A couple of days before Joe Bonsall died, he had a very rough patch. His wife, Mary, called the family to the house. She called Duane Allen, too, who had sung beside Joe in the Oak Ridge Boys for 50 years.
They sat around his bed. Joe’s eyes were closed. Then he woke and asked what was going on. His daughter Jennifer told him he hadn’t been conscious, and that he seemed to be having a bad day.
His daughter Sabrina remembers what he asked next:
“Is this the part where I go?”
Sabrina says her dad kept his sense of humor to the very end. Mary and Sabrina shared these memories with American Songwriter at the family home on Old Hickory Lake.
What Mary Asked For
Mary had one request for those final hours. If Joe passed while she wasn’t in the room, she wanted someone to open the doors.
“I didn’t want anything stopping his spirit from leaving.”
She said she wanted the angels to have an easy job of guiding him out.
Joe died at home, surrounded by his family, on July 9, 2024. He was 76.
A Bed by the Lake
The family had set up a hospital bed in the basement living room. Its windows look out over the lake.
Sabrina says her dad kept telling them he felt like he was dead but wasn’t, because so many people were reaching out to him.
Sabrina had been praying for a miracle. She says God gave her an answer she didn’t expect:
“Sabrina, you’re not going to get the miracle you want, but you’re going to see all kinds of miracles in between.”
How It Started
The first sign was small. Joe was carrying pieces of fallen tree limbs into the house when he noticed one leg felt a little off. He told Mary something was wrong.
In his last years on the road, he sang from a stool and wore custom leg braces. Even then, he kept stomping his foot and pumping his arm in the air. On January 3, 2024, he announced he was retiring from touring, saying only that he had a slow-onset neuromuscular disease. It was ALS.
The Book He Finished
Once Joe couldn’t sing anymore, Mary says, he poured himself into his book. He had started it back in 2020, much of it written at the family farm, working from notes he had jotted down and kept over the years.
He gave it his final sign-off one week before he died.
I See Myself: Musings and Memories of a Blessed Life came out on November 13, 2024. It was his final book. Joe called it a collection of visions from searching through his “mental archives.” It covers his years growing up in inner-city Philadelphia, running with a street gang, finding faith at a youth camp, working as a short-order cook, singing in sold-out arenas, and living with ALS.
Sabrina’s favorite chapter is number 14. In it, Joe wrote:
“I can live without singing. I cannot live without my Mary.”
No Funeral
At Joe’s request, there was no funeral. Instead of flowers, his family asked people to give to The ALS Association or the Vanderbilt ALS and Neuroscience Research Center.
In their announcement, the Oak Ridge Boys wrote that Jesus and his family always came first, and that they would see him again on the Promised Day.
Mary, Still Talking to Joe
Mary told American Songwriter she still talks to Joe every day. For a while, she kept looking for his red truck each morning. She says sometimes it feels like he’s just out on the road playing shows.
She chose a midnight blue urn with a section for each of them, and a smaller box for their favorite cat. It sits on Joe’s nightstand. Joe wanted Barney, the cat who sleeps in his chair, to always be with them.
Do you have a favorite memory of Joe singing with the Oak Ridge Boys? Share it in the comments.