[charlene]

Brad Wheeler from The Globe and Mail contacted me about writing an obit after i tweeted a reply to his about JB .. (he also contacted me when Gordon died and a few times in the last several years but I don’t remember why..lol)

This is it: (he did a bit of editing on my long long one..lol)
Will be in the paper this week..

I have newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, t-shirts - fan club stuff/copies of The Coconut Telegraph…concert at gardens in 1978 was $7.00 ..lol

The first time I saw Jimmy Buffet was in 1978 at Maple Leaf Gardens. A concert of his was always a party and no one seemed to have a better time than Jimmy himself.
The last time I saw him in concert was at the amphitheatre in Toronto, in 1996. He had come in a day early, flying his own little seaplane and taking video of the skyline and the city that was broadcast on the big screens during the show.
He made every city feel they were the most important place to be the night he was there. At one point he and a bandmember walked up the hill to about six metres from the lawn seats where I was sitting and got on a small wooden stage. We lawn people loved it, as they played a few tunes just for us.
The last time I saw him in person was the only time I ever met him. It was at a Gordon Lightfoot concert at Massey Hall in Nov. 17, 2012. It was Gordon’s 74th birthday. The audience sang Happy Birthday to him.
After intermission, Gordon announced that Jimmy Buffett was in the audience, and he was also quite chuffed to tell us that Jimmy was ‘’one of us.’' His grandfather, James Delaney Buffett, was a sailor who had Newfoundland and Cape Breton roots. He was the inspiration behind Son of a Son of a Sailor and The Captain and The Kid.
“Canada holds a special place in my heart,” Buffett said in a 2004 interview. Over the years he often visited Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to fish and visit family.
At Massey Hall, I was sitting in the front row a few seats from the centre aisle and when the concert was over, Jimmy walked by. I put out my hand and said, “Hello, Mr. Buffett.” When he stopped and said hello back, I told him I was a long-time fan and Parrothead going back to the early 1970s, and that I was a Parrothead before I was a Lighthead.
He leaned back and asked, “What’s a Lighthead?”
I told him that is what long time Lightfoot fans called themselves, like the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads. He gave me a big smile and with that southern drawl and twinkling blue eyes declared, “Well, then, I’m a Lighthead too.”
He loved, respected and admired Lightfoot, who also loved to sail. In his tune Rue De La Guitare, he namechecks Lightfoot and his Martin D-18 acoustic guitar: “A toast to those who love to hear a D-18 played Lightfoot clear.”
The respect ran deep.
We well know that their lives were dedicated to their craft of making music and being onstage for their fans year after year. Their songs and memories are forever in our DNA as we will always be thankful that we were on this earth at the same time as Gordon and Jimmy.
Charlene Westbrook, Whitby, Ont.