The Duck Commander Family (19 page)

I wanted to make sure Duck Commander would be okay if anything ever happened to the Walmart account. So we invested in our relationships with the year-round hunting stores, which became a big part of our business. Wouldn’t you know it? Within two years, Walmart decided it was getting out of the waterfowl market altogether. Typically, a setback like that will kill a company. Fortunately, we had a contingency plan and were able to survive without Walmart for a few years. I’m happy to say, though, that in the last two years, Walmart began stocking our duck calls and other products again, and it has become a mutually beneficial relationship once again.

After Walmart stopped buying from us that year, I went three months without being able to cash my own paycheck. Korie and I had to rein in our spending. I told her, “Don’t buy anything unless it’s absolutely necessary.” We were living on a tight budget. I knew I needed to get Duck Commander on an even tighter budget till I could find another source of revenue to keep the company afloat. Duck Commander was like a batch of frog legs sitting in the fridge waiting for you to figure out how you were going to cook them. The hardest
part of having frog legs for dinner is catching the wild frogs and bringing them home. Then you have to clean them and get the meat ready to eat. Phil had done the hard part with Duck Commander. It was primed and ready to take off. All that was needed was a guy who could imagine what else it could be.

11

P
RAISE BE TO THE
G
OD AND
F
ATHER OF OUR
L
ORD
J
ESUS
C
HRIST, WHO HAS BLESSED US IN THE HEAVENLY REALMS WITH EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING IN
C
HRIST.
F
OR HE CHOSE US IN HIM BEFORE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD TO BE HOLY AND BLAMELESS IN HIS SIGHT.
I
N LOVE HE PREDESTINED US FOR ADOPTION TO SONSHIP THROUGH
J
ESUS
C
HRIST, IN ACCORDANCE WITH HIS PLEASURE AND WILL.

—E
PHESIANS
1:3–5

K
orie:
When I was a student at Ouachita Christian School, my senior-year Bible teacher, David Matthews, adopted a little five-year-old boy. In class that year, we talked a lot about how important it was for Christians families to adopt and that children should never be left without a home and loving parents. The idea always stuck with me. James 1:27 says: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

When we were dating, like most couples, Willie and I talked about how many kids we wanted to have. I told Willie about
my desire to adopt and he was all for it. We both grew up with big families so we decided we wanted to have four kids, with at least one of them through adoption. We never knew how that would happen. We didn’t know if we would adopt a boy or a girl or a newborn baby or older child. We decided we would remain open, and if God wanted it to happen, it would happen.

There were several families at White’s Ferry Road Church that adopted children, including one couple that had adopted biracial twins. Their lawyer came to them and asked if they were interested in adopting another biracial child who was about to be born. They told her they couldn’t do it at the time, but they remembered that we had expressed an interest in adopting a child. Their lawyer called Willie and me and told us how difficult it was to place biracial children in homes in the South. We were shocked. It was the twenty-first century. We committed to being a part of changing that in our society. Skin color should not make a difference.

We told the lawyer we were definitely interested, and we started to go through the process of adopting the baby in 2000. We began paying for the mother’s living expenses and medical bills, and Willie and I were really getting excited about bringing another child into our home. Our oldest son, John Luke, was almost five, and Sadie, our daughter, was three. We thought it was the perfect time to bring another baby into our home. But then we found out the mother had promised the baby to a few other families, who were also paying her expenses. The woman had nine children, some of which
she had kept and others she had given up for adoption. The lawyer told us we needed to step away from the situation. We were absolutely devastated and heartbroken. It was such a roller-coaster ride and so emotional and traumatic. Willie and I decided we still wanted to adopt a child, but we weren’t going to force the issue. Maybe it just wasn’t in God’s plan for us right then.

After we lost the child, Willie and I decided we would have another baby naturally and then maybe adopt a fourth child a few years later. I had gotten pregnant very easily with John Luke and Sadie. Well, nine months went by and I still wasn’t pregnant. I wasn’t really worried about it, but it seemed a little strange since I’d gotten pregnant so easily the first two times.

We had a friend who was teaching birthing classes at a children’s home. The class was for pregnant teenagers, some of whom were putting their babies up for adoption. She knew we were still interested in adoption, so she asked us if we were ready. We filled out the paperwork and only a couple of weeks later, the adoption agency called us and told us it had a couple of babies available. There was a boy who was already born and a girl who was about to be born. The director showed us a picture of the boy and we fell in love instantly! He was beautiful, a perfectly healthy eight-pound, two-ounce bundle of joy. We felt like he was ours from the moment we saw him and couldn’t wait to get him in our hands. We rushed
through the adoption process. The adoption agency came out and did three days of home studies with us, and then we went and picked him up the very next week. It was that fast. Willie and I felt extremely blessed and thankful for this precious baby boy who was now ours and were confident that this was God’s plan for our life and for this little boy’s life all along.

We made a nursery in our house and set up a crib, and our son Willie Alexander Robertson came to our home when he was five weeks old in mid-December 2001. We named him after Willie, of course, and his middle name came from his papaw Phil, whose middle name is Alexander. Little Will didn’t even weigh nine pounds when we got him and was just so happy and sweet. He had been living with a foster family who took excellent care of him. We went down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and picked him up. Then we returned home to a house full of friends and family, who had made a huge WELCOME HOME WILL sign and showered us with gifts and love. Will was just perfect and precious, and I have enjoyed every minute of mothering him. We are forever grateful to Will’s birth mother, who loved him enough to give him the life she knew he deserved.