Joshua Ragsdale
Joshua Ragsdale, a promising songwriter whose battle with leukemia inspired hundreds of people to be tested as potential bone marrow donors, died Thursday morning in an area hospital.
A staff writer at Sony/ATV, Mr. Ragsdale was 32. In 2010, his “Ain’t Much Left Of Lovin’ You” became Randy Montana’s debut single, and Country Music Hall of Famer Bill Anderson released “Papaw’s Sunday Boots,” a song Mr. Ragsdale co-wrote with Anderson.
While his career momentum accelerated, Mr. Ragsdale endured debilitating chemotherapy and a string of worst-case health scenarios. A marrow transplant scheduled for spring was canceled when the anonymous donor backed out. The man later agreed to the non-invasive, blood-draw procedure, but by then Mr. Ragsdale had contracted brain cancer that required further chemotherapy. The donor then backed out a final time.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ragsdale wrote songs, retained faith and kept a community of friends, fans and supporters apprised of his progress with often humorous postings on social networking sites.
“Waiting on the doctor... just hid all of his pens,” he wrote on April 28 on Twitter, four days after posting, “Dear Lord... I’ve got the noggin cancer.” On May 13 he wrote “The Price Is Right rocks away the pain,” and on May 30 he took time to thank the late Mel Blanc for giving voice to Bugs Bunny: “You still make me laugh on Sat & Sun mornings,” he wrote.
“I’ve never seen anybody that remains so positive and so concerned about others through such personal adversity,” said manager Bob Titley, who discovered Mr. Ragsdale’s music in the late 1990s and worked to get the young singer-songwriter and sister Shi-Anne Ragsdale a deal with now-defunct Lyric Street Records. Titley spoke with The Tennessean in April, for what was to be a story about Mr. Ragsdale’s recovery. “With every bit of bad news, he’ll react with three minutes of crying and praying, and then it’s back to this positive energy.”
Though humor-filled and positive, Mr. Ragsdale understood the severity of his situation, and he knew that his donor’s flip-flop could be a death sentence. The Be The Match registry keeps track of roughly 13 million potential donors worldwide, and there was no match for Mr. Ragsdale as of October of 2009, a month after his leukemia diagnosis.
The registry is constantly growing, though, as volunteers register through www.marrow.org (the registration process involves a swab of cheek cells). In December, Mr. Ragsdale received a call from the National Institute of Health in Maryland, telling him a potential donor had been located. He hollered in delight, hugged his fiance, songwriter Tammi Kidd, and began preparing for a transplant that would ultimately never happen.
On April 18, Mr. Ragsdale flew to Maryland for the transplant. A day later, he was told the donor had reconsidered.
“He’s the only one close to match,” Mr. Ragsdale said in April. “My doctors have let him know that without him there’s a good chance I won’t survive. So we’ve gone from a great chance of survival and living, to a guy not wanting to do it. We don’t have any answers. I can mope and moan and cry, and it doesn’t do any good. But tons of people have signed up as registered marrow donors on my behalf, I know of five people who have been called and told they were matches for someone on the registry. If I have to go through this to save one person, it’s worth it for me.”
In May, Mr. Ragsdale said of his brain cancer, “My doctors told me none of this would have happened if the donor had done his part.” But his disappointment did not sap his creativity.
“I’m writing songs today,” he said. “We’re just going to keep rockin’ and rollin.’ I’m used to being sick. I just want to do what I love.”
Raised in Mississippi as a preacher’s son, Mr. Ragsdale grew up playing drums in a Pentecostal church. He said the church’s elder members winced and thought he played too loud. He learned guitar, and divided his interests between playing golf and playing music. An accident on a summer job (he fell from a loading dock and broke his neck) ended his athletic aspirations, and he held to music. Mr. Ragsdale and sister Shi-Anne signed with Lyric Street in 2001, billed as Ragsdale. But in 2005, Ragsdale was dropped from the label.
“Yeah, that felt like a real terrible thing,” Mr. Ragsdale said. “It seemed devastating. Looking back, it was nothing.”
Nashville Songwriters Association International Hall of Fame songwriter Mark D. Sanders served as a friend and musical coach for Mr. Ragsdale, and his tutelage inspired Mr. Ragsdale to think about ways to help others stricken with cancer.
“Mark D. Sanders has been my mentor for writing, and he’s taught me so much,” Mr. Ragsdale said. “I realized that people need a cancer mentor. I want to start something where when folks are diagnosed, we’ll have survivors’ e-mails and phone numbers so they can get in touch with someone who says, ‘Yes, I know what you’re going through. Here’s what could happen.’”
Mr. Ragsdale packed a great deal into his short life. He was an outdoorsman and a spiritual advisor to death row inmates. He was a music fan who loved left-of-the-mainstream singer-songwriters Lyle Lovett, Fred Eaglesmith and Thad Cockrell. On his self-penned Sony/ATV biography, he wrote, “I’ve played polo with the Atlanta Polo Club, trained with a SWAT team, caddied for Davis Love III, sang on the Grand Ole Opry, hugged Andy Griffith, worn a bite suite for police K-9 training, was baptized in the Mississippi river, kissed Wynonna Judd and helped Little Jimmy Dickens take down his Christmas lights.”
When Titley first visited Mr. Ragsdale in the hospital after the brain cancer diagnosis, he saw his young friend being pushed down a hall in a gurney. Titley tried to ask Mr. Ragsdale about his condition, but the patient first insisted on introducing Titley to the fellow pushing the gurney.
“He was always more concerned with the people around him than about himself,” Titley said.
In Nashville, Mr. Ragsdale will be recalled for both his songs and his spirit, and his public struggles with a dreaded disease may be inspiring and instructional to others.
“I’ve never considered cancer a cross to bear,” he said. “It’s a path to go down, and people will come down the path behind me. I want to smooth it, cut down limbs and widen it a little.”
