Reba
McEntire, the popular country singer and actress, says that when she is near
Denison, Texas, a town 70 miles north of Dallas on the Oklahoma border, she
makes it a point to stop and visit families at one very special place— Reba’s
Ranch House. And every time, she says, she is moved by what she sees. “It’s
very emotional. There’s a whole lot of cryin’!” says
Reba. “Whether it’s an elderly man or a kid who comes up to talk to me, the
story is the same. They appreciate tat they can rest up at the Ranch House.”
Since 1992 more tan 15000 guests have been able to spend a
night at the Ranch House for a nominal fee while tending to hospitalized family
members at the nearby Texoma Medical Center.
For Reba, creating the Ranch House was in
part an act of love for her niece, 17-year-old Haley Foran.
Haley was born in 1985 with a rare chromosome disorder that left her wit cerebral palsy,
scoliosis and mental retardation, and she spent much of her young life
traveling
from her home in Lane, Oklahoma. to
Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City. Reba regularly dropped
by the hospital to visit Haley and her mom, Alice Foran,
Reba’s sister. Reba says she never forgot the kindness and generosity Alice experienced when she
stayed at a Ronald McDonald House not far from the hospital. So in 1987, when
Reba was asked to help raise money for the Texoma Medical Center, she knew exactly how
she’d like to see those funds spent. Recalls Alice, “She said to me,
‘What do you think about building one of those places like where we stayed in Oklahoma City?’”
While Reba has been able to meet only a
handful of the guests, hundreds have left her a note. “You, Reba, are truly
God’s angel of mercy, and I will never forget your loving kindness,” wrote one man who
stayed there while helping his ailing wife. In another note a mother from
Australia, who traveled to Texas to be with a daughter who was dying of cancer,
said, “I will never forget the kindness I was shown at your Ranch, and how much
the walk up to the hospital calmed me and helped me face up to my great loss.”
Giving seems to come
naturally to Reba, the two-time Grammy Award winner who has sold almost 50
million records and is also the star of a TV sitcom that bears her name. Her
grandfather, John McEntire, grew up in the Depression. According to Alice, “If any homeless young
people came up the road to his house, he’d take ‘em
in, feed ‘em and give ‘em a
place to stay. So Reba and I were raised with that sort of
attitude.”
Reba herself can still
recall the moment when she realized that she could use her star power to shine
the light on charitable causes. “It was years ago, when I was doing a benefit
in Florida with Bob Hope,” she explains. “I remember
thinking, Why is he doing this? He could be
doing whatever he wanted right now, I asked him, and he said, The best part of being in the business is giving back to
people. Giving really feels better than getting.’”
Reba’s first fund-raiser
for the Texoma Medical Center was a weekend concert
in October 1987 at the Denison High School auditorium, That first show took in $55,000. “Reba was flabbergasted by
how much money we’d made. We asked if she could do it again, and she just said,
Tell me where,”’ says Jerdy Gary, chairman of the TMC
Foundation board of directors.
On Memorial Day weekend
in 1989, the show went on again. This time it was held at the high-school
football field and raised $110,000. Reba has had a total of 13 benefit
concerts for Texoma, attracting country friends like Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton and Vince Gill. Over the years she has lent her name
to an annual celebrity golf tournament in Denison and appeared at gala
dinners, Explains Reba. “Those women on the development committee have a
blast After working with them, you get a bug. This
giving gets contagious. You do it and you’re like, ‘I can do this!’ or ‘I can
do that!’”
Her efforts have taken
in roughly $4.5 million for the medical center over the past 15 years. Says Gary, “How do you even
describe what she’s done for us? She doesn’t even see this as charity. She
tells me, ‘I just get up and sing. Y’all do the work!’”
While much of the money
has gone to the Ranch House, Reba now also helps fund two other Texoma projects: the Reba McEntire Center for Rehabilitation and
the Reba Mobile Mammography Unit. The center, which opened in 1995, offers
treatments to help those who are sick or injured restore their physical and
cognitive skills.
The mammography unit opened in 1999. It
travels to remote areas in North Texas and Southern Oklahoma, where Reba was born,
to offer mammograms to women who might not be able to get to a hospital for
one.
While she particularly
enjoys being able to give back to the community where she grew up, Reba has
also taken on tasks for national organizations. She has been a spokesperson
since 1999 for First Book, a nonprofit group that provides new books to
children from low-income families.
“I may have worn
hand-me-downs into college, but my family still had books for us,” says Reba,
who has a degree in education and whose mother, Jacqueline, was a schoolteacher.
“I couldn’t imagine not having books. When I was growing up, my mama had books
and magazines everywhere,” recalls Reba.
“She feels such a strong
personal conviction on this issue,” explains Kyle Zimmer, First Book cofounder
and president. “Our organization has grown exponentially in part because of her
work for us. It’s very compelling to see somebody so much larger than life reach
out to us.”
Zimmer can’t forget the
first time Reba worked with First Book, going to a Manhattan bookstore to read to
children. After finishing, she watched as the kids were allowed to pick out a
book to take home. “Reba was on her knees helping kids lay out books and look
at them, and her warmth came right through. She was having fun,” Zimmer
recalls. But “some kids came up afterward to return the books, because they
didn’t understand that they could keep them. Reba saw this and then looked at
us, appalled. Alter that she wanted to get personally involved.”
First Lady Laura Bush, a
former teacher and librarian, and a longtime literacy crusader, is thrilled
with Reba’s reading effort. “If Reba picks up a book,” says Mrs. Bush, “then
millions of fans and friends are sure to follow.”
Throughout the years Reba has also
supported a variety of other causes. She has asked fans to bring cans of food
to her concerts, hosted a celebrity rodeo for Children’s Hospital, where her
niece Haley continues to see specialists, and helped Habitat for Humanity
provide women in the Nashville area—where Reba now lives—with keys to newly
built homes. All of this generosity has earned her two major honors: the
Minnie Pearl Humanitarian Award and the Country Radio Broadcasters Humanitarian
Award. Earlier this year at the Academy of Country Music Awards, fans selected her as
the winner of the Home Depot Humanitarian Award.
Reba, though, downplays
all this attention. “You don’t know why you’re put on this earth,” she says
matter-offactly. “If I just listen with an open
heart, I can do the things that are asked of me.”
Haley remains a
motivating force for Reba. While she may not be the sole reason behind Reba’s
charity work, she is certainly someone who is never far from her thoughts, and
serves as a tender reminder to Reba that there is always someone out there who
needs help.
“She has taught me
everything. Haley was born to teach all of us in the family to love and accept
each other She can’t walk or talk, but that doesn’t mean she can’t teach me
more than anyone else can.” says Reba. FC