At 80, Mary Wilson still indulges her passion for live music, especially the Charlie Daniels Band. And she still stands up for shows - by the stage and the speakers.
By LANE DeGREGORY
Published June 8, 2003
[Times photo: Michael Rondou]
Mary Wilson, a winter resident of Clearwater, watches last month’s Molly Hatchet concert in Gulfport. For each concert she sees, she writes the date, band and venue in a journal. She has shelves full of albums with ticket stubs and autographs.
GULFPORT - Three hours before the rock concert, the great-grandmom was waiting by the tour bus. Mary Wilson always gets to shows early. She was trying to get the band's autographs. She wanted to make sure she got a spot up front, by the speakers.
She was waiting to see the Southern rock group Molly Hatchet at the Gulfport Casino. Her black handbag was stocked with plenty of pens, plus her auto-focus Olympus. She always tries to snap a few shots of herself with the guys.
Mary is 80 years old. She lives in Clearwater all winter, summers in upstate New York. She has two children, four granddaughters and seven great-grandkids.
She works part time as a maid. Her specialty is polishing silver. She seldom eats out; she won't spend money on makeup or clothes. "I wear hand-me-downs," she said. "I try to save my Social Security for more important things."
Like concert tickets.
Travis Tritt, Tanya Tucker, Sawyer Brown, Ricky Skaggs, the Marshall Tucker Band - she's seen them all.
"Confederate Railroad, of course, and Diamond Rio," she said. "I've probably seen Molly Hatchet 15 times. But they're not my favorites.
"Those rock 'n' rollers, they're just not as friendly as the country people."
Mary likes country music most. Charlie Daniels best of all.
She's seen him 86 times.
Paintings and pickups
Mary's parents were painters and free spirits. She grew up in Woodstock, N.Y. At the dawn of World War II, she married her grade-school sweetheart. She was 22. She had her son and daughter with him.
He took her to her first concert: Ernest Tubb at Carnegie Hall.
Mary felt the passion, the spontaneity, the joy of live music. She realized how different it was to soar with the musicians as they created their performance. How much better it was than hearing music that's recorded, filtered through a radio or record player. Oh, she had the addiction early. But family, work and finances kept her from indulging.
"My first husband turned out to be an alcoholic," she said by phone the night after the Molly Hatchet show. "So I divorced him and mostly raised my children by myself. My mother lived next door. So she helped out with them while I worked."
For many years, Mary worked in a sweater factory. Then she got a job making radio transistors, then working in an antique shop. "I married again - again disastrously," she said. "It was more like a war."
Mary came to Florida for the first time in 1955, to celebrate her second divorce. She started craving Clearwater's beaches. She started coming back every winter for vacation. She saw a few concerts during those years, mostly country, she said.
She went to Woodstock by herself.
"I was 46, and it was in my back yard, and I wasn't going to miss it," Mary said. "My son was grown and gone, and my daughter was pregnant with my first grandchild. The tickets only cost $7 a day. Can you imagine? I still have them. By the time I got there, the fence was knocked down and everyone was just going in without a ticket. So I held onto mine."
She saw Jimi Hendrix, Arlo Guthrie and Sly and the Family Stone.
"I can't remember all the rest," she said. "But I stayed for the whole thing, through all that rain. I slept in my car."
The next winter, Mary moved to Clearwater. She rented a garage apartment and got a housekeeping job at the Belleview Biltmore Hotel. She was a maid there for 17 winters.
She met her true love in the lobby.
"He was a Kentucky gentleman. He was so good to me. We spent 20 summers together, touring national parks," she said. They never married, but he taught her to appreciate new places and old bourbon. She sang him country songs. When he died, he left her his 1981 Chevy pickup and his travel trailer.
He left her alone.
So she started cruising concerts.
Family road trip
In 1991, two years after her Kentucky gentleman died, Mary heard that Charlie Daniels was doing a benefit for firefighters in St. Petersburg. So she drove downtown, carrying her little camera. "I saw Charlie Daniels outside before the show, and I asked if I could take my picture with him. He said, "Sure,' and put his arm around me," Mary said.
He asked if she was going to see his show. She told him she'd like to, but she didn't have a ticket. "So he grabbed me and took me backstage and gave me a pass and a front-row seat."
She's been a disciple ever since. She joined Charlie's fan club and started writing him letters. She met his wife, went to his barbecue benefit, watched him play golf. "He sends me passes, tickets all the time," she said. "And I just love his music. The Devil Went Down to Georgia, that's my favorite. And he plays it every time."
Mary met a couple at that St. Petersburg show, Tom and Anne Bell. They're both 63. They winter in Holiday, not far from Mary's house. They summer in Nantucket.
They're also Charlie Daniels fanatics.
Anne has seen Charlie Daniels 200 times. "Oh, we've seen him 100 times just since we got our belt buckles. And that was in '96," she said.
Mary doesn't have a computer, so Tom prints out bands' tour schedules and takes them to her. Sometimes, the Bells pick up Mary and take her to shows.
"She's a lot of fun. We have a good time together," Tom said. "She doesn't need us to go to the shows, though. She does plenty of them on her own."
To Mary, a five-hour drive barely qualifies as a road trip. She has logged more than 100,000 miles on her truck seeing shows. She writes each concert date, each band, each venue in a spiral-bound journal. She has filled shelves of albums with ticket stubs and autographs.
"Oh, all the band members know me," she said. "I'm usually the only gray-hair hanging out up front."
She stands through all the shows, by the stage and the speakers the whole time. She doesn't wear ear plugs. Doesn't need a hearing aid. She doesn't suffer from any aches, pains or ailments. Doesn't take any medications. "I don't even have a doctor," she said. "My mother lived until she was 99. So I figure I have a few years left.
"I don't see the point of dying anyway. It's too much trouble."
Last month, Mary stayed in Central Florida a few extra days. She had to catch Molly Hatchet at the Casino. She had to wait in line after the show to get the guys' autographs. But she got her picture taken with them. She got home around 1:30 a.m. "I slept in until 7:30, then started packing," she said. She planned to hit the road the next morning, drive her pickup to the Panhandle, stay a week with friends then keep heading north.
"I have to be in Nashville by June 4. Charlie Daniels is having his fan club party there," she said. Then she'll go on up toward Woodstock, stopping to see relatives along the way.
In July, Mary's family is having a reunion in Seattle. She said she wants to go. "But I can't afford the $331 plane ticket."
Besides, Charlie Daniels is performing at a county fair that week, just a road trip from her New York mobile home.
"I have to head back to Clearwater right after Thanksgiving," Mary said.
"Charlie's doing a concert a Coachman Park on Dec. 12."
