I miss John Windham

John Windham was a friend of mine. John passed away a little over a year ago. We worked together in The Collin Raye organization for about 7 years. He was a great sound engineer and guitarist. He was one of the funniest human beings on the planet and could have been a successful stand up comedian. He invented great words such as, "juppa, stungent, gospel knob, and SAFMA". He was also great at doing home repair projects and odd jobs. He even used me as his "helper" on several projects when he didn't need any help. He did this so that I could make a few extra dollars when we had time off from The Collin Raye gig.

John had diabetes from an early age and struggled with it constantly. He and I were usually the first ones awake on the bus and I can remember several times that I had to pour sugar in his mouth to keep him from going into a diabetic coma. There were other times that an ambulance would have to be called to revive him. He was taking 3 or 4 different kinds of insulin several times a day and it was very frustrating for him, but he rarely complained.

John was literally a victim of Tennessee Gov., Phil Bredesen's TENNCARE cuts in January of 2006. Without TENNCARE he could no longer afford many of his medicines and became really sick. It got to the point to where he was admitted to the hospital in March 2006 to have a few toes amputed. While there, they found an aneurysm in his brain. Before they could do ANY surgery, he had a stroke, then a heart attack an died. John was 49 years old.

John's girlfriend, Susan, had a lovely service for him. The pastor was an "old road dog" musician that had never met John, but gave a moving service that touched everyone there. About 8 or 9 people got up and told stories and rememberances of time with John. We were all laughing and crying. I saw many old friends that I hadn't seen in years, others were out on the road working. The one person that was visually absent...Collin Raye. We were told there was a "family matter" he could not get out of. His manager at the time, Steve Cox, did a wonderful job of (once again) covering for him. True or not, that really disturbed me.

Oh well...I just wanted to let John know that I miss him very much. Chris Rock said it best, "If you don't have insurance coverage in the United States, you're gonna die".