Reba McEntire's parents sing praises
CMAPerformer has most nominations of any woman
By Bryan Painter
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Published: November 1, 2009
Modified: October 31, 2009 at 9:36 pm
STRINGTOWN — The "Little Giant,” a bear leaning against Daddy’s horse trailer, and running past the rattlesnakes and over the railroad tracks to the roping pen may seem like an odd mix.

Clark and Jackie McEntire at their home near Stringtown, Wednesday, October 27, 2009. By David McDaniel, The Oklahoman.
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A LOOK AT FAMILY
Reba McENTIRE about her mother and FATHER
The Oklahoman asked Reba McEntire the following questions about her father, Clark McEntire, and mother, Jackie McEntire:
Q: What about you is most like
your dad?
A: My competitiveness. The thing I learned from Daddy is to be competitive. He made a living by competing and so have I. The difference in his competition and mine was his winning was determined by a stop watch. Mine was voted on. As I’ve grown older, I find I listen like Daddy does before I make a decision. I get all the information first.
Q: What about you is most like
your mom?
A: Being a good mother. She loved, protected and disciplined me. She showed us our boundaries of how far we could go before we got out of line; that’s a very important thing for a mother to know. Our temperament is very similar; I guess it’s the red hair. We both love to read, and we’re very protective of our family. They are both very honest people. Daddy’s handshake is better than a signed, witnessed and notarized contract. If he says it, he means it. They taught us that our word means a lot, shows our character. They taught us to look folks in the eye when we meet them and to shake their hand. They taught us how to work hard at a very early age, to take direction and take responsibility. They have always been my heroes. It was always my biggest goal in life for them to be proud of me.
COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS
Reba McEntire gets
two nominations
The Country Music Association’s 43rd Annual CMA Awards will be broadcast live from the Sommet Center in Nashville at 7 p.m. Nov. 11. Reba McEntire is nominated for two awards, the female artist with the most nominations in the 43-year history of the CMA Awards. She has been nominated 48 times.
She is nominated for female vocalist of the year, an award she won from 1984 through 1987, and for musical event of the year for her performance with Brooks & Dunn on "Cowgirls Don’t Cry.”
Other Oklahoma nominees this year are Carrie Underwood, Brooks & Dunn, Miranda Lambert and Rascal Flatts.
Checotah native Underwood is nominated for female vocalist, which she has won three times, and for musical event for her version of "I Told You So,” featuring Randy Travis. Underwood is scheduled to co-host the CMAs with Brad Paisley.
Brooks & Dunn, which includes former Tulsan Ronnie Dunn, are nominated in musical event andvocal duo of the year, which they won a record 14 times.
Lambert, who lives in Tishomingo, is up for female vocalist.
Rascal Flatts, which includes Joe Don Rooney of Picher, is nominated for vocal group of the year, which they won the past six years.
However, that’s actually a one-sentence summary of the childhood of the record holder for the most
Country Music Association award nominations by a female artist:
Reba Nell McEntire. Clark and Jackie McEntire’s third of four children garnered two more nominations this year for the CMA awards scheduled for Nov. 11 in
Nashville,
Tenn. That extends her career total to 48.
It’s been 75 years since
John McEntire, her "grandpap,” won the Steer Roping World Champion title, a feat her father repeated in 1957, 1958 and 1961. It’s been 35 years since
Clem McSpadden hired Reba to sing the national anthem at the
National Finals Rodeo in
Oklahoma City. It’s been 25 years since she won the first of four straight CMA Female Vocalist of the Year awards, which she is contending for again this year. These are interesting threads of her life.
But if you want to hear some good yarns about the young Reba — ones including the "Little Giant,” the bear and the rattlesnakes — then it’s best to sit down with
the sources, Clark and Jackie.
Third grade
An "Away in a Manger” solo at a first-grade Christmas play marked Reba’s school entertainment debut. But a performance two years later remains a source of family history and pride.
That year some of the senior girls at
Kiowa High School asked a third-grader named Reba to sing at their graduation.
"She sang ‘He,’ which is a pretty hard song to sing,” Jackie said. "Carl Albert was the speaker at that graduation. When she got through singing and he got up to speak, he said ‘I predict that this child will be as well or better known and famous as her daddy if she continues on.’”
At 5 feet, 41/2 inches, Albert — who served three decades in the
U.S. Congress — was known as "The Little Giant.”
What did Clark, already a three-time world champion roper, think of the prediction?
"I was proud that he said that,” Clark said. "He wrote her a letter after she did get famous and he wrote word for word what he said at that graduation.”
"It impressed everybody,” Jackie recalls.
Don’t look now, but....
Clark laughs when he thinks back to the start of his daughter’s music career and how some people thought of Reba as this little red-haired girl who’d probably never strayed too far from the country around Limestone Gap in southeastern Oklahoma.
"She’d been to more than 20 states before she ever went to singing,” Clark said.
At least a few times a year, Jackie and the children — Alice, Pake, Reba and the youngest, Susie — would hit the trail with Daddy. Most of the time the old Chevy sedan, pulling a horse trailer, was headed for a rodeo. But every now and then they’d get a break, such as when the McEntire family visited
Yellowstone National Park.
While they were gawking at Old Faithful a bear was gawking at Clark’s roping horse.
"His front paws were up on the trailer,” Clark said. "The old horse didn’t get excited about it.”
Maybe the horse wasn’t nervous, but Jackie said "The kids were wide-eyed and I was too.”
Railroad tracks and rattlesnakes
In 1951, Clark won the calf roping contest at
Carrollton,
Texas, and received a new car.
With Jackie expecting their first child, she traded the car and $500 "to boot” for some land in a community in
Atoka County which consisted of a Baptist church and a cemetery. They lived there until 1957 when Reba was 2.
At that time they moved to Chockie in Atoka County, which is 12 miles south of Kiowa in
Pittsburg County.
"We lived there 34 years,” Jackie said of Chockie. "The roping pen was across the railroad tracks and that was their playground.”
"The rattlesnakes were thick between the house and the roping pen,” Clark added.
No problem.
"Clark kept the arena plowed up because that’s where he practiced calf roping and steer roping,” Jackie said. "So those little kids, Reba and Susie, would just play in the dirt.”
Or during certain times of the year, they’d go with Daddy to do chores.
When Reba was about 5 years old, Clark would get her to drive the truck so he could kick off the hay to the cattle in the
Oklahoma winters. He’d put a 50 pound sack of cattle feed in the driver’s seat, put the truck in "granny gear” and hop out of the truck.
She was told to "go as straight as you can and stay away from the bigger rocks and trees.”
It didn’t work all the time, evidenced by the bark skinned all the way up to the second limb of the elm trees.
But if they weren’t playing or working they were often singing, just as Jackie had done while growing up.
"At night we didn’t have a radio or television or anything like that,” Jackie said of her childhood. "So the whole family sang.
"The singing just passes down from generation to generation.”
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champions in that herd!!!
Donna McSpadden