Most couples pick a church, a courthouse or a family living room. Hawkshaw Hawkins and Jean Shepard picked a stage. On November 26, 1960, the two Grand Ole Opry stars were married on the stage of an auditorium in Wichita, Kansas.
It sounds like a publicity stunt, but for these two, it was simply home. They had both spent years living out of cars and hotel rooms, singing for whoever came through the door. The stage was where they worked, where they met their fans, and where they fell for each other. Fewer than two and a half years later, it would also be the last place Hawkshaw Hawkins was seen doing what he loved.
The tall man from Huntington
Harold Franklin Hawkins was born on December 22, 1921, in Huntington, West Virginia. As a boy he helped a neighbor track down some missing fishing rods, and the neighbor started calling him “Hawkshaw,” after a detective in the comic strips. The name stuck for life.
He got his first guitar by trading five rabbits he had trapped. He sang on local radio as a teenager, entertained troops during World War II, and spent years on the Wheeling Jamboree. He was known for his good looks, his height and his warm, rich baritone. In 1955 he joined the Grand Ole Opry.
The girl who told Hank Williams she would change things
Jean Shepard was born Ollie Imogene Shepard on November 21, 1933, in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, one of ten children. Her family later moved to Visalia, California, near Bakersfield. She was still a teenager when “A Dear John Letter,” her 1953 duet with Ferlin Husky, went to No. 1 and stayed there for six weeks.
She was one of the first women in country music to front her own tours. When Hank Williams once remarked that there weren’t many women in country music, she told him she planned to change that. She joined the Opry in November 1955, the same year as Hawkshaw.
The two first got to know each other on the Ozark Jubilee television program, then toured together. By 1960, they were ready to make it official, in front of the kind of crowd they had always sung for.
A song he believed in
The young family settled near Nashville. Their son Don Robin was born, and by early 1963, Jean was expecting again.
Hawkshaw had just recorded a song he was sure would put him back on top, “Lonesome 7-7203.” Before leaving for a show, he dropped off a copy with a friendly disc jockey and told him to play it as much as he possibly could. He signed the note simply “Hawk.” The record entered the Billboard country chart as a new release on March 2, 1963.
The last trip to Kansas
On March 3, 1963, Hawkshaw Hawkins performed at a benefit concert in Kansas City, Kansas, alongside Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas. The show raised money for the family of a disc jockey, “Cactus” Jack Call, who had died in a car accident.
Bad weather kept them grounded the next day. On March 5, they set off for Nashville in a small plane piloted by Randy Hughes, Patsy Cline’s manager. After refueling in Dyersburg, Tennessee, the plane ran into bad weather and went down in a forest near Camden, about ninety miles from home. No one survived.
Hawkshaw Hawkins was 41. His marriage to Jean Shepard had begun on a Kansas stage, and his final performance had taken place on another one.
“Lonesome 7-7203” kept climbing. It went on to become a No. 1 hit, the biggest record of his career, and he never got to see it get there.
What Jean Shepard did next
One month after the crash, Jean gave birth to their second son and named him Harold Franklin Hawkins II. Overwhelmed by grief, she stepped away from her career for several months.
Then she came back. In 1964, “Second Fiddle (to an Old Guitar)” became a Top 5 hit, her first record on the charts in years. She kept charting every year through 1978. In 1968 she married musician Benny Birchfield, and they stayed together for nearly fifty years.
Jean Shepard was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2011. In 2015, she became the first woman to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry for sixty years. She died in 2016 at age 82.
For the rest of her life, she kept walking out onto the same kind of stage where she had once said “I do.”
Do you remember hearing “Lonesome 7-7203” on the radio back in 1963? Share your memories of Hawkshaw Hawkins and Jean Shepard with us.