Lifelong Lee’s Summit resident Judy Mathews receives constant reminders of her brother, Randy Drake. Recently, it was from a bottle of whiskey signed by country superstar Alan Jackson.
Drake, like 2,976 of his fellow Americans, fell victim to the attacks at the World Trade Center, Pentagon and in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.
Drake, of Lee’s Summit, was not in the North or South towers during the attack, but rather working on a project nearby at 195 Broadway as part of his network integration job with Siemens. When Flight 11 struck the North Tower, Drake and others evacuated. In a catastrophic and fatal turn of events, Drake was struck by falling debris as he fled after Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. Drake lived for 11 days, dying on Sept. 22, 2001.
After his death, his family took solace in country star Alan Jackson’s song “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?”
“We heard it, and all of us were choked up about the song,” Judy said, noting her brother Greg wrote Alan Jackson a letter and told him what their family had experienced and what his song meant to them collectively. Not long after, Jackson wrote her parents back and sent them the original sheet music from the song. It read, in part:
“You know, I didn’t write that song. It was sent to me. It was a gift from God.”
“This was one in a path of many miracles along the way," Judy said. "Constant reminders of him. We were the lucky family, because we got Randy back. We got to see him and touch him and say goodbye to him.”
This past spring, Judy received a call from Macadoodles in Lee’s Summit that she had won a drawing for an Alan Jackson-signed bottle of his Silverbelly-brand whiskey. She was at the lake at the time, telling her parents she had signed up for the drawing when the text came in telling her she’d won. It was another sign. She shared the story with the owners of Macadoodles.
“More than often, a well deserving person is the raffle winner,” Macadoodles owner Jakob Nilsson said. “This is a prime example. People connected beyond explainable reason and odds. I love that the bottle landed with Judy and her family.”
Judy’s mom handed over the sheet music from Jackson’s song and asked her to take it back to Lee’s Summit with her. She will keep it with her signed bottle of Silverbelly. And for her brother, Randy, she bought another bottle.
“I am waiting until September 11 to open the second one, and I will toast my brother,” Judy said. “Everyone was experiencing that tragedy back then. Our nation. Other families. Young and old. We weren’t alone in our suffering, that’s for sure. This is just another little sign that he’s still out there, watching over us. It’s just that feeling. Someone has a hand in that and I can’t help but think that’s my brother Randy out there reminding us that he’s still out there.”