By Karen Middleton
ATHENS — Wally and Ginger Laxson of the East Limestone community have left their Christmas tree up year round for about 17 years.
Ginger collects angels and it’s the best way to display them. Besides, when she talks about taking down the tree her grandchildren object.
“This is my special place,” she said. “I come in here every morning with my cup of coffee and sit and read my Bible. It gets my day started.”
Such tranquil routines are a treat for someone who spent more than 40 years on the road traveling with her husband, Wally, as a gospel music duet. They also raised two sons in an Airstream camper trailer and in more motels and hotels than they can count across the U.S., Canada and the Mideast.
But their sons, Kip and Kylan, adjusted. They formed their own gospel and ventriloquism act.
Wally and Ginger Laxson came in off the road in 2003 when Ginger was injured.
“We’ve slowed down,” said Wally.
“We’ve slowed way down,” said Ginger.
The couple had been standing outside an auditorium where they were performing in Ohio when the accident happened.
“A little boy ran over her with his bicycle,” said Wally. “It broke her wrist and her ankle. She eventually had to have surgery on her wrist.”
Ginger said she couldn’t “hold out every night” to perform.
“I took an early retirement,” said Ginger. “I slowed down and began to work in a different way.”
Wally and Ginger are part of the music ministry at Spring Avenue Nazarene Church in Decatur.
“We can be gone anytime we want,” said Ginger. “It’s not like we’re regular staff members. If we want to be off, we can be off. We still like to be with our sons.”
The couple’s older son, Kip, is a district superintendent of the United Methodist Church, based in Tuscaloosa. Kip and his wife, Tammy, a schoolteacher, have two children, a daughter, Kaitlyn, a freshman at Birmingham Southern, and a son, Landon, a sophomore in high school.
Younger son, Kylan, is a software instructor who travels on his job.
Singing since 4
Ginger, of Cummings, Ga., has been singing since she was a child.
“I started singing when I was 4 years old in church and school functions,” said Ginger. “Back then, everything happened around church and school. At 10, I began singing at funerals and at 13 I began singing with a quartet. I sang all the way through high school and moved to Nashville right after graduation.
“In Nashville, I started singing with The Speer Family. At the same time, Wally had begun singing with The Tennesseans. The Speer Family was all family except for me. They had a daughter who left the act and I replaced her.”
It was while both Ginger and Wally were singing with separate gospel quartets that they met in Nashville during a performance on a local television show.
“The Speer Family sang on live TV every day at 6:30 a.m. for a 30-minute show, five days a week,” said Ginger. “At night we did concerts within the 200 miles of our coverage area. Wally was with the Tennesseans and they were with another live program. But his group was a guest on our program one morning. That was the first time we met.
He says I asked him out the first time.”
That was in 1959 and the couple was married in 1962. Occasionally, the two groups had worked together in concerts. The first time they performed as a duet was in Toronto.
“We decided that we would make a good team,” said Ginger.
The couple stayed in their separate groups for a year and a half after they were married, before they broke away as a separate gospel duet.
Traveled everywhere
During their traveling years, the couple performed in almost every state in the U.S., in Canada, the Holy Land, Barbados and the Bahamas.
“We sang on anything — the back of a truck, under canvas, just anything you could think of,” said Wally.
After the children were born, the couple bought an Airstream trailer and took the boys with them on the road.
“We had an arrangement with East Limestone School where they could come in and take their tests,” said Ginger. “We had a teacher who traveled with us for two years and taught them on the road.”
“We made sure they began school in the fall and stayed in for at least three weeks before we would leave,” said Wally.
“We stayed with the school curriculum week by week,” said Ginger. “In Kip’s last year of high school we had a great aunt who came in here and stayed and he was mascot for the football and basketball teams.”
Wally said when they had to stay in motels, they made them as home-like as possible.
“After we got rid of the trailer we lived in motels,” he said. “We would turn up the furniture to make tents. The maids would stay out of the rooms and leave them because they knew what we were doing most of the time.”
Signature songs
Both Wally and Ginger said they would be hard pressed to name a “signature song” from the numerous gospel albums they’ve recorded.
“I would say the songs we get the most requests for are “Going Home,” “There is a River,” and “Child of the King,” said Wally.
Kip and Kylan cut their own album in 1976, “Big Sounds for Little Ears.” They have some guest artists on the album and acts with Kip’s puppet, “Archie.”
