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June 22, 2010

from the moderated comments

Had it occurred two decades ago, the event would have been acknowledged with an hour-long prime-time network special. As it was, JIMMY DEAN’s death received precious little attention given his monumental contributions to the entertainment industry.

Jimmy might have predicted as much, given a whole generation or two of Sesame Street graduates who think The Muppets began with the long-running (since 1969) kiddies’ TV series. In fact, nearly the first 10 minutes in every segment of the hour-long ABC-TV variety show bearing Jimmy’s name (which ran from 1963 to 1966) featured Dean’s fictional “ol’ buddy” Rowlf the Dog.

Though Jimmy was never based here, many of us older Music Row types remember both Jimmy and his widow, DONNA MEADE. Jimmy, Donna and I were on the same flight once. Another time I ran into Donna at the grocery store, though I was more accustomed to seeing her at The Stockyard’s famed Bullpen Lounge. And on yet another occasion RALPH EMERY and I discussed his helping me with the interstate logistics of my ghostwriting the book that Jimmy eventually did with Donna. (Meade, despite an obvious bias toward her subject, did a terrific job!)

With Jimmy’s passing, Donna wrote “dearest family and friends” a letter of “gratitude” for their “thoughts, prayers, calls, emails, Facebook messages, flower arrangements, gift baskets, offers of help and every expression of sympathy.” Meade noted receiving “hundreds of calls,” extending her apology “for not being able to answer or return all of your messages.”

Donna termed Jimmy’s death “extremely emotional and difficult for me, and the fallout has been completely overwhelming… I was with Jimmy at the time and did everything I possibly could for him… he did not seem to suffer at all, as he was feeling fine after a good night’s rest with no pain, and even traded jokes with Stean, our caretaker earlier in the day.

“That afternoon he was elated to hear from his daughter, CONNIE who was in Italy, and then enjoyed his usual cocktails and television,” with Donna joining Jimmy on the sofa and conversing with him before bringing Dean dinner “on his TV tray. After making sure he was OK,” Donna left the room for “about 2 minutes,” only to return and find Jimmy “slumped down in a chair.”

In the absence of a response from her husband, Donna “immediately called 911. The paramedics were at the house within 5 or 6 minutes” where they confirmed that Jimmy’s heart had stopped beating and next spent “about 30 minutes” trying to resuscitate Dean who, “according to the doctor” died June 13th of at age 81 “natural causes.”

Donna takes solace in the fact that “Jimmy and I were back in our home after our recent house fire and that he was in his favorite place- seated in his stuffed chair in the den, watching his favorite TV show and enjoying his new home, with all three pups at his feet… doing what made him happy.”

Of course, Nashville Network viewers thought Jimmy was happy back in the late ’80s, when Dean and his wife of nearly 40 years, the former (MARY) SUE WITTAUER appeared (voluntarily) on a TNN interview special featuring the Deans, along with other county-music celebrity couples, titled Soul mates.

Dean met Donna during Jimmy’s June, 1989 trip to Nashville where the two were guests on TNN’s Nashville Now. Jimmy followed up with a fan letter. You can draw your own conclusions as to why Polygram Records “mislaid” Dean’s letter for four months, but, undeterred, Dean next invited Donna to be his first mate aboard his Palm Beach, Florida-docked yacht, assuring the former Miss Richmond Pageant finalist of a separate stateroom.

According to an interview Donna gave STEVE DOUGHERTY, the singer sees herself as “a very spiritual person.” But, in April, 1990, amid rumors that Jimmy was having an affair with Donna (who, at 24 years Jimmy’s junior, was not only young enough to be Dean’s daughter, she is about a year younger than GARRY, the oldest of Dean’s three children), Jimmy left Sue.

On October 27, 1991. Sue filed for divorce naming Donna as correspondent. Citing not only Jimmy’s adultery and mental cruelty as grounds for her action, Sue accused Jimmy of acting like “an angry tyrant” and his “habitual drunkeness.” Jimmy countersued, charging Sue with being “completely unsupportive” after she was absent from Dean’s hospital bedside during his 1987 “life-threatening” oral surgery as well as during Jimmy’s 1990 battle with skin cancer.

Of course, the Deans’ marriage could have been quietly dissolved on grounds of irreconcilable differences if either side had been averse to publicity. But the truth of the matter was best summarized by the reactions of thre couple’s three grown children: Oldest son Garry said he understood all he needed to know. Youngest child, ROBERT suggested Jimmy should have moved out of Sue’s house before he took up with Donna (“What you did was right, but your timing sucks.”). Connie, according to Jimmy “has not adjusted as well as the boys, but I think she’s been the recipient of a lot of one-sided conversation.”

None of which explains Jimmy and Sue’s (voluntary) participation in, an gushing on, Soul mates.

No word about how Sue or the couple’s children feel about Jimmy’s final resting place: a $35,000 piano-shaped marble mausoleum nor if it is Donna’s plan one day to be buried alongside him them.

Jimmy would want it known, as he told Steve Dougherty years ago re: his marriage to Sue, “Nobody, man or woman, has ever wrecked a good marriage. My marriage was shot a long, long, long time before.”

Donna presumably still wants it known that she signed a prenup and therefore that she didn’t marry Jimmy “for any other reason except that I’m in love with him.”

Of course, with Jimmy Dean’s investment in real estate, banking, oil and hotels and a net worth estimated to be in excess of $100 million dollars, his
widow, with or without a prenup, would be legally entitled to more money than she could ever spend.

In any event, I suspect that, wherever Jimmy is now, he is finding quirky irony in that, just as his fans were receiving the news of his death, word came that BRENDA BARNES, the CEO of SARA LEE Corporation, is recovering from a stroke that forced her to abruptly take a medical leave of absence from the company to which Dean sold his eponymously-named sausage company (created in 1969) in 1984. Not only did Dean feel cheated in the deal (that began with Jimmy being gradually phased out of management and Sara Lee dropping him as its commercial spokesman and face of the product in January, 2004 when it declared him too old a sales tool for the company’s desired young customer base), he no longer wanted anything to do with the company.

Well, almost nothing. Jimmy held on to one share of stock, enabling him to continue attending shareholders’ meetings and having his say there if he so chose.

I’m not sure why Donna is calling Jimmy’s death a surprise. The last time I saw the couple, during their last public appearance in Nashville on October 17, 2007 Jimmy was using a wheelchair. Those of us covering the event were asked, in effect, not to mention Dean’s frailty in our coverage as we allowed Jimmy to keep his dignity by photographing him in a discreet manner, if at all..

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