My Story
by Ronnie Raper, Festival Founder
In March of 1995 my father-in-law, Doyle Williams, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I remember my own father, Cotton Raper, saying “You and Denise (my wife) better spend all the time you can with him because old Doyle won’t be around long.” Doyle was only 51 years old. Throughout his illness I tried to comfort Doyle and my wife as best I could. Dad kept saying “poor Doyle…just no hope.” A hospice bed was soon staged in the living room and that is where Doyle drew his last breath on March 20, 1995.
Ironically, just 12 years later Cotton began losing a severe amount of weight. At first he was somewhat pleased because he had always been over-weight, but he soon discovered that this weight loss was a telltale sign of something much worse. We didn’t give it a lot of thought at first because Cotton was a hospital veteran. He was constantly under the care of specialist due to a rare disease called Wagner’s that disabled him in 1976. It wasn’t strange to us to hear that he was sick or going to have a battery of tests performed on any given day. Cotton had already survived two open heart surgeries in his lifetime and we felt convinced that he would fight through whatever this was.
I remember my mobile-phone ringing as I got into my car a week later. It was mom and she said “son, I made your daddy go to the Emergency Room. They ran some x-rays and found a mass on his pancreas. They’re not giving him any hope.” I just couldn’t believe it! I heard those same words twelve years ago.
I noticed that Dad’s eyes were yellow by the time I arrived. Where had I seen that before? You want to believe that if you see a train bearing down on you that you can get off the tracks after the horn blows, but we couldn’t change it. Oh, how that ripped at my heart. I noticed there was something else different about Dad’s eyes other than jaundice. He realized that his body, just like a past boyfriend or girlfriend, was breaking up with him. He didn’t want to die, but life was breaking up with him. On Dec 7, 2007 at 3:00 am, Dad drew his last breath on the hospice bed that had been staged in his living room.
Two months later, I decided that there had to be something done to help get people off the tracks of pancreatic cancer. Cotton and Doyle were both well-known for their love of performing music, so we decided to host a music festival each year to honor their memory. Each year we would use the months leading up to the event to educate people about pancreatic cancer, and use all the funds generated to help other patients and families, and with that; Cottonfest was born!
We have since grown into a non-profit organization ministering to the needs of our community, as well as raising money for pancreatic cancer research through The Hirshberg Foundation. Our boards of directors are family members who have been touched directly by this disease.
Cottonfest exists to provide hope for all those like Doyle and Cotton. Their life and their fight will continue through us.