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Dixie Carter finally gets to heaven
We were all very sad to hear of the passing of our old friend Dixie Carter this past Saturday evening. We have lost a true Southern spirit and I lost a very special friend. I first met and worked with Dixie on a UAB MedWise event in 1994 and we hit it off. Right after that I started Big and she fast became one of my first clients when she asked me to handle PR for her Southern book tour on her popular bio, Trying to get to Heaven. I also was lucky enough to work with Dixie on Southern Living’s first holiday TV show, “Holiday Memories with Dixie Carter.” We traveled the South together and it was a special and unforgettable time for me. We had a few more adventures together, like the time she invited me and my friends Will and Kim to see her cabaret act at the Cafe Carlyle in New York City. Lots of wild things happened on that trip that I won’t go into here but one of the coolest memories from that trip was when Dixie introduced me to the legendary director, John Frankenheimer and his wife who were also her guests that night.
Over the fifteen years we were friends she was always there when I needed her for one of my schemes. Like the time she agreed to appear in a TV spot for the relaunch of the local Virginia Samford Theater or most recently when she appeared as a speaker for me at a benefit for the Guntersville Chamber of Commerce on Easter weekend a few years back. That was a special weekend that anyone who was there won’t soon, if ever, forget involving whiskey and Krystal hamburgers and a canoe that fell off the wall and on to Dixie’s head. Only in Alabama. My wife and I will never forget that Easter Sunday and going to a beautiful church service at The Advent. The place was packed, we were all dressed up and the only seats left in the place were on the front pew. That seemed appropriate since we after all were with Dixie Carter. Singing traditional Easter hymns with Dixie was about as memorable of an Easter as I will ever have since my Uncle “C” ate the ears off of my chocolate Easter bunny when I was 5.
The last time I saw Dixie was when she was in Birmingham last year for a Salvation Army fundraiser. She told me then that she was having some “female” issues and it made me a bit concerned. We talked a few times after that and then in October after our son, John IV was born I sent her an email with the good news. We never spoke again. I will say that she was one of the coolest and most real women that I have ever known and she made a big impact on me and my life. I am glad that she finally got to Heaven.
So long Dixie.
John Montgomery
