The most interesting story of my career

EDITOR’S NOTE: Rheta Grimsley Johnson is retiring. Her last column will run June 20.

In a misty gold twilight last September, singer Jett Williams, the daughter of Hank Williams, married Kelly Zumwalt, beautiful divorced mother of three.

They made vows in a cedar cabin secluded on Jett’s farm northeast of Nashville. The minister asked if anyone had objections. Nobody did.

The brides wore white. Kelly, a simple tea-length dressed topped by a red shawl her son chose. Jett, a satiny tunic over dark pants. Both sported Converse tennis shoes.

Kelly made two wedding cakes herself, one a black walnut that surpassed any caterer’s. The cake topper was designed by a Key West artist who did an uncannily good job from minimal description. Jett’s likeness was slim and wore a feathered cowboy hat. Kelly’s figure featured her patented silver pageboy.

Family and friends ate cake and burgers and enjoyed the sweet, damp night, marveling at the complementary compatibility of the brides. Jett lives to hunt. Kelly loves to read. Jett is famous and funny and never meets a stranger. Kelly is refined and intellectual and content to wait in the wings while Jett performs. They are a good couple.

I have known Jett for 35 years. I have interviewed her on a Potomac yacht where she once lived with her late husband, Keith Adkinson, and several times at the rolling Tennessee farm. Our relationship was professional but pleasant. She once let my niece hold Hank’s hat.

Keith was gatekeeper. I treasured my access because I considered hers the most interesting story of my 42-year career. It was Hollywood caliber, the journalistic gift that kept on giving. A quick recap: On her twenty-first birthday, Cathy Deupree’s adopted parents paid a visit to her dorm room and told her she might be the daughter of a famous Alabama singer. They presented a $2,000 check left to Cathy by Hank Williams’ mother’s estate. Lillian Stone adopted the baby after Hank died, but Lillian died herself a year later. The child went into the system.

Before his death and Jett’s birth, Hank claimed as flesh the expected child of a Nashville secretary, Bobbie Jett. Hank made physical and financial provisions, leaving a contractual paper trail. He planned to have Jett live with him when she turned 3, the age he deemed old enough to leave her grandmother’s side.

Life, death and greed got in the way. When she was 30, Jett met Washington lawyer Adkinson, told him what she knew and that she’d decided to pursue her birthright. They married and worked nine years to prove the fraud that had kept Jett from her rightful inheritance.

It’s all public record. Keith died in 2013, and Jett went through more tough times, as all widows do. Her story still was following a trajectory her father might have written a song about.

It was about then I offered to stop taking notes and simply be her friend. We were both at an age when real friendships seemed more important than scoops or publicity. I hurt for her.

“You’ll find love again,” I counseled late one night.

“Oh, I have,” she said. That’s when I met Jett’s future bride.

Most of us spend a chunk of our lives trying to figure out who we are. For Hank’s daughter, kept in the dark so long, it took courage. Finally, Jett knows exactly who she is and wants the world to know, too.

It would take a cold, cold heart to wish her anything but happiness.