Randy Boone was the Fayetteville native who hitchhiked his way to Universal City, Calif., where he would find fame on The Virginian television series as a horse-riding ranch hand, singing and playing a guitar.
He was a cast member from 1964 until 1966, appearing as ranch hand Randy Benton for 46 episodes.
“In a way, I’m probably the last of the singing cowboys,” Boone said in 2011 before his induction as the eleventh member of the Fayetteville Performing Arts Hall of Fame at the Crown Theatre. “I guess I’ll just keep song-singing as long as I keep breathing.”
He never won an Emmy for his acting.
He never won a Grammy for his singing.
And despite his national acclaim, Randy Boone never forgot being born and raised in Fayetteville and growing up in the little, one-story brick house along Pine Valley Loop in the Haymount neighborhood.
“I was fortunate to have fun parents that were also born in Fayetteville,” he said in 2011, “and so I pretty much had a happy childhood.”
Younger sister Lynn Breeden describes life along Pine Valley Loop as “an All-American neighborhood,” where she remembers her brother and his boyhood pals playing in the sewer drains, street hockey games and riding their bicycles.
“He was artistic, a musician and he had the brain of a scientist and an amazing memory,” she said. “He experimented with electricity. He was a lifeguard. He graduated from Fayetteville High School in 1960. He was on the football team as a punter and a kicker.” Breeden still can see her brother kicking footballs over the backyard fence.
‘A wandering boy with a guitar’
Randy Boone was the second of three children born to Clyde Wilson Boone and Rhumel Everett Boone. An older brother, Breeden says, died in an accident. Clyde Wilson Boone owned a cotton salvage business and later a general store downtown before working a civil service job as manager of a Fort Bragg commissary. Rhumel Everett Boone was a nurse.
“She was the first operating room nurse at Cape Fear Valley Hospital,” Breeden said.
Sundays were for worship at Hay Street United Methodist Church.
Randy Boone, after high school, enrolled at N.C. State University, where he planned to major in mathematics.
“I went up to State College and it just turned. I started playing the guitar and hanging out in the college bars more than studying my lessons and attending classes,” he said in 2011. “I wasn’t particularly drawn into the singing cowboy type of songs. Actually, what really hooked me first, I remember, was Joan Baez and The Kingston Trio, and I started singing those kinds of songs. They were the ones that, you know, the college kids loved.”
Lynn Breeden remembers her brother breaking the news to their parents about not returning to N.C. State.
“He came home after his first year in college and told them he didn’t want to go back,” she said. “He was 19. He was just a wandering boy with a guitar. He taught himself to play the guitar. He became a fabulous musician. He could play any string instrument.”
Randy Boone’s hitchhiking thumb took him across the country to Universal City, Calif., near Hollywood in Los Angeles, where he was introduced to Peter Tewksbury, who, according to published reports, directed Father Knows Best from 1954 to 1960, one season of My Three Sons and It’s a Man’s World from 1962-1963.
“The part was for Vern Hodges, and I got that job,” Boone said in 2011. “I got under contract to Universal, and then after It’s a Man’s World, I went into The Virginian series.”
‘It was very exciting’
The Virginian aired nine seasons from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. every Wednesday. Lynn Breeden recalls being in the living room along Pine Valley Loop with her parents watching the show.
“It was very exciting,” she said. “Exciting for the whole family. He didn’t know how to ride a horse, bought his horse named Clyde and learned to ride. We did go out there a couple months and we did all the Hollywood things. I met some cast of The Virginian. It was exciting to be at Universal Studios and see how it was done.”
Cast members included James Drury as the Virginian, veteran actor Lee J. Cobb, Doug McClure, Clu Gulager, Gary Clarke, Roberta Shore, and Boone as the ranch hand with the shy and boyish grin.
Breeden says her older brother-turned-television-actor often returned home to visit with his family.
“When he came home, it was very exciting,” she said. “When he came home, he would rent a convertible. I was teaching at Reid Ross High School, and he gave the school a concert one time.”
Randy Boone’s acting career, according to published reports, included guest roles on The Alfred Hitchcock House, Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, Combat!, Bonanza, Cimarron Strip, Emergency!, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Kung Fu, Gunsmoke and Highway to Heaven. He had parts in four motion pictures, including Country Boy in 1966.
‘Ah-shucks, this is really great’
He eventually found his way back to Cumberland County, residing quietly with wife, Lana, along River Road in East Fayetteville, when Boone in 2011 was enshrined in the Fayetteville Performing Arts Hall of Fame at the Crown Theatre.
“To get this award and to be put in the hall of fame is, I mean, aw-shucks, this is really great,” he said.
Boone later posted on his Facebook page about the ceremony.
“The awards show was wonderful,” he wrote. “They picked us up in a big white limo and treated us so special. The audience seemed to enjoy my video and acceptance speech. I rec’d a very special plaque and a nice write up in the paper. The main act for the show was Bill Engvall and he kept us all in stitches. My wife, Lana, and I feel so special for me to be honored in my hometown.”
Epilogue
Clyde Randy Boone was living in Massachusetts when he died Aug. 28.
He was 83.
“He was a sweet guy,” Lynn Breeden said Wednesday about her older brother. “He had a quiet nature. He really did enjoy entertaining on the big stage or back home in the living room. He loved teaching everybody the guitar. He was my only sibling. We reminisced and talked on the phone. It was never a short conversation. It was, ‘Remember when we did this and remember when we did that.’ He always wanted to know about my children and my grandchildren.”
She says they last spoke about two weeks before he died.
“He was cheerful,” she said. “We maintained a close, loving brother-sister relationship.”
Randy Boone followed in the Hollywood footsteps of cowboy crooners to include Tex Ritter, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.
“In a way, I’m probably the last of the singing cowboys,” he once humbly said of his television and film career.
But Fayetteville always was home.
“He wished to be buried with family here,” Lynn Breeden said, “and this little sister is surely going to miss her big brother.”
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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