“Would you still remember me?” – Lynyrd Skynyrd

I think most every family has that relative. The one who you’re never quite sure where fact and fiction deviate. The one with a slight aura of mystery who lives in a general location and has a job in a generic industry (insurance, construction, real estate, etc.), but you’re never one hundred percent of the factual basis of any of it. You just shrug your shoulders and kind of blindly accept as reasonable what you’re told from others.

My Uncle Ricky was that person for my family. He passed away in his sleep late last Sunday night in Texas at the home he shared with his longtime partner, Michele. Receiving the message early Monday morning that he had passed was jarring. He was only 66.

He was my mom’s brother and the youngest of the four Duke children (by several years) growing up in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. He was the “surprise” of the family for my grandpa Kay, a rancher, who was in his 50’s and my grandma who was nearly 43 by the time she gave birth to Ricky Reed Duke in June of 1958. Athletic and handsome, Ricky was an all-sports star at Pawhuska High School, With just 12 years separating us in age, my Uncle Rick served more like a cool older brother than an uncle. When I was growing up, I read a few of his newspaper clippings and he became an early sports idol for me reading about his time playing quarterback, running point guard, playing baseball and golf and everything in between for the Huskies.

A lot of us were never really sure where he lived or exactly what job he was working, never entirely sure of his relationship status or his exact whereabouts at any given time. But he also was not an absent relative, dutifully showing up at any and most family holidays and events. He loved family. He loved getting together with his mom, brothers, sisters, and relatives for family reunions and hearing the same old stories and laughing like they were the first time he’d ever heard them. He was there for Easter and Thanksgiving dinner. He was there on Christmas eve to (as tradition dictated) pitch in his singing voice on “We Three Kings” with the other men in the family, but performed only after some frantic last-minute shopping and/or the wrapping of gifts in a back bedroom somewhere with minutes to spare. He was cool. He was funny. He had an easy laugh and kind eyes, and yes, he was a complete enigma at times, but we could always talk about family and we could always talk about sports. He loved being around my dad the basketball coach and talking and watching hoops. He’d watch football or baseball with you. He had a John Daly-esque backswing on the golf course and still had a smooth jumpshot on the basketball court well into his 30’s. And Ricky loved his OSU Cowboys from his days and time spent in Stillwater frequently meeting up with old pals and fraternity brothers at football games and an annual calf fry every year.

It’s funny the things you remember about relatives or friends for seemingly no particular reason, but I remember one time in my teens that Rick asked me what kind of music I was listening to. I responded with the mainstream stars of the day – Van Halen, Journey, Prince, Michael Jackson. After nodding along he asked, “What about Lynyrd Skynyrd? You should listen to some Skynyrd!” I knew of “Sweet Home Alabama,” was kind of familiar with some song about a bird being free, but surely couldn’t spell the name of the band nor tell you one person in the band. Was Leonard Skinnard the lead singer? So upon his recommendation sometime along the early 90’s I bought “Skynyrd’s Innyrds: Greatest Hits” cd. It was then that I learned how to spell Lynyrd Skynyrd, learned that no one in the band was named Lynyrd or Leonard or Skynyrd or anywhere close to the group’s name. I listened to the cd several times and dutifully reported back to Uncle Rick that “they have several pretty good songs,” which I’m sure was obviously a proud moment for him. I still have that cd, and it has obviously gained just a little more meaning for me this week.

Famously known for never being on time, Ricky Duke was as cool to me as Ronnie Van Zant was to his legions of fans, and anytime I’d hear a Lynyrd Skynyrd song through the years, my mind would often drift to my Uncle Rick and to wondering where he was and what he was doing. He lived most of his adult life in the Dallas metro area, but he did live with my parents at their house in Norman for a period of time before my parents moved closer to me in Arkansas in 2017. I never was really quite sure what precipitated the need to live with them temporarily, and I never asked. I just figured I probably wouldn’t like the answer and like the saying goes, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

The last time I saw Ricky Duke was at my mom’s funeral last July where I tasked him with reading mom’s obituary, and he did. Our last correspondence was last Christmas Eve when I texted him a link to a YouTube video of an old VHS tape I had recently uploaded. It was a short video from our time together as a family at my parents’ house in Norman, Oklahoma on Christmas Eve, 1988. It featured Ricky and his siblings, their spouses, nephews, nieces, and his mom (my grandma Ruby). It was about 3pm and I told him in the text that I was thinking about him and wished him well imagining that he was probably just starting his Christmas shopping. I told him I was going to get him a Blockbuster gift card for Christmas as a thank you for all of the Blockbuster Video gift cards he got me and the rest of my cousins over the years when we were younger, but that I was having trouble finding one. He responded via text that evening laughing at the memory, thanking me for the video link, and that it “made my Christmas!” He hoped we were well, wished us a Merry Christmas, and signed off with a “Love ya.”

I’m thankful those were the final words I have from him. I love ya too, Uncle Ricky.

For I must be traveling on, now
‘Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see

It may have been more appropriate for me to tie this post to Skynyrd’s “Simple Man,” another favorite of mine. But to do that would have also unintentionally created (while maybe appropriate) a too simplistic analogy of my Uncle Rick. He was a simple man, simple at heart. He was “a little country and also a lot of class,” as Michele described him. But like all of us, he was also a flawed person who made some poor choices along his path. He was in and out of favor with family members and friends for different periods of time, but one thing I never questioned was that he loved me and that he loved his family. Flaws, mistakes, regrets… that’s what make us human, but ultimately love can conquer all. Love will ease pain and cleanse guilt. It’s the greatest commandment, and I think about love when I hear this song, even moreso now. Even though the lyrics themselves point to a man leaving a woman, maybe a lost love even, the music itself is soaring and reflective and rocking and limitless and beautiful, “Free Bird” is Skynyrd’s nine, sometimes ten, sometimes eleven plus minute lovely masterpiece.

With Gary Rossington making his guitar sing in this video, using it to imitate the sound of birds chirping, Lynyrd Skynyrd was at the height of their fame and one of the most famous bands in the world in 1977 when this was filmed. It would have been just a year or so after Ricky graduated from high school, and I like to think that he could have been there with his friends on that sunny afternoon probably shirtless, in cutoff jean shorts with his long brown hair dancing in rhythm with the rest of the Skynyrd Family to the emanating sound of the time, with no cares, no worries and a whole life of limitless possibilities hanging before him on a blank canvas.

Performed at a packed Oakland Coliseum just three months before the tragic plane crash that claimed the lives of Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister and backup singer Cassie Gaines, here is classic Skynyrd with “Free Bird”…

Be free and fly high Uncle Rick. I’ll miss you.

sincerely,

your nephew