In early May 1989, Keith Whitley drove his wife, Lorrie Morgan, to the Nashville airport and gave her a card before her flight. She decided to save it for the trip home. By the time she opened it, Keith was gone, and the words inside read like a goodbye.
A trip to Alaska and a career finally taking off
Lorrie was leaving for a promotional trip to Alaska. Her debut album for RCA, Leave the Light On, was due out within days.
Keith was in the best stretch of his life as a recording artist. The kid from Kentucky who had sung bluegrass with Ralph Stanley as a teenager had become one of the most admired voices in Nashville. “Don’t Close Your Eyes” and “When You Say Nothing at All” had both gone to No. 1. Only about three weeks before that airport goodbye, “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” became his third No. 1 in a row.
He had just finished recording his next album, I Wonder Do You Think of Me. An invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry was expected within weeks.
What Lorrie knew that the charts did not show
Behind the hits, Keith had been fighting alcohol for most of his adult life. When Lorrie and Keith got together, his manager, Don Light, told her about the problem. Lorrie had grown up around drinking, but she later said she never imagined it could be as bad as it was with Keith.
In 1987, Keith got sober and spoke openly about it, saying that if he had not stopped, he did not think he would still be alive. The sobriety lasted about six months.
“It was like a ticking timebomb.”
That was how Lorrie later described life with his drinking. She said she was on pins and needles whenever he was on the road. In her 1997 book Forever Yours, Faithfully, she described tying her leg to his at night so he could not get out of bed to drink without her knowing.
She believed her being there kept him alive longer. She also said, with painful honesty, that nobody could help him, not her, not a clinic, not any doctor he saw, because he did not want to stop.
The weekend she was away
After Keith dropped Lorrie at the airport, he began a weekend of heavy drinking.
On the morning of Tuesday, May 9, 1989, Keith spoke briefly with his mother on the phone. His brother-in-law, Lane Palmer, came by the house in Goodlettsville, just north of Nashville. The two men had coffee and made plans to play golf and have lunch together.
Palmer left around 8:30 a.m., planning to come back in about an hour. When he returned, he found Keith fully clothed on the bed and unconscious. An ambulance was called, but Keith could not be saved.
The medical examiner ruled the death acute alcohol poisoning. His blood alcohol level was 0.47, almost five times the legal limit in Tennessee at the time. Keith was 34, although many reports over the years have said 33 because his grave marker carries the wrong birth year.
Lorrie was thousands of miles away in Alaska.
Reading the card on the way home
Keith often left Lorrie little notes, so a card at the airport was nothing unusual. She had put it away to enjoy on the flight back. Instead, she read it on the journey home after learning he had died.
According to later accounts, the message was a loving wish that troubles and worries would never linger in her life. Read at that moment, it felt like a farewell.
“I felt like he was trying to tell me something.”
Lorrie told UPI that only a few weeks after his death. She also said she was certain that if she had been home that day, Keith would still be alive.
Going back on the road
More than 500 mourners came to his funeral on May 12, 1989. Ricky Skaggs, his friend since their teenage days in Ralph Stanley’s band, gave the eulogy. Keith was buried at Spring Hill Cemetery near Nashville.
Less than a week later, Lorrie was back on her bus, with shows in Topeka, Sioux City and Bismarck. She had a two-year-old son, Jesse Keith, at home, and an album coming out that she said she would now sing differently.
The songs that kept coming
That fall, the Country Music Association named “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” Single of the Year. Keith was not there to accept it.
The album he had just finished gave him another No. 1 with “I Wonder Do You Think of Me,” and “It Ain’t Nothin'” reached No. 1 the following year. Lorrie later added her voice to a recording he had left behind, and their duet “‘Til a Tear Becomes a Rose” won a CMA award in 1990.
In 2022, Keith Whitley was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Lorrie Morgan was there to speak for him.