Frequent KERA commentator Tom Dodge has written a moving tribute to the late Dallas guitarist Ronnie Dawson for the Texas Observer. Dawson, suffering from cancer, befriended Dodge’s son, Lindon, who had been paralyzed by a spinal cord injury; they worked together on building a telescope.

After Ronnie died, Lindon asked me to come over to his house and look at Mars through the telescope. That was good, but I wanted to do it the other way around. I wanted to look at Earth from one of the planets in the neighborhood of the star Vega, 30 light-years away. From that point of view, Lindon has not yet had his paralyzing collision with the rocky crag in the Waxahachie Lake spillway. Ronnie’s cancer is still but a vague impulse buried deep in his DNA. He is making some of the greatest music of his life with the Steel Rail Band and with Mike O’Daniel. We are all young stars, and think we will never burn out.

Image from rockabillyhall.com