Fans have known the look for almost fifty years: the full beard, the dark sunglasses, the cowboy hat. But it did not start as an image. It started on August 8, 1975, on a snowfield high on Ajax Peak in Montana, when a fall of roughly 500 feet shattered the face of a 26-year-old singer who was just beginning to become his own man.
A Trip Meant to Clear His Head
By the summer of 1975, Hank Jr. had spent most of his life singing his father’s songs. His mother, Audrey, had put him on stage as a boy to fill the space Hank Williams left when he died in 1953, and MGM expected a new version of the old Hank.
He had other plans. He moved from Nashville to Alabama, broke away from his mother’s control, and between February and July of 1975 recorded Hank Williams Jr. and Friends, an album built largely on his own songs and cut with Southern rock players including Charlie Daniels and Toy Caldwell of the Marshall Tucker Band. It was the record meant to show who he really was.
Before a big tour was set to begin, he went to Montana to get away. On August 8 he set out with Dick Willey, a rancher from the little town of Wisdom, and Willey’s 11-year-old son, Walt, to hike a remote part of Ajax Peak, on the Idaho line, looking for mountain goats.
What Happened on the Snowfield
At about two in the afternoon, at roughly 9,000 feet, the group crossed a snowfield on the side of the mountain. The snow gave way under Hank. He slid and tumbled down the slope, striking rocks that jutted out of the snow, and came to rest face first on a boulder.
Estimates of the distance have varied over the years, from about 440 feet in some accounts to more than 500 in others. Hank himself has long put the number at 530 feet.
The front of his skull was split from his chin to his hairline. His nose was nearly gone, his jaw and teeth were broken, and one eye had been forced out of its socket. In his autobiography, Living Proof, he described reaching up to feel his nose and finding nothing there, and pieces of his teeth and jaw coming away in his hand. He later told People that only a day earlier, he and the woman in his life had finally admitted they loved each other.
The Boy Who Kept Him Talking
Dick Willey made a hard decision. He would go for help, and his son would stay. He told Walt to keep Hank talking so he would not slip away. For about three hours, the boy sat on the mountainside with a badly injured stranger and did exactly that.
Hank never lost consciousness. Decades later, he said doctors believed that was one reason he survived.
I remember every bit of it.
Willey reached a district forest ranger, Ed Brown, who radioed for a helicopter. The ground was too rough for it to land near Hank, so six men hiked in and carried him about a quarter of a mile to a spot where it could set down. Hank later recalled being strapped to the outside of the helicopter for the flight, and asking the medical team not to cut off the cross he wore around his neck. It was about six hours after the fall when he finally reached Missoula Community Hospital.
Waking Up in Missoula
Surgeons worked on him for more than seven hours just to keep him alive, and few expected him to make it. One doctor later told him he had treated wounded soldiers in Vietnam who looked better than Hank did that night.
When he woke, the first two faces he saw belonged to Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. June was his godmother. He told Rolling Stone in 2015 that she placed a cross on him and promised him everything would be all right.
His head had swollen, in his words, to the size of a watermelon. It was days before he could bring himself to look in a mirror. Audrey, estranged from her son for years, flew in from Nashville to be at his side.
It’s just a miracle the boy is living.
She died less than three months later, at 52.
Nine Surgeries and a New Face
Over the next two years, Hank went through nine reconstructive operations on his face and skull, with metal plates, screws and skin grafts. Doctors warned him he might never sing again. He had to learn to talk and sing all over again, and the long recovery brought a renewed fight with addiction. Counting everything over the years, he has put the total at 17 operations.
Hank Williams Jr. and Friends came out in December 1975, while he was still recovering and unable to tour behind it. He did not release another album until One Night Stands in 1977.
When he finally returned to the stage full time, the clean-shaven, boyish face from his MGM album covers was gone. To cover the scars, he grew a full beard and began wearing dark glasses and a cowboy hat. He has rarely been seen in public without them since.
The Note Walt Kept
Two days after the fall, Hank sent Walt Willey a short note thanking him for saving his life. Walt kept it.
In 2007, when CMT honored Hank with its Giants tribute, Dick and Walt Willey were brought onstage to a standing ovation. Walt, by then a grown man, said he still had the note.
On the 48th anniversary in 2023, he posted a photo marking the day with the same two numbers he has always used, 530 feet and 17 operations.
I am a very blessed and thankful man.