ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 24, 1996 TAG: 9608260054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NASHVILLE, TENN.
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: Associated Press
THE FORMER MOONSHINER-COAL MINER is credited with taking his wife to country-music stardom.
O.V. ``Mooney'' Lynn, who coaxed his wife, Loretta, onto the stage for the first time and watched as the coal miner's daughter rose to country music stardom, has died at 69.
The hard-drinking Lynn, who died at home Thursday, had been hospitalized repeatedly since 1993 because of heart failure and diabetes. His feet were amputated in recent years.
Lynn was portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones in the 1980 movie ``Coal Miner's Daughter,'' based on his wife's autobiography.
Lynn had been a coal miner and moonshine runner - hence the nickname ``Mooney'' - in Kentucky before he married Loretta in 1948 when she was just 13.
He bought his wife her first guitar for $17 for her 18th birthday in 1953, and in 1960 urged her to sing in public for the first time. She reluctantly did so. Months later, she had her first hit record, ``I'm a Honky-Tonk Girl,'' and was on the road to stardom.
``If it wasn't for Doolittle [her nickname for him], there would be no career,'' Loretta Lynn wrote in her autobiography.
She wrote that Mooney went up to a bandleader at a meeting hall near where they lived and said, ``Hey, I got a girl here tonight who's the best country singer there is, next to Kitty Wells, and I ain't kidding.''
The bandleader didn't let her sing that night, but did a week later.
More recently, Lynn ran the 1,140-acre Loretta Lynn Dude Ranch 70 miles west of Nashville. He periodically accompanied his wife on concert tours. He often wore a black cowboy hat with a warning inside: ``Like hell it's yours.''
Besides his wife, Lynn is survived by five children, 15 grandchildren and five great- grandchildren.
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Lynnby CNB