Associated Press
June 03, 2009 08:47 pm
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KATIE PETROSKI
Austin American-Statesman
MARBLE FALLS, Texas (AP) — Lloyd Dalton would be the first to tell you he's not a deeply religious man. He's just a country musician who says God protected him one Friday night almost two years ago at O'Neill's Sports Tavern. The night a man aimed a gun at Dalton in the Marble Falls bar after shooting a bartender who got in his way.
"I don't know if you're a Christian or not, and it's none of my business," Dalton said. "But God was with me that night, and it's changed my life."
Police said the man accused of being the gunman, Paul Devoe III, shot five other people after leaving the bar. Devoe is now in the Travis County Correctional Complex awaiting trial on capital murder charges in the deaths of two of the victims.
Dalton said the shooting put him at a crossroads.
The 75-year-old has spent more than half a century gracing country music stages with his Willie Nelson-style guitar picking, playing mostly on weekends and doing occasional backup gigs for country stars. After that night in O'Neill's, his new stage is in the auditoriums of local churches and the cafeterias of nursing homes, where he honors God for the talents he's been given and looks for healing and understanding.
Dalton grew up west of Dallas in the country, where he learned to play guitar by strumming along to the country tunes of Eddy Arnold and Ernest Tubb he heard on his Philco radio.
By the time he graduated from high school, he was fixing telephone poles and installing wires for Mountain Bell Telephone & Telegraph in El Paso, and on the weekends he and the five other members of the Texas Trailblazers would travel as far as Arizona to play shows.
"I'd make more money in one night with the band than I could in a whole week working my job," Dalton said. "I spent all my free time smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, playing guitar and having a great time."
After Dalton's father advised him to find a good job because there wasn't money for college, Dalton put his focus on work; his band only made occasional television appearances on Channel 4. One of his co-workers told Dalton that her little sister Polly had seen him on TV and was crazy about him. The co-worker later introduced them, and the two were married in 1959. The couple moved to Austin after the births of three children Lloyd Jr., Jenny and Kyle.
Lloyd Dalton kept at his passion, too. He performed at opries all over Central Texas. He played mariachi guitar in Juárez, Chihuahua, with Johnny Cash. He was backup lead guitarist for country stars like Webb Pierce, Hank Locklin and Patsy Cline. But only on the weekends.
In 1978, Dalton received a promotion to area manager, a job that transferred him to Waco.
Lloyd and Polly Dalton and their son Kyle were in a hotel room in Waco after closing on a new house on Dec. 22 when they received the phone call. Jenny, their 19-year-old daughter, had been in a head-on collision on U.S. 183 that killed her, her boyfriend and a passenger in the other car. The other driver, who had been drinking, suffered two broken knees and served three years' probation.
Dalton said his daughter's death left a hole in his heart that never fully healed.
Dalton's sons graduated from college and started lives of their own. Lloyd Jr. owns an electronic installation company and works in construction. He plays bass and knows all his father's music. Kyle went into sports journalism and is media director for the Austin Aztex soccer team.
Lloyd Dalton received a diamond-studded ring from Southwestern Bell, which had taken over Mountain Bell, when he retired in 1991 after 35 years of service. His knees had started to go bad after years of climbing telephone poles, and he occasionally used a cane.
In August 2007, Dalton agreed to sit in for a show at the request of a longtime friend and fellow guitarist. The Friday gig at O'Neill's was just a mile from his home in Marble Falls.
The band began setting up its instruments at 7 p.m. on the small stage tucked in the left corner by the door and eased into a country set. An hour later, the band was in the middle of its third song, "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," when a man came through the front door and confronted a woman inside the bar. The band kept playing until Dalton heard someone yell, "He's got a gun!"
Dalton watched the man put the gun to the woman's head and pull the trigger. Nothing happened, Dalton said. As the gunman put a new clip in his weapon, the woman ran to the back of the bar, out of Dalton's line of vision. He heard a gunshot. His friend later told him that when bartender Michael Allred, 41, tried to talk the man into giving him the gun, he was shot in the chest.
The 30 or 40 people in the bar ran for the exit, Dalton said, but he knew his weak knees weren't going to get him there. He said he held his bass guitar close to his chest and crouched underneath a table.
Dalton said the gunman walked toward him, brandishing his weapon at chest level and pointing it at Dalton before running out the door.
"He looked at me, but I don't even know if he saw me," Dalton said. "He had to have been possessed by the devil. It's the only explanation."
Dalton immediately called his wife to tell her he wasn't hurt.
According to police reports, the woman whom the gunman confronted in the bar was Glenda Purcell, who had recently filed a restraining order against Devoe, her ex-boyfriend. Police said Devoe left the bar and drove to another ex-girlfriend's home about 30 miles away in Jonestown. There, police say, he fatally shot Paula Griffith, 46, her daughter Haylie Faulkner, 15, Haylie's friend Danielle Hensley, 17, and Griffith's sometime boyfriend Jay Feltner, 48.
Pennsylvania authorities later accused Devoe of fatally shooting 81-year-old Betty Jane DeHart and stealing her car.Police arrested Devoe on Long Island, in New York, a few days after the shootings.
When Lloyd Dalton got home after that night in the bar, Polly Dalton was standing in their open garage. The two embraced and cried for a long time.
Afterward, Lloyd Dalton would wake up thinking about that night. Other nights, he couldn't fall asleep.
"I would close my eyes and see that man walking straight towards me with that gun," said Dalton, who said he will never forget the gunman's face. "It makes me sick when his picture shows up in the newspaper."
Dalton began seeing a Christian counselor, who told him he was dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder and tried to help him find his way through church and prayer.
It took several months for Dalton to sleep through the night.
In January 2008, he lay in Seton Medical Center recovering from knee replacement surgery in room 609 while his wife was in room 613 with a broken shoulder after she tripped over a curb outside the hospital. It took more than five months for them to recover, and during that time, Dalton said he finally understood God's path for him.
"What happened to me, I felt like the good Lord was speaking to me," Dalton said. "I told him I wouldn't do any more of this country stuff, no more opries, no more traveling, but I would praise him for giving me these skills instead."
Dalton, whose parents lived out their final days in a nursing home with Alzheimer's disease and dementia, decided to dedicate his energies to nursing homes and charities.
He met with the activities director at Northwood Health Care Center in Marble Falls and asked for a chance to sing and play his guitar. The center already had a duo that played regularly but agreed to grant Dalton an audition.
He played a few songs before putting the guitar down and shaking hands with the few residents who listened to him. Dalton said he was humbled by the circumstances they had to overcome. Afterward, he told his wife he had finally found his niche.
A year and a half later, Dalton said he has more gigs than ever. He gets paid to play regular shows at five venues, mostly for people with Alzheimer's or dementia. He wears an American flag shirt to show his patriotism, makes jokes about his age and laughs with the crowd as he plays old country and gospel songs from his youth. The audience members clap their hands and sway along.
"Some of them can't even talk, but they know my songs," Dalton said. "There's been a couple times where I come home and I shed tears of joy that I can serve folks like that."
L.C. Johnston, a minister at First United Methodist Church in Burnet, where Dalton plays for people with dementia, says he has noticed a change in his friend of 14 years.
"Lloyd has experienced quite the transformation over the past two years," Johnston said. "He went from secularity to frequently talking about his faith and the reasons for it. It's made him a better person."
On March 3, Dalton's phone rang, and the voice on the other end asked him, "Are you Lloyd Dalton, the musician? I'm Alberta Allred, Mike's mother."
Allred had seen Dalton play at a Victims of Violent Crimes event months before and later realized he had been at the bar the night her son was shot. She said she'd had his number for a long time, but she needed to wait until she was strong enough to talk to him.
"He tried to bring me comfort by telling me what he went through with his daughter's death," Allred said.
Dalton told her it would be tough. "I said, 'You're going to have so many people try to do things for you to make you feel better, but it won't. We've been there. We're in the same club now.'
"Jenny's death will always be there. Life goes on, and you have to go on with it, but you never forget," Dalton said.
Allred told Dalton about her son.
"If there was ever anyone who needed to be helped, he'd be there," she said. "Mike was big and tall and easy to talk to."
The two talked for an hour and a half about how her son used to carry a Bible with him and how his daughter tried out for the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
He and Allred talked about life and prayer and how that night in the bar changed Dalton's direction in life.
Devoe's jury selection is scheduled to begin Sept. 10. In the meantime, Dalton says he's as busy as ever, "pickin' and grinnin'." He says he's also happier than ever.
"The good Lord was talking to me that night, and I am so glad I've been able to answer."
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