A Royal Heart

The death of June Carter Cash and the loss of her talent

and boundless love make the world a lesser place

By Ed Bumgardner

JOURNAL REPORTER

No. Please. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. June Carter Cash, 73, died May 15 in Nashville, Tenn. She had undergone heart-valve replacement - relatively routine surgery, by cardiologists' standards - and something went drastically wrong after the surgery.

June Carter Cash, always brimming with youthful energy and affection, had nothing if she did not have a lot of heart. It's a fact that makes the nature of her passing all the more sad and ironic.

June was long the nurturing half of Johnny and June, wife and mother, the person who held tight to and right by her husband, Johnny Cash. June was always there for Johnny, to share in his success and to offer support through his many years of torment and his deepening times of turmoil.

It's hard to imagine Johnny without June by his side.

For June was more than Johnny's wife and duet partner. She was the matriarch, not only of the House of Cash, but of all real country music, a proud hillbilly, born into country-music royalty as the daughter of Mother Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family, the first family of country music.

As a second-generation member of the Carter Family, June was privy to what musicologists consider the birth of country music. But she carried herself, not as a member of a historic lineage, a national treasure, but as 'just folks.' She was a woman who never met a stranger. She personified the good times and the harsh ordeals of down-home folks.

She was 'real people,' not a star.

And real people die.

A week later, her death still seems inconceivable. No matter the problem, it was June who was there to fix it, to offer a shoulder built of concrete Christian faith to lean on, and, if need be, a shoulder of human kindness to cry on.

Times had been tough of late in the House of Cash. But it was Johnny, not June, that the world was watching and praying for, as a seemingly invincible icon's good health slid downhill ever-faster toward an open grave.

June accomplished much in her career. She was an actress, never a marquee talent, but convincing enough to win accolades from some tough critics.

With her husband, she won a pair of Grammy awards, famously for the song 'Jackson.' The couple enjoyed numerous hits, including 'If I Were A Carpenter' and 'No Need to Worry.'

She co-wrote 'Ring of Fire,' one of Johnny Cash's most enduring signature songs. The song, she later revealed, was about her desperate forbidden love for Cash, who was a manic drug addict and married at the time of the song's conception.

Her 1999 album, Press On, her second solo disc, won a Grammy. She wrote two autobiographies that revealed her private thoughts and her love for her husband with typical honesty.

There was nothing pretentious, nothing fake, about June Carter Cash. She told it the way she saw it, and she always tried to stay on the path of righteousness, to walk the line, as her husband sang.

And she was funny. Rick Nathey, a local musician, recalled seeing Johnny and June at Memorial Coliseum when he was a boy.

He walked down front, clutching his camera, to where June was talking to the crowd. People around little Rick were taking all manner of pictures, but Rick just stood there, looking up and grinning.

Nathey said that June finally looked down and said, 'Little boy, are you going to take my picture, or are you just going to stand there and look up my skirt for the rest of the evening?'

'And that's exactly what I was doing,' Nathey said, laughing. 'That was June Carter.'

In a story in the Nashville Tennessean, June's stepdaughter, Rosanne Cash, talked about hearing the phone ring at home one night. June answered and proceeded to have an animated conversation for more than 30 minutes.

When she hung up, Rosanne asked who had called. 'Well, honey,' June replied. 'That was a wrong number.'

Such was the way of June Carter Cash.

About 1,500 people attended her funeral Sunday in Hendersonville, Tenn. Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris, The Gatlin Brothers and the Oakridge Boys performed.

Johnny, nearly blind and in a wheelchair, shakily stood up and kissed his wife goodbye, leaving those in attendance to wonder how much hardship one man - one good man - could endure 

During the funeral, stepdaughter Rosanne talked about June, who refused to use the 'step' prefix with any of the seven children bearing the last name of Cash. 'To June, there were two kinds of people,' Rosanne said. 'Those she knew and loved, and those she didn't know and loved.'

She was a woman who, as the Carter Family sang, always looked at 'The Sunny Side of Life.'

Johnny, in his autobiography, Cash, wrote of his wife, 'What June did for me was post signs along the way, lift me up when I was weak, encourage me when I was discouraged, and love me when I felt alone and unlovable.

'She's the greatest woman I have ever known. Nobody else, except my mother, comes close.''

Ed Bumgardner can be reached at 727-7365 or at ebumgardner@wsjournal.com