One More Note About Gentleman Jim

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Tonight I’m in Mississippi, but that doesn’t mean I’m finished telling you about Texas. Oh, no, I still have San Antonio to tell you about. However, this morning I closed out the musical aviation disasters countdown with Jim Reeves. Jim is my all-time favorite singer. There’s no one even close. This has been going on for as long as I can remember, quite literally. Since I was in eastern Texas (I never got further west than Dallas) and in the neighborhood (Don Henley’s boyhood hometown of Linden is two counties north of where Reeves was born), I went by to pay my respects at the Jim Reeves Memorial. “Memorial” is a misnomer (although that’s what the sign says). This is his grave. The story is that his widow, Mary, bought it sight unseen after his death. Although she remarried, she, too, is buried at the site instead of with her second husband. (She died from complications of Alzheimer’s in 1999.) Also buried there is Cheyenne, his beloved border collie (shown on the cover of A Touch of Sadness). Jim and Mary had no children. The longstanding story was that he was left sterile after a bout of the mumps, although the author of a semi-sleazy biography disputes that (with no evidence, I might add). The inscription on the monument is quite touching, and a testimony of Reeves’ devotion to his craft: If I, a lowly singer, dry one tear Or soothe one human heart in pain, Then my homely verse to God is dear And not one stanza has been sung in vain. I do a lot of stopping for music on my trips (I stopped today to get a photo of the sign telling me I was on the “Jerry Clower Highway”), but this one was a necessity.