Two years ago tonight, my sister, Marie, and I had the good (and unexpected) fortune to meet Don Henley. It had been the only snowy day of that winter (2001), and all over Virginia there were hundreds of car accidents. Some roads were shut down for hours due to all the wrecks. I wasn't sure if Don and the band could make it north to Richmond (I think they'd been in Atlanta the night before), I wasn't sure if Marie should even try to get here from the snowy Shenandoah Valley, and I wasn't sure I'd want to drive in that mess, either. But all the phone calls and emails we checked said the show was on.
Time came to leave for Don's show at The Landmark Theater (a smaller venue) in Richmond, Va. Marie and I enjoyed the show a lot. We'd been to two other Inside Job shows in Virginia, and hearing that Don was coming around again had given us something to look forward to for a couple of months. Turns out all of us made it quite safely. Don told the audience that his children had given him a cold, the third one of the winter, but he sounded great.
Afterward, we took our time heading to the cars because we knew it'd take a long time to get out of the crowded parking deck. I'd had to park on the top, open level (and had to use four-wheel drive to get up there). Marie and I walked to the front of the building and took a picture of the marquee with Don's name on it, then slowly started toward the parking deck, which is across a side street from the theater. We noticed two tour buses parked there. Marie gave me a look and started walking across the street. I followed. We got to talk to Peter, one of the guitarists, and took his picture. He was nice and pleasant. We moved on up to the first bus, where four people were standing. One of them turned out to be a young man we'd met at the Inside Job concert in Virginia Beach, five months before. People kept going from the bus to the building, and back, and finally a man stopped and told us that Don was sick and he couldn't stand out in this freezing weather to sign anything or talk. He asked that we just stand quietly and let Don go by, and told Marie to hide the digital camera! We hadn't even thought about the fact that we might see Don walk by, but that sounded good enough to us. When Don came out, he got on the bus, and we were told that we could get on the bus, one at a time, to get an autograph! That was way more than we expected!
I was first. Don and a couple other men were there. Don was at a little table, and he signed an autograph for me (and one for my friend Kath, who sometimes works out while watching the Inside Job video, I told him). I'd asked him to sign a dollar bill, because I didn't have anything else with me to sign. He said, "I can't sign a dollar bill! It's a federal offense!" so he asked one of the men to get him some paper. You could tell he didn't feel great, but he was nice. We made a little small talk, and I told him I was glad they'd made it, and hoped they'd have a safe trip to New Jersey, their next stop. They laughed about that, because Don had said, on stage, that they'd had quite an interesting trip that day. Don's eyes are a beautiful blue.
Marie got her ticket signed, and then we headed back toward the parking deck. Marie drove back to the Shenandoah Valley (two and a half hours on a good day) and I drove home (about a twenty minute drive), laughing all the way. It was such an unexpected pleasure to get to meet the man, when earlier in the day I wasn't even sure if the concert would even take place. I walked on air for a month.
Joan Pugh, Chester, Virginia, USA
Tuesday, June 5, 2012 at 11:34PM