As the most awarded country music singer ever, a devoted wife, and mother to six children, Loretta Lynn had one heck of a journey.
Growing up in the coal-mining hills of Kentucky, she was dirt poor – her mother reportedly used Sears catalog pages as wallpaper.
The coal miner’s daughter married Oliver “Mooney” Lynn when she was only 16 and, according to the girl herself, it took a while before she learned where babies came from …Country legend Loretta Lynn was born April 14, 1932, in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, the second oldest of eight children. Her mother loved American actress Loretta Young and decided to name her daughter after her. Loretta’s father was a coal miner who died of black lung disease at 52.
”The winters were cold, so my mommy glued newspapers and pages from old Sears Roebuck catalogs to the wall to help keep the cold out. We didn’t have money for wallpaper, but my mommy made that old house stay warm and beautiful,” Loretta said.
She married first husband Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn when she was just 16 years old and he was 21. Loretta was a young stay-at-home-wife, and her husband worked as a logger to provide for the family.
The family eventually decided to move from Kentucky to the logging community of Custer, Washington. It was there Loretta suddenly started getting sick in the mornings – but had no idea why. She decided to see her doctor, who in turn asked her to get undressed.
”I just pulled the sheet over my head, like an ostrich. When he was done, Doc told me I could get dressed again. After that, he put his arm around my waist and he said, ’Honey, your trouble is, you’re pregnant,” Loretta explained in her book “Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter”.
The news came as shock for the young and innocent Loretta, still a minor at the time. She insisted that she didn’t know what the word pregnant meant, or where babies came from…CONTINUE READING