For a lonely gay boy in the rural Midwest, they were a calling card, and a lifeline of sorts.īut I still always think of my grandpa.)Īnd after my father died, I wanted to be at that breakfast table they sang about in “Love Is Alive,” soaking up all the love that sat there. Wynonna was clearly the bigger voice of the duo. But without Naomi’s harmonies and stage presence, I doubt her daughter ever would have become the one-name star she is. And would Ashley have made it in Hollywood without her mother’s support?Īs I grew older, the story of the Judds impressed me, and I saw bits of it in my own life. Naomi’s single motherhood, a nurse trying to score a recording contract, clicked with my view of my newly widowed mother, another country woman, trying to keep it together while still raising children. When cancer visited one of my leg bones after my senior year in high school, I thought of Naomi and her hepatitis diagnosis. I went off to college, got married (well, committed - same-sex marriage wasn’t yet legal in those days) and ended up in New York. Like Naomi, I had persevered and made it out. There, I cultivated a new circle of friends, many of them also from Michigan. One night a Judds song came on, I forget which one, and one of my new friends began singing along. I had to go to all the way to New York City to find my country people. Soon we two couples became inseparable, taking camping trips together several times a summer. When my husband and I moved to Philadelphia and they stayed in New York, we continued our campground reunions, and there was never a camping trip without a Judds singalong around the fire, under the starlit Pennsylvania sky.īoth couples have since divorced, and I have remarried - making sure to impress an appreciation of the Judds upon my new husband - but we all remain close and in touch.