Reba: My Story (38 page)

It was late when Narvel and I got back to our house. We went from home to home again the next day. By the time that long, terrible weekend was over, we were emotionally and physically exhausted.

O
N MONDAY, MARCH 18, MY STARSTRUCK ENTERTAINMENT OFFICES
opened for the first time since the accident. The telephones were ringing as my people walked in at 9
A.M.
The answering service was jammed with calls that had come into the office over the weekend.

Our staff set to work, returning calls, fielding press requests, communicating with the coroner’s office and sheriff’s department in San Diego, and talking with the families about funeral arrangements. The families were scattered all over the country, and we quickly realized that there was no way that we and the victims’ friends in the music community would be able to attend each funeral. So Narvel and I decided that we would organize a memorial service in Nashville to honor all eight of our friends as well as the two pilots. We set about finding a church for the service and arranging for round-trip transportation and lodging for ten sets of surviving parents or spouses. Nashville’s Ramada Inn on Spence Lane, the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, the Doubletree and Opryland Hotels were good enough to offer us complimentary rooms.

On Monday morning, Narvel provided the leadership he’s always been famous for and outlined our intentions to the staff. He said that none of them, except for my publicist, Jennifer Bohler, was authorized to talk to the media, and that Starstruck would make a counselor available to anyone in the organization who wanted one. He was very supportive of everyone’s needs.

Then he began to cry before the whole group. Some
cried with him, and others sat silently. Many of us began to hug.

I am so proud of how tirelessly everyone worked for our loved ones. The word “overtime” was never mentioned. People in my office would be hurrying and planning one minute, and then someone would fall into tears the next. And all of us pressed on.

One of the saddest tasks had fallen to Deborah Carlen. She had been hired by the Starstruck Publishing Group three days after Shelby was born, and was working there at the time of the accident. She became our liaison to San Diego, educating herself, literally overnight, in the legal procedures necessary to recover the victims’ remains. By Saturday, Deborah had single-handedly arranged for the return of all the remains to the various families; none of the funerals—scheduled to take place in each hometown immediately after the memorial service—had to be postponed.

Debbie Hammon had mistakenly processed the wrong paperwork to recover Jim, and Deborah tracked down the correct forms that would authorize the transportation of her husband’s remains.

Some families were desperate for specifics on the condition of their loved ones. They insisted that Deborah tell them which body parts had been found, and some even wanted to know the sizes of the parts. Deborah tried to discourage these requests, and eventually, troubled, she came to me. I told her to give them what they wanted. I treat people like I want to be treated, and I would have wanted to know too.

Deborah also received from officials in San Diego all she could of the victims’ personal property, and worked with their survivors to identify it. Most of the personal effects arrived smelling like jet fuel. They were temporarily placed in Deborah’s office, and the scent lingered for weeks afterward. Then, to make the return of the personal effects easier, they were moved into our conference room. Narvel met each family inside that room as they came to claim their
loved ones’ property. Families again wept openly, and Narvel was wonderful at comforting them.

In the meantime, preparations for the memorial service were going on. We met with the police department. We met with the church staff. We talked about who would handle the music, and who would handle security. We arranged to release pictures of the deceased to the press—ironically, Jenny had coordinated a photo session for the band just days before the accident.

And then, Narvel and I wanted to find someone in the entertainment industry to speak at the service. I called Waylon Jennings.

Waylon had been through a similar tragedy in his life. In the late 1950s, he had been the bass guitar player for the Crickets, Buddy Holly’s band. Waylon and Buddy were on tour in Iowa, and Waylon had given up his seat on a small airplane so someone else could fly with Buddy.

The plane crashed and Buddy, the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and others were killed. Waylon’s life was spared.

Waylon had had to come to a tough reckoning with himself about that, and I was greatly comforted by his words. “Don’t you feel guilty because of the plane crash,” he told me. “It wasn’t meant for you to be on that plane or you would have been. So don’t blame yourself and don’t feel guilty.”

But when he told me that he couldn’t speak at the memorial service, I could understand his feelings. Not all that long ago, I spoke at Conway Twitty’s memorial service. That’s all I could do—talk. The Oak Ridge Boys, Tammy Wynette, and Connie Smith all sang, and I admire them for it.

So I thought for a long time about who could relate to our tragedy—someone who had been through all kinds of rough times. Then it came to me: The Man in Black, Johnny Cash, who has virtually seen it all. I didn’t know he had buried his mother a week before, to the day. But, God bless him, he said he would do it.

O
N WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, SHORTLY AFTER NOON, A CONVOY
of twelve limousines carrying the families, Narvel and me, Narvel’s parents, and my Starstruck family made the long journey to Christ Church in Brentwood. We had asked that the press be barred from the service, but cameramen were stationed everywhere behind the barricades, shooting video and photographs with telephoto lenses. One tabloid reporter nearly slipped the police cordon by pretending to be a family member or friend.

A crowd of about 2,000 people had gathered at the church, and my eves were drawn to two of my dearest buddies, Vince Gill and Larry Gatlin. It really made me feel good to see them there. Back in San Diego, four days before, as Narvel and I were getting ready to check out of the hotel, the phone rang. We hadn’t received many phone calls because Narvel had kept the line tied up, calling the families and piecing together information from the authorities. I picked up the bathroom extension when Mike Allen said the call was for me.

“Hey, little buddy.” It was Vince. I began to cry when I heard his voice, and he began to cry with me.

“Vince,” I said, “what am I going to do when I’m onstage and turn around and they’re not there?”

“If you want me to,” he answered, “I’ll be on your stage. I’ll be there for you.”

I’ll never forget that.

The Reverend Dan Scott, one of the pastors at Christ Church, read from Psalm 91, my favorite chapter in the Bible. Then a ninety-member choir, standing on steps behind a white-ribboned wreath that almost covered the pulpit, raised their voices in song.

In his sermon, Reverend Scott called music the breath of God. He said that no other group of musicians would ever be that band, would ever be able to make their extraordinary music. He also offered the traditional Christian
words of comfort, that death is the entry to eternal life for those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior—such welcomed words.

When it was Johnny Cash’s turn to speak, he sang “Jim, I Wore a Tie Today,” about a musician attending another musician’s funeral, and inserting the names of the band members into the verses. He could not have chosen anything more appropriate or more uplifting.

Some of the lyrics were: “… the preacher said a lot of things but I didn’t hear a word he said …” They reflected my own feelings all too well. I felt that I was moving through the service in a daze, at times completely out of touch with what was going on around me. I had brought my body to the service. It hurt too much to bring my mind.

At the end of the service, Narvel and I walked up the center aisle, and he decided to check out front before we walked to the limousine. He told me to stay inside the church. As people passed by, my eyes fell on members of my organization. I was shocked again by the realization that some members of my group were missing and that their faces would never be seen again.

I took a few steps with Narvel to the car, and once inside, the dam finally broke. I think that keeping incredibly busy had been my mental leaning post for days. Now, for the first time, I could finally let those days’ worth of suppressed emotion free. I cried during most of the twenty-mile ride back to my office. That helped—it released a lot of the stress and pressure. It was easier to meet with the families at the dinner we had planned for them.

M
EANWHILE, WE
’
D BEEN GETTING A LOT OF HEAT FROM THE
press. I probably had two dozen requests for interviews within forty-eight hours of the crash. Jennifer Bohler, my publicist, turned them all down. I hadn’t come to terms with the tragedy myself, and besides, there were families,
friends, band members, crew members, and fans that hurt so bad each time the crash was brought up. I didn’t want to increase their agony.

But my silence didn’t stop the flood of news stories compiled without the input of anyone from my organization. The tabloid accounts were especially cruel: one ran a photograph of each band member with a banner reading “
DEAD
” over each shot. The tabloid was on display at supermarket and convenience-store cash registers for seven days. Debbie Hammon was going through the checkout line at the grocery store with her son, Jeremiah. When she saw the paper, she left her shopping cart on the spot and took her son home.

It was clear that I couldn’t escape the press completely, so Jennifer Bohler, Narvel, and I decided to talk to Jane Sanderson, a reporter I trusted with
People
magazine. I appeared on the April 1 cover of
People
. The cover copy said: “Reba McEntire: ‘This is my darkest hour.’ The dramatic inside story of the night the country singer lost her band in a plane crash.” Beneath my picture was one of an investigator standing by a piece of the destroyed plane’s fuselage.

Jane later said that after interviewing me, she sat up all night to weave together the story. It was such a private and painful period for me, but I had hoped that the interview would satisfy the public’s need to know and that I could retreat back into my life and all of us, the families too, could begin the painful process of healing.

After that, when I did press interviews again, it was always with the stipulation that reporters not bring up the crash. Jenny Bohler or Stacey Harrison-Boyd sat in on almost every interview. The reporters would ask their normal questions about my latest album, or Shelby, or a concert, or whatever. Things would be going fine, and then from left field the reporter would say, “Where were you when you heard about the plane crash—”

“That’s it!” Jennifer would snap. “End of interview,” and it would be.

I feel sorry for people such as Michael Jordan, whose father was murdered during the time I was writing this book. Michael was hurting but wasn’t left to suffer in privacy. Certainly he shouldn’t have been hounded by strangers with notepads and cameras who wanted to plaster his grief across the fronts of newspapers and magazines to make money. Only someone who has been through that can realize how hard it can be on them. After you’ve given all you can to support friends, loved ones, and yourself, you have nothing left for the millions of strangers who read or watch the mass media. You just have nothing left.