John R. Cash (1932 - 2003)

Born 26 Feb 1932 in Kingsland, Cleveland County, Arkansas, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Valerie June (Carter) Cash — married 1 May 1968 in Franklin, TN

Died 12 Sep 2003 in Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee, United States

Profile manager: Jason Overton [send private message]

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Biography

"The Man in Black"

Johnny Cash is a Military Veteran.
Served in the United States Air Force July 7, 1950-July 3, 1954
Staff Sergeant, 12th Radio Squadron Mobile, Honorably discharged

Birth

Son of Ray & Carrie Rivers Cloveree Cash of mostly Scottish/English ancestry. Named J. R. at birth, when he went into the military, he was required to have a full name so he changed it to John R. "Johnny" became his stage name in 1955.

In October 1965, Johnny Cash was arrested in El Paso, Texas for attempting to smuggle amphetamines across the Mexican border in his guitar case. ^[1]

His Brother 'Jack'

On. May 12, 1944, John’s brother Jack had a job working in the high school agriculture shop, cutting oak tree trunks into fence posts on a table saw that had no guard on it. As shown in the movie, Johnny was on his way home from the fishing spot when his father, Ray Cash, picked him up in the preacher's Model A Ford. His father took him home and showed him Jack's bloody clothes, at which time his father pointed out "where the table saw had cut [Jack] from his ribs all the way down into his stomach and groin, through his belt and everything." Jack, who was only fourteen-years-old, held on for a week before passing away. ^[2]

Marriage

Johnny met his first wife, Vivian Liberto, at a roller-skating rink in San Antonio while Johnny was stationed there in the Air Force. Three weeks into their brief 1950 courtship, Johnny completed his training and was sent to Germany. When Johnny was stationed overseas, the pair exchanged more than 10,000 pages of love letters over a period of approximately four years.^[3] John married first Vivian Liberto in 1954. They divorced in 1966. In 1975, Johnny Cash told Penthouse magazine, "My first marriage was in trouble when I lived in California, and I have to take blame for that -- because no woman can live with a man who's strung out on amphetamines." In 1965, after his truck caught fire due to a defective exhaust, he inadvertently started a 508-acre forest fire that burnt down half of Los Padres National Forest in California. When a judge asked Cash why he started the fire, he responded, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead so you can't question it." Cash was sued by the federal government, and he eventually settled the case by paying $82,000. ^[4]

June Carter

Johnny Cash met June Carter when she was hired to be a comedian on The Johnny Cash Show.^[5] In a 1981 Mike Douglas interview, June Carter Cash explained, "He asked me to marry him in front of 7,000 people, but I would have liked it if he had gotten down on his knees and proposed to me, you know, but that wasn't the way it was. It was a great big production..." Johnny continued the story, "We had just sung a song called 'Jackson', and I stopped the show and said, 'Will you marry me?' on the microphone. She said, 'Go, sing another, sing another, sing another!' I said, 'I'm not gonna sing until you answer me. Will you marry me?' And she says, 'Sing a song. Sing a song.' She turned her back, you know, trying to get somebody in the band to play some music or something. [It] kept going until she finally said, 'Yes.'" He married June Carter in 1968.

Death

Johnny died from diabetes on the 12th of Sept. 2003 in Nashville, Tennessee.

On Tuesday, April 10, 2007, the former home of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash was destroyed in a fire that left almost nothing except for the brick chimneys and the steel frame. The house burned rapidly because construction workers had recently applied a flammable wood preservative to the exterior and interior of the house. Barry Gibb, vocalist for the Bee Gees, was restoring the Hendersonville, Tennessee home, located on Old Hickory Lake. A corporation owned by Gibb had purchased the home in January 2006 for $2.3 million. Gibb and his wife Linda planned to write songs there. Neighbor Richard Sterban of the Oak Ridge Boys perhaps summed up the unfortunate devastation best, "Maybe it's the good Lord's way to make sure that it was only Johnny's house." ^[6]

Sources

• Johnny Cash article on Wikipedia
• Find A Grave: Memorial #7863405
• This WikiTree profile is referenced from WikiData: Q42775 Wikidata Information Reasonator enwiki Ancestors (about wikidata)

1. ↑ http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/walktheline.php
2. ↑ Cash: The Autobiography
3. ↑ SFGate.com
4. ↑ Cash: The Autobiography
5. ↑ John Davidson Interview, 1981
6. ↑ washingtonpost.com

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Jason Overton, Justin Cash, Bob Carson, Kitty Smith, Arik Russell and Stephanie Stults for contributions to this profile.

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