On the morning of August 25, 2010, Little Jimmy Dickens stood on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry House and said out loud what most performers only think about. He was 89 years old, an Opry member since 1948, and he had just helped put the most important piece of wood in country music back where it belonged.
A few minutes later, he told the people gathered there exactly how he hoped his life would end.
A stage that had been under water
That spring, more than 13 inches of rain fell on Nashville over a single weekend. The Cumberland River spilled over its banks, and the Grand Ole Opry House took on 46 inches of water. The pews, the curtains, the backstage area and the stage itself were ruined. The Opry kept broadcasting from other buildings while roughly $20 million in repairs went on.
Jimmy Dickens felt that loss personally. He later said he had tried to get into the building soon after the flood to check on the clothes and keepsakes in his locker, but he wasn’t allowed inside.
The one thing everyone hoped to save was the circle: a six-foot ring of oak cut from the stage of the Ryman Auditorium and set into the new Opry House floor in 1974. Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn had all stood on those boards. The circle had been submerged with everything else, but it was pulled out, stored and carefully restored.
The morning on the circle
When it was time to put the circle back, the Opry handed the job to its oldest living member and his close friend Brad Paisley. The two helped a small crew of workers lower the oak ring into place at center stage. Then the two of them stepped onto it, stood behind an Opry microphone and sang “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
That was when Dickens spoke from the heart:
“The happiest hours I spend are right here on this stage on the Grand Ole Opry. When I die, I want to die right out there in front of those microphones, with a full house, and me trying to make them laugh.”
And then, because he was Little Jimmy Dickens, he added one more line: “That’s about as serious as I can be right now.”
A month later, on September 28, 2010, the Opry House reopened with a star-filled show, and Dickens and Paisley were among the first on stage. Dickens told reporters he had brought his wife, Mona, to see the repairs the day before, and she was moved to tears.
One more Saturday night
Dickens kept coming back, weekend after weekend. “I look forward from one weekend to another to get back out on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry,” he said near the end of his life. His body wasn’t making it easy. When he was 92, his friend Bill Anderson told fans on his website that Dickens had been taking radiation treatments, yet had still come to the Opry, sung, and looked great.
Jimmy Dickens turned 94 on December 19, 2014. The next night, December 20, the Opry celebrated his birthday, and the 4-foot-11 Hall of Famer walked out one more time. He sang “Out Behind the Barn,” one of his old Columbia hits, and ran through the comedy that had made him an Opry favorite for decades. Backstage, he traded the usual banter. It would be his last Opry appearance.
Christmas Day
Five days later, on Christmas Day, Dickens suffered a stroke and was admitted to a Nashville-area hospital in critical care. On December 31, Opry general manager Pete Fisher visited him and told the press that he was improving.
He died on Friday, January 2, 2015, of cardiac arrest. He was the oldest member of the Grand Ole Opry and its longest-serving one.
Back at center stage
His wish didn’t come true the way he described it. He didn’t go at the microphone, in the middle of a joke. But on January 8, 2015, the country music community gathered at the Opry House to say goodbye, and his hat, boots and guitar were placed at center stage.
Vince Gill said that the greatest of all evidently “live to be 94 and sing two weeks before they pass on.” Brad Paisley, the man who had lowered that circle with him four years earlier, sang “When I Get Where I’m Going” and told his friend, “We’ll take it from here, little buddy.”
The service ended the same way that August morning in 2010 had: with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” sung on the stage Jimmy Dickens loved more than any other.