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I tracked down Miss Wright's “people” in
Nashville and asked if she could call me and she
did. Chely Wright comes from a long line of
veterans. Her grandfather served during WWII in the
“Big Red One,” the Army's First Infantry Division,
which saw major combat in that war. Her father was
in aircraft maintenance in the Navy during Vietnam
and her brother is a Senior NCO in the Marine Corps.
Chely Wright is not a veteran, but she has long
personal history of supporting veterans and active
duty military with her music. She comes from a
musical family and she advised me how at the age of
ten she was taken to VA hospitals in the Kansas City
area to perform for the veterans. Her grandfather
told her she needed to do this and for her to
remember what these veterans had done for our
country.
Miss Wright wrote “The Bumper of My SUV” and then
filed it away, with no intention on publishing the
song. In the body of the song she asked the lady in
the minivan just where she thought freedom comes
from and what had that person done to help our
nation. Miss Wright was concerned she might come off
a little too strong for a main-stream recording.
While touring and performing for our troops in Iraq
and Kuwait she found the song in a stack of her
papers and had her band learn the music, just in
case she wanted to sing the song. It turned out to
be a crowd pleaser and after receiving multiple
standing ovations from her first performance of the
song, she used “Bumper” (as she had labeled it in
her files) in every show for the rest of the tour.
She still had no plans to record it, but the young
troops in her audience kept insisting they needed a
copy to play after she went back to the “real
world.”
Chely Wright was, in her own words a “band geek”
in high school and has a strong drive to support
music programs. “When money is tight in school
budgets, the arts tend to be the first programs that
have to take cuts” Miss Wright advised me. With this
in mind she founded the
Reading, Writing and Rhythm program in 1999. She
holds fund raising concerts, drawing on volunteer
Country and Western talent to help her perform, with
the proceeds going to support quality music
education in American's public schools. Band-kids do
better in school and that equates to doing better in
life.
Chely Wright has performed for the “troops' in
Korea, Japan, Iraq and Kuwait. She has been to
Walter Reed Army Medical Center multiple times to
visit some of our most seriously wounded veterans.
And, now she is headed back to the “desert” with an
organization called
Stars for Stripes, which brings big name
performers to the troops in some of the smallest and
out-of-the-way places. Forward locations that the
major “shows” do not go out to perform for the
troops. Troops fighting on the front lines, like her
grandfather did in WW II and her Marine brother did
in this current war on terrorism.
Chely Wright, aim high and Semper Fi.
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