Some stories in country music sound too strange to be true. This one is true, and it still hurts to tell.
On the night of June 4, 1993, Conway Twitty was rushed to Cox South Hospital in Springfield, Missouri. He was in terrible pain, and nobody yet knew how serious it was. But inside that hospital, by complete chance, was the one person in country music who knew him best on stage: Loretta Lynn.
Why Loretta Lynn Was There
Loretta Lynn had not come for Conway Twitty. Her husband, Oliver “Doo” Lynn, was a patient at that same hospital, recovering from heart surgery. She was there to look after him.
Then the man she had sung duets with since 1971 was brought through the doors. Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn had won the Country Music Association’s Vocal Duo of the Year award four years in a row, from 1972 through 1975. Their families were close. Doo was fond of Conway, and Conway’s wife, Dee Henry, was fond of Loretta.
Loretta Lynn was able to see Conway Twitty briefly when he arrived. After that, she did what a friend does. She stayed with Dee through the long night while doctors worked. She also kept slipping back upstairs to check on Doo, then returning to sit with Dee again. For one night, she was caught between two men she loved, both of them in that hospital fighting for their lives.
The Last Show in Branson
Only hours before, Conway Twitty had been doing what he had done for nearly forty years. He played the Jim Stafford Theatre in Branson, Missouri, on Friday night, June 4, 1993.
He had been in Branson for a few days. The night before, on Thursday, he and his wife had stopped by Mel Tillis’s theater in town. Mel Tillis later told the Associated Press that Conway Twitty was a great singer, the kind of thing friends said about him all weekend.
After the Friday show, Conway Twitty boarded his tour bus for the drive home to Hendersonville, Tennessee, just outside Nashville.
The Rest Stop
The bus never made it home. During a rest stop in southwest Missouri, Conway Twitty collapsed. A blood vessel in his abdomen had ruptured. Doctors would later call it an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
He was taken to Springfield and into emergency surgery. His wife, Dee Henry, other relatives and some of his band members waited at the hospital. Loretta Lynn waited with them.
Conway Twitty died the next morning, Saturday, June 5, 1993. He was 59 years old.
What Loretta Lynn Said
The loss stayed with Loretta Lynn for the rest of her life. Nearly three decades later, just months before her own passing in 2022, she remembered that day in a public post. She wrote that she had been there when they lost him, and that she and Doo had been devastated.
“Doo and I were heartbroken. So heartbroken.”
She also said it never seemed real, and that she still missed him.
The Album Called Final Touches
There was one more piece of the story still to come. In the months before he died, Conway Twitty had been recording a new album at the Sound Shop in Nashville with producer Don Cook. The sessions began in March 1992 and ran into May 1993, only weeks before that last night in Branson.
MCA released the album on August 31, 1993. It was his 58th solo album, and his last. The title track was written by Gordon Bradberry and Tony Colton, and the album carried a name nobody could hear without thinking of what had just happened: Final Touches.
Conway Twitty was laid to rest at Sumner Memorial Gardens in Gallatin, Tennessee, under the name he was born with, Harold Jenkins.
A Night Country Fans Never Forgot
Conway Twitty spent his life singing about love, longing and the people we cannot let go of. On his last night, he was not surrounded by strangers. His wife was there. His band was there. And, by a chance no one could have planned, Loretta Lynn was there too.
Do you remember where you were when you heard that Conway Twitty was gone?