In July 2016, Craig Morgan stood on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry with his 19-year-old son, Jerry, beside him. Those pictures became the last ones the two of them would ever take together. Within days, Jerry was gone, and it would take Craig nearly three years to find the words that brought him back to that same stage.
A Boy Who Came Home at Nine Months Old
Jerry did not arrive in the family the usual way. Craig and his wife, Karen, brought him into their home as a 9-month-old foster baby. His adoption became official when he was two and a half. He grew up as Jerry Greer, because the singer the world knows as Craig Morgan was born Craig Morgan Greer.
Jerry grew into a star athlete. His favorite number was 13. He wore a Saint Michael medallion every day. By the summer of 2016 he was getting ready to leave for Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, where he planned to play football that fall.
One Last Weekend Together
That July, Jerry came home from football camp for a weekend. He surprised his mother at six o’clock one morning. Later he rode with his father on the hour-long drive to the Opry.
Jerry stood with his dad on the Opry stage that night. After his set, Craig had another show to get to, so he said goodbye to his son and headed back out on the road. Years later, he described that night in a single sentence.
The last pictures I have of us together is on that stage.
Sunday on Kentucky Lake
By Sunday, July 10, 2016, Craig was home again, sitting by the pool with Karen. Jerry was out on Kentucky Lake in Humphreys County, Tennessee, tubing with friends behind a boat near Waverly. Craig texted to ask when he would be home. Jerry wrote back that they would be done soon.
Later that afternoon, the phone rang. It was law enforcement. Jerry had gone into the water and had not come back up. He had been wearing a life jacket. Wildlife officers later said he had likely collided with another rider when the tube flipped.
Bringing Jerry Home
During the search, Craig stayed away from the shore, knowing his face would only draw a crowd. Searchers, with family members helping, worked through the night and into the next day.
Jerry was found around nine o’clock the following evening. To keep the cameras away, authorities sent an ambulance to another part of the lake as a decoy. Craig went to the real spot himself and helped bring his son out of the water. Karen later explained why finding Jerry mattered so much, especially for their three other children, Alex, Kyle and Wyatt.
I didn’t want to get a call six months later.
Grief, Faith and a Carving Knife
At the time of the accident, the family was preparing to enter the Catholic Church, and Jerry was taking instruction alongside them. Craig finished that journey without his son. He was received into the Church at the Easter Vigil in 2017.
He also found something to do with his hands. Craig took up wood carving to get through the hardest days, and the family later opened the Gallery at Morgan Farms in downtown Dickson, Tennessee, selling hand-carved pieces.
3:30 in the Morning
Early in 2019, about two and a half years after Jerry died, Craig woke up at 3:30 in the morning with a song title already in his head. He took his guitar into the living room and wrote as the lines came to him. By dawn, roughly four hours later, the song was finished. He called it “The Father, My Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
The song walks through his grief in about three and a half minutes, from the nights he cried until he passed out to the hope of seeing his son again. Craig never took credit for where it came from.
God used me to write that song.
He had no plans to release it.
Back on the Opry Stage
In the summer of 2019, Craig sang the song on the Grand Ole Opry, the same stage where those last photos were taken. The crowd stood. When he walked off, he was so drained that he told Ricky Skaggs he did not know if he could ever sing it again. Skaggs told him he would have to sing it for the rest of his life.
Craig had no record deal at the time and had not released new music in about three years. He sent the song to his closest friend in the business, Blake Shelton. Blake told his roughly 21 million Twitter followers to download it and said he would gladly give up his own spot on country radio to get it played. The song climbed to No. 1 on the iTunes country chart and the all-genre chart, with no label behind it.
That September, Craig signed with Broken Bow Records. The song became his first top 30 radio hit since 2013 and led to the 2020 album God, Family, Country. In 2022, he used the same title for his memoir, where he wrote about the day at the lake.
What Remains
Jerry is buried on the family’s land in Tennessee, beside the family chapel. The number 13 is set into the chapel’s roof overhang. Craig still tends the oak trees he and Jerry planted together. The friends who were on the boat that day still come to visit.
Craig has said the bad days will keep coming for the rest of his life. He has also said the real success of the song is not the chart. It is the parents who have lost children and write to tell him it gave their faith back to them.