friends right away. That’s the way it was with Patsy. We were cut from the same cloth.”

“Patsy and Loretta got on famously,” Charlie said. “They were talking a mile a minute. Patsy was bandaged up pretty good, but that didn’t stop her from chattering away and laughing up a storm. They talked about how hard it was for a girl singing in country music and traded stories back and forth about the politics of the Opry.

“Mooney and I went out in the corridor and talked. He said what a hard time they’d been having, but that things were starting to look good now that Loretta had a hit. She’d been on the Opry several times and met the Wilburn Brothers, who took her to Owen Bradley at Decca. I told him Patsy’s situation only recently started looking up with ‘I Fall to Pieces.’ We discussed how it was having a wife who was in the business and working the road.

“They’d resettled from Butcher’s Hollow, Kentucky, to Custer, Washington, and now to Indiana. They’d been coming and going to and from Nashville since Loretta first sang on the Opry and finally were sharing a house with a friend. Mooney was trying to find work as an automobile body repairman. I suggested we ought to get together sometime and have a few beers. He was for that. It was the beginning of a long and loyal friendship. Although Loretta wasn’t a drinker, Mooney enjoyed partying and they became regulars in the clique.”

“Patsy relished her success so because she came up rough,” said Loretta, “sort of jerked by the hair. The first time I heard her was on the radio when I was living in the state of Washington. She had ‘Walkin’ After Midnight’ out and had just got married to Charlie. I was a fan, so meeting her the day after the ‘Mid-Nite Jamboree’ was a thrill.”

Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn may actually have met not long after Loretta’s October 1960 Opry debut. When she first appeared, Loretta was advised to dress nicely and to wear high heels. “But,” Loretta recollected, “I didn’t have a nice dress and I had to wear low-heeled boots.” The girl singers in the dressing room referred to Loretta as a “country bumpkin.” It’s alleged that Patsy was present.

The women “ganged up on the side [in the wings] to watch the new competition.” Loretta sang her new single, “I’m a Honky Tonky Girl” and brought the house to its feet with cheering and applause. Opry manager Ott Devine was so impressed he invited her back the following week. She had been voted,Most Promising Girl Singer by the country deejays. When this was announced, Patsy is said to have blurted out, “Most promising what?” and the rest of the women laughed.

“Oh, we were just being nice and nasty,” one participant insisted, “and Patsy was right in there with us.”

In her autobiography
Coal Miner’s Daughter
, Loretta wrote that Patsy “was like Hank Williams, the way she got this throb in her voice and really touched people’s emotions.” She recollected that career and marital problems brought her and Patsy closer and closer. But more than a few people in Nashville claim Patsy and Loretta weren’t that close; others dispute this.

Jean Shepard said bluntly, “Loretta made a lot of statements in her book that don’t hold water. Patsy was a loner, which made a lot of people think she was conceited, which she wasn’t. But Patsy had no super close friends. She and I were
having babies about the same time and talking about motherhood and all. But I’d never say we were bosom buddies.”

“When Loretta first came to town,” recalled songwriter Lee Burrows, “she was brought to a dress shop by Vivian Keith, who worked with [agent] Hubert Long and the Wilburn Brothers. She told the manager, ‘Loretta doesn’t have anything. Can you do anything?’ She gave her two dresses. When Patsy got wind of this, she called Loretta over and gave her a bunch of clothes.”

Dottie noted, “Loretta spent time with Patsy at home. Sometimes, after the ‘Friday Night Frolics’ and the Opry, Loretta and Mooney were with us at Tootsie’s. And not everyone was welcome in that group. But Loretta didn’t drink anything stronger than a Coke. Whether Loretta was Patsy’s closest buddy, I don’t know. Does it matter? Patsy enjoyed playing the role of mother hen.”

“There were so many wonderful things about Patsy,” said Loretta. “I’ll say this and let it rest. She was
my
closest friend. She was the one person, other than my husband, I could turn to in a crisis. What stands out in my mind most about her is that she was my pal even in jams. There was a lot of resentment when I first came to town. There were a lot of girl singers trying to get to the top then. Somebody’d get a little jealous and I’d speak when I’d have been better off keeping my mouth shut. But Patsy was strong-willed and always taking up for me. If it hadn’t been for her, I don’t think I would have lasted.”

Teddy Wilburn was associated with Loretta from the beginning. He, Doyle, and their brothers Lester and Leslie managed and booked her, in addition to publishing her songs. She was featured on their live and TV shows, and not, as depicted in the film
Coal Miner’s Daughter
, on any Patsy Cline show. In fact, she and Patsy never sang together onstage. Much misinformation about Patsy and Loretta’s careers came about due to the dramatic license taken when the Wilburns, because of a contractual dispute with Loretta and disagreements over the script, refused permission to be portrayed. Many things the Wilburns did for Loretta were attributed to Patsy.