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Country music icon Loretta Lynn's successful career was marked with tragedy
Married at 15, Lynn raised six children while navigating a difficult and often turbulent marriage
The country legend endured devastating losses, including the deaths of two of her children, Jack Benny Lynn and Betty Sue Lynn, before her death at age 90
Loretta Lynn built a legendary country music career on telling deeply personal stories with song — many of which were rooted in hardship, loss and resilience.
Born in rural Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, Lynn grew up in poverty as one of eight children in a coal mining family. Herbestselling 1976 autobiographyCoal Miner's Daughter, went on to become a 1980 box-office hit film that won a Best Actress Oscar for leading lady Sissy Spacek.
Her early life would go on to shape the candid songwriting that made her one of country music's most influential voices.
At just 15 years old, Lynn married Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn, a union that marked the beginning of a complicated and, at times, turbulent relationship. Together, they would go on to havesix children— four of whom she had given birth to by the age of 20: Betty Sue, Jack Benny, Clara Marie, Ernest Ray, and twins Peggy Jean andPatsy Eileen.
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By her late teens, she was already raising a growing family while navigating the demands of married life and a burgeoning country music career. In later years, Lynn described her husband as supportive of her work but also difficult in their personal life, acknowledging struggles that included infidelity and physical abuse.
Lynn's music career took off in the early 1960s with hits that reflected her lived experiences, including songs about marriage, motherhood and independence. Her 1975 hit, "The Pill," celebrated the birth control pill.
Speaking with PEOPLE in 2016, Loretta said her career was so intense in the early days that it wasn't unusual for her tomiss out on holidays and family time.
"I was working clubs, and I was doing like three and four shows a night," she recalled. Loretta even kept up with her busy schedule well into her pregnancy with the twins. "I'd play shows right up until the babies was born and that guitar around my neck just about killed me. I don't advise it to any mother."
Her personal life, however, would go on to be marked by profound tragedy.
In 1984, Lynn's eldest son, Jack Benny Lynn, died at the age of 34 in a drowning accident while attempting to cross a river on horseback at the family's ranch in Hurricane Mills.
A rescue team later found and retrieved his body from the river on the family's property and, at the time of Jack's death, Lynn was on tour. She checked into a hospital after falling unconscious due to extreme exhaustion. Her husband traveled from Tennessee to an Illinois hospital, where Lynn was recovering, to deliver the news of their son's passing in person.
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"She tore to pieces," her youngest, Patsy, told PEOPLE at the time. "They were very close."
Years later, in 2013, Lynn faced more heartache when her daughter, Betty Sue Lynn, died at age 64 due to complications from emphysema.
Inan Instagram tribute to her daughterin July 2022, Loretta described Betty as "feisty" and "fun." Most importantly, however, she said Betty had "a heart of gold."
Through these losses, Lynn continued to perform and remain connected to her fans, often channeling her grief into her music.
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In addition to personal loss, Lynn also faced health challenges later in life. Shesuffered a stroke in 2017and laterbroke her hip in 2018, both of which required extended recovery periods and limited her time on stage.
Sixteen months aftersuffering her stroke, however, Lynn told PEOPLE she wouldn't let her health troubles define her: “I wasn't goin' to let it stop me. You just can't sit down and say ‘Hey, take me.'”
Throughout the course of her career, Lynn earned multiple awards and accolades, becoming known for pushing boundaries with songs that addressed topics often considered taboo in country music at the time.
Lynn died on Oct. 4, 2022, at the age of 90 at her home in Hurricane Mills.
The countrymusic icon herself made several appearances(via video footage and recordings) at her own public memorial service weeks after her death, reflecting with her trademark humility on what she hoped her legacy would be.
"I would like to be remembered," she said in one video, "just as a good person."
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HOUSTON (AP) — Never-before-glimpsed views of the moon’s far side. Check. Total solar eclipse gracing the lunar scene. Check. New distance record for humanity. Check.
WithNASA’s lunar comebacka galactic-sized smash thanks to Artemis II, the world is wondering: What’s next? And how do you top that?
“To people all around the world who look up and dream about what is possible, the long wait is over,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said as he introduced Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen atSaturday’s jubilant homecoming celebration.
Now that the first lunar travelers in more than a half-century are safely back in Houston with their families, NASA has Artemis III in its sights.
“The next mission’s right around the corner,” entry flight director Rick Henfling observed following the crew’s Pacific splashdown on Friday.
Ina mission recently added to the docketfor next year, Artemis III’s yet-to-be -named astronauts will practice docking their Orion capsule with a lunar lander or two in orbit around Earth. Elon Musk’s SpaceX andJeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to have their company’s lander ready first.
Musk’s Starship and Bezos’ Blue Moon are vying for the all-important Artemis IV moon landing in 2028. Two astronauts will aim for the south polar region, the preferred location for Isaacman’s envisioned $20 billion to $30 billion moon base. Vast amounts of ice are almost certainly hidden in permanently shadowed craters there — ice that could provide water and rocket fuel.
The docking mechanism for Artemis III’s close-to-home trial run is already at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The latest model Starship is close to launching on a test flight from South Texas, and a scaled-down version of Blue Moon will attempt a lunar landing later this year.
NASA promises to announce the Artemis III crew “soon.” Like 1969’s Apollo 9, Artemis III aims to reduce risk for the moon landings that follow.
Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart loved flying the lunar module in low-Earth orbit — “a test pilot’s dream.” But there’s no question, he noted, that “the real astronauts” at least in the public’s mind were the ones who walked on the moon.
Wiseman and his crew put their passion and feelings on full display as they flew around the moon and back, choking up over lost loved ones as well as those left behind on Earth.
During the their nearly 10-day journey, they tearfully requested that a fresh, bright lunar crater be namedafter Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020. They also openly shared their love for one another and Planet Earth, an exquisite yet delicate oasis in the black void that they said needs better care.
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Artemis II included the first woman, the first person of color and the first non-U.S. citizen to fly to the moon.
“Wonderful communicators, almost poets,” Isaacman said from the recovery ship while awaiting their return.
Apollo’s manly, all-business moon crews of the 1960s and 1970s certainly did not do group hugs.
For those old enough to remember Apollo, Artemis — Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology — couldn’t come fast enough.
Author Andy Chaikin said he felt like Rip Van Winkle awakening from a nearly 54-year nap. His 1994 biography “A Man on the Moon” led to the HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon.”
“It’s amazing how far we’ve come and how different this experience is from back then,” Chaikin said from Johnson Space Center late last week.
The hardest part, according to NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, is becoming so close to the crews and their families and then blasting them to the moon. He anxiously monitored Friday’s reentry alongside the astronauts’ spouses and children.
“You know what’s at stake,” Kshatriya confided afterward. “It’s going to take risk to explore, but you have to make sure you find the right line between being paralyzed by it and being able to manage it.”
Calling it “mission complete” only after being reunited with his two daughters, Wiseman issued a rallying cry to the rows of blue-flight-suited astronauts at Saturday’s celebration.
“It is time to go and be ready,” he said, pointing at them, “because it takes courage. It takes determination, and you all are freaking going and we are going to be standing there supporting you every single step of the way in every possible way possible.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
