Christmas Tales of Alabama (13 page)

Brenan, words tripping with enthusiasm, would tell them: “My favorite football player is Jonathan. He's my best friend—a football player and a brother, too.” By then, Brenan had become the team's mascot. When he was feeling well enough, he would run through the paper sign with the players as they entered the field.

Before the game against West Morgan High School, Coach Pugh reminded his players, “A lot of people would love to play tonight who will never get to play this game. You need to realize your situation is special and you need to think about it on every play. You need to think about this young man who, just one time, would love to able to put pads on and play.”

Jonathan thought, “If this kid can go through all this, we need to just pull together and do the best we can do.”

Another Challenge

The young football standout who had been through so much would need to draw strength again in 2008. He'd used his Carnegie scholarship to attend Centre College in Kentucky. He chose the small-but-prestigious private college over one of the South's major football powerhouses because he felt he would be nurtured academically, physically and spiritually.

He said goodbye to little Brenan, whose family promised to bring Brenan to see a game at Centre. Before Jonathan's sophomore year, his beloved grandfather passed away. Not only was Jonathan heartbroken to lose the man who'd taken over his care after his mother's death, but he was also faced with some adult decisions.

With only his brother—who was serving in the military—and his autistic uncle left of his family, Jonathan had to plan his grandfather's funeral and then decide how he could take care of his uncle while finishing college.

After the funeral, Jonathan came to a decision. He'd have to drop out; he'd have to go home to Athens. The young man who'd always had so much on his shoulders, who lost so much but still shared his heart with a chronically ill little boy, was about to find out how much others cared about him.

Jonathan's football coach at Centre, Andy Frye, asked a prominent Danville, Kentucky couple for help. Frye introduced Jonathan to Tom and Alane Mills, who formulated a plan to help the student stay in school. Under their guidance, Jonathan found an apartment and moved his uncle to Danville, setting up a budget with his uncle's Social Security checks. During the week, Jonathan lived on campus, continuing to play football and study for a double major in Spanish and international business, and visited his uncle on weekends.

Despite the pressures, Jonathan led the division in rushing that fall. Little Brenan, though, didn't get to see Jonathan on Christmas 2009. Brenan was back in the hospital having surgery to straighten his spine.

As Jonathan entered his senior year at Centre in 2011, he had many accomplishments under his belt: a semester studying abroad, an internship with a congressman and one with a nonprofit foundation. Meanwhile, Brenan was feeling stronger physically than he had in a long time.

The two planned to see one another when Centre played Birmingham Southern University in October 2011. They were looking forward to the reunion, but no matter what happens, they know that their unusual friendship transcends time and distance. The bond formed over the gift of a Christmas jersey has proved stronger than any of life's challenges.

S
IGNS OF
A
NGELS
AMONG
U
S

This story begins in 1985, when Nashville songwriter Becky Hobbs had a premonition: she suddenly felt she would experience a severe car crash. When the premonition came to fruition, Becky would write lyrics that, against many odds, would became a best-selling song that touched many lives, including that of a comatose little girl. The song continues to have an impact on people today.

That's why this story has no end.

Not long before Christmas 1985, Becky had a strange feeling of pending doom. She would wake in a sweat from nightmares of a crash and think, “I'm not ready to die.” The dreams continued for weeks until, on January 24, 1985, she had a revelation. While baking a cake for her birthday the next day, Becky heard a voice say, “Be careful. This may be your last birthday.” At first, that sense of doom returned. Then she realized the voice had said
may
.

She vowed she would be ready.

On her birthday, January 25, 1986, Becky was traveling home to Nashville with members of her band from a benefit performance in Albertville, Alabama. It was pouring rain. The band's van had stopped at a traffic light at the intersection of a four-lane highway when Becky looked up to see an eighteen-wheeler racing along the highway. When the traffic light turned green for the van to move ahead, Becky realized the tractor-trailer rig was traveling too fast to stop on slick roads. She felt the van begin to move forward into the intersection. She knew the driver, the band's road manager, Randy, didn't realize the truck was going to hit them.

She yelled, “Stop!”

Just as Randy hit the brakes, the truck collided with the van. The trailer carrying the band's equipment was ripped away and the van was totaled, but its occupants had—miraculously—suffered only minimal injuries. Seconds later, and the truck would have struck the van broadside, likely killing those inside.

That's when Becky realized: the voice she'd heard the day before was that of her guardian angel. She scribbled down a song title: “Angels among Us.” For several years, she would think about lyrics to go with the title. Then during the Christmas season of 1992, while sitting in her beloved late father's recliner, Becky got another feeling: finish the song. Working with friend and fellow songwriter Don Goodman, she did.

Angels in Alabama

A premonition followed by a car wreck led Nashville songwriter Becky Hobbs to write lyrics for “Angels among Us,” which became a hit for the group Alabama.
Photograph courtesy of Becky Hobbs
.

Becky recorded herself singing the completed song and sent a tape to Randy Owen of Fort Payne, Alabama. Randy was lead singer of the country music group Alabama, one of the most popular singing groups of all time. Randy immediately liked the song and had a strange feeling about. It was different from any song the band had recorded. As he typically did, Randy played the song for his wife and children. His youngest daughter, who was three at the time, loved the song. A friend of her older sister's, who had played basketball on a high school football team in the Owens' hometown of Fort Payne, had tragically died not long before. “In my daughter's three-year-old mind, she was an angel. She would say, ‘Daddy, you've got to do that song about angels,'” Randy said.

Once she sat on her father's lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and begged him to tell her the words to the “angel song.” Randy began reciting the words and suddenly knew that the introduction to the song should be spoken, not sung.

“My little three-year-old girl showed me how,” he said.

Getting the song recorded, though, would be an uphill climb. Other members of Alabama, and record company producers, did not feel that “Angels among Us,” was the type of song the group should record. Randy fought for it. Alabama finally recorded the song, and it was released in December 1993 on the group's
Cheap Seats
album.

Randy said, “The song was so powerful: the record label tried to kill it; radio stations tried to kill it but they couldn't.” Much to Randy's and Becky's surprise, when radio stations finally did begin playing the song, they played it at Christmastime; neither thought of “Angels” as a song only for the holidays.

The song became one of the group's biggest hits. “It changed Alabama's career for the better,” Randy says now. “To this day, a lot of people don't know anymore about Alabama than ‘Angels among Us' and ‘Christmas in Dixie.'”

The group began receiving letters and phone calls from fans who were touched by the song. The responses came during a stressful period of Randy's life, which he describes as a “horrible time.” They helped relieve some of the tensions and made him realize the song was changing lives.

“You can do some really magical things with music,” he said.

Out from Darkness

In 1996, a little girl in Virginia lay critically injured in a hospital bed. While out shopping for Christmas gifts, nine-year-old Heather Harcum, mother Penny and younger sister Holly were involved in a three-car wreck. Penny and six-year-old Holly were unharmed, but Heather suffered swelling and hemorrhaging of her brain. For twelve days, she lay comatose. On December 12, Penny had the idea to bring a tape player to the hospital and play Heather's favorite song. She retrieved a tape of “Angels among Us,” which she and Heather's dad, Jim, had already tucked in Heather's Christmas stocking for her to find Christmas morning. The song had always made Heather and Penny cry because it reminded them of loved ones who had passed away.

As soon as the music started, Penny saw tears coming from her daughter's eyes. Penny crawled into the hospital bed with her little girl and whispered, “I love you,” and asked Heather to say it to her. Heather gave a muffled, “I love you.”

Soon Heather would fully recover. Newspapers across the country reported the story of the little girl who woke to the song about angels. Becky was in California where her husband, Duane, was performing with Glenn Frey when she heard Heather's story. Kim Armstrong from Alabama's Fort Payne office called to tell Becky about Heather's miraculous recovery. Becky's phone soon began ringing off the hook as people called to tell her of the miracle. In January 1997, Becky talked with Penny Harcum, who said Heather was expected to make a full recovery and had already gone back to school. Heather had some short-term memory loss and balance problems but was otherwise back to normal. In fact, during her first week after returning to the Isle of Wight Academy, she made perfect scores on three tests.

Randy Owen and members of Alabama also heard the news of Heather's remarkable recovery. The entire Harcum family—Penny and Jim, Heather and Holly—were invited to see their first Alabama concert in February in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Randy said that meeting Heather and her family that night was “very emotional in a very positive way.” Then he asked, “How do you fathom something like that?”

Becky, though, feels there is a reason behind each event that led to Heather's recovery. “Maybe writing this song was one of the reasons I wasn't taken on January 25, 1986,” she said.

Part 2

New Year's

T
HE
C
OUNTRY
'
S
F
IRST
M
ARDI
G
RAS

Mobile on New Year's Eve

Before Alabama was a state or even a territory, Mobile was a bustling port city. Located on the Gulf Coast, it was the perfect site for trade and slave ships to dock. Much of the land that would become Alabama was still untamed in the 1700s, and by comparison, Mobile had many amenities: stores, hotels, brothels and churches.