Making of a Legend

third version 9/02/06, 3/07,4/07

Part One

The Franklin Years

The True Story of Andrew and Cami

Moonlight wishes a kiss from you

Moonlight wishes a wish from you

All night long my wishes come true

Then you pray that dawn never come

‘Moonlight Wishes’

Andrew & Cami, Moonlight Wishes 1970

Chapter One

Trouble in the Bayou

Before ten thousand people yelled his name in different languages across the globe.

Before his first song The Cost hit #1 at the age of 19.

Before the infamous break-up, the hopeful reunion, and the hype of the folk sweethearts that captured the heart of the nation...

Before he was a rock superstar at 23.

and

Before the green-eyed, red headed beauty caught his eye, there was a hometown boy from Franklin, Louisiana named Andrew Joseph Whiete, who had a few small dreams.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The facts of Andrew’s early life are well known. They have been published throughout the world in newspapers and magazines and spewed forth sometimes on a daily basis by television sets and radio announcers everywhere. Here there are again:

Name: Andrew Joseph Whiete (yes it has always had the extra ‘e’)

Birth date: January 2, 1952

Time: 12:04 AM

Weight: 9 lbs 3 oz.

Father: Joseph William Whiete

Mother: Evelyn Francis Redding Whiete

Place of Birth: Franklin Hospital, St. Mary’s Parish, Franklin, Louisiana

Andrew Joseph Whiete was ushered into this world two weeks premature. He was the first son of Joseph, an electrical engineer, and Evelyn Whiete. Both parents’ natives of Louisiana and god-fearing folks who attended regular Sunday Mass at the Franklin Baptist Church.

It was March 18, 1950 when Joseph met Evelyn at the annual Pelkey Barn Dance in Franklin. She was a graduate of the Shevesport School for Girls and had come to Franklin with a friend to help with the elementary school children that year. She was working to be a teacher and saving money to go to University of Louisiana at Shevesport where she hoped to earn her teaching degree.

Joseph, a graduate of the University of Louisiana in 1948 received a degree in Electrical Engineering, and worked at the Franklin Electrical Plate Factory as a front line inspector. A native of the nearby town of New Iberia and friends as well as enemies with many from the Franklin/St. Mary Parish area, romping around the woods and swamps during his childhood days.

“My hometown was New Iberia, I attended NISH (New Iberia Senior High School) and our sports teams often went against Franklin teams. We didn’t always win, but I made lots of friends here when I came to watch those games. New Iberia’s a big town, home of the Bees. Franklin was the home of the Hornets, so there was lots of buzzing going on during those games.

I always liked Franklin it’s a small town with good people. They didn’t have a great football team, but then again I never played football, so I’m probably not a good judge of the game.”

A small, unknown fact about Andrew’s illusive father was that he was forbidden to play any kind of sports during his schooldays due to a childhood bout with the mumps that left him deaf in one ear and an anxious mother who was concerned for her child’s health everyday.

However these facts did not deter the 18-year-old Joseph in 1944 to walk down to the Army Recruiting Office and try to sign up for military service against his mother’s express wishes. For nearly his whole life, Joseph fought against having a disability and did so successfully. Many people even in Franklin today, myself included, never knew he was partially deaf. In the end though, determined or not, Joseph lost the battle to fight for his country and Julia Whiete received her wish. The Army classified him as IV F -- physically, mentally or morally unfit for service.

Although, Joseph was always convinced he could play on sports teams and often spent time in Franklin with his friends playing stickball and other games unknown to his mother twenty eight miles away, officially, his mother would never allow it and kept a watchful eye over her son during his younger years.

“My mother was a wonderful person. She was a bit overprotective at times. She was one of those mothers who would send for the doctor whenever I received a scratch. But you have to understand it was hard for her. My father wasn’t around all the time with the fiddling and all. I imagine raising a boy proved to be daunting task to my Momma. I tell you, though, she handled everything with the dignity of a southern woman and the hysterical nature of a mother. That’s the whole of it.”

Joseph’s father, Andrew, was a character of his own kind. Born Andrew Reed Whiete on December 16, 1895 in New Iberia Parish. He was the son of a poor dirt farmer and a god-fearing mother who was very strict with her rules and her life. She passed on when the boy was only nine and it left just his father and him. Andrew Reed played fiddle with a band named The Williams Trio in New Orleans at the age of eleven, and continued with the group until he was eighteen, according to his son.

‘My daddy could play that fiddle, no doubt about that. He was a tall man with bright eyes always carrying a smile. I can’t say much about him when I was a kid. He spent more time on the road than at home, but I remember some good times watching my daddy play on our old porch. He always had some story of the road to tell. I was a kid, it was more interesting than watching the clock chime, so I listened.’

Joseph’s father traveled as a vagabond for years playing for any one who would listen. He was a musician who believed that all musicians needed to be seen and heard or they weren’t musicians. He had a passion for music and keep on that course no matter what.

Joseph’s mother was from about as far as you could go away from Andrew Reed Whiete’s social circles. Julia Margaret Dollingford had lived in a societal world of parties, affluent people and southern charms. Andrew had lived in a poor house with a dirt floor. The two met unexpectedly at a party one hot Louisiana night. He played the music with his new band at the time, Granger Rail, and Miss Julia Dollingford didn’t stop dancing to the fast fiddling all night.

“My momma loved the sound of the fiddle. She would always kick up her heels to it when Daddy came home. Never seen her do it any other time, but I do remember once we were walking on the street in New Iberia and there was a man playing the fiddle on the corner. He was a neighborhood fellow and Momma listened for a few moments and then shook her head at him. When she turned to me, I remember her saying, ‘now he ought to pursue some other aspirations in life before he starves.’ That was my Momma, she always spoke her mind.”

When Andrew Reed, however, decided to pursue his own aspirations in 1923 at that dance, namely making Julia his wife, the couple was immediately shunned by her world of society and her parents. It wasn’t too long before they made their own life together without the need for society’s acceptance. The first of the Whiete rebels perhaps was born.

Shortly thereafter, the couple moved to a small boarding house in New Iberia, were married in a civil service in 1924, and stayed there until their only child was born in 1926. She joined the Baptist Church, unlike the upbringing she had been accustomed to in her own Christian life, and made friends in her new town. Her husband would attend church for those first few years and provide some money at a job in the town hauling corn. The latter due to Julia putting her foot down after Joseph was born. She demanded they have a house of their own.

A few streets down was a friend of Andrew’s from his days of The Williams Trio, Rutherford Williams, and for $4 a week they rented the house that Joseph was to call home for his first eighteen years.

Being a father was something the 31-year-old Andrew Reed had wanted, and though he may have wanted to provide for his family hauling corn was not something he found acceptable. A myriad of jobs followed along with happy moments of Julia’s next two pregnancies, however they were not to be. Both children never saw the world and passed on before anyone knew what they would become. He had made a decision after the loss of their second child in 1928 he was going back to fiddling.

The world of his old musician friends was right there when he came back. They weren’t going to let him fade silently into the background. He had always been a respected musician across many parishes and other musicians and asked on many occasions to join groups. He had been fiddling for well over 20 years by then. To this day those who had the pleasure of hearing him think of him as one of the best fiddlers in the world. Andrew Reed picked up his fiddle one day, kissed his wife, and their two-year-old son, walking out the family door. For the next sixteen years, Joseph would see his father a couple times a year and spend almost every birthday and holiday with his mother and her friends in New Iberia. His father sent his mother money to pay the rent most of the time. Other times, his mother was left to fend for herself. She took in laundry and worked a few small jobs to keep feeding them. To Joseph’s knowledge though, growing up, his mother never spoke one despairing word against his father. His father’s wandering ways did have an effect on the son he had left behind. Ones he would reverse when he become a father to Andrew in 1952.

“My father was always larger than life when I was a kid. Most of the time, I idolized him for the things he did and the things he didn’t do.

Things were hard sometimes, sure. Money was tight, I didn’t always have shoes and sometimes we relied on the kindness of others for meals. My momma made the best out of every situation, no matter how hard it was. She was a fighter and she never was brought down.

You know, every boy wants his Daddy, but I didn’t have anything to keep him around. I’ve never been much in the way of a musician and all, never picked up an instrument. I will tell you that we never went hungry and shockingly we never lost that house. I actually wanted to buy that house for my momma when I graduated from the University, but she wanted a change a guess. She moved to Alexandria. A few years later, I was able to get her a house there.

What I do remember about my daddy was when he returned home Momma always make it a special occasion. Like he had gone on a business trip or something. We would have a great meal, laughter, dancing and all that. I remember those times most with my father.

It was the laughter I hope he passed onto my son. That was who my father really was. I gave my son, my father’s namesake because I loved my father and I wanted him to continue on somehow. I may not have always understood why my father was the way he was, but the last few years we spent together were wonderful. We talked about his fiddling days and the travels he had made. Couldn’t have been nicer. He wanted to know all about my life and that was a….a…good moment for us.

The love my daddy had for my momma was unending, complete and whole. You know, a father only wants what’s best for his son, and a son wants to honor his father. So giving Andrew his name that was my way I guess, of honoring Daddy.”

What passed on from Joseph’s father to his son was a little more than just a namesake. It wouldn’t be long before it was discovered.

I wanted to mention though a little about Joseph Whiete’s talents. He was never known for talking about his own successes as his wife and my best friend, Andrew, often said throughout the years I lived across the street from them.

“Daddy never liked talking about singing in church when he was boy. I don’t know I guess he never thought it was important. But when my momma told me that, I guess I was about nine or ten and it just made me proud. You know, he used to sing these silly songs to me when I was little. He probably doesn’t remember, but I do. You know just folk songs really… it was fun. I got the best Daddy in the whole world”

Andrew said of his father in one of his first interviews in 1970 for the Moonlight Wishes Tour.

Joseph did sing in the church choir as a child, even with his deaf ear. That was an accomplished all to itself. In a rare moment on his porch in Franklin, he told me about those days.

“Oh, yea I sang a little. Momma liked it. I like music. I don’t know if I was any good, some people said I was, but I only had one good ear, luckily I guess it was a real good one.”

Joseph did prove to be a great success at school also where he did very well.

“I get my book learning from my Daddy. He was real smart in school. Graduated from college, top of his class. He won’t tell you that, so I will. He never talked about it much, but he instilled in me everything I needed working hard and doing right. I always remember Daddy saying – ‘you work hard in school and life’ll let you in.’

His son said in that same interview in ’70.

When Joseph decided to take on life and a career he based the decision on finding a wife, settling down and raising children. First was receiving enough money from his odd jobs of fixing things that he had been doing for years across the neighborhood for family and friends, to attend college. He went directly from High School to the University of Louisiana, received his Electrical Engineering degree in 1948, and walked into the Franklin Plate Company that same month. Life had let him in very quickly.

The job at Franklin Plate Company proved to be a good place to start. After only after two months of being there, he received a promotion to front line inspector. It was two weeks before his marriage to Evelyn, though, when Joseph showed his Whiete family lineage, inherited from that rebellious father of his.

He shocked his fiancée and his friends when he accepted an electrical engineering job at Boudwin Electric, a new company that moved its headquarters into Franklin just a few months earlier. The job included a considerable pay increase and quickly the doubts of those around him vanished when Joseph bought a home at 8 Darce Lane, a residential area that was known for some of the nicest and more expensive houses in Franklin.

The couple married one year to the day after they met at that Barn dance on March 18, 1951 at their church. They settled into their new home that featured three bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a living room, dining room, full size kitchen, a recreation room or den, a wraparound porch and an expansive backyard. Perfect for a new couple looking to have a few children. They didn’t have to wait long.

Andrew’s grandfather and namesake may have been a great fiddler and a loving husband, if not the most accessible father, however Joseph was to be a much different type of family man. Growing up, Andrew had to say this about his years with his father.

“My daddy has always been there for my brother, John and me. I can’t recall a single time he wasn’t at our birthdays or concerts at school, or just patting us on the back for a job well done. Sure, he was a father, I mean, every kid gets in trouble, and my daddy could come up with some good discipline for our young minds to take in. He never resorts to whippings though. Of course, my brother could tell you that my father once chased him with a belt, but that was special and not completely undeserved.

I remember fishing at the creek, building the tree house, just sitting with him on our front porch. He wasn’t real talkative but if he had something to say, you heard it. He taught me the important things. You know about life. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t ask my father or tell him. He always listened.”

Andrew would continue giving those interviews and more and more would come out about his daddy. I know all of it is true from the personal experience of almost living at Andrew’s house those junior and senior years in high school. Both his boys called him ‘sir’, when John could remember to, that was. Even in Andrew’s most rebellious days in that final year of high school, his father never received any bad manners from him. Joseph was the cornerstone of that house on Darce Lane and their was no mistaking the influence he had on his children. From his years as a child longing for a father, to a good father and husband always being there for his family, he would have made his parents proud. I’m sure he did.

Now Andrew may have inherited his grandfather’s name, piano, and a large wooden chest that was first brought to the New World by his ancestor and passed down to the first born son of each Whiete family ever since, but Andrew Reed Whiete never reached the worldwide fame his grandson would years later. Sadly that grandson would never actually meet him.

The legend of Andrew Reed Whiete would only to be told to little Andrew by his father, mother and grandmother. Andrew Reed Whiete passed away the night before young Andrew Joseph entered the world, two hours earlier to be exact. Although it seems a likely namesake, it was not a likely occasion.

Joseph mourned his father’s death and celebrated the birth of his first son all at the same time. He shuffled between funeral arrangements in Alexandria, where his mother had lived since Joseph bought her a house there a few years earlier, and keeping a watchful eye over his young wife in Franklin. This may have overshadowed any new father’s own joy, however Joseph would prove he was a far stronger man than his mother gave him credit for in his early years.

“My daddy passing on while Evy was in the hospital giving birth to Andrew was the best gift I was ever given. I was saddened to lose my father, but Andrew’s entrance into the world just brought joy to my heart. Even at my father’s funeral a few days later, I held my son proudly in my arms. No one could have wanted anything more.

It’s always a bit bitter to swallow that my daddy never saw Andrew in this life, but I know there’s a reason for that. He’s just waiting for him in heaven, playing some music for Andrew when he gets there. Of course, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to hear it first. To be sad about my daddy’s death would take away from the life he had. He wasn’t ever sad even at the end. He always had some special delight well that’s what he used to call it.”

At the time of the funeral, it was suggested by Joseph that his mother, Julia, come live with the couple in Franklin, but she simply insisted her son go back and be with his family right away. Joseph didn’t disagree and returned to his wife and son’s side. Julia Whiete’s relationship with her new grandson was to be far from a distant one in the next few years.

“My Momma visited us all the time and often stayed at the house in the guest room for weekends before returning to her home in Alexandria. Momma fawned over Andrew like you wouldn’t believe. It was good for him, she talked up a storm about daddy and how proud he would have been of Andrew. She insisted that we move that grand piano my daddy had been given to our house. It was an ordeal, like me tell you, but Momma always knew best. I was real glad that Andrew knew his grandmother for a little while. Unfortunately, John only had a few years with her before she passed on. During those younger years, Andrew told the stories about Daddy to John, though. That was good. Andrew was a good boy and he knew where he was from and that’s partly to due with my mother.”

Julia Whiete passed away when Andrew was six and John, his younger brother, was four. She died peaceful in her sleep at her home in Alexandria at the age of 55. His grandmother passing was to be Andrew’s first loss and he took it hard for the little boy. Although the six-year-old refused to cry, he did write a poem and even though his parents both insisted that he read it at the funeral, Andrew refused, choosing instead to place it in a sealed envelope inside with his grandmother. He was remarked by his mother as saying at the funeral that ‘Jesus can read it to her.’

“Andrew was a precocious little boy. Also saying things that were far beyond his years. At his grandmother’s funeral he just sealed up that piece of paper right inside with her. Never letting any of us read it, mind you. It was tempting to pull that paper of there after the year of mourning and her bones were to be interred as is the custom here, but we decided in the end that it was between Andrew, his grandmother, and God himself. We were not going to go against all of them.”

Evelyn Whiete said of her son. It was however his mother that started the boy on his path with music. She knew early on that her son would inherit her father-in-law’s gifts.

At the age of four, Andrew had already started plucking out keys on that family piano originally owned by his grandfather. Evelyn quickly found a piano teacher, a Mr. Richard Queenly from St. Ives, Louisiana.

Queenly was a classical pianist who taught only five gifted students each year. Evelyn knew her son was to be one of those five. In 1957 a few months before Andrew’s 5^th birthday, she made certain of that fact.

“I knew Mr. Queenly’s mother, Geraldine, she went to a few of our church suppers. She was a lovely woman. She knew Andrew had a sweet little voice. She had heard it a few times. So when I told her my plan of Andrew working with her son, she simply loved the idea. That next Sunday, her son Richard was there at our house after church service. I served Geraldine some coffee and beignets in the kitchen while her son met with Andrew. “

From the moment Richard Queenly saw the young Andrew, he felt the boy had potential. Years later, he would comment on his early training with Andrew to a radio station.

“Andrew was an accomplished young musician at a very early age. I started working with him at five years old. He learned quickly, very smart. I would show him chords and he would know them by the end of the hour-long lesson. To sit for an hour and listen was an amazing accomplishment for any five-year-old child. I knew he was born with the talent for music. It was always right there in his face and in those notes.”

Queenly was correct. The young Andrew had a talent for music, chord progressions and rhythm. However there were far more talents yet to come. Including one unexpected factor that would often get in his teacher’s way...a young girl by the name of Camille Anne Moore. She would prove to be Queenly’s and Andrew’s biggest challenge yet. The former was unexpressed with the petite green eyed, redhead that constantly interrupted his lessons with his new prodigy, while the latter, hid his smiles from the teacher but not from the girl at the window.

Chapter Two

Hope in A Jar

The Moore Family once owned all the land covering Darce Lane, including the home of the Whiete family. Before the Civil War, or as Southerners call it, The War of Northern Aggression, this land was known as the Mooreland Plantation, a sugar cane plantation, last to be owned and operated by a tall, fearless man, Alabaster Elijah Moore, an ancestor of Thomas Moore, Camille Anne Moore’s father.

Now, Alabaster Moore was an interesting sort of man from what I understand. He was born in 1833 to wealth and privilege, fought in the war at 28. I guess he was about 32 when the war ended.

Thomas Moore explained to me on his front porch one day.

Mooreland was known for its sugar cane, however after the war Alabaster Moore couldn’t keep the production going with the abolishment of slavery. Destroyed his business. He divided up his lands to nearby farmers and the new ‘carpetbaggers’, turned businessmen that invaded the South that next year. He sold most of the plantation for a decent price and he stayed on at the Homestead until he died with his four children, six grandchildren and various relatives.

At the height of Mooreland Plantation glory days there was once a large plantation house, expanse fields and several shacks that housed slaves before the war. Alabaster Moore was the last member of the Moore family that had owned the entire plantation, Thomas Moore had said.

I never knew him (Alabaster) of course, but my great granddaddy Alexander Thomas Moore did remain in the homestead as caretaker. Not too certain how good of one he was, considering, a year or so after his death the plantation home was crumbling and ruined. It was taken down after that and the only house that remains of the Mooreland Planation is my families here on Darce Lane.

That’s the whole of the Moore Family story in regards to Mooreland Plantation that is. Thomas Moore did tell me that his own father, Charles might be the reason for the last of the family’s wealth to be squandered.

My father was a bit of a risk taker, and not particular good at financial endeavors.

To be exact, Charles Moore was a consummate gambler and lost all the wealth the Moores had going back to the Louisiana Purchase days on risk taking ventures. The Moore family name, though, is still honored in the town of Franklin, even if it did received a few mishaps and some unfortunate events that caused the later Moores to rely on their own means of survival.

Age old history aside, Thomas Moore made a good profession as an English Teacher and in 1956, accepted a position with the Franklin Senior High School, moving his family from Richmond, Virginia to that original Moore house on Darce Lane summer of 1956, one month before Camille (I will be referring to her mostly as Cami after this passage, since she rarely like the name Camille) Moore’s fifth birthday.

Cami was always a loving child, very sweet and kind, but she did have a fun loving side to her that could often get her into trouble. I do recall an incident with Andrew right after we moved in next door.

Recalled Evelyn Whiete of her new son’s playmate during that first summer.

Andrew was only five years old and a very quiet child. He listened mostly to what was going on around him. Camille Anne was not so quiet. She did so love being around our house, waiting for Andrew to be done with his piano lessons with Mr. Queenly. She wasn’t as disrupted as everyone would have you believe, however, there was this one time where her patience was lost. After several attempts to distract Andrew, Mr. Queenly closed our front curtains to keep Andrew focused. And, believe me, he needed to be focused when it came to Cami, even back then. Well, after he closed those curtains she just started playing a game by herself in our front yard. A game that involved screaming and running. After one very loud scream, all was disrupted. Andrew flew from the piano with myself not far behind.

Poor thing, she was all in a fright as two bees buzzed around her head. She was flaringly around with her arms. Andrew went right to her and stopped her from moving. After a moment, the bees flew away uninterested. That is the moment when I believe Cami was taken with my son. I invited her in for some milk and cookies I had just baked and we got to know the little girl who lived next door. Andrew never did finish that piano lesson that day. Mr. Queenly sat in awe as much as Andrew and myself watching Cami smile and thank us every time she took a bite of those cookies. She did love cookies!

Cami was perhaps not the best playmate for the quiet, precocious five-year-old Andrew, whom his mother wanted to make into a classical pianist, though. She seemed to be more suited for Andrew’s younger brother, who had a habit at the age of three for trouble. But fate would step in before that happened.

Cami was far from being quiet and reserved as Moore children often were. As I have mentioned her father was the English Teacher at the Franklin High and he quickly earned the reputation of being one of the hardest teachers in the school. (I was fortunate never to actually have him as an English Teacher coming into Franklin in my Junior Year, but there are numerous stories about him) While her mother worked part time at the Pharmacy in town. At that time, in 1956 women did not often go to work and barely ever in Franklin, Louisiana. However, if you knew Mrs. Diane Moore, she didn’t take to custom so well and she walked each day from her house to the Pharmacy toting along her little daughter. By the time Cami went to Kindergarten that fall, it was Evelyn Whiete who stepped in and perhaps made the decision that clenched the two children’s inevitable fate.

I simply told Diane Moore that I could easily watch over sweet little Camille until she came home from work. It was no bother at all, what with Andrew and Camille starting Kindergarten that Fall together at Foster Elementary. Diane did have an idea to keep Camille out of school for another year. She felt her daughter was too young for socialization, I suppose. I tell you, I thought that girl needed some friends. In the end, Diane understood.

So everyday I waved goodbye to Andrew and Camille as they walked down the path together to the end of the road and then onto Iberia Street where they continued on to the school. Then they would walk home again and Camille would stay here until her Momma came home from work. I suppose I do have a little something to do with Andrew and Camille becoming friends, although I rather imagine they would have done so without me.

Evelyn Whiete may be modest in her part with Andrew and Cami however it was during those early school years that held some of the most memorable for the young Cami.

Andrew and I always had fun. I spent so much time at his house and playing out in the yard when we were little that I started to imagine Andrew’s house as mine and Andrew’s parents as mine, but I always called them Mr. And Mrs. Whiete. Of course, after a few years we had the Moonlight Cottage and then that was our place. That was great. I always think about that time, playing games and singing songs, baking and eating Mrs. Whiete’s famous cookies. I loved those cookies! Best ever. My happiest childhood memories were over Andrew’s house and in the Moonlight Cottage. I can’t recall a single time that I didn’t want to go there. His family was wonderful. His Daddy always called me ‘Cami sweetie’ and his Momma ‘sweet baby’. They were some good times. Not like being at my house.

Cami stated one day swinging on Andrew’s front porch during our Senior Year. Unfortunately for the young Cami it was a true statement. Being at her own house wasn’t anything like the Whiete’s. Thomas and Diane Moore didn’t make friends easily and although the even-keel, easygoing Whietes’ lived next door and would be ideal neighbors it would take their children to bring the parents to each other’s front porches.

Maybe it was Thomas Moore’s background and reserved nature that kept him from taking up Joseph Whiete offers of fishing trips or perhaps it was Diane Moore’s strict upbringing (and consequently her leaving home due to that fact at 17) that kept her from taking up offers from Evelyn Whiete for dinners. Whatever the reason, Thomas and Diane Moore were far from the neighborly type in the beginning, even with Evelyn Whiete watching their little girl every day.

My Momma got pregnant when she was seventeen and Daddy and her got married right away, but my grandmother, my momma’s mother, Nellie Casper, was a mean woman. She had these eyes that always looked at you and you knew that if you were even thinking about doing something wrong, she’d know.

I don’t know how Momma could stand it, but round about when I was eleven years old, I guess, Momma wanted to take me to meet my grandparents. I didn’t want to go, but you didn’t say no to my Momma. She wouldn’t listen anyway. So I just went to my room and cried all night, silently. The next morning we left for Alabama and there I was meeting them. Never been so afraid before that in my entire life. All I keep thinking, I remember, was if Andrew was here, you would not be looking that way, you know. Andrew could make anyone happy, even my Momma….in the beginning.

Grandparents and strict parents aside, Cami would not be deterred from her task and from becoming close friends with the young pianist at the Whiete household. One of those tasks she excelled at was often distracting Andrew from his serious practices by making funny faces and begging him to come outside of his living room. Queenly continued to try to instill the importance of posture, movement, and classical composers in young Andrew’s mind, but it was with great difficulty with the curious and at times loud, Cami at the front window. However despite Cami’s best efforts, and Andrew’s own ability to get into mischief, it would be only two years when his parents and Queenly saw all of the training paid off in Andrew.

At the age of 8 Andrew was already a strong pianist. He could play Bach and Mozart with such precision that Queenly entered him into the esteem Alexandria School of Classical Music. Three times a week, eight year old Andrew would leave Foster Elementary School, be taken on a two-hour drive to Alexandria, and attend more school, namely more piano lessons from Queenly. The sessions were two hours long bringing Andrew and his mother home past eight o’clock at night. It was a rough life for an eight-year-old who was more interested in street football and friends than piano.

Andrew hated that school, the one in Alexandria.

Cami would say later about her friend’s lessons.

Oh, he went because his momma wanted it, but he would complain something fierce about it to me the next day. He used to say I’ll tell you, sweetie, he always called me that….if Mr. Queenly wanted so much to make me perfect with my playin’ then why should he hit me with a ruler when he was the one that was wrong. Didn’t he know it could break a finger and then where would he be? That’s Andrew…obvious and to the point. Of course, he would apologize after and tell me to tell him to stop behaving so badly. I never thought he did, so I never stopped him. But he would never say anything to anyone else. I asked him about that once and he just said ‘Sweetie, you’re the only one I can tell.’ So that made me feel good. After all, I was seven or eight at the time and if Andrew wanted to tell me something in confidence well, that’s what friends did.

Keeping his dreams though contained to his best friend didn’t last forever. It was during one of those perfected performances at the Alexandria School in 1960 during A night of Bach and the Classics’ that Andrew performed four pieces, ending the concert by standing up from the piano and walking to the microphone. The young boy from Franklin was about to make one of the most memorable speeches ever heard at the Alexandria School of Music auditorium. The contents were unknown, of course, to the young pianist or the audience members, which included his mother, father, brother, and even Cami.

‘Thanks everyone. My name is Andrew Whiete and I am not going to be a classical pianist. I’m writing my own music someday. Promise. Sorry Mama.’

Andrew took his final bow as the audience broke into a low murmur about this strange boy who many considered a prodigy headed for Symphony Orchestras one day.

It was first time anyone in or out of that auditorium had ever heard Andrew make a promise and his parents quickly learned their son was very good at keeping them. So good, that by ten, he was writing songs and stuffing them away in a secret compartment at the bottom of his grandfather’s chest, known only to his best friend, Cami.

I had my grandpappy’s old chest that was in our attic at the time. Inside were all these handwritten music sheets, real old. I was fascinated by it. I didn’t play the fiddle, but I could hear them in my head. Anyway no one went up there, so it was a good place to hide all the music I had been writing. If it wasn’t ready to be heard yet, it went in the chest. That’s how it worked. There are still songs there that aren’t ready.

Andrew told me once when we were hanging out on his porch during those Franklin years. He went right on stuffing that chest fill with all kinds of songs. Ballads, duets, piano solos, jazz numbers, blues and on and on. He was writing for only one audience member, the young Cami, the only person who Andrew let hear his songs before they were ready. His mother still insisted that he continue to play the piano, though and Andrew kept right on taking lessons at the Alexandria school and kept right on playing his own music to the beat in his head. No one at the time knew how talented this young boy was…except maybe his best friend.

Did I know Andrew was talented? Come on, that’s an easy question. Yes. Yes. Yes. You couldn’t have heard him and watched him and been with him for as long as the both of us were without knowing. Of course, if you wanted to know if I thought he was talented in music back then. I don’t know, I never really thought about it. I liked the songs. I liked his singing. I just liked watching him. He was so serious about it and I guess that impressed me.

Cami’s quirky answers were something that never ceased in regards to Andrew and how she felt about him in those early years. Your guess is as good as mine. Was she joking? Was she truly unaware? Who knows, but Cami did do the one thing that helped the songwriter/singer/pianist achieve his goals, something he would never forget.

Cami was always ready to listen if I wanted to show her a song or three or four at a time. She has always been supportive. The most supportive, loving, sweet person I have ever known. That never changes.

Andrew said of his girl in 1970 during Moonlight Wishes tour. The impact his friend’s supportive nature had on him played a part in everything the young musician did, and he did have one other reason for being grateful to his beautiful redheaded friend during those early years.

It was the on the day of Andrew’s 11^th Birthday. The day had gone smooth, nothing out of the ordinary in Franklin. A birthday party for Andrew was held in his backyard with all of his friends. Gifts, cake and games ensued through the day, however when the guests left it was ten year old Cami that beckoned for her friend to join her in their tree house, The Moonlight Cottage, made the previous year.

Now, the tree house is a whole other story. We’ll deal with that later. (Chapter Three)

Nestled inside a magic world of mist and dreams, the friends sat alone in that tree house as they often did sharing dreams and hopes. On that day Cami had brought a special package with her, one that would bring the two far closer together than they could have known on that January day.

The package was wrapped simply in red paper and topped with a colorful bow. The card was homemade and signed by Cami attaching X and O all over the bottom. Now what exactly was inside that package would prove to be one of the most memorable and useful birthday presents Andrew would ever receive.

“My eleventh birthday, man, that was one of the best days of my life.”

The then a little less than famous Andrew would comment on his first radio interview with The Bax from KKLS in Shrevesport.

“Cami was so excited. She gave me this beautifully wrapped package and inside was the most beautiful sight I could have ever seen, outside of looking at Camille Anne, that was.”

By the way, using her full name, Camille Anne, was the only way Andrew said he knew how to express how much he loved her. Incidentally it was the only time she let him use Camille at all. She said once, something about her name used by Andrew that way made her heart jump and to this day, she says it still works.

The contents of that package took a whole year that Cami had saved her allowance for. One week before his birthday she went to a music shop in St. Ives with her daddy. Underneath nearly a roll of that wrapping paper held a black case. Inside that case was a Harmony Acoustic Guitar, all shiny and new.

On that Louisiana night in 1963 Andrew, speechless gave his friend a kiss on the cheek and a smile that would be known years later to capture any girl’s heart, even his best friend’s.

The small town of Franklin and its population of 6,000 were about to find out that the singer/songwriter/musician had another talent...charm. And even though they were just best friends, and boys were not the biggest things on Cami’s young mind, she did confess to blushing that evening.

“Oh, it was sweet, like nothing he’d ever done before. He stared at me for a long moment after. Then he began playing on the guitar. It took a few more years for him to look up at me again.”

Cami’s gift to this day is fondly thought of by Andrew

“That guitar Cami gave me was the best present I ever got. She had no idea where it would lead me, but she knew I wanted one so bad. She was the only one who could have known. I never talked about it to anyone else.”

The guitar brought a different style of music to Andrew and Cami in that tree house, but even in the midst of learning the guitar and luring him to new sounds, Andrew still would continued those piano lessons with Queenly for several more years. It wasn’t until the age of 13 that things in the Whiete Household changed.

The quiet young boy who mowed lawns for the neighborhood and helped his mother’s with church suppers and events was about to shock his own family yet again. One day in 1965 after a nice supper at home he announced very simply and politely that he would not be returning to the Alexandria School the following year. Instead he would rather join the Franklin School Band, playing keyboards.

Evelyn and Joseph tried to convince their son he would have time to play in school bands when he was older, but this time Andrew persisted, explaining he needed to become a part of Franklin where he lived and not in a town he didn’t know the kids. The discussion was left for a decision to be made by his parents.

It was a few hours later on the porch that evening that Joseph and his son had another talk. This one may have proven to be a bit more persuasive to his father.

“I just told my daddy that it was bad enough that I was a straight A student and if he wanted me to continue to do well in school and to play music without losing all my friends and being considered some freak, well then he had to make a decision. By the next morning, Daddy had told Mama I wasn’t going to the Alexandria school anymore.

I joined the school band.”

Andrew said in an interview in 1972’s March issue of Rolling Stone Magazine.

The school band benefited for two years before Andrew got another idea in that same tree house I talked about earlier, an idea of another band, his own. Of course, just like every artist, it wasn’t easy to find just the right members. However Andrew Whiete was never one to give up easily. His determination at making his own decisions and running his own life was something the young Andrew always excelled at. His great success over the next years showed that.

Now to truly understand Andrew’s relationship with Cami in those early years, it’s important to highlight a few of those numerous stories I’ve heard so often over my years in Franklin. Fortunately, Andrew was always there to clarify a few things so the unbelievable grandiose stories of their youth wouldn’t get out of control. (I should mention that Andrew wasn’t a big talker so some stories will receive comment from others)

Years later Andrew would write a song about this time in his life taken from the perceptive of an adult -- Childhood Games, a #1 hit fromm Andrew & Cami’s album In Your Eyes.

Childhood Games, aren’t the kind that children play

Childhood Games, are what you and I have made

Childhood Games of wonders and delight

Childhood Games can I love you tonight?

Andrew Whiete

In Your Eyes, 1972

Chapter Three

Childhood Games

Dwight D. Eisenhower had served two terms bringing the world into a new era and the two kids from Franklin saw television come into millions of homes, including their own. The Rosenberg’s had been electrocuted for being spies. A young Wisconsin senator by the name of Joseph McCarthy had already blacklisted hundreds of American entertainers, writers, and citizens during his Communist witch hunts and Rosa Parks wouldn’t get off that bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

The best friends had been given the polio vaccine first discovered by Dr. Jonas Salk. They saw the beginnings of the National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA) with Explorer I that went into orbit. Sure, it was one year behind the Russian Sputnik perhaps, but still very exciting. While attending 2^nd grade in Franklin they even saw two new states, Alaska and Hawaii, enter the U.S.A. to round it up to fifty.

In politics and the world, however, it was a much different story. The Korean War was over when the pair was one year old so it did not affect them, however politics would come into play too quickly for either of them to realize. In 1960, parents and the two best friends alike watched the first televised debate between the youngest presidential candidate ever from Massachusetts, Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and the Vice President, Richard M. Nixon. (Cami said she wasn’t exactly interested at her house and looked at her coloring book much of the time. Andrew said he watched it and thought Senator Kennedy would be a good President.)

Andrew and Cami’s parents voted for J.F.K., while their neighbors in Mississippi and Alabama split between Kennedy and Senator Harry F. Byrd (and that wasn’t bad for a Sen. Byrd who was never actually a presidential candidate).

Still tensions internationally were continuing. Across the waters from Florida stood Fidel Castro who took over the country a year earlier and things were starting to heat up in a little country called Vietnam. In the years to come this would be the war that the two friends would pay close attention to.

Soon our new president Kennedy would be put to the test on many levels, some with success, some in failure, but no one could escape the excitement of the Kennedys’ during those early years of the 60s and no one really wanted to. They were America’s Royal Family.

For Andrew and Cami, though, world events were not as important yet as the world going around them. Charles Shultz had created The Peanuts Comic Strip and it ran every week in the Sunday Funnies (Cami always felt bad for Charlie Brown. Andrew liked Lynus’s reasonable nature). MAD Magazine interested Andrew, Robby, Billy and most of the young boys in Franklin. (I had many copies of it as well back in Philadelphia).

On the music scene the Fender Guitar had been around but not in Franklin yet, and Gibson invented the Les Paul guitar later that same decade. It would revolutionize the music industry in years to come. Sony’s Pocket Radios were convenient, Scrabble became a must play game at all 50s parties (at least with adults). Dozens of sugar cereals flew off the shelves in our groceries stores, including Sugar Frosted Flakes. (Andrew actually loved Wheaties. Cami’s was anything with Sugar in its name. Her parents never allowed sugar cereals in the house, so when she visited Andrew’s she got a special treat before school. Andrew’s brother, John couldn’t live without them.)

They watched Howdy Dowdy and Buffalo Bill, Gunsmoke, The Life and Adventures of Wyatt Earp and all those westerns that never seemed to cease. (Cami loved Cowboys and Indians) The introduction of Frank L. Baum’s 1939 movie onto the small screen brought joy and terror to millions of children, including Franklin’s youth. (Cami was terrified, she said, of the Wicked Witch of the West, but loved the Good Witch Glinda. Andrew had read the original Oz books and loved the movie, he said.)

The Whiete and the Moore households changed also as many more ‘modern’ conveniences came into their lives, even color kitchen appliances that replaced white. By the end of that decade, they had already experienced Yahtzee, Ant Farms (John had one), Tang (it’s a powered drink that is stirred not shaken, Cami loved it) Motown Records had begun and the Ouija Board became a commercial success. (Jill had one and Cami swears she never played it. Andrew said it never worked.)

Sadly, those early years were witness to Albert Einstein and James Dean passing away. But the tragedies didn’t end there. On February 3, 1959, three of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll legends boarded a plane in Clear Lake, Iowa headed for Fargo, North Dakota and a new tour. 17-year-old Ritchie Valens, 22 year old Buddy Holly and 29 year old J.P. Richardson (a.k.a. The Big Bopper) lost their lives in a snowstorm; all of us lost their music.

“We cried for days after that plane crashed. We had listened to the music, even though, we weren’t supposed to. Andrew had 45s of all of them. I loved ‘la bamba’, ‘Peggy Sue’ and all of those songs. When we heard that they were gone, Andrew and I just stopped playing the music for a while. I’m sure our parents were happy, but it just didn’t seem right to listen.”

Cami said of the tragedy. Andrew had a different viewpoint about those events, perhaps, more poetic for the songwriter.

“The world seems upside down. On one hand, we were hearing so many new styles coming out in music, you know, then, bang, it’s over. Buddy, Ritchie, The Big Bopper, it was like someone had taken the wind out of our sails and their wasn’t any more sunrises.”

However, Andrew and Cami still had Elvis, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry to play that music parents hated and the clergy condemned. American Bandstand still brought it to the television set every week with Dick Clark and the Grammy Awards Show started in ’58. Kids who wanted to shake and twist to the music were ready, the seven and eight year old Andrew and Cami included.

Aside from the music, Cami and the other Franklin girls did get a special treat in ’59. She laughed about it the day she told me the story as a teenager.

“Jill received her first Barbie Doll at Christmas that year. She had a black and white zebra bathing suit with these little sunglasses and a little pocketbook. She had these tiny little black heels that came off. It was so cool!”

Cami would get her own Barbie that next Christmas from none other than her best friend.

“Cami loved that Barbie doll Jill had. I mean all the girls did. For Christmas when she was I guess, eight, I thought I’d get her one. She wanted one so badly. I didn’t get the bathing suit ones though, every one thinks it’s because of her mother being so strict, but that’s not true. When I went to the store there was this one that was all dressed in a pink dress with a big hat and was a red head. I knew Cami would love that. And she did. The doll even went into the Moonlight Cottage with us a few years later. I think it’s still there.”

The pink clad southern Barbie was confirmed by Cami as Plantation Belle and it was her favorite doll. A little unknown fact about the Barbie days was Andrew’s love of G.I. Joe. He had an action figure of him (many of us boys did!) and it was G.I. Joe that became Barbie’s love during those early days.

“Andrew told me that G.I. Joe was named Gregory Ignacious Joseph one day and I liked it. So when I got Plantation Belle Barbie from Andrew that Christmas it seemed only right to have her be G.I. Joe’s friend. We wrote letter to each other from Barbie and G.I. Joe.”

The letters were never seen by a single person outside of the friends and what they said are for anyone’s guess although Andrew did comment once that G.I. Joe sent his military paycheck to Barbie back in the states. (He was always making the world a safer place for democracy. Hey, he was G.I. Joe!).

But Barbies, games, world events and television shows, were just the beginning for the two friends’ special moments they would share as those early years progressed.

Everyone it would seem who has ever read an article, heard or seen a radio or television talk show during those Andrew & Cami years of the early ‘70s has recalled the story of Puff, the Magic Dragon. The Peter, Paul and Mary song that was released in ‘63, when the pair of friends were eleven. Yes, it’s true they did sing the song together for years before they took the stage. I was even fortunate enough to hear it my first year in Franklin. However the Spin the Bottle game that the couple years later would recount and play on stage with audience members signifying their first attraction to each other, had actually been played several years before Puff was released.

It was April 18, 1961 Andrew was nine, Cami eight. They went to their friend Jill Green’s birthday party where the introduction of the infamous Spin the Bottle game did cause attractions, but not necessarily between the two best friends.

Many friends recounted years later that ever since all of them were old enough to be attracted to each other in any way, they could never tell if Andrew and Cami were. A secret society of two developed between the friends early on. Looks were given and understood. Winks, smiles and even an occasional laugh would signify they knew something the others could only speculate about. The gossip of Andrew and Cami together or not began and it would last right on through their high school days.

“It wasn’t malice we felt towards them of not being a part of their secrets, although we should have. It was just Andrew and Cami. They always had a secret pact between them.”

Jill Green had told me while I lived in Franklin. Jill and Cami were friends since second grade. She called herself ‘the pretty one’ with blond locks of hair and blue eyes. She acted, talked, walked and behaved as any good southern girl left somewhere in Gone With the Wind. Scarlett O’Hara didn’t have anything on Jill Green.

Below is Jill Green’s explanation of what is called ‘The Spin the Bottle Incident.’

“That year at my birthday party we all kind of enhanced the game of Spin the Bottle. It had gotten boring. So the two chosen had to be sent into a closet for approximately two minutes. The lights would be turned off and all. We were cool, at least we thought we were, but mostly we were just terrified and excited to be picked.

Well, every girl wanted to have Andrew chosen, you know, why not? He was the cutest boy, still is. But he was also very nice and polite, a true gentlemen. There was this one time when Andrew spun the bottle and it landed on Cami. It rarely happened. Sure, we had seen them kiss before with the game, I think once, but this was very different. Every one of us was more excited than them, I think. We were kids, we mocked and all making kissing sounds and doing that annoying song about them up in a tree, kissing and all. Mostly cause they had that damn tree house we all wanted to go in. Anyway, they went into my parents downstairs closet with storage boxes and stuff. Luckily they fit. We all immediately listened at the door.

It was so quiet, except for us who kept trying not to laugh. For two minutes we all huddled ‘round that door. It’s pathetic now that I think about it. That was excitement in Franklin. Anyway, when they were told to come out. We all scrambled to act like we weren’t listening. Andrew and Cami exited, calm as could be, and didn’t speak a word about it ever from that day to this. We all had our theories, of course. But I for one always wanted to know what had actually happened in there. You just could never tell between those two.

We always thought they’d get together, but us girls secretly wished they weren’t. We all wanted Andrew. I know I did. He wasn’t just cause he had the best smile and the most beautiful green eyes in the whole world, and he did, but you see, he always protected Cami, you know, like a knight in shining armor and all. Just like the birthday party of hers when he dressed up as one the year before. We all should of known by then. But we kept right on wishing.”

It was true, by the time Jill had her 9^th birthday party, Andrew was already a knight in training. He had actually created the image himself one summer day as another birthday present for his young friend.

At Cami’s 8^th birthday he may not have known it at the time, but there was no turning back for the 8-year-old Andrew who had walked unknowingly into an arena that would forever place him between his very own princess and the world. The day would forever be remembered in Franklin’s history and especially for all those children who attended Cami’s birthday party on June 26, 1960. This is referred to as Andrew’s ‘Knight in Shining Armor Incident.’ (I’m not kidding about these names, in Franklin, they actually use them.)

The day was a sweltering 120 degrees in the shade in Franklin when Andrew arrived twenty minutes late, at Cami’s backyard party. An unusual thing for Andrew who living only next door would often arrive at any of Cami’s parties early. Helping out with decorations and preparations. Cami had already begun thinking the worst as the minutes stretched on and the guests all arrived and began munching on treats and snacks sent out by her parents. Jill Green recalls being there early that year and how her friend was slowly becoming a nervous wreck.

“Cami’s 8^th Birthday Party was a bit scary in the beginning. Cami started off happy enough. She greeted me at her gate with her usual smile and then immediately asked me if I saw Andrew coming and had I spoke to him earlier that day and was there something wrong. I hadn’t seen him, nor heard anything and I said so. Her happy smiling face changed to concern as she walked to the edge of her lawn and looked across to his house. Finally after an excruciating painful few more minutes, other kids arrived and Cami did her usual greetings, smiling and making them feel welcome and all, but I saw her she was constantly looking to his house, waiting. I felt sort of bad for her, you know. She’s a sweet girl, always has been and to see Cami upset makes all of us upset. Her mother was trying to get her to play a game with the kids, but she said she would wait until Andrew came. We all knew she weren’t start anything without him. That was the way it always was. But I have to tell you as the five minutes went to ten and then fifteen. I could of killed that boy myself, making my friend so upset and all. Not to mention all of us just sitting there.”

Andrew arriving a shocking twenty minutes late had done more than make up for his tardiness as he entered through the gate of Cami’s home riding a pony and dressed in a full knight’s outfit.

“I’ll never forget what Andrew wore.”

Cami said years later while at a bonfire down by a small beach in Franklin during their Junior Year of High School. At the time of the recollection, Andrew smiled briefly in Cami’s direction and continued to play quietly on his guitar.

“Andrew had a white shirt on and black pants with medieval like boots of some kind.”

She had stopped at this point to look at Andrew.

“They were just black boots.”

Andrew casually interjected at the time and then went back to playing.

“They were real nice. Anyway, he wore armor over the shirt, it was all shiny and like new. He had a sword inside one of those holders and he had a helmet and all.”

Andrew again continued for her as she looked at him.

“The armor was from two pieces of metal my Daddy and I had worked them down until they fit, tied rope around them and slung ‘em over my head. The helmet I got from a friend.”

It wasn’t just the outfit that impressed the onlookers at that party and especially the birthday girl that hot summer day.

“He rode the prettiest white pony ever.”

The pony, Race, had been borrowed from his friend Robby Crowley’s, who was only one who knew Andrew’s whereabouts and shockingly had kept it all-secret, even with Cami looking upset. Robby Crowley was not good at keeping secrets.

The pony and the rider got an enthusiastic response from all, especially the excited Camille Anne Moore, who forgot she was upset at him and smiled completely lost in her dreams of knights and princesses.

“Andrew was crazy. He got it in his head that he would arrive at Cami’s party as a knight. I never would have done it. Cami’s birthday is in June and it gets hot here. Really hot. Whenever he told me he was going put all the metal on and get up on Race, that was my pony, I told him you’re nuts. You’ll pass out before you get to her house.”

Jill Green’s husband and former classmate and childhood friend of Andrew and Cami’s, Robby Crowley said.

“But one thing people don’t get about Andrew is when he gets an idea in his head, there’s no stopping him and off he went shining metal and all. It was a big deal. He used this real low voice that was almost funny, but that was Andrew he was always doing stuff to impress her or whatever. Andrew never did anything unless he could do it big, you know. And that day, it was big.

He called her Princess Camille Anne, which was a big deal, cause she hated her name. She would threaten your life if you used it...unless, of course, you were a knight in shining armor on top a White Shetland pony. I guess that was different.

Anyway, the pony was pulling a wagon with a huge gift in it. We all wanted to see it, but he went through this entire routine, asking her permission to get down and offer her a token from him. You know, like the old time movies and things. It was hilarious. When he finally took off the drape covering the gift. You could have heard the scream for miles. And that girl can scream. It was this castle all made out of wood and he glued pieces of stone to it to look like a castle wall.

It was kind of cool, it had a drawbridge that worked and all, but I never would have made that whole thing. I’m telling you he’s crazy. I have no idea how long it takes, but when I asked if at the time was it worth it? He said, hell yes!

I’m not sure what he was trying to prove but Cami was sure excited. The rest of us stopped trying to impress her with our birthday gifts after that. We just lost gracefully. I remember her parents bought her a bike that year also, but all she wanted was to ride the pony with her knight and talk about her Castle. The bike got a little lost in the middle of it all.”

Princess Camille Anne and her knight, Sir Andrew, took a ride on that pony all around the yard according to Jill and Robby; while her mother watched her daughter panic stricken she would fall off. However, as a good knight should be, Andrew made certain nothing happened to his little princess, and she arrived back safely.

According to those seventeen children at the party, Andrew even slid off the pony, and helped Cami down. Unfortunately, for her knight, the pony was not as cooperative as he should have been. Race had it in his head to get some food. So a mere few seconds after Princess Camille was safely on the ground, the pony took off like a shot across the yard and to the food table prettily decorated in pink and purple ribbons.

Ignoring the table set up and any manners, Race promptly destroyed the cake, ate the ice cream and other sweets on the table, before knocking the entire table and the decorations down, leaving a mess of streamers, ribbons and bows in his wake. Perhaps, not the most gallant steed a knight should have, but to be fair to Race, he probably wasn’t aware of the impact he would have on the young Cami.

A normal eight-year-old girl might have cried at the beautiful birthday party that was ruined, but not Cami. She held herself with as much dignity as a Princess can muster and laughed out loud. To this day, she recalls it being her best birthday party ever.

“I loved that party. Race was so funny. He just wanted to be a part of the party that’s all. Momma got so upset about all it.”

This time as Cami recounted the tale, Andrew did look up to me.

“Upset is an understatement.”

As for Race, all the seventeen guests, Cami’s parents and even her gallant knight tried to catch that pony. Hours later, it proved to be a fruitless task, for Race had eaten his fill and returned back to his home at Robby’s house contented with his day in the limelight.

Her parents tried to clean up the tattered mess that was their daughter’s birthday party, picking through the streamers and such trying to salvage gifts and what was left of the cake. The remains of the purple and pink battlefield left a sour taste in Cami’s mother, Diane’s mouth as she took special consideration of her daughter’s knight, thus promptly sending him home with a stern look unimpressed with his heartfelt apologies.

“Cami wouldn’t have that.”

Jill explained.

“I had never seen her look so angry at her momma. She never said anything back then. But that day, you could see why she had red hair, if you know what I mean.”

It was true the Princess would not be stand for her knight being treated in such a fashion. She quickly took charge. Walking confidently to the side of her friend taking his hand, and standing before her parents disapproving looks, she spoke her mind.

A speech that according to Robby Crowley, was a total of a minute.

“Yea, she was funny. She just stood looking right at her momma and said something like Andrew didn’t know that the pony would ruin the table and all and how dare she accuse him of that. Then she just shocked us when she grabbed Andrew’s hand and said if he was leaving, then so was she. Then she dragged poor Andrew to the gate. It was unbelievable. No one spoke for a few minutes. Off they went.”

Needless to say, the Moores didn’t particularly want a birthday party without their guest of honor, so they conceded to their daughter’s demands and her father asked them both to come back. The battle was over and Cami got her knight, her birthday castle and a great story that has gone down in Franklin history as one of those legendary tales of Andrew and Cami. One that would be recanted time after time in school hallways, locker rooms and around dining tables.

Cami was a true Princess defending her knight however saving Cami soon became a regular 24-7 job for young Sir Andrew. Stories of Andrew and Cami’s first years of school were nothing in comparison to the middle school years and into high school.

One such situation occurred during school recess in seventh grade. Sir Andrew was not just good at riding up top a steed and portraying a knight, he could use that sword when it was necessary. (To be fair, it wasn’t actually a sword that he used, but the person receiving the blow had to feel like it had been.)

It is now referred to in Franklin as The Dodge ball Incident. Billy Houlton, one of Andrew’s friends and a member of his band a few years later, recalled the story one night at those same bon fires. (There were lots of bon fires)

“The Dodge ball Incident was simple. Look here’s what happened Tommy Ray Ricker thought he was a real bully. Well, he wasn’t, he just bullied girls and that was not cool in Franklin, and especially not cool with Andrew, you know. Tommy and Andrew had had a few run-ins before the Dodge Ball incident. I mean, Tommy thought he could pick on girls all the time. Andrew didn’t agree. One day at school during gym class, the boys and the girls were playing dodge ball, you know just fun stuff, it was at the end of class, everyone liked Dodge ball, mostly, but Tommy Ray, man, it took way too serious. You know. He started hitting Cami once, then twice, with that ball and Andrew was getting’ mad, real mad. Then Tommy threw a third at Cami, hitting her right in the face and he was aiming for it, you know. That was it, Cami started crying and Andrew picked up the ball closest to him and pounded that kid with it. Hit him right in the nose, oh he was bleeding, but Andrew didn’t care. He just stared at him like a predator looking at prey. It was intense, I mean we will all like nine or so, we thought Andrew’s gonna kill ‘em and we weren’t gonna stop him.

Mr. Fulton, that was our gym teacher, he was in a fit, he was yelling at Andrew and Tommy to go to the principal’s office. Cami went to the nurse, but Andrew didn’t take his eyes off that boy the whole time. Tommy was scared to walk with him to the Principal’s office, hell I would have been too. Andrew can get a look on his face, and you know, you was wrong.

You know, though, people made it sound like Andrew and Tommy had their first encounter out there on the school ground that day, but it wasn’t the first. Andrew had run-ins before with Tommy and believe me, Tommy knew that hitting Cami would make him mad. I don’t rightly know what Tommy was thinking doing that, but he sure got what he wanted. And man, was he scared of Andrew after that. I mean, really scared. Served him right, that Tommy ain’t no good kid and I ought to know cause I ain’t one either. But pickin’ on girls, that’s just stupid. Well, Tommy was that. A few years later when he was about 11 or so, I guess, Tommy got picked up for smoking pot inside the school. How stupid is that? He went away and I guess his parents never brought him back, cause I ain’t seen him again. Oh, by the way, Andrew did get a good talkin’ to by the Principal, but uh you couldn’t convince Andrew he had done anything wrong. He said he was sorry for scaring the other kids that day and that he would be sure not to do so in public and on school property again. And he never did. ‘Course that didn’t mean that he didn’t find you if you done wrong, just elsewhere, you know. Cami wasn’t badly injured either, I went with her to the nurse’s office, she was more shook up then anything and she cried and cried until Andrew came by. He always made her feel better.”

The Dodge Ball Incident may have done much more for Andrew than just protect her honor as a good knight does, it started many thinking that Andrew and Cami were something more than friends even at those tender ages. The situations however calmed on the school grounds from that point on, didn’t truly stop, as Billy explained.

“Well, there’s the Red Rover Incident, I guess. That was in eighth grade. One year after The Dodge Ball one. We were all playin’ it over Robby’s house in his backyard, there must have been about twenty of us or so. You know now that I think about it, there were not too many smart boys in Franklin. I mean, take Cullen Thompson, that’s the boy from the Red Rover Incident. He was one step to getting killed and he still took a bet that he ain’t never should have taken.”

The bet that Cullen Thompson took was from his friends. They bet him one dollar that he didn’t have the guts to kiss Cami when he ran over for Red Rover.

“Now come on, you kinda have nothing going on in your brain to take that bet. Besides, that past Valentine’s Day, Cami had not accepted Cullen’s Valentine cause he scared her, I guess, but Cami was always nice to people, even Alan, even if they did scare her. She would just smile and try to walk past.”

The Incident goes like this: Everyone was playing Red, Rover. Andrew and Cami were on the same team standing in the center, holding hands. Armed with the bet of the one-dollar in his head and ready to withstand the wrath of Andrew, Cullen Thompson headed into the lion’s den. He reached the line and headed right towards Cami grabbing her around the waist. Andrew response was quick and efficient prompting pulling Cullen away from Cami and punching him several times until he hit the ground. Cullen ended up with a bloody nose while Cami ended up with her honor restored again from her soon becoming infamous knight.

Years later, Cami would recall the Dodge Ball Incident to an interviewer while on tour in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

“Andrew was the best protector. I felt so bad when he was called to the Principal’s office over the Dodge Ball thing but Andrew just said that a knight had to beat off the evil kings and he was just doing his job. He was always sweet like that. No one bothered me when Andrew was around. They were too scared.”

Cami was correct on that point, according to friends and those who were there that day, it was the last time Cullen Thompson or any boy ever attempted to grab Cami...at least in front of Andrew.

Unfortunately some were more persistent than Cullen Thompson was and one in particular didn’t play games or harmless childhood bets about kissing. Some didn’t even concern themselves with Cami’s infamous knight. But then again some boys were far more dangerous than evil kings.

From protecting her during dodge ball games and other sports to giving a look to any boy who showed interest in her, Andrew became her perfect knight in shining armor. A role he seemed born to play.

“By the time we all went to high school, no one ever messed with him or her. Andrew could fight, but you never saw it. It was just understood that if Andrew didn’t approve of you being around Cami, you just weren’t, you know. No one ever was allowed to hurt her. Sure, to some guys it was frustrating cause they wanted to date her and all, but they were jerks anyway, but to most of us girls, it was real romantic. I guess, we all imagined he would save us, you know.”

Jill Green-Crowley said of those early years. Her chance however with Andrew never did come, Andrew and Jill did not always get along, which was hard to do, considering Andrew got along with almost everyone.

“I think he was jealous of my friendship with Cami. I mean we were girls and there were things even Cami wouldn’t tell Andrew. Though sometimes, he could get me real mad, you know, hovering around her and all. He used to order her around something terrible.”

To be fair, the ordering that Jill spoke of was when Jill offered Cami marijuana in ninth grade and Cami took some to make her friend happy. That situation did not end well at all.

“Oh, Andrew could get mad at you if you did anything he didn’t like with Cami. He never let her drink or do anything. When he found Cami and me smoking a joint. He looked right at me and he told Cami to wait for him on the street real strict like and Cami did. She did everything he said. Then Andrew just stared at me you know with that stone look he has and he said he didn’t want me around Cami no more. I told him that was her decision and he said, I swear he did – ‘now, it’s mine.’ And then he walked away. He could be mean spirited when he wanted. Luckily, he was worried about Cami getting into trouble so he didn’t tattle on me or anything. I guess you could count on him for that.”

When I confirmed this incident, Andrew didn’t have anything to say other than this.

“That sounds about right.”

My own knowledge of Andrew’s ‘orders’ toward Cami seemed to be protection more than orders, but each to their own. Jill never did get past that incident and always had some words for him when he told Cami that they were leaving some place or that she wasn’t having any beer when it was passed around at those bon fires.

“Look, Cami could do whatever she wants. Jill just isn’t good for her. She gets these ideas in her head and I don’t honestly know what she is thinking. Cami’s just trying to be her friend, but she doesn’t need friends like Jill. If that’s sounds harsh, then so be it. I love her too much not to protect her.”

Mind you, that statement was made before Andrew and Cami started dating not long after I arrived in Franklin and experienced Jill’s retorts to Andrew one night. To say I was confused about Andrew and Cami’s relationship would be an understatement. It seemed simple enough to them, but to us, it was a maze of uncertainty.

However I must concede being a knight can’t have been easy. Living up to one has to be difficult, so I’ll explain one last incident that may give you a better understanding of that role of Andrew’s. This one hit too close to home for him.

Now, Jonathon William Whiete was the typical younger brother. He was intent on making his older brother, Andrew’s life as difficult and frustrating as possible. His first and perhaps Andrew’s most difficult to bear was when John decided to fall in love with the girl next door when he was only ten.

“I do love Cami. You have to understand; she is so sweet and so pretty. The prettiest girl in Louisiana, I used to say. She still is. Andrew would get so worked up about it all. He’d tell me to be quiet, to go in the house and all, but I know she liked it. She always smiled at me. What girl wouldn’t want to be called the prettiest, I ask you. I understood how it all worked. I was great at getting the girls to smile at me.”

The fact about getting girls to smile at him was disputed by many of John’s friends and the girls who were subjected to his never-ending ‘charms’. Cami neither confirmed nor denied liking the attention from Andrew’s younger brother. But like or not, Cami was to be stalked by him for much of her middle school and high school days. This fact alone infuriated Andrew’s sensible knight persona.

“John was relentless, I am not kidding. I love my brother, but he was trying my patience when we were young. He was always calling Cami, his sweetie and making kissin’ sounds on our porch to her. When I got older, we had a talk about it. Nothing ever changed, he just got more determined and I know I never got through to him.”

John and his ‘charms’ were relentless to Andrew, but he was his brother and like or not he had to endure the humiliation that came with having a brother. (I know I have an older one. Only children are luckier than they know). Annoying younger brothers aside things were starting to mean more than friendship to the calm, collected Knight of Camille Anne Moore’s.

I told you I would explain later about the Moonlight Cottage, the famous tree house that was built by Andrew and Cami and become a place of solace, quiet talks, summer nights and everything two kids could ever want well, that time has come. Believe me, it was much more than just a tree house right from the beginning.

Chapter Four

Moonlight Wishes

It was the summer of ’62, new music was hitting from Motown it seemed everyday. Andrew couldn’t get enough records. Cami couldn’t learn the dances fast enough. They left 4^th grade at Foster Elementary School. Andrew with A’s, Cami with C’s and D’s, but passing, and were beginning the summer happy and looking forward to what all kids look forward to -- no school. The summer did not disappoint.

When Andrew Whiete and Camille Moore got into their heads to build a tree house in between their families land nestled between two oak trees in the distance it was to become much more than they could have known at the time.

“You know, it wasn’t any great reflection or anything. Just a treehouse, lots of kids had ‘em.”

Andrew said years later to a radio station in New York during Moonlight Wishes tour.

“Cami and I thought it would be fun. So we asked our parents about it and that’s where it started. What it turned into was something of pure magic.”

Magic is exactly what it still is. But the best friends could never have predicted how useful it would become. The tree house was built during two weeks of late September in ’62. The design and planning was brief but the results were amazing...for a tree house.

Joseph and Thomas hauled the wood from a nearby friend who was in the lumber business. Ten-year-old Andrew and the two men spent two weekends from dawn to dusk, hammering and building. Cami and Evelyn Whiete provided refreshments and pep talks to the group.

“I used to think as I looked up at Daddy and Mr. Whiete and Andrew all building that thing that one of them was gonna fall and die or something. Mrs. Whiete used to have me go and make some cookies or get some lemonade when I would get panicked about it. She thought it kept my mind off of seeing them up there, but honestly, it just made it worse.”

Cami confessed to me on that same porch swing of the Whietes’ during Senior Year of high school.

In the end no one fell and no one was hurt seriously. Andrew and the men received some cuts and scrapes from the wood, trees, hammers and such, but it was more or less safe. The tree house was nothing like a normal everyday tree house that kids make in their back yards. It had a planked floor with log sides, a cozy peaked roof and a small porch on the front. The inside, however, was more of a mystery to everyone except the two best friends. What is known is there’s a small table that was made for the house and a patchwork rug donated by Andrew’s mother from their attic.

Now, the subject of the naming the tree house was an even greater ordeal. Andrew and Cami worked on it for months before the house was built and after. Finally, they decided. A wooden sign painted white with purple lettering was fixed on the front door and it read ‘Moonlight Cottage’. Underneath on the tree was another white sign painted with black lettering reading ‘Keep Out’ Property of Andrew & Cami.

Of course, for many Franklin kids the envy began with the tree house itself, but the name and the signs all over it just heightened it. It seems everyone was begging to go inside. Andrew’s own brother, John, who at two years younger was only eight, would have given anything just to see it.

“I hated that tree house. Everyone, especially me, wanted to hang out there.”

John said to a local television station interview after the first Andrew and Cami song, The Cost hit the airwaves in 1971.

“Andrew wouldn’t let anyone except Cami in. The worst part was that it was half pink and half brown inside and out. You would think we would stay away after they did that, but it somehow it just was more unique.”

The half-and-half tree house painting came out of a simple problem that the two friends faced. Cami wanted pink and Andrew wanted brown. Simple enough if it wasn’t for the fact that both could be extremely stubborn.

“We didn’t fight about it. We just talked about it.”

Cami said. However, Andrew had a different opinion.

“Fight? I’d say we were determined in our position about the color. I mean she wanted the whole thing pink. Mostly, I wouldn’t care, but come on, pink. I didn’t really want to live in Barbie’s house. I wanted something a little less…pink.”

One of the biggest factors in their young lives was that the pair according to many sources never fought. Their friends could tell stories of times they thought they would fight about some thing or another, but they’d always calmly come up with a solution. Usually it was concluded with Andrew leaning down to his 4’ 11 ½” friend saying something out of earshot from their own friends. Cami would smile, problem solved. True to this phenomenon of never fighting, they simply decided to paint it both colors, one for each side, inside and out. How did it work?

“Great! Andrew sat on the pink side and I sat on the brown that way neither one of us had to see the other color. I guess after a while we just didn’t think about it. It was our Moonlight Cottage and….”

Cami never did finish that sentence but it’s understandably if you knew how important that tree house had been to them.

By its first year of its existence though, The Moonlight Cottage had become a sensitive subject for everyone in Andrew and Cami’s life. From friends and neighbors to adults and passerby’s alike.

Seeing the famous tree house still standing in the trees on the border of Andrew and Cami’s families’ land in Franklin, you could almost understand why it was the envy of all. It has a charming quality about it, like a magical little cottage hidden in a woodland mist of childhood dreams. Andrew and Cami had plenty of dreams to go around inside that Pink and Brown house.

By the third year of The Moonlight Cottage it possessed another feature that John and all the Franklin kids wanted. The wooden ladder on it could be hoisted up by a pulley system. Andrew designed it when he was thirteen and it closed off the world of adults and kids below. The ladder was to become a big discussion among Cami’s parents for years. The two were never allowed to actually use it when they were young but as with everything time would eventually fade the fear of parents and for that matter the inhibitions of young children.

The Moonlight Cottage from the beginning became Andrew and Cami’s special place. A perfect sanctuary from the world below and an even more perfect romantic getaway for the soft kisses and lovers’ promises that would come years later.

Mostly for the first years of its existence The Cottage was a retreat for both friends. To Cami it was a place to come when her parents fought and to Andrew a place to write his next song. The two would spend hours inside talking and dreaming during the long afternoons in the summer before work, boyfriends, girlfriends and life had caught up with them yet. The time of innocence and secrets between best friends was held within the four walls of the Moonlight Cottage.

“Andrew and I were very fortunate to have that place.”

Cami fondly recalled one night on a television station in my hometown of Philadelphia during the Moonlight Wishes tour. I can still recall seeing the far away dreamy look in her face and hearing that wistful tone in her voice as she talked about the Moonlight Cottage to the show’s host. Andrew was sitting beside her on the show, he reached down and took her hand, smiled at her, as she continued.

“I don’t know where I would have gone when I wanted to run away or just stop being who I was. I knew if I went to the Moonlight Cottage, Andrew would be there. He always came and he always made me feel better. I don’t know how you did that.”

Cami turned to Andrew on that show that night and looked up at him in a way that only Cami can. She was reliving a special memory and only the two lovers knew what it was. They smiled at each other and much to the audiences excitement that night, Andrew leaned down and kissed his best friend. The host took a moment to ask the next question. (I should remind you that if you are of a cynical nature, such as myself, you will find these stories unbelievable, but I assure you there was some magic in that Moonlight Cottage and Andrew and Cami just brought it from there and took it with them on stage. You can believe whatever you want, but you are missing out, if you think that magic is only in stories).

During that same interview, Andrew and Cami did recall fondly how they used to make up stories in the Moonlight Cottage.

It was a special game only they played. One would start a story about far away kingdoms, the high seas or other fantasy worlds of pirates, princes or evil wizards. Meanwhile the other would continue it. These stories, according to them, would go on for days, weeks and even months. Becoming ever more complicated and intricate as it went along. One of those stories left a lasting impact on the pair.

The story began in October ’64, when they where both 12 and it was another night of Cami’s parents loudly discussing their future. She retreated to her world in the trees. A few minutes later as usual, Andrew climbed the ladder and sat down beside her, telling jokes and trying to make her smile.

When she finally cracked a smile and then laughed out loud, he moved onto to the next part of his plan. The story he had been working on for the past few days of One Eyed Willie, the Most Feared Pirate of the High Seas.

The story began that night and by the time everything had calmed down in the Moore household next door, their daughter was lost inside a world of swashbuckling pirates and a fair maiden who had been kidnapped by an evil band of soldiers. Andrew ended the story that night with One Eyed Willie acquiring a grand pirate ship with his new crew, while seeking out to find his love and revenge upon the one who stole his eye.

Although the story would be many more nights until its conclusion, it was on that first night when Cami went back to her house and didn’t think at all about her parents or her own troubles, but instead dreamed about being a fair maiden of an heroic pirate who was sailing on the seven seas searching for her, that Cami saw her friend as much more than just a young boy with blond locks and green eyes.

“I fell in love that night. It’s true. Andrew was always so good at telling stories and I loved hearing them, but he spoke of love and pirates and maidens and chivalry like….like a grown up.”

Cami’s falling in love part of that particular story wasn’t for the on air audiences, she told me that years later, during In Your Eyes tour.

“Andrew had this way of speaking, he could do a pirate’s voice all harsh and mean for the evil ones and then he would do Willie all soft and sweet. He’d always lean closer to me when he’d do that. It gave me chills and I just loved it. I didn’t want the story to end. And it didn’t for a long time.”

The story did continue for a record four months where, according to Cami it ended in a great sword battle and cannon fire on the open seas.

The story had developed into quite a tale and Cami waited for baited breath to see how Willie would track down the enemy who had cost him his eye. When it was her time to tell the story she would always bring Willie closer to finding his enemy by land or sea. She introduced characters from Willie’s past and from the enemies past. However, as she recalled years later, when it was Andrew’s time to tell the story, he would divert the unfortunate hero to a deserted island with cannibals or witch doctors where he would find himself further away from his goal.

Finally four months and two days into the One Eyed Willie story Andrew told of Willie reaching the Forgotten Isle and Death Cavern. The one place where he would find his enemy and make him pay. The story built in intrigue and excitement as Willie fought cave bats that were double the size of normal bats and ferocious rodents who could not be named by any of their victims because they had been ripped to shreds. They had huge wings and gigantic teeth that could bite into your flesh and drain all your blood in seconds. (Cami loved that part!)

Outside the Moonlight Cottage the Louisiana rain was beating down hard adding to the excitement of the story being told inside. At the climax where Willie met his enemy, Old Gray Henry, a loud thunderclap was heard outside and Cami jumped at the sound. Andrew smiling told of the epic battle that ensued with sword clashing and honor restored.

In Cami’s own recollection, she told of how Andrew mimicked the battle with a pencil in one hand jumping all around the tree house on his knees (Andrew was always a tall kid for his age) as Willie and Old Gray Henry fought to the death. It was Old Gray Henry who made a fatal mistake at a crucial moment during the battle, looking down to his fallen weapon. Willie wasted no time in retrieving it and slicing Old Gray Henry threw the heart. Ending the years of searching and completing his revenge.

Cami was so excited by Willie’s heroics and Andrew’s storytelling skills that she clapped loudly for a several minutes. In a display worthy of a Pirate, Andrew re-sheathed his pencil and indicated how Captain William kissed the fair maiden’s hand by kissing Cami’s. But the story did not end there, even if the young maiden before Andrew that night was flushed with excitement from the finale.

Andrew continued with a moving epilogue to explain the fair maiden, Isabella was the one girl that Willie had been in love with for years. Old Gray Henry kidnapped her when Willie’s eye had been taken years earlier and he never thought he’d see her again. The display of heroics left the young Cami speechless, smiling, and with a few tears that fell for the beautiful reunion of William and Isabella.

Andrew ended the story with Captain William and his fair Isabella agreeing to sail the seas together. At this point, Cami did protest that the two lovers should get married, however in true hero form, Andrew explained that was another story.

The tale of One Eyed Willie, the most feared Pirate of the Open Seas had reached its conclusion, but for the two friends, the Captain would always live on in their memories and someday William and Isabella would get married. (Cami make Andrew promise to tell the story. As always with Andrew, he kept his promises)

Storybook pirates and fair maidens however were not what always filled the room of that sanctuary in the trees. Times were good and bad for the young dreamers. Uncertainties and insecurities crept in as the years continued. The best friends were growing up and nothing was going to stop that. Those awkward early teen years turned into more complicated and confusing years of high school, dating and heartbreak that even pirates would have trouble fighting.

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that it was in that tree house that the perfect harmony between the two friends became ever more practiced and…well, perfect. Singing inside their sanctuary in the trees was among their favorite thing to do. Andrew keep right on writing the songs, and Cami loved singing them with him. Day after day, night after night.

“Sometimes we sang so much that we lost track of time and what was happening in the world.”

Cami said at an interview for Moonlight Wishes.

“Those times were amazing. She is amazing.”

Andrew had added.

Those times, however, were being threatened by two factors. One: Cami’s ever watchful eyes of her mother who was seeing the young boy next door turn into a young man; and Two: the outside world of men who were starting to see something more than a hometown pretty little girl in Cami. One was something Andrew saw and try as he might couldn’t conquer, while the second was something Andrew could never have seen and never would understand, but would fight with everything he had to make it end for his beloved Princess. The fight would be worth much more than he had perhaps originally signed on for as her Knight.

During the Summer of ’62 when the Moonlight Cottage became a reality to the Summer of ’66, only four years had past for the two friends, secrets had been exchanged and even the hope of love was coming into their hearts, however it was not meant to be for several more years.

Pirate stories and childhood dreams of yesteryear were turning into more serious conversations about life, love and music. Especially music. Singing or talking about it were the constant conversation there from its beginning. It was real life dreams of today and tomorrow that were intertwining the two once best friends from remaining innocent and untouched by the outside world beyond their Moonlight Cottage.

From eight-year-old birthday parties to more adult moments, many years past for the knight and his princess as they both were about to enter the world of boys, girls, dating and high school. To the two best friends and their own friends, life seemed great.

From spin the bottle, downstairs closets and hungry ponies they all began to change their fun to infamous bonfires at the beach, playing music and great times and laughter. Back at that birthday party years earlier only began the spark that would eventually turn into a burning flame.

Andrew had grown from a cute boy, the apple of his mothers’ eye into a handsome six foot two fifteen year old with the whole world in his hands and many, many enthralled girls at his feet. Cami grew into a petite four foot eleven and half inch red headed beauty that captured many a boys’ eye with a sweet voice, soft demeanor and a sexy body that was starting to curve in all the right places. Those features were not lost on her best friend.

“Cami is beautiful, she always was. She held stardust in her eyes and the most amazing color hair that just cascaded down her back. When she would wear shorts that I knew her mother didn’t approve or tie her shirts at the waist so you could see her stomach a little, oooh, she’s a beauty. I was probably about fourteen or so, when I really, really wanted to kiss her. I mean, playing all those games, you know Spin the Bottle and all, just keep getting harder and harder to resist her. I knew I was falling in love, but I couldn’t tell her. It wasn’t like that.”

Andrew said of his friend at an interview with The Bax in ’69. He never did explain why he couldn’t tell his beautiful best friend, but over the years with him, I did hear some stories that might give some insight into his thinking. One, in particular, that wasn’t the topic of any school conversations or interviews in later years.

I hesitate to mention it, since I know in doing so I will be betraying a confidence to Andrew. One he made me promise at age sixteen. However, I will say without this incident you cannot truly understand how Cami can overcome and survive anything with her knight and how together they find the truest of all loves. One that cannot be broken, beaten, or destroyed no matter what life throws at it.

Chapter Five

Dark Night

It was time for Andrew and Cami to enter high school. By now, they had walked to school together since that fateful decision Evelyn Whiete had made years earlier. They shared the same locker, studied together, walked home and when Andrew joined the track team at the high school, Cami went and watched practice everyday. It was perfect, if not still confusing to those around them.

The confusion led the way for a myriad of questions and concerns from many. Some received jokes in return; others got an explanation of how important friendship is. Still for most, it was always about watching what Andrew and Cami would do next. Friends in high school truly believed that life just wouldn’t be as exciting without the Princess Camille Anne and her knight, Sir Andrew.

“High School was great.”

Robby Crowley said of Franklin Senior High School.

“Andrew was king, man, completely. What he did, we did. Where he went, we went. Nothing stopped us, you know.”

Of course much of what they did was the same as any kids in high school. Bon fires, pep rallies, football games (and track meets), term papers, and growing up.

“I first met Andrew during his Freshman Year of High School. I had just moved to Franklin from Atlanta, Georgia.”

Paul Anderson, Franklin High’s Music Teacher said in a local paper, The Franklin Sun, after Andrew and Cami’s first album, Moonlight Wishes hit the record stores in 1970.

“He was a bright kid, not just smart, bright, real energy and excitement in him.

That first year, I had decided to start a jazz band at the school. Andrew was in the school band playing piano. He was good. I knew from some of the other teachers that he had classical training, but I often caught him playing jazz on that piano more times than not in the music room. So I asked him if he was interested in a joining the jazz band. He was, he had said, if he could work around Track practice, meets, and Cami.

Cami was his number one priority, no doubt about that. I even thought they were dating that first year. Hey, I was just a teacher. What did I know?

Every time Andrew stopped by the classroom to pick up something or drop off a new piece of sheet music the band might want to play, Cami was with him, wide-eyed and happy. She always had a smile and a kind word. She was a sweet kid and I didn’t need to be too astute to know that she looked at Andrew with eyes of love. Even during brief conversations with him, he returned the look to her across the room.

Anyway, I guess I heard from others that they weren’t dating, just friends. I always thought that was sad, somehow. They seemed pretty perfect for each other. At least what I saw of it. They had a chemistry you just don’t find much.

About the music and Andrew, well, he was always there, always ready to work, and always helpful. He is a great piano player, no doubt about that, but he was great at lots of things. I even went to home Meets for the Track & Field team several times. He wasn’t one for losing.

Look, I guess what I’m saying is Andrew was a good kid, sure he was independent and knew what he wanted, but a good kid. He never talked back or gave an attitude to me. He had manners, politeness and a sense of wonder about things. That was a real great quality. To be amazed or wonder at the world, I liked that a lot about the kid. I knew he had it. If he wanted it, he would do it.”

Paul Anderson unfortunately would never see the greatest fame his gifted student would receive in years to come. He was to prematurely pass from this life in 1972, while Andrew and Cami were on their In Your Eyes Tour.

During that freshman year Andrew did want it and took on another role in addition to knight, protector and best friend. He was to become the Franklin’s leader of the band...The Angels to be exact.

The concept had begun a year earlier, unfortunately for its leader it didn’t get started fast enough to capture his Cami into the band. A series of events would make that transition much more difficult than Andrew had at first anticipated. The one who seemed to have everything going for him had lost out on one of his own dreams...for a while at least.

‘Cami refused to sing in the band. She was real determined about it. She only sang new songs to show the group and only when the garage door was closed off from the outside, you know.

Billy Houlton said who was the Angel’s drummer for those early years.

“We figured she was shy, but man, could she sing. We all wanted her to stay in the band. It was incredible, watching Andrew and Cami singing together was like watching stars that hadn’t noticed they were stars yet, you know.

Paul Anderson did come and see The Angels a few times before they went public.

“Look, Andrew’s a great guy. He was very popular and when he started that band of his, The Angels, all the kids wanted to be a part of it. But you know it wasn’t about shunning people or anything. There were times when they had over a dozen members just cause Andrew didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. He was like that.

Robby Crowley who played guitar for The Angels talked about those early years before I had joined the group.

“When it came to getting gigs and all, well, things changed. Andrew got a little more determined to put together the best band he could. The losers and slackers started to fall by the wayside and The Angels emerged, you know. It was great playing with him. He was hard, but we were good. They loved us. Well, they loved him and when Cami finally started singing with us, I knew we had something.”

The name of The Angels came from the two best friend’s imaginations one day when Andrew and Cami where up in their Moonlight Cottage. Andrew told a radio station in St. Ives four months after the Angels began singing there. Andrew was only seventeen at the time and it was his first recorded radio interview at KKLS.

‘Cami and I came up with the name. I kept saying we needed something cool and different, but easy to remember. Cami just said- ‘how about the Angels or Demons or something like that?’ She wanted the Demons, I liked the Angels. We talked about it for a few minutes and I said the Demons were fine and she said she liked the Angels instead. So we went with the Angels. That how it went. Not that exciting, I guess. You know though, I think I was smart to listen to her, cause I don’t think I’d be talking to you right now, if we called ourselves the Demons.’

That may have been very true, however, to get the angelic voice of Cami’s with Andrew on the stage for those early gigs, it wasn’t an easy path and it was filled with uncertainty and fear.

“Cami just out and out refused to sing in the band.”

Jill Green-Crowley said during a summer bonfire in Franklin.

“She was so shy and she hated singing in front of people. Poor thing.”

The truth of the matter was it wasn’t shyness or even stage fright, the truth hides behind a veil of tears and Cami’s refusal to join the band, officially and sing with her best friend, came from a much deeper problem.

Even a knight in shining armor is entitled to a bad day once in a while.

Andrew and Cami’s came in the summer of 1966. He was fourteen and a straight A student at Franklin Junior High. She just turned fourteen (one day earlier) and had grown into one of the prettiest girls in Franklin. She carried long red curls, dark green eyes and small stature that was attracting many boys. That Saturday Andrew and Cami had celebrated her birthday in a very different way from the other birthdays. There was still a party earlier that day with friends, but that night, while everyone wanted to go for pizza, Andrew and Cami wanted some time alone. They retreated to the Moonlight Cottage. What started off as a night of birthday wishes would end the next day in a nightmare.

Andrew wasn’t just content to sit by and watch his princess be liked by other boys. He had already deterred some of that with his looks and well-placed words.

“Yea, Andrew was rough about Cami.”

Zachary Livingstone, a former schoolmate of Andrew and Cami’s said.

“I liked Cami in Junior High, come on, who didn’t? She is beautiful and sweet. I wanted to ask her to the dance in eighth grade. I mustered my courage and did. She was very polite and said she was going with Andrew and his date. Then I thought I’d be clever and see if she would at least dance with me. She said she wasn’t sure. It was about two hours or so after that I guess that Andrew caught up with me outside school. We talked and I didn’t ask Cami to dance.

Look, people around here like to say he stopped anyone from dating her. Well, so would I, if I knew I had a shot or something. I mean, sure Andrew still dated other girls, but he wasn’t fooling me, he liked her. We all knew it. I guess I should have been disappointed and maybe I was, a little, but Cami was always real nice to me even after that incident. She never said anything about it. Neither did Andrew again. We all still hung out and he was a great friend. Nothing changed. You just knew that Cami was off-limits. That’s all. Now, listen, my intentions towards her were pure. You know, not like some others. There were some guys in school that just didn’t get it, some I heard cornered Cami and tried to get her to ‘dump’ Andrew or whatever. I don’t know, I didn’t hang around those types. I heard Andrew set ‘em straight though, every time. Can’t blame him, they were real assholes, you know.”

For a while during the beginning of The Angels, Zachary Livingstone played bass with the band.

“I was terrible, absolutely terrible. No lie. I don’t know why Andrew put up with me. He was a real patient guy, real patient. I never did play bass again, but I learned a lot from Andrew during that time.”

Most of Andrew and Cami’s Sundays were spent at church singing in the choir. While outside of church, they would spend hours singing his songs in the Moonlight Cottage. They were developing a team in harmony, music and melody that was getting stronger with each passing year. Their voices seemed to be made for each other and the beauty of the sound and two teenagers captured any that were fortunate to hear.

Andrew had spent much of his time, teaching her the songs and the harmonies, while he was developing the idea of the complete and final Angels in his head. He was also looking to his co-singer in many more ways than just friends by the time they turned fourteen. Feelings were developing and although it was all kept quiet only the truth revealed in their hearts. The knight and his Princess were beginning to see the possibilities they hadn’t dreamed of before…with each other.

Back to Cami’s birthday celebration that June, Andrew did something he rarely ever did that night. It was through Andrew’s own words that I was to hear this story a few years later in our Junior Year at Franklin High.

“I just wasn’t going to take it anymore.”

Andrew had said in one of those rare moments of frustration. (Andrew did have a few.)

“I knew I liked Cami. I knew I loved her. So, when it was her birthday that year, I was going to kiss her that night. Really kiss her. And believe me, I was really determined.”

Andrew, always the southern gentlemen, did ask his best friend before he plunged into this new arena of their relationship.

“I asked her and she just looked at me. So I leaned closer. Then she said could I teach her how to french kiss? I am not kidding.”

Andrew in an effort befitting of a knight did grant his lady the favor, however his motivations were much more far-reaching than a lesson in kissing.

“Oh, yea, I did.”

The memory brought a smile to his face.

“I taught her to kiss. Believe me.”

I should mention that Andrew’s candid nature wasn’t common, at least not about those moments. Of course the many beers we had consumed could have caused it to occur that night.

“Then it was over, but she knew and I knew. I thought it was perfect. I didn’t have any other thought that night when I went to sleep. By the next day, I figured we were a couple and that was good considering we were going into high school. I never wanted to go into high school without that solved. I had thought about it for a long while.”

Unfortunately, Andrew would go into high school with nothing solved as to his and Cami’s relationship due to that following Sunday. There seemed to be another outside problem that would enter their lives and take away the innocence of even their first kiss.

Andrew and Cami had gone to church as usual and sang in the choir. Everything seemed to be normal, however, it would be far from that on this day.

There was another boy who had been watching Cami with a keen eye. He wasn’t interested in saving her or being her knight. This boy was much more interested in Cami’s blossoming young teenage body. It was to be his actions that would threaten to destroy the castle walls Andrew had built around his beloved princess.

Cami had agreed to organize the missals that week and had to go to the back yard shed at the church to put them away. Meanwhile, Andrew was helping Cami’s father Thomas, his own father, Joseph and few other men in accessing the water damage to the church’s roof from heavy rains in the past several months.

Cami walked into the shed and was greeted with much more than just old missals and dusky belongings of the church. The dark walls blocked out the warm Louisiana sun that mid-morning. A stream of it entered through the door with Cami, however a seventeen-year-old boy waiting in the corner closed it off quickly trapping her in the darkness.

The boy wasted no time taking his chance of finding her alone and unprotected. He had been watching her each Sunday outside the church. He was one of those boys that the Sheriff watched, as did most of the parents. Even Andrew made a mention of him once before to the minister. Unfortunately, none of those signs lead either of the two friends to believe what was about to occur in the church shed that morning.

The boy began overtures to the frightened 14-year-old Cami. It ended in a struggle and her being pinned to the dirt floor, unable to move. Divine intervention may have prevented an even darker moment for the young Cami, though, when the boy made a fatal mistake and she let out one loud, long scream before covering her mouth into silence.

That scream didn’t fall on deaf ears.

Andrew had heard it.

In a flash, he dashed across the yard, his long legs that would help him in the next years on the Track & Field Team, sent him charging towards the reason for that scream from his Princess. When he arrived at the shed, he slammed open the door and entered.

The sight before him made his stomach turn but it didn’t halt him in his quick decision-making. Within a matter of moments Andrew rushed to Cami’s side, pulled the boy off her and threw him against the far wall with a force only capable under the pressures of rage and anger. Andrew had both at that moment and it was feeling that would not leave him.

Andrew then proceeded to pick up the boy and throw a few punches until the boy hit the ground, bleeding. The boy never got one hit in during the ordeal. Andrew, three years younger than the boy, dragged him by his collar to the door and was about to continue on to the police with him when Cami’s soft whimpering from behind made him pause.

Turning to see his beloved, precious Princess, tears in her eyes, her beautiful Sunday dress ruined, standing away from the light about to pour inside from the door, he stopped.

Cami begged Andrew not to tell anyone. Begged and pleaded with her knight to let it go. It wasn’t something he was very good at doing. Solving problems was his normal mode of operations and here was a big problem that needed solving.

However, through those tears and Andrew’s own heart breaking at the destroyed look on his Princess’s face, he conceded to her wishes.

There was a look exchanged between the two boys. Then Andrew exchanged some words with him before he let go and helplessly watched as the boy took off running across the church’s lawn. Andrew wasn’t convinced that would be the end of him, but now he had more important concerns to deal with. He turned back to Cami, rushing to her side.

Cami allowed Andrew to hug her as she fell against him. Her soft cries ripped through his heart yet again, leaving an intense feeling of anger and hate within the fifteen year old, the likes of which he had never felt. At her insistence he quickly took Cami out of the shed, through the back woods, where a shortcut brought them back to the sanctuary of the Moonlight Cottage before anyone knew what happened or would ever know.

In those quiet moments Andrew carefully checked her for any bruises or cuts, and Cami continually begged him not to say anything about the boy or what happened, even making him swear a pledge never to talk about it again. For the first time in Andrew’s life, he went against everything he believed in and swore to her. Andrew would uphold that pledge and, in the days, weeks and years to come refuse to answer any questions about the scream or what had transpired that day. An action that neither may him feel like a friend or very proud as Cami’s knight.

The boy who had attacked Cami received two black eyes and a bloody nose as well as a very serious threat from Andrew to never see or talk to her again. Cami had escaped from the incident only marginally harmed physically, a small cut from the floor as she had fallen.

Unfortunately, the damage had been done in other ways. Before even arriving at The Moonlight Cottage she blamed herself for the boy seeing her at church singing and attracting his attention. No matter the protest from Andrew she was convinced of it. It was then when she made up her mind to refuse to sing again. An unfortunate result that left Andrew’s already breaking heart crushed. Normally quiet and respectful towards Cami’s decisions this time he fought back with a fierceness of a Knight. To sing without his Princess was too much for the young Andrew to take.

He wouldn’t let the subject go with Cami, and to his credit, her non singing rule was slightly relaxed throughout the next year when Andrew begged her to sing with him inside their tree house, or at the occasional Angels garage rehearsals where she knew everyone and there was no fear.

Cami had, it seemed, forever stepped down from the stage, giving up on her own dreams, willingly and completely. Andrew had to take a backseat to that boy in the shed who neither deserved her sacrifice nor ever respect her.

A deeper tragedy transpired from her decision that day, one that wouldn’t so easily be accepted. The elated feeling Andrew had the night before when they first expressed their love in that kiss was now to be left far behind, it seemed to the broken hearted boy who longed to see his princess smile again.

The details of that long night are unknown to anyone except, Andrew and Cami, but the impact of the situation did change their lives forever. Andrew still wanted his princess in his arms, to hold her and protect her from the storms. Cami still wanted her knight to be there for her when the darkness overtook the sunlight.

What they both needed, perhaps, was truth, a truth that went beyond cries and pain.

A truth that still remained hidden in their hearts, pushed deeper into the dark night.

Fortunately Andrew refused to let anyone or anything consume his Princess and the once-knight content fighting the battles outside began a war within. He was more determined than ever now to have her at his side and letting go wasn’t something he was going to do. Not even for his Princess.

Chapter Five

Saturday Night Horrors

Knights may save the Princess from the evil sorcerer, but it took a true friend and love to help Cami get back onto the stage and back into her own life. The image of the brave knight faded into the sunset for a while, but Andrew never left Cami’s side after that summer of ’66. If they seemed to Franklin youth and parents inseparable before, after that summer they were immovable from each other. One out of fear, one out of absolute determination to never falter in her eyes again.

“Nothing is ever gonna hurt her again.”

Andrew had said in his once again candid nature that I was fortunate enough to hear during our Junior year. (And yes, there was some beer involved).

“Last night we were in the Cottage and she got this distant look and I just wanted to hold her and tell her how much she meant to me. I hate this, David. It’s like living a life you’re not really in. I don’t know, maybe, I’m going crazy.”

Of course, when I had tried to get more about what she meant to him I wasn’t greeted with that hard truth. Not yet.

“I love her. She’s my best friend. I can’t see her in pain. I know what you’re thinking, but Cami and I we got something deeper.”

Deeper was exactly right. The looks and sideways glances they once shared were rapidly turning into an unspoken language that only they understood. The hope of every boy at Franklin High School that liked Cami seemed dashed, unknowingly except to Andrew, by the boy in the shed. For her Freshman and most of her Sophomore years in High School Cami refused to date anyone and was kept closely guarded by her friend.

Cami went to the dances and parties without a date, but instead with Andrew and his dates. She would hang out with her friend, Jill, and some others at the dances themselves, but she would never stray far from her best friend’s side. Andrew would always find time to dance with his friend, tell a joke or get some punch. His dates, however, weren’t so understanding and would often bring up the subject, but it never did them any good. Andrew wasn’t about to leave Cami alone, not for anyone and certainly not for the girls at Franklin High.

Now what you are about to read is true. I am sorry if I dispel some hideous knowledge that will forever make you think Andrew Whiete is not perfect. However, keep in mind, perfection is subjective and to me, I believe this just will speak to his heartfelt need to find his Princess again and not to some insidious behavior pattern. Ultimately, it’s your choice I’m just the teller of the tale.

It was Freshman Year at Franklin High School, and it was about to end. The final dance was being planned and Andrew had made plans of his own. He told me about them a few years later when the subject was brought up about that time.

“I wanted Cami to go to dances. Her mother wouldn’t let her date until she was sixteen and I didn’t want to cause a problem with her mother. I was still in trouble for the pony thing.

Andrew said of him bringing other dates to dances with them.

Underneath it all though Andrew had goals of his own regarding Cami. One of them it seemed was to desperately try to make her jealous. He would date girl after girl usually for a total of one date each. The girls loved it but Cami never took much notice much to Andrew’s frustration.

“Oh, she was frustrating. I couldn’t get her to say one word about them. I started to believe, actually believe, that maybe, she didn’t love me after all.”

However, Andrew as I have said, was not one to give up easy.

Andrew received his driver’s license in January of 1968. It marked the first ritual that made Franklin kids once again sit up and take notice of the pair…The Saturday Night Drive-in.

At the time, Echo Drive In was the most popular place to bring dates, sit in cars, listening through the terrible speaker system to the almost new movies of the day. The drive-in tended to be years behind in providing those new movies, however, it still was the place to make out for most of the Franklin High kids.

It was a known fact that Saturday nights were B-horror night and the ultimate make-out night for everyone. After all, the movies were horrible and the drive in was dark, if not a bit crowded. While most came to the drive-in to get to know each other better, Andrew and Cami made that night their special tradition for much different reasons.

B-Horror movies, extra special gory ones were always Cami’s favorite. Nothing made her happier than if some guy’s head popped off, or mutant bugs ripped apart a person and ate him on screen. The thrill of death was a strange, if not a bit disturbing, aspect of young Cami’s life. It explains all the blood and guts from the old One Eyed Willie story of the Moonlight Cottage days years earlier. Cannibals, big bats and laser ray guns would burst onto that drive in screen every Saturday night for an exciting two movies and Andrew and Cami would always be there, the only two perhaps watching the movies.

The strange ritual become even more disturbing as the pair on a scale from 1 to 10 judged the deaths on the screen. A rating of one meant it was best goriest mess possible and a rating of 10 meant it was lame, dull and boring.

Many of their friends attended that same Saturday night drive in for reasons mentioned before and they found Andrew and Cami’s constant retelling of the deaths from it at the lunchroom table in school on Mondays more disturbing than the fact the two actually watched the movies.

Jill and Robby were completely convinced the first time they saw the couple at the drive in it was for a date, but they were quickly proved wrong as they cheered on the deaths.

‘Saturday night movies at the drive-in were a big tradition of Andrew and Cami’s.’

Jill said of her former classmates.

‘You have no idea how serious they were about those Saturday nights. It didn’t matter if the movies were terrible, and they were. Saturdays were horror night and those movies were some of the worst, but Cami loved them. Andrew never took any of his dates to the drive in on Saturday. It was one of those things just everyone knew. Saturdays were with Cami. As a matter of fact, I don’t think Andrew ever took a date to drive in any night, well until later. That is another story.

Anyway, it was their special place, you know. And they actually watched the movies. None of us understood it. Before the movie started they always played music at the drive in and all of us danced and had fun. Andrew and Cami were no different. They danced. Slow, fast, it didn’t matter. They even did that dancing our parents would have killed us if they saw us. You know, the dirty dancing stuff from Motown. Oh yea, that was great. Andrew and Cami did it. They did everything just like all of us, only they weren’t dating or anything, so we could see at least.

We’d always ask ‘are you two dating?’ And they would always say we’re friends. Cami would get upset sometimes, saying why can’t boys and girls be friends and all, but then they would be all over each other dancing. It was crazy. They weren’t fooling anyone, you know. I mean, hey, it wasn’t like us girls were upset that Cami always said they were friends. We were happy about it. There was still a chance for the rest of us.

But you know those two just confused us for years. I mean, come on, she leaned against him in the car, he got her popcorn covered in butter that could make you sick and they laughed, cheered and hugged each other all the time. What were we supposed to think?

Anyway, it wasn’t until David Ross came in that the rules changed. Everything changed that summer.’

Andrew explained the Saturday Night Drive-in to me long after I had experienced my own drive-in night with Cami on her first date. It wasn’t at all fun. (I’ll discuss that later)

“Cami used to lean against me in the car and drink my Dr. Pepper, even though she always said she didn’t want any. That was just Cami and I loved it. Her against me, dark drive-in, alone in the car, it couldn’t get better. But when the scary music would start in the movie and she’d get excited and hold onto me, burying her head in my chest and peek out to see what was happening, those were the best moments. I put my arm around her to protect her and she just pushed against me more and more. I loved Saturday night, I gotta say. I miss those times.”

Andrew said to me one night. The look on his face as he remembered left no confusion as to his feelings about her.

It was at this time that Andrew and Cami joined the high school drama club and Andrew has joined the Jazz band at school, while still doing his own band, the Angels. A band, Cami still refused to official sing in, but attended all the rehearsals in Andrew’s parents’ garage, and supported.

It was also the time that Andrew became the most sought after date for all the dances, movies and anything at all in Franklin. However, times were changing even more for the two would-be lovers. Their passions were hitting an all time high, both in music and for each other.

Chapter Six

Love in Time

By the summer of ’68, Andrew still had a dream to fulfill. One that no one in Franklin knew about. It would take a rather unlikely event for it to finally make it come true. An event I had the unpleasant and yet, dubious honor of being a part of.

Andrew and Cami had just finished their sophomore year in high school when the tides began to turn for the two friends. Birthday parties with knights in shining armors and Moonlight Cottages gave way under the pressure and demands of growing up.

The summer began as every one did. Hopes of sunny days and times at the beach, sitting around the bonfire and playing in the Angels. The subject of Andrew and Cami had been around the school all year, but that summer led to wide spread speculation and innuendoes. They flew like hotcakes around a fire, borrowing a term from my southern friends. However the young friends confirmed nothing. The age old statements still were being said ‘we’re just friends.’ And all their friends were helpless to agree, although Jill, Robby and Billy did secretly wish they would catch Andrew and Cami at something, especially on those Saturday night drive-in ‘dates.’

Andrew and Cami were no different at least on the outside, but on the inside those unknown and unresolved feelings from childhood games and youthful moments were creeping back into the two teenagers. To be fair, that dream of Andrew’s had manifested itself several times before this summer. Hopes were dashed before they began though.

The stories were numerous and many, however one sticks out in Andrew’s memory. The couple was 14, it was before the ‘Ryan incident’ and before Cami stopped singing at church and in public. This story told by Andrew one night after the high school play in our Junior Year, can perhaps best describe the unseen obstacles the two friends fought against.

Even though the pair had a perfectly good tree house to hang out in and talk, I guess sometimes old habits are hard to break. This habit was of Andrew throwing stones at Cami’s bedroom window and him climbing up the trellis to the roof and finally entering into her bedroom, just like a good Romeo. Their late night liaisons went on without her parents knowing about them.

Oftentimes, since Andrew told me the story, I did believe if her parents had been aware of how much time Andrew spent in Cami’s bedroom, they would have been more open to that tree house idea, even with the ladder.

Anyway, on this particular night, Andrew climbed into her bedroom and sat down, as he always did, on her floor, while she sat on the bed. Cami had a new game to teach Andrew that night. A game she learned over at her friend, Jill’s house a few nights earlier. It was one of those childhood games of chances and dares. Something to test the boundaries and add fuel to an already raging fire. Of course, for the pair playing that night, being just friends made the danger and excitement that much more luring.

The new game pursued and between dares of sneaking into her parent’s liquor cabinet and telling truths about everything from friends to would-be girlfriends and boyfriends, they found themselves in an unexpected position by the end.

It was Andrew’s turn to ask a question, won by a series of correct answers by him. (As to the rules of this game, they are shaky at best. I believed it to be a Truth/Dare game with some type of southern twist. Most games that were played in Franklin that I recalled had an added horror to them)

The question was simple enough, something about her wanting to be a singer, however when Cami was caught inside a dare (again I don’t know how that works), she may have considered the game wasn’t such a good idea at all. I was starting to think I would refuse playing it also, if it was asked of me. It sounded like you always lost. Unless of course, you turned the tables on your opponent, which Andrew seemed to have a special talent of doing, especially with his cute redheaded friend.

Andrew’s dare was to let him kiss her...on the lips. (That was a big deal, one of those unwritten laws and all. Someday, I will have Andrew write them all down. In case, you visit.)

Without waiting for a response, Andrew gathered up his courage and leaned over, kissing her for a total of a few seconds. (His remembrance was longer, but we all know at 14, every kiss given to a pretty girl is exaggerated)

In a moment of shock and excitement, Cami simply replied back. ‘Why’d you do that?’

Andrew’s response was, as always, truthful and to the point.

‘I don’t know.’ With a quickly added: ‘Want to do it again?’

After a few more kissing experiments, both friends stared at each other. Andrew was sitting on her bed by this point and Cami was in his arms. Her thoughts may have been the same as her friend, perhaps a glimmer of hope that they could be more than friends, but neither let on openly their feelings about the kisses on that night and neither talked about it again.

The story ends with Andrew going back out the window, down her trellis and heading home. However, the effect of that dare and those kisses was not lost on the boy who lived next door. He held a different feeling than when he had gone in. Those feelings he had bottled up were starting to explode and he was all set to tell her how he felt a few days later, when unfortunately, an awful fate stepped in disguised as Ryan and the two would be lovers lost their own chance for happiness that summer.

All was not lost though, Andrew had found his heart that night and he had given it to his best friend to use to be a true friend with support and encouragement instead of a boyfriend, a sacrifice that was neither regretted by him nor forgotten by her.

Being Andrew, though, it didn’t take long, right about the next school year to start working on his own plan to put Cami back in his arms. Unknown to the world and to Cami, that was part of the plan.

Recounting the story at 17, nearly two years later, to me that night, Andrew still held a romantic look about him as he talked. A look that struck me as he spoke of those lost moments and hidden kisses. My friend was in love, truly and completely. I may have heard the words before from him, but it wasn’t until that moment that I could understood what they meant.

Now to truly understand the naivete of my own youth and misunderstandings, I will have to recount another tale, one about a year before that night with Andrew of revelations. When I first entered the world of Franklin, Louisiana and found myself caught up in Andrew Whiete and Camille Moore.

I came to Franklin from about as far away in miles as in culture, Philadelphia. I had never experienced the South, southern food, southern charm, southern laws, unwritten ones, that would confuse and enlighten all at the same time.

That summer of ’68 was a big wake up call for me that I had definitely left the North and entered a world somewhere over the rainbow. We were certainly not in Philadelphia anymore, Toto.

My father worked as an electrical engineer in Philly and a great job opportunity opened for him way down in Franklin, Louisiana. It wasn’t the best timing for my older brother, Michael and me. We were both in high school in Philly, I in my Sophomore Year and Michael about to enter his senior...maybe. My brother was, for lack of better term, a derelict. Arrested for possession of drugs in his Junior Year. He got off easy without jail time but was slapped with a fine that my parents had to pay for him. By the summer we were moving the Philly cops had visited Michael every time some kid was involved in any illegal activity in our neighborhood.

Michael was the family problem and the main reason, I found out later, to be why we had moved at all. The job for my father wasn’t by coincidence he had been searching to move to a quieter town away from a big city. My parents, secretly hoping this would curb my brother’s wild ways. Without opportunities that presented themselves in a large city, Michael would be able to concentrate on schoolwork and graduating. He already stayed back in 7^th grade, suspended for bringing in a switchblade to school. By the time, I had entered high school, Michael should have graduated all ready. However bad grades and picking fights with his fellow students made that a problem for the school, the teachers, my parents, and ultimately for Michael himself.

Even when we did go to Franklin, it would take two more years before Michael would graduate, one year after myself, mind you.

So there we were the family from the home of the Philly Cheesesteak, moving to Franklin, Louisiana. I had to get a magnifying glass to see where the town was on a map. I remember recalling my first sights of Franklin as we drove down Main Street that first day. It consisted of a few shops, a grocery store, a pizza parlor, a weathered movie theater and what could have once been a dance hall but now held a bar that didn’t look inviting. Without being disrespectful to the people I met and did become friends with that summer, those first few weeks, I have to admit, I thought I was stuck in hell, the southern version of it anyway.

I had decided within the first week, that it simply had to be a breeding ground for serial killers. Now don’t get all mad about it, if you came from the south, I did learn that the north, south whatever has all different types of people, some good, some not so good and that serial killers can come from anywhere, even Philly. But, hey, I was sixteen years old and had left all my friends, I was obviously going to be upset at any town we moved to. Not to mention, that all of the kids names were ‘Billy Bob’, ‘Billy Ray’, ‘Bobby Lee’, ‘Bobby Ray’, ‘Bobby Bob’ and so on.

Coming from a kid from Philadelphia, I’ve seen some scary types of people, the city breeds them in droves, but down near the Bayou these guys hanging on the street corner in overalls without shirts, smoking, would have put some serious fear inside toughest bully in our city school.

The fear didn’t stop at clothing and names either, I was certain all of the boys carried pocketknives and had a concealed shotgun inside their house or their locker. All could and probably have used them to teach a lesson to the gator that stepped in their swimming pools or to the new kid who arrived from the big city.

That was the first week, the next week didn’t get any better. I started imagining the crime team that would have to sweep the woods for our bodies, only to discover that we were just stupid northerners who didn’t know hoe to deal with the locals. I wouldn’t even to be inclined to disagree with their analysis of our plight.

Overwhelming fear aside, we still moved into a house on Darce Lane, in a residential area of Franklin that had beautiful houses with nice scenery and little did I know held many people I would call friend in the next year. The house had the feelings of an old southern plantation home, without the expanse of a plantation field. But it wasn’t too bad, almost normal.

My father started working at Boudwin Electrical with Joseph Whiete among many others and as fate would have it, they got to be friends. Early on in that first summer we moved there, I was all ready hearing stories about a boy who lived across the street and was my age around the dining table. The subtle hints were being dropped which for my parents are as subtle as a nuclear explosion. It started with ‘go on over and say hi’ and then it led to more fear than I could imagine.

‘Why don’t you see if he wants to come over for dinner? Find out about the other kids....blah, blah, blah.’ Which is what my sixteen year old head kept hearing. Along with ‘I am not telling any one of these serial killers in training my name or address. No way.’

Now every sixteen-year-old has that moment of pure terror that starts with a simple statement from your father with a less than obvious response you are expected to have.

My came at the dinner table the day before July 4^th that summer. My father came home from work, the usual talking began and I expected to hear how I was going to wither away and die in this house or that I would be sent to the nearest Psychiatrist Hospital. Which in my mind set, both options seemed plausible and welcoming to the alternatives.

Unfortunately, I was not prepared for my father’s plan of attack and I was left with my defenses down.

‘We are all going to the July 4^th Festival tomorrow. Mr. Whiete has agreed to have you and his son meet. That’ll be great for you, David.’

As I sat there, images of what Mr.Whiete’s son would look like, act like, what concealed weapons he might be carrying, I began to think of a way out.

The usual excuses didn’t work and soon I realized my mother was about to get involved. That was it. One well placed, you cannot stay in this house until you graduate, I forbid it, from my mother, had me agreeing to go to this festival and meeting whoever or whatever, the 3 named son of Mr. Whiete would be. Michael even jumped in with a ‘yea, I heard of him. Some guys were saying he beat up some kid or something.’

Great, I thought, I hope my parents will be happy when they read about me left dead in a ditch somewhere in the back woods or worse my body would never be found, floating around in the bayou for the gator’s to gnaw on. That was it, my life was over ironically enough on Independence Day. Back then, I always tried to find the irony in any situation. This one was filled with it. If I wasn’t so terrified, I might have laughed at it all.

Well, my parents may have had good intentions and all, but there was another problem beyond my own imminent death: Who wants to hang out with the guy your parents pick out to be your friend?

It just wouldn’t ever get better now that we arrived in Franklin, Louisiana and like it or not, I was going to tell my parents I couldn’t go to illness the next day. They were quicker than me and I wasn’t great at being a rebel, so aside from my best aches and pains speech, I went to that July 4^th Festival.

When I got past the fact that all the food there was made from parts of animals that I didn’t know you cooked much less made people pay for and eat. The festival itself had a few of the regular things you would see in a television show from a small town. The local politician was getting pies in his face to raise money for some fund. You could try your hand at a myriad of games all of which I was convinced were unbeatable and probably rigged.

The first Whiete to enter my life was Mrs. Evelyn Whiete. She was a beautiful woman, for a mother, with a smile that made me feel that at least she wouldn’t kill me. She seemed too nice and entirely too god-fearing. She was bringing her warm blueberry pie to the judging booth. My mother joined her, carrying a less than warm peach pie. Next it was her husband, Mr. Joseph Whiete. He was about 6’ 1 with sparkling blue eyes and hair that might have been black or a dark brown when he was younger but now had seasoned into a salt and pepper look that accented his still handsome face. And he didn’t look at all like a person who would breed a serial killer. That made me feel easier.

Mr. Whiete had a hearty laugh and he slapped my father several times on the shoulder as they talked. He seemed friendly enough. In the middle of a conversation about the Plant and some problem with the ducts and things that engineers talk about, he quickly turned and shouted to a boy a few feet away.

‘Andrew, come on over here, boy.’ He said, grinning at my father. ‘Come on and meet Mr. Ross and his son, David. David’s your age, right?’

I nodded, looking at the boy before me. To my surprise, the 6’ foot 2 blond haired, green eyed, perfect smiling wonder I was introduced to, actually wasn’t any thing like anyone I had met in Franklin. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t like anyone I had met in Philly. Andrew shook my hand, greeting me with a smile and a ‘how are ya doing?’ That one I could understand his speech and two had a genuine, down to earth quality about his greeting and mannerisms. I relaxed a bit.

Well, it turned out, as you can imagine that Andrew Whiete, who did have three names, but never used them, unless you were Cami and wanted to scold him for something, was a great guy. Even though I had wanted to find my own friends if at all possible in Franklin, I will always be secretly grateful to my parents for meeting Andrew Joseph Whiete that day. I never told them of course, but after that summer I never really looked back fondly on Philly.

Sure, I lost some friends and it was a different lifestyle, a little slower (it was hot all the time, everyone moved slower) and all. I was hooked and just like everyone else in the town, I had found Andrew, the one kid that could make life in that small town seem interesting. I wasn’t that different from everyone else there, I soon found out. I wanted to be just like Andrew. Or at the very least, stand close enough to let the coolness roll off him and land on me.

Let’s face it, I was sixteen and very easily impressionable. Sure, I had been told I wasn’t bad looking and I did play bass so that put me on a better list than others. But to be cool the way Andrew was, to be in a band like Andrew had, to have all the girls that Andrew had following him (and there were girls and girls)...Come on, what more could a sixteen-year-old want?

Apparently it was the first and not the last time I was wrong about what I wanted.

Right after meeting Andrew spirited me away to hang out with his other friends across the field. This is when I met Camille Anne Moore. I tried not to make it obvious that not only was she pretty, and she was that, she wore rolled up jeans, white sneakers and a light green shirt that was tied above the waist a little, but she was cute. Bouncy, fun and cute. Now, like everyone else, I found out later, I had the same impression of Andrew’s best friend. They were together. They had to be. He put his arm around her and bought her food and laughed and joked with her. It was obvious, she was his girl.

So, as pretty as she was, I stayed clear. I was absolutely certain it was one of those unwritten laws and all. (This was before I knew how complicated those laws could get).

I thought at the time, I had been pretty clever to figure that out on my own. Unfortunately, not clever enough to have any clue that Cami was far cleverer than I gave her credit for. From that day to this, she will never surprise me again.

In our junior year, Cami asked me out, in such a sweet, nice way that only, if you knew Cami at the time, could be done. I hadn’t even thought it was a date. By then, I had several experiences that made me always think twice about my thoughts of Andrew's best friend. First, I did know they stuck to that ‘friendship only’ alibi. I even knew Andrew dated. A different one every Friday night. Barely any of those girls made it to date two.

Second, I had an encounter with Andrew and Cami’s past with Ryan, the boy from the church incident years earlier. It all happened fast and before I knew it, Andrew had my father’s car and we were driving out to Rte 19 out of town and running down several boys. When they turned on foot towards a barn, Andrew got out of the car and took off running. It was no surprise he caught them. Unfortunately, my own brother was with them. Luckily, Michael reasoned with himself that it might not be a good idea to tell our parents that I used Dad’s car, if that meant he would have to explain why he was with this group.

Andrew threatened Ryan with a switchblade knife that I didn’t even know he carried and wasn’t entirely certain he did carry it with him, before that secret phone call from Cami that put him and Ryan in this situation. Ryan had ventured back to Franklin and saw Cami at the drugstore, following her home. She ran inside called Andrew and off we went.

That incident was enough to get an explanation out of him about why this Ryan kid was on Andrew’s hit list. Needless to say, after that, it was to be the first and last time I’d underestimate Andrew’s role of protector in Cami’s life and in the situation with Ryan, I even agreed with him. That kid was bad news. I did notice a lot more, though after knowing about Ryan. For instance, Cami never went out alone, Andrew was never too far behind any encounter with a boy making overtures to his friend, now it all made perfect sense to me.

So with all that knowledge behind me, I thought when Cami asked me to go bowling with her, Andrew and his date I was helping her out, not making her feel like a third wheel and all. Well, I was wrong again. The bowling date was uncomfortable, but mostly due to my uncertain mind, thinking what was I doing with her? And more importantly, why wasn’t he with her?

If you can believe it, I was even foolish enough to go on a second date to be nice, because in Franklin if a girl asked you to go somewhere you are supposed to go if you’re not dating someone steady. Again, one of those laws I got wrong.

Apparently, I found out from Andrew later, that you can say always say no, but you have to be polite and have a good reason.

Anyway, the second date proved to be more terrifying than I could have imagined. Now, don’t get me wrong, I liked Cami, she was a sweetie and I did think nothing was happening between Andrew and Cami. Andrew had assured me of that himself. And that was the truth nothing in terms of dating was happening between them. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask about hidden feelings, but hey, I only knew them for a month before school started.

Cami, you see, asked me to the drive in on a Saturday. I was shocked, I knew about their Saturday Night Drive In ‘dates’, and I even found the courage to say it to her. She said it was no big deal and Andrew would bring a date, so foolish again, I let it go. It wasn’t easy to fight with her. She was a little bit of a thing and she seemed genuinely happy to have me to go with her. I thought maybe Andrew had asked someone and she was offended so she was trying to make the best of it. I found out later, Andrew only asked a date because Cami was taking me and that he was very upset about it. Unknown to me at the time of the date, Andrew was only dating the girls to get her attention, apparently it worked. She wanted to date, too.

Well that Saturday night came and we all went to the drive-in. It was the worst night of my life. I don’t say that flippantly either. Sitting in the back seat of Andrew’s father’s car with Cami was making my nerves wrought.

It didn’t take long to see that Andrew was upset and I started to believe jealous as well and I was the one he kept looking at. You have to understand Andrew doesn’t make anyone feel bad, honestly. He is always polite, but the constant looks were becoming obvious.

Unfortunately my rational mind wasn’t kicking in as I sat nervously at the drive-in that Saturday night with Cami watching the movie and smiling occasionally over at me to say how cool that death was. I kept looking at the people on the screen getting killed by mutant bugs and thought that’s what was going to happen to me if I didn’t get out of this situation fast. Except I was the bug and Andrew would be the crazed killer. I wouldn’t even blame him, I should never have agreed to the second date and I was seriously considering telling Cami I had decided to join the priesthood and hoped we could be friends. All of this was going on and we only kissed and sat close to one another.

Now that I think back on those events, I often think how ridiculous I was being, especially since in the back of my head I knew that the Ryan problem was something completely different.

The end of the night came with Andrew and Cami into the first fight they had ever had. I was not happy to be the person, who had caused it, believe me. However, after the smoke cleared, after a five day silence period where it felt like the whole world just stopped in Franklin and finally after a long talk with each other, all of us got what we wanted.

I got to be free from the Cami situation and any more dates, while Andrew got his princess and Cami, her knight once and for all. The best friends became sweethearts and everyone in Franklin felt it. True love had won over years of unspoken feelings and unwritten laws. For that summer and into senior year everything seemed perfect in the world. And to us that lived it, it was.

Andrew and Cami were the sweethearts of Franklin long before they became the folk icons of love and lovers. And to anyone out there reading who doesn’t believe in true love or that anything can be perfect, I beg to differ with you. One thing I have learned from Andrew Whiete over the years, the odds against you are just challenges to be faced. The worse the odds, the more you’ll learn from overcoming them.

Andrew had never said a truer statement and for the years to come, it would always stay with me as he continued to encounter those odds time and time again. If nothing else, from the first day I met Andrew to today, he will always be viewed as a fighter, an innovator, blazing his own path into the future wherever it may lead.

Chapter Seven

Beyond the Moon

Andrew and Cami were together for good by that summer of ’69.

Outside of Franklin, though, the world was changing. There was increasing chaos and civil unrest that began to permeate through the television sets of every household. While most of Franklin was watching hit television shows like The Mod Squad and Hawaii 5-O, others were seeing the first episode of The Brady Bunch and Marcus Welby, MD. Children were introduced to Big Bird and his friends in Sesame Street and Franklin was glued to the television like 50 million other viewers for Tiny Tim’s marriage to Miss Vicky on the NBC’s The Tonight Show. A sad day came for many of us Franklin youth, Andrew, Robby, Billy and myself included who all sat down to watch the final episode of the short-lived series called Star Trek.

In July, we all saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. We were excited for Elvis Presley’s first live concert in nine years and we even discussed a way to get to that Music & Arts Festival at Max Yasgur’s farm in Woodstock, New York.

But something was entering our world that was very different than laugh tracks and over-dramatized television. Every night parents and children alike sat glued to their sets watching a conflict thousands of miles away in a country called Vietnam. Andrew was no different. He sat in his family’s living room with his parents, his brother and his best girl watching the horrifying events around the globe unfold.

In June, President Nixon announced troop withdrawals from Vietnam. We cheered.

In September the world is shocked by the 109 deaths in the My Lai Massacre. We mourned.

In November, 250,000 people marched against the war in Washington, D.C. We hoped it would end.

In December, the United States initiated the draft lottery. We were all scared.

High school friends and family members started leaving for the army and for ‘Nam, uncertain if they would ever return. We signed up for the draft and we prayed in our own ways that the President and all those people who are parents elected would finally end this.

Andrew’s philosophy was the same we all had. ‘We can’t vote but they can send us over to ‘Nam to die.’ The philosophies started to find their ways into his songs as well, however no one seemed to pay attention, least of all those lawmakers. Andrew for the first time in his life was mad, at the government and at the war. Tensions rose across the United States and inside the White House. We watched it all.

The Vietnam Conflict escalated, deaths were in thousands and all we could do was watch helpless to fight against it from Franklin, Louisiana.

No conversation in that year was without those topics in it somewhere.

Andrew and Cami’s confessions of love that summer and into our Senior Year were held against a backdrop of an uncertain future. It brought us all together in a way only those who lived it could understand. It was decided we could at any time be called to die so why not live? And we did. Andrew was taking a lead and we all followed. He led us into what the ten churches in Franklin referred to at Sunday masses as going straight to Hell and Damnation. But we didn’t care.

As tensions rose across the world, in the small town of Franklin, tensions were high right in the Moore Household. First, was Mrs. Moore’s constant disapproval of Andrew. There wasn’t really a why, that any of us, including Andrew could figure, only that she showed it through her disapproving looks thrown at Cami’s boyfriend. The boy next door who mowed the lawn every week and served as Protector and Knight for their daughter was being questioned and quarantined and outright distrusted. Andrew’s anger rose with each passing day and soon whatever worst fears Mrs. Moore had imagined about him and Cami, he brought them straight into the light.

For the first time in his life Andrew didn’t try to please someone. He did everything possible to get around her and passed her instead. A highly unlikely scenario for the boy who couldn’t do anything wrong in the eyes of the Franklin folks.

His rebellious nature took over that year, beginning with a motorcycle and ending with taking away Cami from her mother and her home. The signs were small, but as the months progressed, they grew and soon anyone who didn’t know Andrew had changed were in for a surprise.

During the summer, that Saturday night movie date of Andrew and Cami’s changed a bit from watching the screen to not remembering what movie was even playing. Long talks late into the night, where Andrew would throw stones at Cami’s window to beckon her to come down and take a walk led to more serious teenage fun. Making out at Pike’s Peak, stealing kisses behind the bleachers at his Track & Field competitions and soft whispering on his porch or in the Moonlight Cottage during hot Louisiana nights. They were inseparable. And all seemed as it should be. What was going on behind the scenes where parents and friends didn’t go was a bit more intense.

Friends at the numerous bon fires at the beach noticed them taking more and more time alone. Andrew and Cami became more popular as an actual couple, but their eyes only followed each, leaving behind the many girls and guys. For Andrew’s part he would always announce he was taken and that was that. The girls never did give up, but they knew. The chance had passed on both sides. And maybe, to some, they began to realize maybe there never really was a chance at all.

The most significant change happened during that summer and into the Fall. Andrew’s band, The Angels, continued to play all the time in Andrew’s garage. (His parents were the only ones that wouldn’t bother them about the noise). We had become more polished and during that summer had started playing gigs at local places, not much, coffee houses, local places, July 4^th festival. The usual, but we were starting to take off. Franklin kids were standing outside the garage waiting for us to rehearse, our own audience.

A few months into the summer, after July 4^th, Andrew decided to take a chance and play for the Hotel Redmond in St. Ives.

The Hotel Redmond used to be one of the premier resort hotels in the area during the late 30s and 40s, even into the 50s it saw success with a dance hall and restaurant. Unfortunately, the dance hall now was being used for canned music and populated by the older generations looking fondly back on a time that didn’t exist anymore. More unfortunate for the Hotel Redmond was that the crowd didn’t bring in the business and it was slowly declining. The Hotel business was still half-good and the dance hall looked to be a lost cause.

The Events Manager, Steve Johnson, who had started at the Hotel Redmond only a year before we came, had put up flyers around Alexandria and St. Ives looking for entertainment acts for Friday nights. About a month earlier, he started putting up a few flyers in Franklin passing through. We all had seen them and it was mentioned to us several times that we should go there, but the Hotel Redmond had a sort of stigma attached to it. Old folks and old music, so we didn’t really discuss it at rehearsals.

Then one day, when Andrew announced that he had gone to the Hotel Redmond and talked to the manager about the gig. He didn’t say much else, but we knew he had an idea.

Andrew, Robby, Billy and myself went to see Steve Johnson and we played two songs for him. He agreed to let us play on Friday nights and was hoping to get the nearby college crowd in at the dance hall. Andrew didn’t agree that day, but said he would have to get back to him, much to the rest of the band’s surprise, but as we drove home that day. He told me of his idea and it had to be taken care of before they could agree for the Angels to play.

The idea was simple: he wanted Cami to sing again in the band. Everyone in the band, Robby, (guitarist) Billy Holton (drugs) and myself had no problem with Cami in the band. She had a great voice that sang perfect harmony with Andrew, when we were all so lucky to hear it, that is. Usually it was during a jam session and he’d pull out Puff, the Magic Dragon and she would sing along or when he was introducing a new song to the group. He could persuade her to sing it.

The task seemed to have Andrew worried in a way I hadn’t seen before. I actually think he was nervous coming home from that audition at the Redmond. He was quiet and barely said a few words other than he wanted Cami to sing with us and that he was going to talk to her when they got back to Franklin. He dropped me off and parked the car at his house. I remember watching him take a few breaths before crossing his lawn to her house.

Trying to get her to sing in the band did not seem to prove as difficult as he indicated. What with the reason, I knew of why she had stopped singing and the fact that she hated singing for a crowd anytime he did ask her, I was shocked when he announced a few days later that Cami was joining the band. He said that he just talked to her for a while and she agreed. Well, whatever got her to sing the band was grateful.

Cami was great, like she hadn’t ever stopped singing and I was secretly wondering if she hadn’t. I chalk it up to one of Andrew’s well placed, please and Cami melted under the gaze of those green eyes and his smile. If others had thought he couldn’t charm Cami the way he used to the other girls, they were wrong. I had seen it happen time after time and I was beginning to think he could charm her better than any of them.

‘I knew Andrew was going to ask me to join the Angels sooner or later. He had that look in his eyes, every time I would sing with him in the Moonlight Cottage or at the rehearsals. I know Andrew. I’ve known him since he was five and I can tell you if he gets the look in his eyes, just give in. You don’t win. I never did.’

‘Yea, he got all worked up about the Hotel Redmond gig when he came back from there that day. He just kept telling me how much he needed me and without me the band wasn’t going to make it and all. I know he was just trying to get me to say yes, but you know Andrew can be very convincing and sincere. I bought it. I joined. Thought I was going to ruin his life or something. Secretly I was glad, I wanted to sing again. Of course, I did. I love singing and I loved singing with Andrew.’

The Angels were playing Friday nights at the Hotel Redmond and Andrew and Cami became bigger than anything St. Ives had seen before. They were talked about all over Franklin from parents to kids alike. We couldn’t rehearse at the garage anymore, the crowd was becoming a problem in the Whiete’s driveway and the neighbors, in particular, Mrs. Diane Moore, were complaining. We moved our rehearsals to an abandoned barn on Rte 19, that Andrew’s boss, Joe Summers, of Joe’s Mechanic Shop, owned.

Soon, the Angels were more than just a band, they were the band that Andrew and Cami were in and St. Ives and Franklin would prove to be too small. The Franklin sweethearts and the Angels were on our path to stardom, leading all the way to...New Orleans. The music capital of Louisiana.

However, it would be another one of those unlikely events that would jumpstarted that move.

Chapter Eight

Rivers Run Deep

At the beginning of the summer of ’69, Andrew had been working at Joe Mechanic’s Shop for the second year, on weekends, and for the past school year, after school also.

When Andrew inquired about a job during the summer of ’67, he had been only 15 years old. However, he walked away from talking with Joe Summers, the owner of the shop, with a promise he could have a job pumping gas when he turned 16.

One day after his 16^th birthday, on January 3^rd Andrew was standing in Joe’s shop again walking there straight from school, asking the man to live up to his promise. Joe hired him for the gas station and Andrew began pumping gas, washing windshields and checking oil on weekends only with an occasional school holiday or Friday after school thrown in. Even though, Andrew insisted he could work after school, Joe didn’t agree.

Within a few months, Andrew started helping out the two mechanics in the shop, Billy Ray and Tommy, both who didn’t graduate from high school, even though they were three and four years older than Andrew, working on cars after his regular shifts. After that, Andrew came in on Saturdays to do a tune up or fix a transmission, learning the ropes and years of experience from the mechanics and Joe himself.

When Joe looked back on it he said he couldn’t get Andrew away from the job.

‘Andrew was one of those hard working kids, knew what he wanted and went after it, even at his job here. He worked the pumps and all. Everyone liked him. He was polite and understood how to treat the customers. Always did. He used to talk about fixing his Daddy’s car and that junk in his driveway, he had picked up for $30 bucks over in Alexandria. I decided to let him work on an oil change one day. The kid was great. Fast. And he knew what he was doing. I just let him go on and do other jobs. Finally, he had to get off the pumps and start working in the garage as a mechanic. Besides, I had lost a few older kids to the draft and there were openings. You know, Andrew never asked for more money or anything like that for the work in the garage. That wasn’t like him, his Daddy taught him well. He was a good kid. I gave him a raise, of course, but he never asked for it. That boy just gets bored, needs things to keep him busy. Well, I kept him busy, that’s for sure.’

The job did earn Andrew a decent wage and the ability to keep taking Cami out to the drive-in, festivals, dances, concerts and more, when they were together and just best friends. As a matter of fact, I can’t recall a time when Andrew was ever without cash on him for a bite to eat or whatever.

I can also attest to his experience with cars, as I was the unfortunate owner of a car that tended to break down, time after time. It wasn’t a bad idea to have a friend as a mechanic. Usually Andrew would just pop the hood, take a few seconds, look it over, move something around and tell me to start it. It almost always did. If it didn’t start for some reason, Andrew’s expression would change to sympathetic and I knew it was going in the shop for a few days.

Andrew’s other responsibilities of his job included using the tow truck to help stranded drivers. One of these situations came up the summer of ’69.

The Angels had been playing at the Hotel Redmond for a while now, bringing in large crowds. Andrew and Cami had been together since March of ’69 and the world was still in chaos.

Andrew was working late at the shop, fixing Mr. Earl Thompson’s car, yep that’s Cullen Thompson’s father. At the time, Mr. Thompson needed the car for a business trip to Shevesport the next day. It was Thursday night, around 6:30 PM and Andrew was supposed to meet Cami about an hour earlier and attend a birthday party for Robby Crowley that evening.

The Louisiana sun was starting to descend in the sky, leaving beyond brilliant colors of purples and reds. Andrew hadn’t had a chance to see the sun all day much less the beautiful sunset that blanketed Franklin that evening. He had arrived at the shop at 9:00 AM that morning, ready to put in a full day until 5:00 PM. One week earlier, since school was let out, Andrew spent four days at the shop from 9:00 to 5:00 PM, sometimes later if he was needed by loyal customers and Saturdays from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM.

The Angels stilled played Friday nights at the Redmond, two sets a night. With the summer, they were considering adding Saturday night as well, with two more sets. During his day off on Friday’s it was Cami’s turn to get Andrew for a while. It was their day together and throughout the summers, her parents, his and all of us didn’t see them until the Redmond that night or sometimes right before to pick me, Robby or Billy up before heading to St. Ives, when we asked if he could.

Needless to say, Andrew was onto another plan, one that involved marrying his sweetheart when they graduated. The extra hours at the shop, and more nights added to the Redmond gig was a means to make that happen.

It was during on this particular Thursday night that Joe received a phone call from a Mr. Henry Dumond, the local pharmacist, who saw a broken down car with a young girl in it on Rte 19 about two miles from Franklin, while he was coming back from a seminar in Shevesport. Joe told Andrew about it and although he was already late and probably in trouble from his girlfriend, he agreed to pick up the stranded driver, with the promise that he would close up. Joe after a long day himself, wished him a good night and left the office.

Andrew drove out a few miles to where Mr. Dumond said he saw the car and found the car’s driver, patiently waiting, while she drew a picture in the fading light.

The girl was no older than Andrew, as a matter of fact, he was to find out she was seventeen and a student at Shevesport High School a bit later at the garage. Accessing the damage of her car, popping the hood, trying to start the engine and a loud thump that accompanied it, Andrew explained to her that she had received bad gas and he was going to have to drain her tank. He added it shouldn’t take longer than a few minutes, but he would have to take it back to the garage.

The girl, called Graciana Ferrina, but went by the name of Zia was on her way from her home in Shevesport to visit her father for the summer in New Orleans. Her father, Rick Ferrina was a saxophonist in a jazz band named Neon Blue. Throughout her conversation with the cute mechanic from Franklin, a town she had never seen, nor knew about, since she moved from San Francisco just a year ago, Zia was having trouble concentrating on his assessment of her situation as she trying to figure out where she had seen before.

‘I thought Andrew was a nice guy. Everyone always asks me if I was attracted to him. No, not really, I never really liked the blond look and all. But was he cute? Absolutely. My concern was with my car at the time and I was more impressed with his skills as a mechanic and trying to figure out why he looked so familiar.’

Zia after talking with the talented mechanic about her father and music, she finally realized she had seen him at the Hotel Redmond where she had gone a few weeks ago with her friends from Shevesport. He was Andrew Whiete from the Angels. Instantly, she found herself in a conversation about how exciting it would be for her father to hear his band.

‘When I finally figured out he was that Andrew from the Angels, I was so excited. I probably made a fool of myself. I loved their music. It was different and new. Great beats, great songs, great voices. Well, he went right ahead, calm as good be, talking about maybe coming to New Orleans, well he fixed my car. It was then, that I met Cami, she came into the shop and we started talking. She was very nice, they both were. I remember thinking they looked different on stage somehow older. Anyway, I gave him my father’s number at Pappy’s Place in New Orleans and Cami gave me Andrew’s number and that was that.’

I remember thinking when I watched them on that stage that they have to be together and standing there in that mechanic’s shop there was no mistaking it. It was really incredible watching them. It was mesmerizing. I’ll never forget it. They have this chemistry. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before or since. They had it on stage, too. It was more than just great voices and great songs. It was a part of them being them. They made an audience come alive. You were definitely watching two people in love on that stage and those same down to earth personalities were evident in that shop that night.’

The meeting may have been brief, but certainly eventful. Andrew fixed her car and got her back on the road to New Orleans for $1.50 and Zia got the name of singer/songwriter/musician that her father would forever to be grateful to her for in the months and years to come.

Zia thanked the nice Franklin mechanic and his girlfriend handed a copy of her father’s card to him, telling him her father’s band, Neon Blue, was always looking for songwriters and new talent for the club, if they were interested. Off she went into the night, but not without an escort provided by that mechanic who simply didn’t like the idea of her driving alone to New Orleans, Cami joined him and they drove over two hours out of their way to see she got off the highway safely.

‘I’ll never forget that. It was crazy for him to follow me to the New Orleans exit. I thought he was crazy. Who would do that? Now, I know, Andrew Whiete would do something like that. I was soon to learn that was just the way he was and honestly, I did think it was sweet of him and Cami. The only thing I regretted was not asking them to meet my father that night. If I known he was going to follow me almost the whole way, I would have.’

Well, Zia may have regretted it, but it only take several weeks before Zia convinced her father that he needed to see this band, The Angels, and Andrew and Cami. Finally, Rick Ferrina went down to St. Ives with his daughter to see what the commotion was about. Unknown to Xia, Rick had heard things about this band who were single-handily resurrecting the Hotel Redmond.

‘I went to St. Ives right before July 4^th, I guess. Zia tends to get an idea in her head and can’t get it out and this band, The Angels and Andrew and Cami just kept coming up in conversation. I decided it was time to hear them and see what it was all about. My daughter has a good eye for talent. She’s a drummer, gave her them myself when she was young, and she knows music. Besides she was seventeen and if she liked it, maybe it was something new and different. Maybe it was in New Orleans. I had been looking for a new sound.

‘When Zia and I went to the Redmond. We asked about Andrew Whiete and The Angels. We were told that the hall was overcrowded and we would have to wait for the 2^nd set when people were rotated. Rotated? I thought for a teenage band from Franklin? It was crazy. People were lined up around the corner and down the street to get in. Well, I told the manager where I was from and that we were scouting new acts, the manager immediately got us a table close to the front.

Once I heard The Angels, I knew they had it. Andrew and Cami had these incredible voices that melded together like an instrument, not to mention that the crowd was going wild for them. They were a cute couple, too. I wanted it on the stage with us in New Orleans.

When they sang The Cost, I was hooked. They had this chemistry up there. I’ve worked with bands for years and been around, so I know about what it takes to be a star. Andrew had it. In that small hall with hundreds of people jammed wall to wall. He had it. I knew it at that moment. I didn’t waste any time and I asked them to come up to New Orleans and see what we could work out.’

What was worked out wasn’t as easy. The Angels were already playing Friday and Saturdays nights at the Redmond with the possibility of Thursdays after the 4^th. We were all excited to go and see if we could do it in New Orleans. We were kids of course we were excited.

Unfortunately when Andrew asked Cami’s parents if he could take her for the afternoon there, all hell broke loose. It was too dangerous and forbidden by both parents. Thomas and Diane were set against it. The only time they may have ever agreed on anything.

Andrew was defeated, Cami was upset and there was a feeling that we shouldn’t go at all without her. We hadn’t performed without her for a year and even though there were songs we could do, it wouldn’t be the same for us, and especially for Andrew. Cami stopped all that and took Andrew aside telling him that he had to go and try, even it meant without her.

The sadness he held in his eyes as he proceeded to make her proud was overwhelming as we got into Andrew’s car and headed to New Orleans for an audition. As the hour passed on the ride, we weren’t even certain Andrew wanted to do it anymore. He was so quiet and anything we asked him was met with a one-word answer. I think we all hated Cami’s parents at that moment. Robby and Billy even tried to express that and got a whole speech from Andrew that was almost hostile as he turned on them, making us all think maybe the one-word answers were better. The speech consisted of every reason why her parents had the right to say no and how we needed to respect that, even if we didn’t like it. I was beginning to think, Andrew didn’t like it at all. And although, he was correct about their rights, I knew Andrew was trying to convince himself as much as all of us.

So there we were at Pappy’s Place on Bourbon Street in the heart of the music scene in New Orleans, without Cami. The scenery was exciting, musicians on the street corners, music in the air, but Andrew wasn’t hearing or seeing any of it as we walked inside the small dimly lit smoke filled club.

We met with Rick again and a few of his musicians from Neon Blue and then we were sent up on the small stage to play a few songs for the crowd. The crowd consisted of about seven or eight people who looked at us, but were too memorized by hangovers to pay much attention. It was a dead crowd to say the least and although after the second song there was a thrown out ‘that ain’t bad, kids,’ our way, we were a little defeated by the lack of enthusiasm. We were getting used to the wild crowds from the Redmond and New Orleans just didn’t seem to want us there.

Andrew politely told the crowd thank you after the second song and took off his guitar ready to leave, when to our surprise several people objected and told him to keep on playing. Andrew shrugged his shoulders, but we continued for three more songs. The small crowd even applauded us as loudly as they could with their headaches from the night before. It was encouraging at the least and frightening at the most.

When Rick approached us after that song, we left the stage and had a talk. Andrew was more than polite, but Rick had a sense of urgency about him that made Andrew uneasy. Finally, Andrew ended the negiotations with a surprising ‘yea, we’ll do it on Sundays at 3. We have to leave by 5.’

Rick agreed and the deal was done. We walked out of Pappy’s Place with a new gig and a new crowd, for whatever it was worth. It wasn’t surprising that Robby and Billy discussed the gig all the way back to Franklin. Nor was it surprising that Andrew didn’t say a word about it. Secretly, I was curious what he was thinking. I knew it had something to do with getting Cami to that gig, but how was the question on my mind.

A few days later, he explained it to me. An explanation I will never forget. It went something like this: Cami was coming to New Orleans come hell or damnation.

Well, hell and damnation sort of came. Andrew didn’t bother to ask the Moores anymore about it. Cami didn’t say a word either. They had devised a plan and that plan involved Andrew going with Cami to church every Sunday and singing in the choir, just as they had years earlier. Then Andrew and Cami would got out for the afternoon together. We would all go to New Orleans and play two sets and return to Franklin and Cami would be home in time for dinner at 6 PM every week and her parents didn’t have a clue.

As I had mentioned previously Andrew was leading a revolution of his and parents didn’t really have a say, least of all, hers. During the sets on Fridays and Saturdays at the Redmond, the banter between the two got hot and backstage would get even hotter. You couldn’t go into the back room without finding them in each other’s arms or making out against the wall. There were living right on the edge and we were right there with them.

We went back and forth on Thursdays during the day for rehearsals and Sundays for performances in New Orleans. (Andrew decided not to take the Thursday at the Redmond). Those Sundays were amazing. The crowd was mainly jazz, but when Andrew and Cami sang out their hearts with his music they cheered and applauded so loudly it sounded like they’d bring the house down. The ones with hangovers even applauded.

Though, the crowds would gradually change over to college students and teenagers as the months past, New Orleans had it set of problems like everywhere else. And Andrew and Cami had their own to go right along with it.

Over the course of the summer, Rick and Neon Blue would sit in on a few sets, usually one or two songs a night. The crowd liked it, Andrew and Rick worked together well and it added to the music, not to mention helped out when Billy decided to take a construction job and quit the band. So it was good for all of us to get help from Neon Blue musicians. Greg Taylor was great for Robby’s guitar riffs as well as playing on his own with Andrew. No one in Neon Blue played bass, so I was left alone. However, Rick had even advice for all of us. Sometimes Andrew took it and sometimes he told him he was doing it his way. Usually, it was better Andrew’s way anyway.

The first problem in New Orleans became Skeeter, the Neon Blue drummer.

He had taken one too many chances with Cami. Flirting and making comments that Andrew and many others thought were underhanded and unnecessary. Aside from the drink, Skeeter had been into drugs as well.

The final act with him came when Skeeter told Cami one Sunday as everyone was cleaning up, ‘if she wanted a real man, she should come and see him.’ Andrew was standing right behind Cami, putting away his guitar.

His dark side emerged once again and I felt like I was sitting in my father’s car all over again. Andrew took her hand and walked them both to where Rick was standing at the bar. Before Rick could start about how great they were that day, Andrew informed him that The Angels were leaving.

Rick inquired as to what happened, of course and assured Andrew it wouldn’t happen again. Andrew agreed it wouldn’t, adding that he refused to play again until Skeeter was replaced. The next Sunday, we arrived and Skeeter wasn’t there. I was even impressed. I was even more impressed when I found out who would be taking over for him.

That’s when Zia came in.

Everyone knew she could play, but most bands didn’t want a girl drummer, there wasn’t a novelty in that yet. However, for Rick, he had to make some quick decisions and his daughter was right there and knew the material. She had already played some sets with Neon Blue when Skeeter had been too drunk to get on stage, so it was a logical choice. The best choice Rick had ever made.

The Skeeter problem was solved, but unfortunately, the problems weren’t over for Andrew and Cami that summer.

Diane Moore become ever watchful of the constant time she felt her daughter spent with the boy next door and told Cami whenever she had the chance. She also wanted Cami to work at the Pharmacy with her and begin to earn some money. Cami didn’t like the idea, but she agreed to make her mother happy. It didn’t work. There were fights over working Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays during her time for the gigs at the Redmond and rehearsal times. Soon, her mother and Cami were in a full-fledged war that Andrew was right in the middle for. All of this was still going on without her parents’ knowledge of New Orleans or Pappy’s Place.

That Hell and Damnation Andrew had mentioned when he first explained how Cami was going to those sets in New Orleans was starting to come back and haunt him. It felt like it had already come for us who played in The Angels.

The motorcycle had already been a topic of great discussion among Cami’s parents. She was forbidden to ride on it. Andrew’s new attire of a leather jacket and a pair of shades were the second issue that summer. But the worst one came on July 4^th at the Festival in St. Ives where the Angels were scheduled to play with Neon Blue.

This incident would not be so easy to get around, even for the rebellious Andrew at the time. Diane Moore was on the warpath and Andrew was in the battlefield ready to fight for justice and his Princess with whatever it took.

Chapter Nine

Dark Night

When you live in Louisiana, especially a small town. One of the most exciting things to do is leave and see bigger small towns for holidays. July 4^th was one of those holidays.

Every year, in Franklin, there was a July 4^th celebration, the same one I had met Andrew at a year earlier. Every year the games were the same, the balloons were the same and the music was same, blue grass, fiddling, you know, everything a good southern hometown festival should have.

The Angels, namely Robby, Cami and myself talked about playing at the Festival that year and why not?

It was in our hometown and the kids loved the music. Andrew didn’t voice his opinion much on the topic other than to say, things like we’ll see. It seemed Andrew had a different idea. He didn’t want to play in Franklin circumstances as they were with Cami’s mother for instance. She was now questioning every move he made with her daughter. There was also the fact that Lewiston had invited The Angels to play at their July 4^th festival, which was slightly bigger, and we hadn’t ever been there before. Around about the last week in June, Andrew announced to the band that we had the invite and did we want to take it. It was exciting and new, we all agreed quickly.

Unknown to Andrew at the time or any of us, Rick had also booked the Neon Blue to go to the Lewiston festival that year. It was Xia who brought ‘the good news’ with her one-night two days before the festival to us. She had been asked to perform with Neon Blue at Lewiston and she had to decline stating she was all ready playing with The Angels. Her daddy wasn’t so happy about that.

This conflict caused some sparks to fly on that hot July. First, Xia tried to convince her father not to ask Andrew or god forbid, tell him to play in Neon Blue that night. Second, Andrew had to somehow convince Cami’s parents that her performing in Lewiston wasn’t going to be dangerous.

Both tasks proved to be far more daunting than anticipated. As mentioned previously about the Andrew and Cami’s parents issue, he wasn’t big into telling them much these days. He had been under the impression that they didn’t need to know as long as she was safe and under his protection everything would be fine. However, going to Lewiston and playing late into the night, prompted some discussion that needed to be had, if for the rebel. After all, they wouldn’t make it back until well past Cami’s iron clad curfew of 12:30 PM.

The conversation began one Friday while Cami was at work with her mother at the pharmacy. Andrew stopped by to talk with Thomas Moore before dinnertime. Andrew was asked to stay for dinner that night and explain the situation again to his wife, so that she would be aware. Andrew reluctantly agreed. It may not seem like much to have a home cooked meal most likely prepared by his girlfriend, who is a great cook and whose food was very liked by everyone, including her boyfriend. But on that night, Andrew didn’t think having a conversation with Mrs. Diane Moore was going to do any good. He was correct. It didn’t.

In the end, Andrew and Cami walked out the house with more dashed hopes, more rules and plans to amend them. They went to their tree house and they plotted as only two teenagers’ hell bent on getting their way could.

She had turned 17 a few weeks earlier and she wasn’t about to listen to any more rules from her mother. The war was waging and it was escalating out of control. The only control that seemed to be in place still was Andrew. As Cami discussed ways to deceive her parents and sneak out, he developed a slightly different plan. A bit more rational and certainly more sane. At this point, Andrew was all ready lying about where they went every Sunday. Adding more lies didn’t seem to sit well with him, even for that rebel he was becoming.

So, like any southern boy should, Andrew took the matter up with the one person who could give him some clear advice, his father. After getting that advice, that only fathers, like Joseph Whiete can give his 17-year-old headstrong son, Andrew was armed and ready.

He took off the next day at work, much to the surprise of his boss, Joe, who not remembering the last time he had asked for a day off graciously gave it. Andrew then proceeded to go to Bouwdin Electric and meet Mr. Moore for lunch. The conversation he had never escaped either of their lips, but in the end, Andrew had permission to take Cami to the festival under the strict guideline that they would be home no later than 2 AM, no matter what happened.

It was interesting that Mr. Moore used that terminology considering the events that unfolded at that festival. He never could have known, but ever since Andrew told me what he had said, it also has made me feel like Thomas Moore predicted or at the very least, unconsciously knew what would happen. Never felt the same around him again after that. If he could predict the future, I didn’t really want to know and especially, if he could only predict awful events, that was worse.

Anyway, predications and cosmic coincidences aside, we all went to the festival and planned on having the night of our young lives. We were going to Lewiston and sure, the festival was lame, but it had a Ferris wheel and some rides, not to mention one of those big wheels with a barker standing outside ready to take your money for a chance to win a prize. That was cool and much better than ducking Mr. Ferrington, our Mayor back home.

We rode the Ferris wheel, played the games, won some prizes, ate cotton candy and did all those things we were supposed to do at 17. We were kids and we were out of Franklin until 2 AM the next morning. Life couldn’t get better. These were the thoughts on our minds as we started our set at 7:00 PM. And it was true life wasn’t getting any better. We just hadn’t figured it would get worse.

Throughout the first set, nothing was noticeably different. We played the songs we always played. The crowd cheered loudly and applauded. They liked us. We played the second set and the crowd went wild and got bigger as the songs went on. When Andrew sang Rainwater, they cheered throughout the whole thing. Then it was time for a break for The Angels and Neon Blue came on. Pumped up by the crowd and the excitement in the air, I can’t blame Andrew for taking that stage again with those guys. He loved jazz and man, did he play it that night. Still, nothing noticeably changed.

The third set of The Angels came at 9:00 PM and we were ready. We played the songs like we never had. There was a fevered excitement in our hands and instruments as we gave it everything. The crowd didn’t disappoint.

During ‘Childhood Games’, several girls rushed the stage trying to get a hold of Andrew and two security guards had to pull them off. The guards stayed after that standing on either side of the stage for the rest of the set. We felt like a band, sure we had some incidents at the Redmond, with people too close to the stage and banging on it, but to get rushed, that was great and a little frightening, at least for Andrew.

After that third set, we only had one more at 11:30 PM and Neon Blue had one at 10:30 PM, so we had about an hour to spare. Andrew got stuck signing autographs to the side of the stage. I took Xia on the Ferris Wheel again while Robby found some new friends, all girls, and took them to play some games. Cami stayed by Andrew’s side, of course, during those autographs and proceeded to sign many of her own from adoring male and female fans alike.

It all began to unravel during that last Neon Blue set at 10:30 PM. Andrew was getting tired. The adrelin rush he had felt during the first few hours was waning and signs of exhaution were showing in his playing, if not his voice. Cami started to notice first, I noticed it next and Xia noticed it as the set progressed on. We still had another set to do with The Angels and there was our leader killing himself for Neon Blue. We were all not pleased with Rick Ferrina that night and we discussed our options carefully.

Unable to do anything, Xia and I went to get some water for Andrew for the next set. Cami wanted us to find tea for his voice, but water was about the best we could come up with. She was dead set against coffee.

One immediate problem after we left to find both the water and Robby, who was missing since the last set we had done, was Cami had been left alone. She was standing off to the side of the stage, not too far and still in Andrew’s line of sight. Andrew never liked to leave her alone. It was one of those promises he had made to her at that first gig at Hotel Redmond. He would always be there to protect her.

For most of sets that night, he would turn and smile at her during certain parts or riffs on his guitar. Winking at her, causing her to smile back. At this particular time, he was into one of his own songs, Time Again that Andrew looked over and didn’t see Cami standing anywhere.

It was about this time that Xia and I had returned with an annoyed Robby and a few glasses of water. Andrew’s eyes found mine and he looked at me intensely. Then his eyes searched the audience, the fair grounds, where the technicians stood. No Cami. His expression changed and he jumped off the stage without finishing the song, taking off towards us.

We all turned and followed him, while the crowds were still chanting his name. The realization was suddenly coming to us as we saw him looking frantically around the area we were. Where was Cami? She had been standing there when we left.

Andrew circled the area once, twice and then stopped suddenly. We looked where he looked and when he took off running to a nearby tree and several figures in the distance. We dropped the water and followed.

The figures took off as they saw Andrew sprinting across that field towards them. Like rats they scattered in different directions. Two headed for the parking lot one headed for the other side of the festival grounds. Andrew saw Cami against the tree. She was scared, trying not to show it.

The next events happened so fast that before I knew it Xia and I had charge of Cami with instructions to get her some water and to her, he said, he would be right back. She never yelled or screamed or even cried that night. She just said a silent prayer that only we heard as she took Xia’s hand and we found her a seat and some water. I even got her some of that infamous butter with some popcorn, but she didn’t touch it. Her hands were shaking and she was quieter than she had ever been, not uttering one word. She was worried about him. Hell, we all were.

The rest of the story goes like this, since I never heard it first hand from Andrew or Robby who was with him in the car at the time. I had to get the rest from the police report filed by Ryan, the boy who first entered Cami’s life back in the summer of ’66 at the Franklin Baptist Church.

The statement made at the time by Ryan was recorded at the Lewiston police department and read as follows:

Andrew Whiete ran my pickup truck off the road on Route 23, three miles outside of the Lewiston Festival. He got out with another boy and then Andrew came up to me and assaulted me for no reason. He hit me several times in the face and kicked me in the ribs, not stopping even when I asked him to. He broke two ribs and my left leg.

He then dragged me over to the edge of the cliff on the side of the road and he tried to stand me up. I could feel the pain in my leg so bad and I was begging for my life, but he just kept taking me closer and closer to the edge. I thought he was going to kill me and I didn’t even know why. I didn’t even know this guy really. I had only seen him one time before when I went to church with my Aunt in Franklin. There wasn’t no reason to be mad at me. I didn’t do nothing.

I’m telling you that boy is crazy. He kept on saying that he was going to kill me. He kept me there for a few more minutes, I thought I was going to die.

Finally, my friend, helped me out and kicked Andrew down. Andrew just went after him. He punched my friend several times and when he was on the ground, I thought Andrew would kill him too. I know he carries a knife and there’s been stories and all about Andrew and how he threatens people all the time. He is bad news, that kid. Anyway, finally the guy with Andrew got him back into the car and they took off leaving us both to die. I was hospitalized for three days at the Lewiston Hospital. He broke my friend’s nose and we still ain’t got no reason why Andrew Whiete attacked us.

That was Ryan’s version to the Lewiston Police Department. And it wasn’t ignored. Two days later, The Franklin Sheriff, Ned Frey, picked up Andrew after questioning him at Joe’s Mechanic Shop. When the Sheriff asked him if he knew anything about the Lewiston incident, without further prompting Andrew told the Sheriff a similar story about tracking down and beating up Ryan and his friend, who happened to be my older brother, Michael again. Nothing left out, other than the reason he did it. The Sheriff questioned him again at the station and implored the boy to tell him, but Andrew didn’t budge. He said he had his reasons and Ryan and Michael knew what they were.

Andrew was never charged with assault or any crime whatsoever from the Franklin or Lewiston Sheriff department. He stayed overnight in jail though and made one phone call to his father.

Now, I still am not versed in all the ways of the south, but I was agreeing with whatever it was that did open that jail door the next day and sprung Andrew, dropped all the charges against him. Maybe Andrew finally told the Sheriff or maybe, his father did.

Maybe they even got Cami involved, but I highly doubted it then and I still doubt that today. How did Andrew walk away from sending two kids to the hospital? One may never know, but it doesn’t really matter. We all knew why he had done it when the story circulated around town. We were right there with Cami and we knew he didn’t have a choice any longer. That choice was taken away by Ryan and my brother.

Whatever did happen with Andrew’s father and the Sheriff, it did involve my brother leaving town and my parents sending the police after him. It did involve a small write up in the local press about the charges being placed and then dropped. And it did stir up some bad times for Andrew, who was all ready in trouble with Cami’s mother who was convinced he had killed someone when the news hit of Andrew in jail.

However, there is always a silver lining on every dark cloud, my friend always says.

Andrew did bring Cami home that night from Lewiston much earlier than expected, sometime around 12:30 PM. I know I drove his car back.

However, the mystery surrounding those charges being dropped still clings in the air of Franklin. Whenever it is discussed at town events, there is a quiet hush that is felt all around. In the end, Andrew will remain Cami’s protector and knight if not in his own way, a protector to all whom live in Franklin and may need him.

Andrew was only seventeen when these events unfolded and to this day to any Franklin native he will always be considered ‘one of their best’ from adults to teenagers and children alike. A true idol to look up to, and respect. On the other hand, Ryan would never again set foot in Franklin after the Lewiston Festival incident and we were all happy about that, especially Cami.

I know it sounds like a storybook, but it really wasn’t for those of us that lived it. Maybe, just a good imitation of one. The knight was out of the dungeon, but the Princess was locked back in the tower. They were separated for two months. No talking, no dating, nothing at all. It might have seemed bleak for the love-struck couple.

Of course, they didn’t listen.

The all-ready furious Andrew and the less than controllable Cami, were not in the mood. The rules weren’t even guidelines anymore. She would sneak out through her window, we all went to Redmond, Friday and Saturday nights, just like normal. We even went back to New Orleans on Sundays, just like normal. He went to work every day at Joe’s, she worked at the Pharmacy. They never talked to each other in church, but sang in the choir together. They passed each other on the street, quietly and spent time making out at Pike’s Peak and behind the Pharmacy while she was on break and her mother was inside working.

Us kids would see them, walking hand in hand along the beach, hanging out at the bonfires on nights when the band wasn’t playing and the band got the rest of it. There wasn’t any time for talking backstage at the Redmond anymore or in New Orleans. Rick got ignored in-between sets. If you weren’t Cami at that time or you were trying to take time away from his girl and him together, it wasn’t going to happen.

Rehearsals at the old barn became a secret meeting place to discuss how they were going to get her out for another event. Somehow, she even convinced her parents to let her go to a family picnic at Xia’s house in Shevesport for a night.

I went down with Andrew that night. Within moments of saying hello, they were gone. Never to be seen again until they met up with us at the late night movie in town. I didn’t even know how they knew we would be there. Cami went home with Xia, we went back to Franklin sometime around 3 AM.

To say that Andrew had been a rebel before Lewiston was nothing compared to those few months. Word of mouth from jealous kids and overly obsessive parents, mostly told to Diane at her church even caught them several times. Thomas would pay Andrew a visit, he would lay down the law again. Andrew wouldn’t interrupt or even defend himself and off he would go back to his house. Hoping he had finally stopped that boy from ruining his chances at ever seeing his daughter again, at least in his wife’s eyes.

The restrictions became worse. The danger became worse and the excitement just kept building. Two months led to three and then finally, Thomas Moore gave up. There was no stopping Andrew and frankly, no stopping his daughter. His wife yelled about it, but the restrictions were lifted. Andrew was welcomed back by Thomas Moore himself one day during October of ’69 sometime before Halloween and that was that.

The war of the parents versus kids was over. But the fun was just beginning for Andrew and Cami. The fact that the ban on dating was lifted just heightened their intensity with each other and their disregard for actual curfews. Diane Moore’s nerves were shot by the end of that year and I don’t think Thomas was too far behind.

I think the whole situation of trying to keep those two apart could be summed up in one conversation I overheard standing at Andrew’s birthday party in January of 1970. An unlikely pair was talking. Thomas Moore and Joseph Whiete and it was one of those small revelations you learn about a friend’s parent that forever stays with you.

It came from Joseph after Thomas was trying to lighten the situation from the past several months with his neighbor, making a comment that simply said, ‘thank goodness all that business is over. Your son is a very determined young man, Joseph.’

Joseph Whiete at the time turned toward Thomas Moore and made a reply that I will never forget.

‘That business never should have happened in the first place. Your problems with your wife are not something my son should have ever dealt with and I’m know for a fact that you should be eternally grateful to my son for keeping your daughter in that house of yours these past few months.’

With that, the quiet and reserved Thomas Moore, feared Franklin High English Teacher by day, never looked more scared than at that moment. He stared after Joseph Whiete for a few minutes and then turned his attention to the guest of honor celebrating his 18^th birthday with his arm around his daughter.

Now it just might have occurred to Thomas that it was all over. Any hope he had of making his wife understand when those kids were 16, or that Andrew would adhere to those restrictions at 17, melted away as he looked towards what he must have considered by now to be his future son-in-law at 18 years old, surrounded by friends and loved by his little girl.

One note and perhaps the most fascinating part of this story is that at the time of Andrew and Cami’s debut album, Moonlight WishesÓ, their were many surprised to find that Time AgainÓ was absent from the song list. Not I, though, after the incident at the Lewiston’s Festival, I knew how much he hated singing that song. And truth be told, Andrew never did sing it during the New Orleans years again. Of course, with Andrew you can never tell what will come out of tragedy or glory.

It wouldn’t be until Andrew and Cami’s 2^nd album, In Your EyesÓ , released in ’72 that Time AgainÓ broke the record of the fastest folk song to climb the mainstream charts to #1 since Peter, Paul & Mary’s Blowin’ in the Wind in 1966. Not bad for the rebel with a heart.

Chapter Ten

Thundersky

The summer of ’69 had passed and with it, trails and tribulations were creeping to a close on one chapter of our lives...High School.

Other horrors awaited us out in the real world, beyond fearful parents and petty jealousies, one by one are senior class was dwindling and it didn’t seem to have an end in sight.

Recruiters from the military walked our school hallways at least twice a year, even more in our senior and boys who swore they would never enlist, found themselves signing cards and telling parents they weren’t going to college or working at the plant. It was like some kind of epidemic that everyone was powerless to stop. Those boys we joked with about girls and sex in the hallways were picking up guns and heading over to fight a conflict against an enemy that was getting harder and harder to define. A war you couldn’t even call a war, according to our government. A world most of us were just plain terrified of.

Parents and teachers held fast to the belief that President Nixon knew what he was doing, after all they elected him. But amidst all of this, there were small glimmers of hope.

First, Franklin High got a new Principal Harold D. Cartell, sending away Principal Synder, who everyone thought had a nervous breakdown over the summer. Come to find out, Synder moved when he received a higher paying job in Florida. Principal Cartell was a tall, lanky man with an ability to hover over you and glare accusingly when you were eating lunch or standing in the hallway, much different than the pudgy short Synder who at the most would never accuse, just state obvious facts.

After the first few months of dealing with Cartell, we were all secretly wishing Synder could come back. At least we knew what he was about. This guy was more about making you feel like you did something wrong because you had the nerve to come to his school than worried if you had actually done anything.

As I have mentioned early on, Andrew was always a straight ‘A’ student, barely opening those textbooks to become one. After I realized the coolness wouldn’t rub off on me as I had originally hoped that first summer I met him, I started to think I could at least kept up with him at school. I wasn’t a bad student myself. We were even in honor classes together senior year. It was a newer concept for Franklin High even calling them honor classes would be gracious. In reality, they were classes that mostly you worked independent. The teacher, who often wasn’t in the room after the first ten minutes of class left an assignment on the board and we were expected to finish it and place it on his/her desk the next day. Usually the assignment involved an essay on the topic. Of course, to be fair, the honors classes were for English and Social Studies, it wasn’t called history back then.

As you can imagine, even though the school considered us students smart and headed straight for college and possibility becoming the next President of the United States or something like that, this didn’t necessarily mean we were capable of self-discipline. Believe me. What I remember most about that year and in particular history was Andrew’s way of dealing with the work and the entire school year. Saying he knew the system would be understating his abilities. I think in his own way, he got around the system.

Andrew’s version went something like this: The teacher, Mrs. Platt in history, for instance, would stay in the class for the first week, possibly even two, for the majority of the class. She would sit behind her desk reading a magazine hidden from the class inside a copy of The History of the World or something like that. After that, if nothing happened in class, such as unruly behavior, you wouldn’t really see her until a week before finals, where she would then have a weeklong discussion on every topic of every assignment that was given. Essentially, the discussion questions were directly based on the end of the chapter questions. Mostly dealing with dates, places, and names of famous people who brought the death tolls higher in each war, conflict and massacre across the world.

There were some other pointers my friend gave me. At this point, I thought it might be helpful to all of you out there who happen to be in this predicament while reading this book in your history honors class right now.

(Of course that’s unrealistic since those of us who did take honors classes would never read stories about rock stars during class, we were too busy doing our assignments, right?)

Here’s how to get an A, according to Andrew:

1. Challenge the teacher at all costs, especially if you actually pick up on a misplaced date or place. Be polite and give them the benefit of the doubt, after all, they could have just slipped up by accident. If they try to correct themselves, accept it and move on. After all, they know, you know and that’s enough.

2. Don’t miss assignments. That pisses them off. They have to prove they are teaching you.

3. Write on a topic you like, not just the first one you can think of. Make it interesting. Ask yourself whether or not you would want to read it. If not, don’t write it, guarantee by the first two paragraphs you’ll be bored and run out of things to say about it. The teacher will be bored sooner. If you have to do the essay, don’t let them get off skimming it. You wrote it, then can read it. (If you wrote it in the last period, you might want to amend this rule.)

4. Ask questions that start debates during discussions. Debate is always good.

(Here comes the southern unwritten law thing again)

5. Don’t ask for extra credit especially from male teachers. It makes them work harder and now you’re just being a kiss ass. They have lives, too. They were once your age and they are probably a coach for one of your school teams.

There are other ones, but that about sums it up. Now, here’s the real question. Does it work?

Absolutely, Andrew got straight A’s, I got straight A’s and he barely brought home books. Now, in respect to Cami it was an entirely different story.

Andrew carried books for her all the time. She did take them home. She even celebrated the day she got a B- on a history test and Andrew framed it, placing it in the tree house. It was never that she wasn’t smart enough, she was. It was a more a matter of ‘why’ with Cami. Which was the adverb she began all her talking with of the day’s events at lunch.

Why do we have to learn this? All those people are dead.

Why does Mr. or Miss. whoever hate me? Don’t they know I’m not going to be a math person?

Who made up those names of the planets? Why do we have to learn them? And why is one of them named after Mickey Mouse’s dog?

You get the picture.

Since Cami’s freshman year or possibly earlier, Andrew had been tutoring her, not in formal sessions, just helpful hints, hence the rules of earning an ‘A’. (I’m sure if I pressed him about it, he could tell me how to get a B or even how to flunk out). She got some of them down well. For instance, she could certainly bring up topics for debate. They were a bit frightening and entirely uncomfortable for the teachers, but the students loved them.

Her most talked about one came in junior year. It was in Social Studies and Mr. Jessup was discussing the rules of government. When it was explained how the Congress, Supreme Court and Office of the President worked together to create checks and balances. She simplified the entire process with one statement. (I know I was in the class with her. I didn’t get to take any honor classes until Senior. It was changing of schools thing.)

When Mr. Jessup asked for comments and questions about the process, Cami jumped right in and raised her hand. Her response was one of enlightment for all of us sitting there.

‘The government wouldn’t need all those people if they could learn to get along with each other and just do what every citizen wants.

I mean, look at the Supreme Court, all those judges are about 100 years old and they are telling everyone what the founding fathers thought. That’s rude. Hundreds of years from now, if some old judge started telling people what I was thinking, I would come back and haunt him.

And then what about the Congress? I mean why does it take so long to pass a bill? They should have homework or something to finish all that. And the President, he gets to say no to any bill, right? No matter what. Kinda like on that gameshow, when the announcer hits that buzzer thing and stops people from answering a question. There are always upset, like if they had one more minute they would have figured it out or something. You know, maybe the people in the Congress should have made it so the President would like the bill before they gave it to him. Makes more sense.’

That was it, and believe me, if you ever had the privilege and honor of being present during one of Cami’s logical debates, you would not view the world in the same way again. These thought out questions though didn’t always earn her ‘A’. It was required to actually pass the tests. Something, Cami hated. Whenever she did have a test, she would panic and forget things like her own name.

In Senior Year, Andrew came up with a different plan to try to have her overcome her testing anxiety. He gave her a poem he’d written to read and memorize. I can’t include it here, because I never actually saw it. Well, Cami memorized in no time and before every test, she said it to herself. Whatever it was that was in it, worked. It might have been a little superstitious and maybe she thought of it as a prayer and that God actually intervened on her behalf, but she tested higher, thus winning her better grades. The teachers that year were shocked and probably even wondered if she was getting the answers ahead of time. However, her hard work paid off and she received a ‘A’ for the first time in her life on her report card. As a matter of fact, that report card hangs next to her framed ‘B’ Test in the tree house.

School grades aside, there were many other things to keep our young minds occupied during senior year. We were all marching closer to freedom from the confines of hallways and lockers. The teachers and the Principal were making it their personal goal to see we entered the real world with absolutely nothing that could actually help us. In the process they wanted to see, and I mean Andrew personally, if we could keep up on everything from finals and fundraisers to proms and pep rallies.

Principal Cartell’s biggest obstacle to overcome with Andrew and Cami began during the first week of school. It was a battle he had no chance of winning.

It had been tradition each year that Andrew’s locker instantly became Cami’s. This was long before they were an official couple. Cami’s reasoning each year was always the same to the teachers and in particular, this year to Principal Cartell who watched the two budding sweethearts with considerable attention.

‘I always shared Andrew’s locker. Everyone knew that. He used to carry my books to class when we were in grade school, so when we moved on to junior high it just continued. In High School, Andrew insisted that the tradition stay intact, so we did. It wasn’t set up so we could see each other all the time or anything like Principal Cartell made it sound. We probably saw each other less.

You know, it was rare when we were both there at the same time, except at the first and last class of the day and maybe before and after lunch period, but that was all. Principal Cartell used to have fits about that locker thing all the time. He always say things like ‘you have a locker, Miss Moore, I suggest you use it.’ I tried to explain that he could give away my locker to another student or close it down and save some money or something, but he wasn’t into that.’

‘He threatened to call in my parents all the time. I would have killed him. First, Andrew and I weren’t supposed to be dating, much less seeing each other at the time and my daddy works at the school and he never said anything about it, so what was with that new Principal?

It was completely unfair and unjust, like everything else. Andrew didn’t take it though. He used to just throw Cartell a smile, say have a nice day, sir, and walk away. Principal Cartell started plotting ones to take that smile off Andrew’s face, I know he did. That was when he started with everything else he wanted Andrew to do because it showed ‘school spirit’, that’s what he’d say.’

That was true, Principal Cartell did get it in his head that in order to keep Cami from jumping into Andrew’s arms every time she saw him. (That was a tradition too, once they started dating) and to keep them away from that locker situation as much as possible, he would have to somehow keep the boy distracted. Distracted was perhaps a mild word for the amount of committees Andrew was forced, and I’m not kidding, forced to be on.

First it was homecoming. Andrew ran in a Track & Field Competition that day, winning the 100-yard dash race and coming in second in the Cross Country. Tiny Tommy, that’s what he was called, came in first. He was small, but that kid could run. I understand it did him some good, later on that year, when he took up with the Football quarterback’s girlfriend and head cheerleader, Linda Sue. We heard he ran into the next county when Freddie found out who had been with his girl. Anyway, after the competition, Andrew had to help set up the homecoming dance that night at the gymnasium.

In March, he was working on the Senior yearbook committee. This time, Andrew enlisted our help. Cami and I joined. Andrew took pictures, I wrote captions, and Cami developed the most interesting questionnaire that I’m sure, Franklin High, had ever seen.

It included questions about the organization of the school itself and whether the budget should include paying for new bleachers cause the ones outside collapsed one day almost killing several students who were making out under them. (No, the students weren’t Andrew and Cami), but they did go there from time to time. She was becoming a little activist all on her own.

She even went so far as to present those results from the questionnaire to the Principal with a full report on why we all needed a place that was safe for kissing. By the way, all of us received a detention for her trouble and Cami was so proud. Unfortunately, those bleachers are still there today. When I returned to Franklin, a graduating senior informed me that the Cami’s questionnaire had been used again the past year for the senior class. Principal Cartell, who is still there, didn’t find it any more amusing.

After the yearbook, it was the Senior Outing Committee to decide on what we would do for our annual day out. Go to Pelkey’s Farm like last year’s seniors, although that was unlikely since all his cattle were let out by the students, or could we find a place that would be cooler. Andrew slept through those meetings.

Eventually another questionnaire went around the school giving options. Just a quick note, Cami loved to type and copy on the only two typewriters and one small copy machine we had in the school library. The library was a small room that consisted of packed in rows of books, two tables, a desk and a card catalog. For a girl who hated studying and taking tests, she spent a lot of time in that school library. Andrew spent a lot of time sleeping there.

The Senior Outing was held at the beach that year and even though no girl was allowed to wear revealing bathing suits and certainly none of those two piece kinds, we all had a great time. Not too bad for the questionnaire girl, who by the way, got the teachers to sign a petition that went to Principal Cartell who didn’t like the idea of our beach outing at all. Cami explained to the teachers that the entire senior class voted and decided where they wanted to go. There wasn’t anything more democratic than that. Principal Cartell finally gave in, begrudgingly.

Andrew’s 4 foot nine girlfriend was becoming a force to be reckoned with and the Principal started to realize he had spent too much time focusing in the wrong direction, namely at Andrew.

Of course, if truth were told, Cami’s actions were most likely trying to keep the Principal from bothering Andrew. She told me at the time, that if Cartell did not get off Andrew’s back, she would personally condone killing the man and had Andrew’s defense all worked out in her mind. I tended to take her very seriously.

After seeing her view of the United States Government the year before, I was certain the defense would be something like:

Your honor, Principal Cartell was being unjust, unfair and just plain rude. Rudeness is the worst crime and certainly more punishable by death than murder. Andrew should not be blamed for Principal Cartell’s problems. The defense rests.

You would think that with all these committees, events, organizing and planning going on for our class, that Andrew and Cami didn’t have time to concentrate on the band and the music. Not true. They have a lot of determination.

The Angels performed at the Hotel Redmond every Friday and Saturday and in New Orleans at Pappy’s Place on Sundays, just as before. Half-way through our senior year, we started on Thursdays again at the Redmond just like we did in the summertime.

It was about that time in April when the school play rehearsals began for the new musical, Bye, Bye Birdie.

At the time everyone had seen the 1963 movie with Ann Margaret, Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh and Jesse Pearson, it was a favorite at the Franklin drive-in. Every summer they would play it at least four times.

So when Miss Bloom, our drama teacher, acquired the Broadway show from some friends she knew in New York. No one actually knew how she obtained it on our small budget, but she was so proud of that production.

Andrew and Cami had already been in Chorus for years and they do Oklahoma in their Junior Year. So it wasn’t suprising that they auditioned for Bye, Bye, Birdie.

Andrew, of course, with his three and a half octave range got the lead of Conrad Birdie. Cami was right at Andrew’s side starring against him as Kim McAfee, the girl who was chosen by Birdie to be kissed on national television. It was the only time Mrs. Bloom had allowed a kissing scene. During Oklahoma, the couple never kissed on stage.

‘Andrew and Cami had certain magic about them on stage. You could always feel it. When they were performing in Bye, Bye Birdie for our musical, our best yet, they made a darling Conrad Birdie and the school sweetheart Kim McAfee, originally played by Ann Margaret in the film, of course.

Recalled Miss Clementine Bloom while I interviewed her at Franklin High where she is still embarking on new plays and now allows more kissing scenes.

During the play’s final performance, Miss Bloom still remembered Andrew and Cami’s improvised portrayal of it.

‘One of the crucial parts in the play was the big kiss on national television, of course. The entire plot moved towards that one moment where Kim would be taken with Conrad and leave behind her high school sweetheart, Hugo, or if she would make the right choice. Andrew and Cami pulled it off beautifully every night. Although I had noticed the kiss lasting longer and longer as the performances went on.

It’s funny thinking back on it now, but at the time, I was very upset when Andrew decided to alter the plot on closing night, with a little help from his co-stars, mind you. You see, to understand, Kim does go back with Hugo in the original script, but that night, it was a bit different.’

Xia and I were sitting in that audience for the night Miss Bloom’s slight heart attack occurred.

In the play that final night, the ending showed Hugo, who was being played by Robby Cowley, kissing another girl. Hugo and the girl went off together while Conrad and Kim went off together, altering the plot quite a lot.

It was the funniest thing any of us had seen. After all, we all knew Kim was supposed to leave Conrad and go with Hugo for that perfect happy ending, but Andrew didn’t agree with it. So it changed and it was great for all us who were watching it. Miss Bloom almost passed out, but the show was still a great success. People talked about it in Franklin High for years after we were gone. Mostly from Andrew’s younger brother and his friends, who needed that coolness factor to rub off somehow when Andrew graduated.

Andrew and Cami were both fearless that senior year. She learned about questionnaires and the power of the people. He learned about rewriting musicals. I learned....nevermind. We all got an education.

By graduation in June of ’70, we all agreed it was a great year.

To top it all off, the Angels performed at the Senior Prom. There wasn’t a graduate that didn’t feel the magic that night. Andrew and Cami were named King and Queen, stepped down off the stage to dance their final dance to the ‘Love Me Tender’ and left Franklin High School with a bang, just like Conrad and Kim.

The couple was destined for glory and we all wanted it to happen for them, for us and for the music. It was the summer of goodbyes and tearful farewells. Most of us left to find our way in the world, through college, marriage or other means, but mostly, that summer was filled with laughter, music and romance, all courtesy of our beloved couple who we unselfishly routed for.

Chapter Eleven

You’ll All I need

The event I’m about to discuss started on one of those hot summer Louisiana nights that has become inspirations for songs, poems, Tennessee Williams plays and air conditioning.

I separate this event from our Senior Year, even though it happened during it, because it doesn’t lend itself to quick, clever sarcasm or crazy kids stuff. It doesn’t even lend itself to humor or rebels. This event is something that will be as memorable as any other event I’ve mentioned, but the exact details are for Andrew and Cami alone and I leave that with them. I suggest you do the same.

I’ve included it though, because it bears mentioning, as much as Cami’s 7^th Birthday Party, or Spin the Bottle games or even The Angels. The couple who would go on to charm an entire generation with cheerful and clever stage banter and who would make everyone believe in true love, needed to find some of their own special moments, not on the stage or in front of thousands of people yelling their names.

This is one of those moments.

The night had started off shining bright and hopeful in the eyes of the sweethearts of Franklin. There were on top of the world and looking down over the rainbow. With love and passion gripping their hearts and souls, they left the large cast party for Bye, Bye Birdie filled with their friends to find a place on their own. By now, most of us were used to their slipping away before the party ended. They ended up in their own secret hideaway, The Moonlight Cottage.

Here amidst the dreams of children a perfect setting was created for their final lovers’ pact. Where knights in shining armor and princesses make their final journey passing magical flights of fancy of the past and enter into love for the first time.

When the sun rose the next morning, the two went off lost in love and each other and the world would never be same for the would be classical pianist and the pretty girl next door.

Cami’s own words described it to me, years later.

‘I couldn’t think about anything but Andrew after that night, which was an accomplishment. After all, all I did was think about him most of the time, anyway, but it was different. Newer somehow. I look back on it now and wonder how I didn’t know he had a plan. His eyes sparkled and he had this sort of excitement to him. I’m seen Andrew excited, happy all that, but the look he had was more like he had some secret he held. And he did.

He took me to a place the kids called The Magic Path. It wasn’t really magic, but it was beautiful. Just a path in a forest a little while away from the Franklin line. No one we knew owed it. Color and light lined the walkway as you entered and it shone with such brilliance, it was like you were in Oz or Neverland. He called it ‘A magical fantasyland of wonder.’

It was there that Andrew picked a few of my favorite flowers, orchids and got down on one knee in front of me. I couldn’t breath. You know what’s coming and I really thought I would be cooler about it. His words were beautiful, short and so sweet, I always wished I could remember them, but the night before and the morning and the Magic Path kind of made that impossible.

I thought I did feel the earth move under my feet. It’s not something you can describe. It had a sense of romantic love with the most beautiful backdrop you’ve ever seen. If I hadn’t already fallen in love with him, I would have that day. I think I did all over again.

Although neither have ever revealed what words won the Princess Camille’s heart, it is clear when they speak on it that they will never forget it.

What did I say to Cami?

Andrew has said when asked about their engagement by a reporter in 1971 as their first album climbed the charts.

‘That’s a story we’ll tell our kids someday. Maybe they can tell you about it, but I’d like to keep it between us. There are moments in life that you’ll never forget. That was one of them.’

The elation the couple may have felt from their night of dreams and the engagement that followed would help to do much more than bring their love to a new turning point. For Cami, it would help her past the next hurdle in her young life. One she never saw coming.

Ever since Andrew and Cami could remember the Moores fought, not small insignificant couples who fought over small matters that could be solved with some good maneuvering and relying on a long-term commitment made in the beginning of a marriage. These were different kinds of fights. Harsh and to the point, at the expense, most of the time of their little girl.

Andrew once told me that he had spent many a time up in the tree house with Cami while her parents fought loudly in the house below. The war I had mentioned between Cami and her mother only escalated further and further.

Cami once on Mother’s Day, talked about her mother to a radio station in New York in ’72, on the Andrew & Cami ‘In Your Eyes’ tour.

‘Every mother’s day, I used to get up early and cook breakfast for Momma, then I would do the dishes and clean the house. I’d even sweep the back porch with the broom. It was special for her and I loved doing it. I loved my Momma, but I’m don’t think I’ll be visiting her this year. When she left Daddy and me two years ago, I was a senior in High School. Now, I’m 20 years old and I don’t ever want to go back to Franklin. Andrew is all I need and all I want. That time is over.’

Three weeks after this interview Cami would go back to Franklin, Louisiana and back to her family home.

Diane Moore’s deciding to leave her marriage to Thomas Moore that same day Andrew had proposed to her had to leave the young Cami confused and insecure. On one hand, she had her Knight. On the other she lost her mother.

Confusion and heartache followed Cami that summer and Andrew felt it all around her. From lovers’ trysts and words of love to the bitter harsh reality of divorce, it may have proven to be too much for his Princess.

The life she had once known, even with the fighting and the insecurity had ended so quickly, in fact, that by the time any of us knew about Diane Moore, she was all ready moving into her own apartment in Alexandria. Leaving behind her little girl who desperately searched for understanding and a life without cruelty.

Sadness may have gripped that girl’s heart that cold April, but by graduation and into the following summer, Andrew was her shoulder to lean on and he provided all the warmth, security and happiness she could stand.

At that Senior Prom, I mentioned earlier, Cami was happy than I had ever seen her before. The princess finally got the crown, sure it might have been only metal and with fake diamonds, but she proudly wore it as her knight, now crowned King, danced her around the floor.

The trials, the fights, the stand offs and the shootouts along the path to love were enduring and heartbreaking, but fairytales could and did come true underneath a painted sky of paper stars in Franklin’s dimly lit gymnasium. It was as if the lights and magic all converged blanketing the lovers behind a veil of protection from the harsh winds outside their world.

As we all watched them, Elvis Presley’s words had never meant so much, I think, than that on night to us and to the King and Queen.

‘Love me Tender, love me true,

All my dreams fulfilled,

For my darling, I love you and I always will.’

Chapter Twelve

Victory

Graduation and school days behind us, we all marched forward into life once again. Waiting on different things to push further and help us learn.

Andrew had been accepted to Duke University along with myself. Xia was planning to go to the University of North Carolina. Robby was taking a job at Andrew’s father’s old factory, The Franklin Electrical Plate Company and Cami was planning the wedding of her dreams.

One rainy June day, two days after graduation, we all went with Billy to the airport in Shevesport. He was taking a flight out of Louisiana to begin his own journey at Army boot camp that summer. Within six weeks, he would be shipped across the world to Vietnam. Powerlessness was never so overwhelming than when Billy waved goodbye from the runway and walked up the stairs. Cami and Jill were silently crying, Robby was doing his best to stay strong as he watched his best friend leave. Andrew stared out at the tarmac never saying one word as the plane took off into the Louisiana sky. His expression was one of concern and anger. As the seconds dragged on into minutes and no one seemed to have a desire to leave the airport, Andrew announced that Billy was going to be fine and he would be coming home.

That afternoon we all went down to New Iberia, by Andrew’s suggestion, and sat at a diner. We didn’t touch the hamburgers or malted milkshakes we had ordered, but that awkward conversation finally broke through to the highlights of Billy’s life. Stories flung around the table about mishaps, childhood fun and friends.

That night we played at the Redmond and Andrew announced Billy’s departure to the crowd. There was a rare somber moment, where the audience didn’t breath as Andrew spoke. They knew it could have been any of them. And even though, most kids didn’t have any respect anymore for ones that signed up on there own, Andrew and Cami took the situation and turned it around as only they could.

A few moments of back and forth between the couple and the crowd was cheering wildly as we banged into Rainwater, a new song that we had started rehearsing a few weeks earlier. It was scheduled to premiere in New Orleans, like all our new songs, but here we were at the Redmond, kicking up a storm with guitar riffs and drumbeats the audience loved it.

It was a great victory for the band and an angelic send-off for our friend.

However, when the audience wasn’t there, discussing the subject sent sadness through The Angels. There was a tension you could feel in the air. A small storm picking up speed as the summer days went by.

At the time, The Angels were still playing at the Hotel Redmond now on Thursday, Friday and Saturdays packing the crowds in. We made $250 dollars a weekend and all the free food and drink we wanted. Andrew and Cami, and sometimes the rest of us, signed autographs off to the side of the stage for a while. Steve Johnson, the manager, after a few weeks of the lines and confusion, gave us a table and some chairs.

On Sundays at Pappy’s Place, the crowds were becoming wilder and louder. We started going up on Wednesdays and we were getting known. Then complications set in. Pappy offered The Angels a shocking $350 to play Saturday nights.

I knew at the time, Andrew was torn between the making more money for college and the wedding and his loyalty to the Redmond. He hardly talked about it, but when he did, he said it was up to the whole band.

One night in early July, he mentioned that to The Angels backstage. Robby, Xia and I jumped at the chance to tell him we wanted to do it. It was a hotter crowd on Saturdays and $350 was a lot of money. For the rest of us, making money wasn’t a bad idea either. We figured we only had this summer left.

Not to mention in May, Robby had it own situation. Jill was pregnant and although she had given him a hard time with whether or not he was the father, he asked her to marry him one night after a Redmond show. It wasn’t necessarily romantic and Jill didn’t give an answer for a week, but finally in the end, Robby had stood up for what he wanted. He took the matter up with Jill’s father and the two were engaged. He got the job at Franklin Electrical Plate and had a wedding date set for July 22^nd in Jill’s backyard. We were all invited.

The Angels did start playing Saturday nights, much to Johnson’s upset. We lost $100 from the Redmond, but we gained it all back in the end and we didn’t cause any real enemies in the transition. In the end, Johnson understood and wished us luck up there in New Orleans.

Saturday nights at Pappy’s Place were jumping. The people were out of control and so was the amount of watered down liquor Pappy was selling. We kept on playing they kept on drinking. It was a good partnership, but Andrew was getting restless and the signs were started to show.

That year we played at a July 4^th Celebration in New Orleans and right before the show, Andrew sprung another idea. He wanted to cut a demo ‘just to see if we could’, as he said. He had asked Rick Ferrina his advice, since he had worked in recording studios before. We agreed it wasn’t a bad idea and Rick gave us the name of a friend at Diamond Recordings in New Orleans.

We all started to get excited about the prospect of during a demo, however fate would step in once again. This time in the form of Phil Kites.

We were finished our set in New Orleans and packing up the equipment on one Sunday night, when Andrew was approached by a older man in a business suit, not the typical audience member. Andrew jumped off the stage and shook his hand. For the next several minutes they talked and all of us stared wondering what was going on. Greg Taylor of Neon Blue was watching as well. He explained who the man was and our intensity to this stranger talking to our friend, heightened.

Phil Kites was a producer for RMG Records out of Burbank, California. RMG was a big label, signing folk acts and others for years. Most of the people we all listened to had worked with RMG. It was almost King of the record companies. It was big and there Andrew was talking to this record producer.

Andrew called us all down as we went over in our minds the possibilities. We all sat at a table and began discussing one of the most memorable and bittersweet conversations we ever had.

Cami sat next to Andrew, holding his hand the whole time. Her sweet smile never leaving her face as Phil Kites explained the situation to all of us.

In retrospect it must not have been easy for the man looking at our young faces and telling us our hopes were being dashed. At the time, I kind of thought of him as a nice guy, even though what he was saying could have come from Satan’s minion.

RMG Records wanted to sign Andrew and Cami to the label. Take them to California and record their songs in a state of the art recording studio. A real life record contract laid on the table in front of us. It was the most beautiful thing any of us had ever seen. It wasn’t our contract, it wasn’t our deal, but it was beautiful.

Kites went on to explain although we were all good, it was Andrew and Cami that the company wanted. They felt they could sell and sell big. As he continued telling us about where the company thought Andrew and Cami could go, records, tours, all of it, a sinking feeling was beginning as we melted into the background.

The exciting speech ended and there was a brief silence like right before the Walls of Jericho fell. Then Andrew looked at Cami smiled and stood up from the table.

He started to speak and the words were surreal as we watched him turn down the contract politely for both him and Cami and explain he wasn’t going without the band. They were all in together.

Kites tried to explain again even with a sympathetic edge to his voice, but Andrew had made up his mind and we all knew he would stick by it.

Robby began speaking, for the first time since I had known him, he had stood up twice in less than a month. He told Andrew that wasn’t going to happen and that he was quitting the band anyway and marrying Jill. He told him how much the world needed to hear his music and that he would be front row for their first concert, baby or not. Then he uncharacteristically hugged his friend and leaned over kissing Cami on the cheek.

‘Don’t be a fool, you take it.’ He said, softly to Andrew and walked back to the stage, finishing cleaning up for the night.

Well that was that, or so we thought. Kites looked happier. Andrew was moved by Robby’s speech you could tell, but he wasn’t budging. In his mind, he still had two more members. Two members who sat in absolute shock and awe at what had just happened. Kites waited.

Andrew restated his opinion about The Angels being a band. That’s when I couldn’t take it and for that matter neither could Xia. If someone had told me this story as I’m telling you, I wouldn’t have believed it. Give up a recording contract from RMG records because of principal and loyalty to your friends? That boy had lost his mind. We were right there to help him find it.

Kites saw the dilemma and he excused himself from the table for a moment, leaving the four of us alone. Xia had known for a while that no record company was going to hire a girl drummer, it wasn’t the thing and why take the risk? The audiences we had played to always made comments, some annoyed, some interested and still others just plain rude. It wasn’t surprising to her that RMG didn’t want to take that risk. She told Andrew and Cami that night, she had to go to college and it wasn’t trying to back up to make them feel better. If the music industry wanted a girl drummer she told Andrew she would be right for them.

The pendulum was swinging towards me. I was ready, I was planning in my head how to make it sound.

‘You don’t have to do this, David,’

I remember hearing Andrew say, but I had decided on a different approach. I knew what Andrew would be like. He would never give up on his friends and he would fight it to the bitter end. I looked over at Cami, who had been quiet during the entire ordeal. She wasn’t holding his hand anymore and now she had a queer expression on her face. Anticipation with a kind of hidden sadness. I know Andrew saw it, cause I did and I never catch anything he hadn’t caught first.

I simply asked Cami what she wanted to do. Not surprisingly she took the easy way out, ‘whatever Andrew wants,’ she said. I was about to tell her for the first time, she needed to make her own decision, Andrew got there first.

She tried to get around it, but I could see those protective walls crumbing around her. Finally, she stood up and said, ‘you guys are my friends and I love you, but I want to go and I want you to go,’ she said, turning towards her best friend.

‘There is nothing left for you in Louisiana. You’ve done everything you can. The crowds just keep getting bigger. Louisiana is too small a state for you and it’s time, Andrew.’ She took his hand and smiled up at him.

Now, it was my turn to take the easy way out. I agreed with Cami and nodded at Andrew. That was it. It was done and I knew he wouldn’t let her down. By the time, Phil Kites returned everything was back to normal.

Andrew shook Kites’s hand on the deal and they sat down to look over the contract. By Robby’s wedding that July 22^nd the contract was signed and sealed with Andrew and Cami leaving in August on a paid first class ticket to California.

Now, before you think everyone was happy and contented with the sweethearts leaving Franklin, that simply wasn’t so.

Everyday people would complain at the Redmond gig and around Franklin, itself. Andrew’s own mother was taking to asking things from her son, she hadn’t in years, like if only he could play the piano one more time. She would hug him goodbye every time he would leave even it was only to pick up some milk and usually grab Cami and hug her to.

Andrew’s father was a bit more subtle. He would take his son fishing like they used to. Invite Cami over all the time for breakfast, lunch, dinner it didn’t matter. It was done usually by yelling over to her sitting on her family porch in the mornings or afternoons. Joseph even invited Thomas more and more over to his house. Thomas and Joseph could often be seen sitting outside on one of their porches during those hot summer nights. My father was also asked to join them. Joseph and my father would smoke cigars, away from their wife’s kitchens. Thomas didn’t normally smoke but there were a few times in the spirit of it all, he would give it a go. After the mess that happened with his wife and their divorce, which was in the process of being final, Thomas Moore changed a bit. The Franklin High School kids after our class never knew how fortunate they were that he did. He was never as feared again.

Well, to Joseph Whiete and Thomas Moore, they were in it together. Their kids were leaving not because he gave her away down an aisle in a church. Nope, they were headed for sunny California and a whole new world that parents would no longer be an everyday occurrence.

All of it would be different for the Moores and the Whietes. However we could always count on the soon to be ex-Mrs. Moore to make the situation intensify to a boiling point. She had a skill for that and she certainly didn’t disappoint that summer of ’70.

The contract had already been discussed and signed when she hit with her metaphorical snowball. One that increased as it rolled down a hill that ended at the bottom where her daughter’s life began.

It was before Robby’s wedding and the cigar smoking fathers were already underway, when she marched herself to her old house while Cami was alone. Andrew and I were looking for a good gift for Robby’s wedding, something from the guys only. Cami’s father was at work and she was making a pie for later that evening to bring over the Whietes house.

The exact conversation is between Cami and her mother, but we heard it all when we returned from our excursion though a well of tears and hurt.

Her mother had, not surprisingly disagreed with both her marriage and that contract. Both of Cami’s dreams crushed under that woman’s anger. She proceeded to tell her daughter that she would end up on the streets alone when Andrew left her and that she was nothing more than a whore. Those were Cami’s own words she said her mother said during the conversation.

Cami had heard, through years of fighting, quite a lot about her parents and during those times trying to make her smile in the Moonlight Cottage, Andrew had heard it, also. They both knew Diane had gotten pregnant at 16 and Thomas asked her to marry him. They knew she regretted all of it. It took a lot more for Cami to see that her mother just resented her happiness with Andrew and with her career choice, however. That day Diane had done more than she could have imagined and Cami’s fragile shell was starting to crack. I left Andrew’s house, telling Cami not to worry about her mother and that she was wrong, the most lame thing I could say during that situation, but all the same, I felt so bad for her at that moment and I remember telling Xia all about it that night, hoping Cami was all right.

It turns out that when I did see her again a few days later, that sadness she had in those green eyes was masked well by her smiles and laughs. Andrew had placed her in a protective shell that would prove to be a downfall later on, but at eighteen with the last of their innocence leaving no one, not even Andrew Whiete would recognize those signs. No one got to them and in particular, her. It was like the summer before when the Moores had forbidden them to see each other, with an added edge to it.

During one of the Redmond sets one of Cami’s adoring fans wanted to have a picture taken with her. Usually Andrew was cool about that, he watched them, but he never said anything. This time, the fan wanted to say thank you and kissed her on the cheek. Cami backed away, quickly and looked down, like she had done with the Lewiston Festival incident a year ago. Andrew stood up and immediately the fan moved away. There was this moment of tension from everyone in the room. Finally he smiled and said he was sorry, taking Cami’s hand and leaving the room. Backstage, it didn’t get better. He was restless and angry.

He kept going back and forth with her on the contract and California. Deep down, he knew they still would go, but he wasn’t certain he could protect his princess any longer. If they failed, her mother would destroy her. If they succeeded the fans would overwhelm her. He was lost for the first time since that summer back in ’68 and all he wanted was to tell the girl he loved how much he loved her.

In New Orleans, it didn’t get better. Once they found out Andrew and Cami had a recording contract, amidst the ‘how can you leave us, Andrew?’ comments was a sense that they were going on to make it big and everyone wanted an autograph, a piece of memorabilia or a kiss from their beloved couple.

We finished our final set in New Orleans to an enthusiastic crowd on Sunday and we stayed talking among ourselves for the last time as a band and as a group of friends. They were scheduled to leave on a flight at 10:00 AM Monday morning. It was end of The Angels and the beginning for Andrew and Cami, that was what Phil Kites had told them they would be billed as.

It was to be all about the hometown sweethearts from Louisiana. Off those sweethearts went on their own with a new band and a new look. It was innocent, comfortable and could relate to the general masses they were being groomed for. Still, watching them and saying our good byes that day, once again at the airport we had seen Billy go was bittersweet for all of us. Parents and friends alike. Andrew waved from the tarmac, we waved back and off they flew into their own sunset.

The sky had brilliant hues of reds and purples against the Louisiana sun. The picture perfect storybook closed its final page of the Story of The Knight and the Princess.

I secretly wondered if Andrew and Cami ever knew what magical paths they created for all of us year after year, chapter after chapter. If they ever knew, without them, we were all be left in a place without storybooks or happy endings. But we knew that day standing in the airport watching the plane take off that it was time for them to give their magic to the world.

We were praying it would happen for them and for everyone who would see what we all ready knew about those two sweethearts from Franklin, Louisiana.

Part Two

The Cost

The ‘Andrew & Cami’ Years

We can live in a perfect world,

We could have a perfect love,

We could live in peace,

But what about the cost?

Andrew Whiete, The Cost

Moonlight Wishes, 1970

Chapter Thirteen

Diamond Queen

At eighteen, Andrew and Cami entered the California recording studio as green as anyone could be, or so those producers believed. There were from the south, they had charming smiles and polite ways, but these kids didn’t know anything about a big recording studio that pulled out all the stops to make stars out of nobodies on an everyday basis.

Those producers and recording engineers were about to learn that Andrew Joseph Whiete, even with three names, wasn’t about to taken as some hick that just walked out of the bayou.

I always imagined him in that first recording session completely unimpressed with the new band, that I was certain he had creative issues with and the thousands of dollars of equipment.

Of course, it could just be a bit of jealousy talking. (and probably is) Still Andrew was a perfectionist in every sense of the word. He always had been. Rehearsals for The Angels were grueling at times. Pitch, tone, harmony, notes, pressure, riffs and rhythm occupied young Andrew’s mind at all times. We just did what he said, as best as we could. Even Cami would feel it from time to time. He did with the grace of that well raised southern boy, but you knew if he wanted it, it would happen, one way or another. There wasn’t really room for second best with the music or with Andrew.

RMG had unknowingly maybe, even to Phil Kites at the time, signed up a true artist if not a bit crazy one sometimes. Andrew was never the ‘go with it’ kind of guy and those RMG producers would have to deal with that fact, sooner or later. Andrew never was known to disappoint, and he didn’t with those big time California producers, promoters, musicians and engineers. It didn’t take long.

Andrew always had the talent for adjusting quickly to new situations within that first he was arranging the vocals with his new band, courtesy of RMG records. The vocal arranger they hired was fired. The technician to assist the band in the studio wasn’t needed after Andrew learned the ropes and even Phil Kites kept the team of make-over artists ready to make Andrew and Cami into stars at bay as they continued recording.

Andrew didn’t tell me until much later, but he said he was terrified on that first flight. He kept wanting the plane to turn around and to go back to the Redmond, settling into what he called ‘a state of complete ignorance.’ He was beginning to even envy Robby and Jill’s marriage and soon to be baby. The fear subsides though, when he hit that recording studio.

The contract that had been alternated three times before it was actually signed featured one small fact that Andrew wasn't budging on. He wanted to keep all his masters and retain the right to his music. It was something of an obsession with him. I remember when we first started talking about recording contracts and dreams of stardom Andrew would always to quick to point out that he wasn’t doing anything if those leeches were gonna steal his music. He had read about these lawsuits that weren’t front page headlines yet, but still made the music circuit about artists losing their rights and all. Andrew wasn’t gonna be another one. So when he told me about the fight with Phil and RMG executives I wasn’t surprised, he held out. He got his rights and a few other amendments by the time the fight ended.

Actually, Andrew and Cami emerged with one of the best contracts in RMG’s history. Not bad again for the hicks without any experience in the recording industry.

Andrew & Cami’s debut album, Moonlight Wishes was released November 30^th, 1970. By Andrew’s 19^th birthday in January of ‘71, he and Cami celebrated it on a plane bound for their first tour concert in New York’s famous Greenwich Village Folk Scene of the 50s and 60s. KKLS, out of Shevesport, which hosted a popular disc jockey called The Bax, announced that Andrew and Cami’s The Cost hit #1 that week.

When I spoke with Andrew a few hours before his concert to wish him a happy birthday, I think he was more excited The Bax announced it then the song hit #1. We were all big Bax fans.

Their music proved to transcend time bringing a new style of Folk Music that would eventually become the next great music invasion of the ‘70s, unknown at the time to RMG or their new stars.

“Andrew Whiete’s music may be billed as Folk, but this singer/songwriter from Franklin, Louisiana, walks to another beat altogether. It will capture you from the beginning and leave you wanting more.”

Village Voice, January 3, 1971

“ The darling sweethearts, Andrew and Cami looks may hearken back to a yesteryear of innocence and love, however these two bring a feeling of passion and intensity to their performance and music that can’t be denied. If you haven’t seen them yet, get out and go.”

Delaware Press, March 15,1971

The reviews keep coming and Andrew and Cami album, Moonlight Wishes, rose to #1 becoming Platinum in record time. The Cost, Rivers Run Deep, You’re All I Need and the title track, Moonlight Wishes soared to #1 hits, while two others, Love in Time and May You stayed in the top ten for weeks.

It was amazing everything changed.

Cami said at an interview May of ’71 just days after Moonlight went platinum.

We don’t go anywhere without Jeff (the band’s manager). We can’t even eat at the restaurant in the places we go. Everything is ordered in at the hotel and Andrew and I never spent any time together unless were on stage. But we’re famous now, I guess that’s what happens. I wish sometimes we were back in Franklin at the Moonlight Cottage. I still love watching him on stage, it makes it all worth the cost.

The melancholy tone of Cami’s voice in the interview on WKKS in Seattle that summer morning should have alerted her best friend to the toll the tour might be on her, but Andrew had problems of his own. The girls.

Excited fans constantly rushed the stage and screamed during his and Cami’s banter on stage making all of it barely audible. Though the audience didn’t seem to care, they keep right on coming, show after show. Groupies soon followed from all over.

He was becoming a well-trained star in his own right, handling them with one of those southern charming smiles of his and with a ‘We love you too, honey’ thrown in for good measure. Those concerts took on a life of their own as they continued through October ’71.

Xia and I caught the show up in North Carolina at a concert in the Park one summer night in July. The energy and excitement could be felt before Andrew and Cami took the stage. It was at this particular concert that the wild card side of Andrew showed its face and RMG, the audience and for that matter, Andrew, would never be the same.

Andrew and Cami are two of the nicest people I’ve ever met. They are wholesome, real. I do truly love working with them. No great demands or requests, well, except alone time. That’s a constant request, but other than that, we all had a great time touring. It wasn’t until North Carolina that the tide changed. Andrew had been working on this new song I wasn’t aware of. He taught it to the band apparently and then just played it on stage. It wasn’t the traditional Andrew and Cami song. It was edgy and loaded with electric guitar that he played. The crowd went wild. They loved it! I couldn’t believe it. I called RMG and spoke with Phil. He didn’t sound too upset about it, but when the other producers found out, all hell broke loose. I don’t think Andrew ever saw that coming.

The song played the night Jeff Peters, Andrew and Cami’s manager, didn’t say, was Rainwater and it wouldn’t be recorded until 1975 on Andrew’s solo album, but throughout that summer he introduced song after song causing the producers to finally come out on tour and talk with their stars.

Yea, the producers had a field day with the new songs on tour. They preached about what was considered an Andrew and Cami song and what wasn’t. It was to protect their investment and all.

Andrew said to Rolling Stone in 1975 when his solo album hit platinum, carrying the feared song, Rainwater to #1.

They are producers, they have to do what they think is in the best interest of their company. I get that, but I’m not going to hold back what I have to say, if I have to say it.

Luckily for the couple, it was time to go back to the studio and record another album. Andrew and Cami were thrilled to get off the road and back into the recording studio. He had something to say and he thought it was time to say it, while she had hopes of getting married. They were both wrong.

Chapter Fourteen

The Cost They Never Saw

Andrew and Cami’s debut album, Moonlight went platinum. They had four #1 hits and two that went to #2. They were becoming the loved couple of the year, creating a passion and intensity in both they’re on stage performances and their off stage antics. All of which was taking time away from being them. The sweethearts from Franklin still resided amidst the glamour and lights of fame, but no one could hear them screaming.

Andrew had resorted to paying off crew members at the concerts to keep a watchful eye for Jeff while he and Cami took some needed alone time, usually in a dressing room or a trailer parked outside. It wasn’t pretty or knights and princesses, but they were always together without being together, it started to pull them down in a way no one, not even Andrew could have guessed.

Frankie O’Keefe was the bassist for Andrew and Cami during the 1971 tour.

They were crazy. Before a show they usually paid one of the roadies to keep Jeff away. Jeff was persistent, always keeping them busy with photos, going over things, you know. Anyway, Andrew even enlisted our help sometimes. They’d sneak away to a dark corner or on the roof of the place we were performing. Stuff like that. Hey, we were happy they weren’t fighting like most couples. That was the thing about Andrew and Cami they actually were in love. And I mean, really. She was just as persistent as Jeff and if Cami wanted some time alone, none of us stopped her. If she didn’t get it, we’d all pay for it on stage, you know. One time, Andrew was talking about how he knew he loved her as a lead in to The Cost. There was a kiss before the song started, it was something they always did. Well, they kissed. The audience cheered. She grabbed him and kissed him again, much longer. The audience cheered louder. We just sat there waiting for them to stop. I tell you there was a moment there, where I didn’t think they would. But, hey Andrew wasn’t any better. You could never tell what he was going to do. They had this bit they did about how they first kissed playing Spin the Bottle, it was cute and the audience always loved it. But when Andrew brought people actually up on the stage to play the game, I thought that’s it, Jeff’s going drop dead at the side of the stage and here comes a fight. The game continued and everyone was good about it. Quick kisses, you know sweet and innocent, but when the bottle Andrew spinned actually landed on Cami, he leaned over and kissed her leaning over her on the stage. The crowd went wild. I’m not too certain the producers did.

The antics on stage, though making them very popular with audiences and the talk of every town and city they went, O’Keefe was correct about the producers not going wild over them. RMG was trying to create an innocent look of a boy and a girl in love, but the two nineteen year olds had no intention of keeping it. They were quickly becoming a man and a woman, and they were in love, intensely and passionately. That kind of passion had never been contained in their high school days it was even more unlikely on tour away from their home and their lives it would remain innocent and sweet. All they had during those first years on the road was each other and they took comfort in that, whenever they could. Unfortunately for RMG it wasn’t always in the best of places. Especially on stage.

When Andrew and Cami finished recording In Your Eyes, released in ’72, again on Andrew’s 20^th birthday, the couple were talking to the producers about their marriage plans for that summer.

They said no and that was that. We needed to wait another year or two. The novelty was the engagement, not the marriage. I wanted to kill Andrew for agreeing to it, but I understood we had an image I guess it didn’t include an actual wedding.

Cami told the Franklin Courier, luckily, for the masses not distributed widely.

As for the new songs, in particular Rainwater, the edgy song he had played in the North Carolina concert, the producers felt he had to stay to the mold. Andrew didn’t. He worked out a compromise. Record a few songs with the newer sound to them and he would agree to wait on the marriage. RMG agreed to two new songs on In Your Eyes. Andrew kept his word telling the disappointed Cami the marriage had to be postponed at least for a year.

In Your Eyes, hit the record stores and instantly it was a success, even with those dreaded renegade songs on it, Thunder Sky and Lay Yourself Down. Both songs with the addition of percussion and more ‘wild’ lyrics soared to #1 hits, along with four more songs from the same album. Trouble in the Bayou, Diamond Queen, Living Everyday and The Road Home.

The album combined this folk/bluegrass, jazz/rock sound. It wasn’t traditional at all. It rocked and we loved playing it. It was new, different, fresh. It worked. Thunder Sky proved to be the first #1 hit off the album and perhaps the most different. People liked it, hell they loved it. I always think that was when we saw a real glimpse of Andrew’s true soul, you know. Of course, we had no idea how much he could rock until Silver Glass was released in ’75. Then the world really saw what was hiding underneath that clean-cut southern exterior.

Frankie O’Keefe said about In Your Eyes when it was released in ’72.

One thing I’ll always remember about those years on the road with Andrew and Cami. He would show us any new song with a piano and a melody line, you know. Every time he sang those songs, we knew it would be a hit. Sure they all didn’t hit number one, but they most come close. He sang Thunder Sky one night after a concert and we heard it then. With a piano and just him, no percussion or anything. You knew it was good then. I’ll never forget when RMG people heard it in the studio later that year. Andrew was trying to play it cool, but he was nervous, we all were...except Cami. All she kept saying was the people will love it, so who cares about what the producers say. She was great like that back then. She never doubted the music. She never doubted him.

Peter Strausman who played guitar on Andrew & Cami’s 1^st and 2^nd albums recalled at an interview in his California home.

Those times were good. The people loved them, we loved them and we all believed they loved each other. I know there’s all this hype about him being her protector, knight in shining armor and all, but that’s what they write to sell papers. Andrew and Cami, they are the real thing. No jokes, when they were together on stage, it was incredible chemistry. When they were off stage, they were pure magic, you know. Not like stories, but real. They were fun to be around. Always joking with each other and the band. Playing games and having fun. Hell, they were kids still. No one really knew the pressure they were under. I don’t think they knew, until it all hit rock bottom that night.

When things went bad. They went really bad. Everyone was worried about Cami, but it was Andrew who was dealing with the pain, you know. He was hurt...bad. Those around him know what went down that night. We were right there with them. Andrew and Cami still performed that night, but it was sad. Real sad. For all of us.

Chapter Fifteen

The Descent of the Girl Next Door

In Your Eyes was soaring across the charts producing in the end six #1 hits leaving the last four to finish in the top ten. The album went platinum and gave Andrew and Cami four Grammy awards that year. Best Album, Best Vocal Performance, Male and Female (Thundersky & Lay Yourself Down) and Best Song (Thundersky).

The duo that skyrocketed through the folk scene and landed with soft rock on the pop charts in ’72 with Thundersky, Andrew and Cami were riding high on success. A second tour was underway, including a folk festival featuring folk legends and stars from the past decade. However, the tides shifted that summer. The girl next door buried herself in a path of uncertainty and quick fixes, while the knight in shining armor tried to write new songs among questions and betrayal.

The Franklin dreams were all gone that summer and what was left in its waking nightmare was almost more than Andrew, Cami and the rest of us watching could have survived.

It was hot that August, hotter than normal in Alabama. I remember thinking thank god we were playing at night. We would have all died from the heat during the day. I felt bad for the earlier acts that day, you know, the ones trying to make it up the ranks to album covers and head billing, but any ways, that didn’t matter, cause we had our own drama unfolding backstage.

O’Keefe recalled at a recording session with GreenPale, a newly formed band that consisted of himself and Mutton Redskin, original guitarist for Tommy Jessup on Walkin’ the Fine Line album.

Some of us knew about Cami, some were just as shocked as Andrew was, but you know, Jeff knew. He had known since the beginning, I think. He tried to hide it well, but there wasn’t no hiding it. It’s like a close knit family out on the road. It’s hard to keep secrets. You know, I thought it was wrong of Jeff to keep hiding it from Andrew and all, but I guess he had his reasons. Keep the show going, keep the act going, keep her going, you know. And he did, along with the road crew and others. They all keep her going and she kept them going. When it came down, it came down hard and fast.

We were almost on, one minute or so to go. The whole band was standing at the stage in the wings, when Andrew came whipping around the back side and down the stairs. We looked at each other and followed him.

The sight before us against one of the trailers outside wasn’t good, you know.

Andrew was there first and he didn’t say anything. It’s like the whole world stopped at that moment. Cami was leaning against the trailer, strung out with Paul, one of our roadies. That’s all I’m saying. Andrew can tell you if you want to know, but she was strung out on speed so bad, I don’t think she knew what was happening. You ain’t never seen Paul run so fast. It took the whole band to hold back Andrew and get him to cool off. Cami just stayed there completely gone and looking at Andrew like she was confused. There was this long stare and you could actually feel his eyes cutting into her. No words, just this painful silence. Then it hit her or something, because she began to explain and Andrew walked away. He went on stage, she followed and the drama continued as we started our first song. There was actual anger and betrayal in his eyes as he looked at her. She was crying during ‘Lay Yourself Down’. Everyone on the stage felt it. They performed two more songs and then he took her hand as they exited the stage as the crowd cheered and chanted their names.

Next thing we knew was Cami was going away and the tour was cancelled for the last five remaining shows. Andrew disappeared and I didn’t hear any more about him until SilverGlass was recorded. I saw him in the studio about six months later. Man, was he different. No more clean cut boy looks. He had completely changed his look, his attitude and his music. It was like being reborn, I think. But the music was still heavenly, you know.

Officially the studio announced Cami’s departure in one brief statement read by Andrew. For any of us, who knew Andrew, it had to be one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He wasn’t prone to reading statements and he hated studio verbiage, but nevertheless he read it to a room full of anxious reporters and vultures waiting for the story of Andrew and Cami’s breakup.

I heard the canned statement on our local radio station at Duke one afternoon in early September. Andrew had a monotone voice expressing no emotion in it at all. I had to wait a few moments before I believed it actually was him. In the end, it was.

The statement read as follows:

Cami and myself have officially split due to differences that are personal. The In Your Eyes tour that was cancelled for the last five concerts will not be rescheduled. Thank you for your support of our albums and records. Andrew and Cami would have never been without you, our loyal fans. We both sincerely thank you for all you have given us. We will always remember you. Thank you.

The speech ended and immediately reporters went into overtime with questions, Andrew answered them in the same fashion, giving the fans and reporters alike a mystery as to where Cami was, why she left or even why they had broken up. It was always the same answer that spewed forth from the podium.

There is nothing more I have to say at this time. Thank you.

The mystery remained intact since that officially statement Andrew gave. Andrew true to his word, never had anymore to say about the matter until December 16^th as you’ll read on.

Cami, who eventually was found back in Franklin living at home with her father, never spoke to a single member of the press. Meanwhile the songs of Andrew and Cami resonated on radios across America for the next several months along with numerous false accounts of what happened to the sweethearts from Franklin.

What wasn’t official was Cami’s entrance into a drug program to help her kick the speed she had been feeding her system since the beginning of the In Your Eyes Tour. Andrew going to visit every day both at the clinic and at home in Franklin only to be turned away time and again by a guilt ridden Cami and then finally a painful and heartfelt goodbye for the sweethearts of Franklin to the world and to each other. A goodbye that many of us thought could last forever. Andrew, RMG or even on the ‘Zach Baxter’ show Andrew appeared on, never released all of those facts.

It was December 16^th when Andrew accepted a request to appear on a New Orleans radio station to discuss what would become of Andrew and Cami. The radio host was Zach Baxter, a well respected national talk radio host. He was someone Andrew highly respected for years, so when Andrew told me he would accept his invitation, I wasn’t surprised. If anyone would do Andrew and Cami justice it would be ‘The Bax’ as he was called.

I went with Andrew to the studio for that interview and watched my friend that December afternoon. He was worn, like someone who had gone through a war without the benefit of knowing it was one. Andrew had been playing for the past few months back in New Orleans with Xia’s father, Rick and his band, Neon Blue. New Orleans was a time of beginnings, so for Andrew it was a place to go and find comfort in the familiar smells and sights of that great city. A place to be reborn to paraphrase Frankie’s words.

As the interview progressed past the Golden Years and into more recent nightmares, Andrew shifted a bit in his seat uncomfortably, but to the listener it was a steady voice with a lower less defining accent than the boy from Franklin. He was less than a month away from his 21^st birthday and that boy no longer existed.

Yea. It was hard, of course, it was. Cami was my touchstone, my beacon, my inspiration. It’s never gonna be like it was for those years again. It doesn’t mean it’s all bad, it’s just different, Zach. Maybe it’s more real now. Things were crazy on those tours. Nothing seemed real.

Andrew said at the interview.

Zach Baxter: So what actually happened between you two, Andrew? The world wants to know.

Andrew: Oh, you know things caught up with us like anything else. The control over our own lives were slipping, inch by inch. It wasn’t a tidal wave or anything like that. It was just a slow gradual walk into hell. But, you know, Zach, Cami’s doing great. I’m really proud of her. Never been prouder. I may not have her by my side, but she’s always in my heart.

Zach: So will there be a reunion in the future?

Andrew: That’s what so great about the future, you never know.

Zach: What’s your life like now without Andrew and Cami and the fame?

Andrew: Fame is fleeting, Zach, but music is forever.

And on that note, Zach Baxter rapped it up in true Andrew style. No mention of his playing with Neon Blue or anything remotely publicity oriented. Just two guys talking, that was Andrew and on that day, it was magic all over again. People accepted his explanation to ‘The Bax’ and moved on. However, it would be several months later before all of us would find out where his music moved on to.

Now to Cami’s credit and I do want to say this for you to truly understand the events that occurred that August. She did kick her habit and get cleaned up. She did tell Andrew it was over and handed back his ring. She did tell him he was not responsible for any of her problems and she had to deal with them on her own. This may not seem like much after the horrific events that occurred before however, for Camille Anne Moore it was taking responsibility and standing up in the face of losing everything. The shelter of the Princess’s tower melted away and left standing was a very courageous brave woman.

Part Three:

SilverGlass

Rebirth of an Artist

Moving circles within silence,

Walls of gold have faded, aged

Nothing left behind,

Sweet temptation and rage.

Andrew Whiete, Hellbreak

SilerGlass, 1975

Chapter Sixteen

Angel to Demon

When I walked into the old Pappy’s Place located downtown New Orleans one May evening it was like I was back in high school. Years melted away and time seemed to cease in that one moment when we were all just happy to be playing music and performing. The band on the stage consisted of Neon Blue’s normal crew, including Rick Ferrina on saxophone and Muddy Rivers on guitar with a few new additions I was to find out soon.

The band finished up an old jazz favorite and Rick took the microphone. Now was the time most people used to get their drinks, but not on this night. He said two magical words that seemed to captivate the audience into not moving or possibly breathing.

We’re taking a break. Those weren’t the words. Then he casually pointed to the side of the stage and announced.

Andrew. That was. The crowd applauded loudly and cheered as a tall man took the stage. He was dressed in blue jeans and a black tank top, nothing outstanding or exciting. He wore his hair loose that reached his shoulders and covered part of his face as he leaned down at the keyboard on stage. His face held a beard that seemed to hide his normal features and obscure them in the low lighting of the bar.

The first notes banged out on the keyboard, the crowd jumped to their feet and raced towards the stage. The notes continued loud and fast. The melody picked up instruments like vagabonds left on the side of a road. An electric guitar joined playing a fast rift along with percussion, bass and then it happened. The man started to sing, it was high, it was harsh and extremely controlled. Controlled as only from the depths of a familiar three and a half octave range could it have come. Slowly his features came into view as he banged his head along with his chords on the keyboard and switched his vocals to lower, heavier as the instruments slowed down speed. It was wild ride as the song twisted and bent in all the right places, keeping in time with the vocal changes and the rifts on guitar that were numbing.

Those familiar green eyes that made women melt still held a concentration in them as they focused on the music, looking occasionally towards the crowd forming at the front of the stage. The boyish looks had matured and who stood at that keyboard that night was no longer the charming, southern boy from Franklin who won girls hearts with the innocence of an angel. Now, those eyes and everything that went with them possessed an inner demon that was aching to get out. A demon that the women standing at the stage staring up at him and saw and undoubtedly wanted to devour.

But the demon on the stage didn’t have interest in his eyes for anything but the music and it was damn good music.

That’s when I first heard Pulling on You and Hellbreak. Two of Andrew’s first #1 hits off of the Silver Glass album.

As I looked around I began to realize the patrons that were jammed into little Pappy’s Place were far from jazz people. College students, high school kids and 60s rockers. There were all dancing, listening or standing staring at the singer in an expression that defines awe.

I asked one of the kids dancing wildly next to me. Who this guy was and she said to me something I’ll always remember.

‘They call him Andrew. He’s straight out of Hell.’

When I inquired of the girl if she knew anymore she shook her head with a disappointment.

‘No one gets to him. He’s closed off, you know.’

Yes, I did know and it wasn’t something I had wanted to hear, even though watching him could have told me the same conclusion, the wild girl had come to. He was lost in his own world on the stage and off he was lost in another one.

Andrew changed his looks, his dress, his style and his soul all to escape one thing...Cami. And from the look of him singing he was doing a good job at concealing his emotions at least to the excited crowds. He had gone from heart and soul to performance and the crowd was eating it up, if not completely destroying him along with it.

I did talk to Andrew after that set. I even inquired, foolishy, how he was doing. You would think after being friends with him since Sophomore Year in high school, I could have come up with something more useful, but I’m sad to say I didn’t. The answer he threw me was probably as unpredictable as he had ever been.

Me? You want to know how I’m doing, Dave? You’re going have to go to Franklin to find that out. I ain’t here. So quit asking questions. You here to play music or sit around, college boy?

The harder edged Andrew pulled me up on stage for the next set and we jammed for a few songs before he announced he needed a drink.

As the reunion went far into the next morning. A clear picture of the past six months came into focus. It began and ended with a bottle of scotch, a pack of cigarettes, a producer from RMG, Phil, to be exact hanging in the wings and waiting for his star to come back. A few uninterested nods towards girls who called out his name in the distance of the smoky bar and another bottle of scotch to wash it all down.

Life isn’t hell, Dave, it’s just the road that paves it.

Andrew said that night as he downed another shot of the scotch and waited for it to settle into his system.

Andrew wasn’t unknown for making quotes and song lyrics sound like poetry, but on that night, it was like watching a slow train wreck without the benefit of a tunnel to go through.

For me, I had one more year at Duke, waiting to get my degree in History when I had an epiphany on that same night. I liked to blame it on the scotch I drank with my friend, but it was one that I never regretted from that day to this. However, my girlfriend and finance, Xia, did.

I out and out told Andrew I was staying, if he wanted me in the band. He said in typical Andrew fashion.

What took you so long, David? I knew at once that he wasn’t completely lost. Hope teetered along with scotch and bourbon bottles that night.

Well, I was back and the walls, the bottles, nor the train crashed. Within a month, we all were back in the studio recording again with a few changes. Dennis Stone was on guitar. That was the guitarist I heard on the stage when I first arrived that night in New Orleans. His story is one of pure Andrew magic and I got to hear it from Dennis himself that same night.

I was working the streets, playing guitar for anyone who would listen. I came to New Orleans from Springhill near the Arkansas border. A nothing little place, you know. I wanted to get noticed and all. I figured it would take a week, but as things go I was one dime away from starving three months later. Anyway Andrew stopped by while I was jamming and he brought along his own guitar, a folk guitar. I started on about how I don’t play that kind of music and he said who does anymore and started doing a rift on that guitar I ain’t never heard before. It was incredible. I ain’t never seen anyone play like that, except me maybe. Well, I asked him about the chords. He was real patient and I learned ‘em and started playing with him. He began varying the melody line and that’s how it started. He asked if I wanted to jam over at Pappy’s place with him that night. Well, my momma didn’t raise no idiot, so I went. And I stayed. I didn’t know that Andrew was, you know, Andrew and Cami from the folk thing until recently. Rick told me all about it. I did actually have their album In Your Eyes. It was the only folk album I ever bought. I loved Thundersky. By the way, Andrew and I made $75 dollars on that street corner for those few hours that night.

Neil Henry was on keyboard. It was a long fight with RMG and Andrew. They wanted Andrew out in front on stage and he wanted Neil Henry on keyboard. Neil was playing with The Mavericks, a band making its third album with RMG that summer. Neil was one of the best keyboardists at the time in the business and he was sought after. He was helping out lead singer, Sammy on The Mavericks as a favor since he fired his keyboardist two days before they left for the studio. Neil and Andrew talked and history was made. Neil recorded with Andrew and finished his album with The Mavericks. However, when the tour was discussed, Neil asked to tour with Andrew. RMG agreed.

Andrew is more powerful as an artist than people give him credit for. He’s one of those rare gems you find but can’t sell cause it’s too rare. Andrew’s got great music, but those execs keep trying to sell him. They are gonna wake up to a rude awakening when the true artist emerges.

RMG had one more year on the contract originally signed by Andrew and Cami in ’70. So they got SilverGlass, at the insistence Andrew record soon or Cami would have a lawsuit to deal with after her leaving.

Andrew went back to the studio recorded ten tracks in record time, saving the studio money and making RMG very happy. Unfortunately, for them, he wanted something in return. A signed agreement never to sue Cami for the year missed on her contract and never to involve themselves in his personal life again. They agreed and signed a document that actually stated RMG and its producers and managers could never release statements or make statements about Andrew Wheite’s personal contacts, commitments or life. A landmark contract was signed. Andrew was free, at least from the humiliation of public statements about his personal life again. At that moment, I realized again that the Andrew Wheite from Franklin was all still intact, forever protecting his precious Princess even now.

Chapter Seventeen

Shattering Glass

SilverGlass was released and soared through the charts. EverFall made it first to #1 on the pop charts, then it was immediately followed by Misty More, Deeds Unknown, While You Were Waiting, Never Do It Again and Rainwater, the original too edgy song played first in that Andrew and Cami North Carolinian concert a few years before.

Andrew was interviewed for Rolling Stone magazine after his sixth #1 hit emerged.

The album about a journey. Not the why or the where, but how the journey goes. I guess it’s introspective in a way, most songs are, but looking for the meaning within it isn’t gonna be the same for everyone. That’s what makes a song, it should speak to something different in everyone. To you maybe it’s your lost love of your life. To him, it could be a mistake that never been set right. That’s what I strive for. People need to find their own meanings for the music. When fans tell me that EverFall was moving to them because they just had a falling out with their best friend and it helped them understand, that means a great deal to me. I write the music because I have to write, but I play it because I want you to hear it. I want you to tell me what you see. Help me see something new.

The success of SilverGlass in ’75 brought fame and fortune once again to the young brilliant musician/singer/songwriter, however it didn’t bring peace or happiness. As the songs climbed the charts, gaining fans as each one hit #1, Andrew reverted into his own world of pain and sadness.

It took others and myself many months to discover how deep the pain went for Andrew.

Chapter Nineteen

SilverGlass Tour: 1975-1976

During the SilverGlass tour life was very different from those early folk years of playing and games. There was nothing but the music and the concerts for Andrew and The Whiete Knights. Learning new songs on the road were the few times we spent with Andrew during that first tour. He was closed off, unresponsive at times and leaving the concerts as soon as the lights went down.

Encores proved to be a nuisance, chanting and screaming a problem with the sound levels, girls jumping on the stage for a touch from their idol was beyond what Andrew could handle. From roadies to security, he fired them one by one. For a time, all of us Angels thought he would start firing us, especially at those tense moments when Cami’s name was mentioned. It was the absolute forbidden law. Cami would never be mentioned or discussed.

Andrew kept himself together with scotch, cigarettes and bourbon whenever he could find it. The stories of his wild ways started hitting papers across the U.S.

Andrew Wheite parties all night at The Flamingo, gambling until dawn

Andrew Wheite, rock icon, finds time for fun in the sun and women in Florida.

The headlines continued from coast to coast and pictures emerged of Andrew with two or three women around, wearing sunglasses and drinking. When I finally approached him about his ‘wild nights’, he was far from understanding.

It is what it is. Deal with it or leave. It don’t matter to me either way.

This was far from the Andrew who supported anyone who wanted to try and become a musician. He was losing himself in a swirl of liquor and stage lights.

What I was to find out a bit later that the wild nights the papers picked up on were nothing compared to the string of women he kept coming and going from his bed over the year. It was sad and yet, a relief to know their was a plan for how they were picked, who they were and on and on.

The plan went like this: Andrew would pick one out during a concert, then inform Jeff about them. Jeff would then proceed to ask the woman questions. Age, ID, where they were from and how many concerts have they been to.

These very simple questions determined if they were suitable to meet the star. The purpose of how many concerts had nothing to do with ego. If the woman had been to more than two, they were considered a possibly groupie and they were out. If they lived elsewhere then the city they were in, they were considered a risk of traveling to see him and they were out. And if they couldn’t produce proper ID, they were considered underage and they were out. Jeff then took down their information, saying it was for sending them a picture signed by their favorite idol. The women accepted the explanation and Jeff often did send a picture, but no free tickets or anyway to contact Andrew again.

The plan worked well and the rest was up to Andrew. He usually went into the suite at the hotel and within a few hours, the time was up. Jeff would offer a place to change and a taxi to get the woman home. Meanwhile, Andrew would sleep until noon or longer, undisturbed. This helped mostly with relieving the hangover from the night before.

When I asked Andrew about the women and the drinking, he explained simply.

When they want a second of your time every second of every hour of every day, Dave, I’ll hand the bottle and the women over to you. Until then, I get what I want. Booze, women, privacy. Not always in that order. It ain’t that hard to understand.

No, it wasn’t. However, I didn’t listen well and broke the cardinal rule for the first time one night after a concert in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Maybe it was the nostalgia of being in our home state or the fact that Xia and I were planning a May wedding that would be coming up in less than a month. Perhaps the other fact that we had received a reply from Cami saying she would be attending motivated me, but whatever the reason, it wasn’t one of the smartest things I had done in my life. Although it may have turned out to the best.

A friend is a friend no matter how tattered the road becomes.

The line from While You were Waiting I thought was appropriate for the conversation opener. Andrew didn’t. He took a swig from a nearby scotch bottle and began a not a conversation, rather a confession I’ll never forget.

It’s my fault she left, you know, Dave. I was too hard on her. I am always too hard on her. She’s fragile, she’s not built tough. I led her into this hell and then I didn’t save her. I couldn’t protect her. I broke my word.

The confession continued on finishing the bottle of scotch and ending with Andrew’s final words before he passed out for the night.

Loving her was the easiest thing I ever did and it was the best. This is all bullshit, smoke and mirrors. The magic left when she did. I live inside the shards of glass where no one comes and no one goes, but it reflects constantly.

I wrote those lines down that night and when morning hit. He read them and thanked me for it, taking the small piece of paper and beginning a new song. One that would become his biggest hit. Luckily, I didn’t get fired and he agreed miraculously to come to the wedding in May.

Maybe it was the timing or the moment, but things changed after that night. Andrew dropped the extracurricular nights and the drinking. He began writing again. Incredible songs even better than what Rolling Stone and other critics called ‘his best album ever, nothing would top it’ in reference to SilverGlass several months earlier.

At the time, I wasn’t aware of Andrew’s motivations, but after his return to St. Ives that next month, it all fall together in perfect sense.

He was writing the songs for her. Every one of them, writing his heart and his soul out on a piece of paper, a napkin, a coke can. He had something to finally say and he was saying it louder and clearer than ever. SilverGlass proved he could do his own style, but The Magical Path gave him renewed hope and moved him towards a better place in a way no person ever could have.

Andrew had lived his life through music and the journey he embarked on that rainy night in Baton Rouge began a flood of emotions mixed in with guitar rifts and keyboard solos.

Once again, we all wanted to hitch a ride to this man who the world raised up on high and shouted his name to the heavens. Whatever hell he had journeyed through in the past year, he found salvation somewhere in that place where the music and the magic intertwined. Andrew had provided the music, while we all waited to see the magic. We wouldn’t have to wait too long.

Part Four

The Magic and the Music

I gotta make it through this endless night,

Gotta make it before midnight

Breaks across the sky

I gonna dream of dreams I’ve left behind,

Fly on angel’s wings clear my mind,

Gotta make it before midnight

Breaks across the sky

Andrew Whiete, Endless Night

The Magic Path, 1977

Chapter Twenty

Back to the Beginning

When the SilverGlass tour ended May 17^th of ’76 there was a fever in the air that resonated throughout the country. Aside from America’s bicentennial year and everything that went with it, the air held a magical twinge that could be felt everywhere.

Of course, I was getting married in three days so that statement may have been a bit biased. However, for The Whiete Knights who were saying goodbye until we hit the Independence Day concert tour for six weeks in July & August, it was still felt deeply. We had lived and breathed on a world wind tour, combated ups and downs that roller coasters could never do and now, we were leaving each other for a while. Venturing into that world of normalcy and quiet nights.

Andrew had rekindled his musical journey and The Magic Path already had six songs written with a new one he felt like every day. By the time, we would hit the studio in September, everyone knew they would be ready.

Some good-byes, however, didn’t last long. Dennis had accepted the invitation to the wedding and was staying at Andrew’s parents’ house in Franklin with his idol, while Xia and myself tried to finish the wedding plans before the actual wedding.

We had been settling back in Franklin for a few days of needed rest and seating charts when the radio at KKRS out of Shrevesport began an announcement at 5:15 PM.

Good Evening everyone, this is Tim Paleson broadcasting live from the St. Ives Hotel Redmond where crowds in great numbers have began arriving for a very special performance by an artist known as Andrew. Just an hour ago, this radio station received a phone call about Andrew Wheite showing up out of the blue carrying his old Folk Guitar and asking about what was going on there tonight. Well, you’ll in for a treat, St. Ives and Louisiana, because he’s back and he’s better than ever. The folk singer of Andrew and Cami to the Rock Super star legend has come home. His latest album, SilverGlass was the winner of 10 Grammy awards. Andrew is the only artist, other than Elvis Presley, who carries the distinction of more #1 hits on the Folk and Pop Charts in history. Well, he’s right here tonight on stage at the Hotel Redmond. It’s the first time since his high school band, The Angels played here from ‘68-70. So stay tuned to KKRS for the entire concert of Andrew Wheite. And if you’re in the area of St. Ives, come on and drop by for a special live performance of this great artist.

It wasn’t Tim Paleson’s great publicity stint or welcoming attitude that Xia and I jumped to our feet on. It wasn’t even the great introduction or special performance concert that made us slide into our car and start driving the fifteen minutes trip to St. Ives. It was a selfish need to play on that stage again with our friend and the ultimate leader of the band. The opportunity of a lifetime and neither one of us were missing us.

But as we drove closer I started to feel something different, something exciting morphing around me like an alien about to inhabit the soul of a human. Something I couldn’t explain. It was one of those feelings you get when you know it will be amazing or at the very least, memorable.

That feeling stayed with me on the drive out to St. Ives and it stayed with me as we met up with Andrew backstage. It even stayed with me as we began playing. It nagged like an old friend and as he began Pulling on You and the crowd went wild, I saw what the feeling was and I smiled.

Chapter Twenty-One

Magic Leads Home

It’s like heaven in the dark,

Hell in the light,

Dreams are lost and gone,

Time cannot be right,

I’m just pulling on you,

Through this lonely night.

The lyrics to Pulling on You resonated in my head as I played the chords again. I knew them without thought, but on that night, it all sounded different. It all felt different. On that stage, time reversed and I could hear the crowds and I felt like a kid again. Excitement building as the climax of the song hit with a fevered pitch.

I’m just pulling on you, babe,

Through this lonely night.

Just pulling on you, babe,

You can make it all right.

The crowd cheered as the last note was strummed and a deafening roar erupted in that banquet hall.

Thanks everyone. It’s so nice to be home.

Andrew casually said like he had done many times at Louisiana concerts, but you could hear it in the last words, nice to be home. There were different and I looked at what had caught his attention. In a moment, I saw her.

She was standing near an exit sign to the side of the stage, just smiling up at him. There was a pause from Andrew and then he smiled back. I breathed. I think she did too.

Well, St. Ives it looks like there’s gonna be rain tonight.

The crowd went wild. If anyone there, didn’t understand his lead in to his most popular song to date, Rainwater they may have been a bit confused as the sun started its long descent in the sky through a small window at the back of the hall.

But before we play this. I think it’s time to tell you something. You see, my bassist, David Ross and my drummer, Xia Ferrina. Well, boys and girls, these two are tying the knot tomorrow.

The crowd cheered as Andrew made us take a bow.

Well, I’ve been with both of them since the beginning of this flight and I have something for them that with all the wedding plans they been doing I didn’t have time to give them. So, if you both don’t mind I would like to present you with your wedding present a day early, just in case, I get carried away or far too drunk tonight and don’t make it to the church on time.

The crowd broke into cheers and laughter as we agreed for the reason of the redhead standing still smiling up at him as Andrew continued.

But I can’t do this without some help from a very close and dear friend.

The crowd quieted waiting in anticipation of something they weren’t aware of. People started to look around trying to catch the first glimpse at this close and dear friend of Andrew’s. Meanwhile, I leaned back over the stage and spoke to Cami.

I think that’s your cue.

She smiled at me and touched my hand as she climbed the stairs and passed me. She smiled towards Xia and then met Andrew in the center of the stage. The crowd settled on her and began screaming and yelling her name. The past had come back to life and now that old Hotel Redmond stage held two of its most successful acts back together, smiling and joking with each other. The magic had begun and everyone who was or wasn’t in that room, that night could feel the energy and excitement.

I think they like you.

Andrew had said into the microphone but leaning over her.

No, honey, they like you. They told me so.

They did? Now, when did you have the time to talk to each of them?

I move fast.

I remember.

The crowd laughed and played with them as they continued into their familiar banter.

Now, Cami, I gotta ask you something.

Are you sure you gotta, Andrew?

Oh, yea, I gotta.

Well, then go ahead. What are you waiting for?

Did you know I was down here for David and Xia’s wedding?

Yea, I kind of heard.

Are you going to the wedding?

Of course I am. It’s in our hometown. Oh, honey, were you worried I wasn’t invited?

A little.

The crowd broke into laughter as he threw them a sly smile and continued.

Well, I got a car.

You do? Is it yours?

I think so.

Do you have a driver’s license still?

Yes, I do. Louisiana and all.

Nice picture.

Cami then proceeded to show a few people in the front row the picture. The crowd began to get excited and started chanting their names

I think they are getting restless, honey.

Andrew said leaning down to her as he always did when they were younger. She turned away, not blushing, but making it look so.

Camille Anne Moore, I think we should go to that wedding together.

Andrew Joseph Wheite, I think that is the best thing I’ve ever heard you say.

Andrew laughed, they kissed and the crowd went wild. But the show wasn’t over yet for the reunited couple, or for their anxious fans. We pounded into Rainwater like it was years ago, feeling the music through our bones.

In the midst of all of this, Andrew did announce our wedding gift. A beautiful house in Franklin. Now, I had to ask Andrew, after I thanked him of course, when he had found the time and for that matter, the house. He said, he had some help from our old friends.

It seems Jill, Robby, Billy and the Original Angels were the old friends. So, while Jill asked Cami to help pick out a nice house for David and Xia to look at when they returned and to possibly buy, she unknowingly was picking the one for Andrew’s wedding present. This was all casually explained, in the Andrew & Cami familiar banter on stage as it led into their favorite song, Puff the Magic Dragon.

The sweethearts were back together and singing again. The childhood song took on a different meaning as they smiled at each other that night. It was a tribute to their love, but it held a deeper meaning in their eyes. Childhood dreams could still be found and cherished and together they could walk back into the world bringing the magic with them.

Everyone went home happy.

Andrew and Cami were back together, the world had been set right again and to the close knit circle of friends at our wedding that summer, it was a magical path we journeyed. And it was only the beginning.

Perhaps in the end, Andrew was right. A friend is a friend no matter how tattered the road becomes.

Andrew and Cami lived the dream, had it all, saw it shatter, found the pieces and picked up the truth of what really matters in this world.... love.

I leave this story with Andrew’s own words as a tribute to them and to any person who believes the journey is over and the past can never be reborn.

I saw it with my own eyes and I believe in it. Just as I believe the sun will rise and magic hangs in the air everywhere.

Hope is a journey not taken by fear,

Nor torn with shadows,

Nor nightmares or tears.

Hope is what helps,

When darkness sets in,

The edge of the woods,

Can be the beginning of dreams.

Andrew Wheite

Hope in a Jar

Moonlight Wishes (1971)

The End Originally written as a Valentine’s Day Card to Camille Anne Moore, 1967