Nolan's Conclusion

I Have a Friend I’ve Never Met Named Nolan - Part 3
The Conclusion to An Interrupted Journey of Friendship

It’s just after 10 PM on a cold February Saturday night. My wife and I have just returned from a wedding reception. The lovely daughter of some friends of ours, still in her white dress, and her tired, but smiling young husband greeted us at the door as we came into their home, filled with family and friends.

I am still seeing their smiling, fearless faces now as I sit here staring into the snow white screen of my computer, the cursor blinking at me impatiently.

You see, I am trying to write the conclusion to a story, but I want it to end differently. I am trying to find light and hope in what has become anything but a happy ending.

I have known Nolan’s fate for weeks now, but have been unable to see anything positive in what I have learned. I have printed everything I know about him, page after page from Facebook and other web sites. I keep it all in a green binder I pull out of my backpack during quiet moments at home, in hotels, on a plane. I have looked for meaning and found only questions, until tonight. But more on that later.

I imagine it’s okay to release Nolan’s real name now. I started by using an alias because I was writing about sensitive and personal things, his wife’s fight with and ultimate death to cancer. I was touched by the outpouring of love and support I saw on his Facebook page, and I wanted to write about how online social networking can give us insight into the human condition. But most of all, I wanted to share what I learned from him; namely that we must love and appreciate the people in our lives now, today, because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Indeed. In the aftermath of what he had gone through with his wife, Nolan’s responses to his friends were in turn, touching, real, and humble. I have since learned from mutual friends that this was his nature.

The man I never met, but befriended on Facebook, is named Clete Haegert, and he followed his wife Marjorie in death on December 17th.

To pick up the story where I left off a few weeks ago, I have to go back to Facebook. As I mentioned, on December 15th, Clete had posted that someone had broken into his home while he was away at a Titan’s game. Then, nothing from him.

I was shocked when I got back to his page on December 22nd to read the posting of Clete’s funeral and visitation arrangements. My first thought was that Clete, overcome with grief, had ended his life. Dumfounded, I perused his page, scrolling down the posts – going back in time – to put the pieces together. There weren’t many pieces. There were only the sad exclamations of heartbreak from longtime friends, new friends, and poignantly for me, Facebook-only friends like myself – folks who had never met Clete in person, but had read his posts and been impressed enough to want to get to know this wise, insightful man.

As I continued to read posts on his page back on December 22nd, one caught my eye, becoming the first puzzle piece in what would become a dizzying amount of information in a heart-wrenching puzzle: “Oh, Clete, we miss you so much! Who would do such a thing?”

I scrolled down further to read the comments of a puzzled friend who had just heard the news and asked what happened. The answer came in one brief, cold line from a family friend: “He was found 12/17 murdered in his home.”

What raced through my mind is no doubt what’s racing through yours. How could someone do this? Knowing what he’d just gone through, what he’d survived, this was a terrible stroke of luck.

Reporter Wayne Thomas of The Tullahoma News reported it this way:

Three Nashville area residents were arrested Saturday in connection with a burglary that occurred five days before a murder at their stepfather’s residence in Winchester. Cletus George Haegert was found dead Thursday morning in his affluent neighborhood in the Hopkins Point subdivision near Winchester by his stepson James Harris, who had driven from Brentwood to check on Haegert when he could not reach him by phone.

Margie Regina Sherrer, 58 of Gallatin, Delora Lynne Woods, 51 and her 32-year-old son Robert Glenn Ingram (relatives of Clete's late wife) of La Vergne were arrested on charges of aggravated burglary of the Haegert’s residence on Dec. 13. The three are charged with entering the residence while Haegert attended a Titan’s football game. (A later report states the three were arrested for aggravated burglary and later released on bond.)

The 68-year-old songwriter was found on the floor of his home. An autopsy by the state medical examiner revealed that Haegert died of multiple gunshot wounds. (It was later revealed that Clete was shot in the back, and a handgun was found on the floor beside his lifeless body. Nothing I have seen to date mentions ownership of the gun, whether it was Clete’s or his killer’s.)

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spent almost 12 hours at Haegert’s residence last Thursday night and early Friday morning gathering evidence in the case. (I keep watching for news on the indictment or motive of Clete's killer(s), but everything I read contains words like "pending" and "still under investigation.")

Now more than ever, I needed to know about this man whose words of strength and hope tugged at my heart so many weeks ago.

Google searches don’t pull up a lot about Cletus “Clete” Haegert. Most of what I found is in conjunction with another man, Bob Frank, who had co-written songs with Clete for his 1972 debut album with Vanguard Records and throughout Frank’s music career. Frank has recently staged a come back, citing Haegert as not only a collaborator but friend. I went to Frank’s website. Pictures of a younger, smiling Haegert among a cast of music row insiders revealed more than a few pieces of this growing puzzle I was so hungry for.

Born and raised in Oklahoma, Clete set out for Nashville in the late 60’s to claim his fame and fortune. He was signed on as a songwriter in 1968 for Tree Publishing in Nashville, where he penned many moderate country hits for artists throughout the 70’s. Later Clete would publish songs for the late cowboy crooner Chris LeDoux.

He never wrote a number one hit, or became a household name. More importantly, it seemed Clete had an endless list of lifelong friends, folks with whom he’d weathered many storms and shared many wonderful memories. A lot can be learned about a man by the company he keeps, especially when it is company he has kept consistently throughout his life. Anyone in the music business can tell you, collaborators are many, but friends are few, and they’re never around long enough.

Other musical projects consumed Clete’s energies over the years. In 1985 he formed the country rock band White Crow, playing regionally and recording sporadically over several years. Capitalizing on his Irish roots, Clete formed Clete O’Hagerty and his Irish Derry Aires. They were a favorite Nashville attraction, especially on St. Patrick’s Day, and the act earned him the irresistible title, “Dean of Irish Honky Tonk.”

Here is a song from Bob Frank’s debut album, long out of print, that was co-written by Clete. This is an MP3 from my own iPod, collected with the help of a musicologist friend who has a knack for procuring rare and precious artifacts from lost civilizations of rock and roll, folk and country music. I love the natural storytelling quality of these songs, and the timeless nature of the production. This is a short, humorous moral tale about how we should treat a brother when he's down on his luck.

http://www.unhitched.com/Before_The_Trash_Truck_Comes.mp3

I have since befriended on Facebook a number of Clete’s close friends as a result of this story. All have been kind and thoughtful – reflections, no doubt, of their friend. Birds of a feather, so to speak, and not at all surprising.

After a concert I performed recently in Oklahoma City, I was approached by a man who had moved from Nashville years ago. He had been a songwriter on music row in the 1970’s. I dropped Clete’s name, and it induced a warm smile. “Yeah, I knew Clete,” he said. “Great guy.” I didn’t divulge Clete’s fate, having been so warmed by the man’s smile. I let the recollection of Clete hang in the air around us until the subject of conversation changed.

So this is the light I have found in this tragic story: We live on. Despite our having been taken – sometimes violently – our memory is carried on in the hearts of everyone who loved us, anyone we have met with whom we’ve left an impression.

And my thoughts return to the wedding reception we attended earlier tonight, where a houseful of people gathered to launch a young couple off into a life of happiness – and sadness, prosperity – and struggle, light – and dark. It’s a journey each of us have taken and will continue to take if we live long enough. We have all been there once, standing at the threshold of adulthood, apprehensive yet giddy about the future, awash in the innocent light of youth.

Darkness is the absence of light, and it is always there – until, that is, a candle, or a light bulb, or a flood lamp, or the sun appears to cancel it out. Darkness flees in an instant when faced with the irresistible presence of light.

Evil, despicable acts of violence destroys only the body, but not the core of who we are. Like the light of a candle, the light of who we are is carried on within our loved ones.

Darkness prevails only until someone takes the effort – the brief, minimal effort – to strike a match and light a candle. That’s all it takes. Light in the tiniest form, reflected in the loving twinkle of a friend’s eye for instance, is all we need to cancel out the darkness. In this small and simple way can light be passed on until the darkness is a bitter but receding memory.

And I see this light as I look at Clete’s online picture album lovingly put together by his sister just before the funeral. There, on one of the last pages, Clete stands with his daughter at her wedding. Their smiles mingle in my mind with those of my friends at tonight’s reception, creating a kaleidoscope of light and hope.

And I realize it is all I will need to cancel out the darkness.

Cletus George Haegert
1941 – 2009
Rest in Peace, my friend.