LORETTA LYNN’S DYING WORDS
Country superstar bared truth about Twitty, Dolly and tragic family curse
COUNTRY icon Loretta Lynn’s final days were a surprising mix of joy and TRAGIC tears as the Coal Miner’s Daughter bared her deathbed confessions and final regrets while bravely staring death in the eye and refusing to blink, sources close to the family tell GLOBE!
As the end approached, the 90-year-old shared her deepest secrets, including the truth about her love for country music titan Conway Twitty, why she was jealous of her best friend Dolly Parton and how she blamed herself for her beloved son Jack’s tragic death, says a close family friend.
“Loretta had time to take stock of her life during her final days,” the family friend confides. “She was proud of her tremendous accomplishments, but kept some nevervoiced secret sorrows she needed to unburden before joining her lost loved ones on the other side.
“Her forbidden love for Conway was the heaviest of them all.”
Teenage bride Loretta was married for 20 years to Oliver “Doo” Lynn when she met Twitty in 1968. Her hubby’s boozing and skirt-chasing pushed her close to Twitty as they began recording a string of No. 1 duets, including their classic Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man.
The pair became country music’s leading duo, and their chemistry led fans to think they were married — and they were close enough to be lovers.
“Conway gave Loretta a shoulder to cry on, even though he was married, too,” says the friend.
Before her Oct. 4 death at her Hurricane Mills
Farm in Tennessee, the You Ain’t Woman Enough songbird confessed “she and Conway deeply loved each other, and she was tempted to enter into an affair as payback for Doo’s cheating,” dishes the pal.
“But in the end, they settled for platonic love so as not to break up their families.”
Still, the deeply spiritual singer believed being at Twitty’s hospital bedside when he died from an aortic aneurysm in 1993 was more than a coincidence!
“It was eerie. Doo was in the same hospital having a medical procedure when they brought Conway in, so Loretta was running from her husband’s bedside to Conway’s,” the friend says.
“Loretta said it was God’s will that she got to say goodbye to the other love of her life and hold Conway’s hand as he slipped away.”
In spite of scoring 24 No. 1 singles and three Grammy Awards, Loretta also confessed being jealous of longtime pal Parton for her crossover success.
“She saw Dolly striving for a career as an actress, and crossing over from country to pop music,” the friend says. “Loretta wanted that, too, but her acting career began and ended with a TV guest role on The Love Boat.
“And producers told Loretta her voice was too country for pop.”
Still, while Dolly “was always kind,” Loretta sometimes felt the 9 to 5 star “lorded her success over her,” says the friend. “She finally admitted in her final days it made her jealous.”
But Loretta’s biggest regret was ignoring her mom Clary’s chilling warning about buying her sprawling, 3,500-acre ranch with Doo in 1966.
“Clary told Loretta she and Doo should pack up the family and get out of there,” says the pal. “She got the feeling the grounds were haunted and told Loretta if she didn’t move, one of her children would drown there.”
The tragic prophecy became horribly true when
Loretta’s oldest son, Jack, 34, drowned trying to cross the ranch’s river on horseback in 1984.
Loretta opened the ranch to the public and it became one of Tennessee’s most popular tourist attractions, but the It’s Only Make Believe songbird continued to see ghostly spirits and believed the place was cursed.
“One of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles was fought right on Loretta’s property,” the friend notes. “Many soldiers are still buried on the property.” Certainly, tragedy dogged the mom of six as hubby Doo died at 69 in 1996 and oldest daughter and right hand, Betty Sue, 64, passed from emphysema in 2013.
Then, just last year, Loretta’s friend and foreman Wayne Spears died when he was swept up in a flash flood on the property.
Before her last breath, “Loretta admitted she regretted not listening to her mother,” the friend says. “She went to her death believing her home was cursed.”