The turbulent life of Johnny Cash, highly acclaimed singer, songwriter, guitarist, actor and author, is well documented in song and the media. Although he was best remembered for country music, his songs crossed into rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk and gospel.
Born into a family of seven in Kingsland, Ark., in 1932, Cash began working in the cotton fields at age 5, singing along with his family. Taught guitar by his mother and a friend, he was playing and writing songs at age 12. His family’s economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression inspired many of his songs.
Cash enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1950 and was assigned duty as a Morse Code operator intercepting Soviet Army transmissions at Landsberg, Germany, where he created his first band, the Landsberg Barbarians. While in Germany, he exchanged hundreds of love letters with Vivian Liberto, whom he had met earlier at a roller-skating rink in her native San Antonio. One month after his discharge, they were married at St Ann’s Roman Catholic Church in her hometown and went on to have four daughters. Liberto later stated that Cash’s drug and alcohol abuse, as well as constant touring, affairs with other women and his close relationship with June Carter led her to file for divorce in 1966.
Cash’s rise in music, addiction to drugs, marital problems and conversion to Christianity are documented in his 1975 autobiography, “Man in Black,” so named because of his regard for the poor and hungry. His book tells a compelling life story of a great talent dealing with accomplishments and failures, happiness and sorrow as he fought the demons of his life.
Sheriff Ralph Jones of Walker County, Ga., was a typical rural county law officer in Northwest Georgia. He was friendly to his constituents, tough on hardened criminals and sympathetic to the locals within his jurisdiction. He served the citizens of Walker County as its highest law enforcement officer from the mid-1960s to December 1984.