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It didn't have any personal significance to me other than the fact that it really touched me. Until I recorded it and heard it on the radio, I started to get e-mails, cards and letters and phone calls from people. Then it started to do something to me personally. The song was written by Tim Johnson. He watched the relationship between his wife's grandparents and wrote the song off of that and the unconditional love affair he saw, which is a real beautiful story. When it's 'for better or for worse' and worse rolls around, it's pretty beautiful to see what someone who loves you will do for you. I think that's really where he wrote the song from, and I just tried to give the song the dignity and emotion that it needed to live, and basically stay out of its way. I'm very proud of the song, and I definitely think it would be a great song for anybody that's a caregiver.
We love "She Misses Him," but why was the video changed from using the Reagans? It meant a lot when they were on the video because they are people we can relate to and know it's a true story for them.
I think that Ronald Reagan became one of the faces for Alzheimer's because he obviously is one of the most famous patients that was willing to be heroic enough to come forward and tell what he had. Of course when we first heard it, that was what we thought of. We contacted the Reagans and we got a green light from them to explore shooting a video using footage from them. We shot the video using footage that we'd acquired from the Smithsonian and the Ronald Reagan Library. We finished the video and submitted it to CMT at the same time we submitted it to the Reagan family. Six days after it had started to air, the Reagans' chief of staff sent a letter to Atlantic Records and to me. It was very nice. It said, 'the President and Mrs. Reagan are very honored by your tribute and they are enjoying listening to the song very much; however at this time, realizing that this footage, for the video is public domain footage, they respectfully request that you change the video without their likeness. So, what this really boils down to is that when it's public domain footage somebody could take that footage off of the video that we have and throw it on a Web site and it would be legal. They really didn't want that, nor would we. We did the video in the first place out of honor and respect for them, and in honor and respect for them, we pulled the video and re-shot it using a couple in Nashville instead. I really think that makes it more poignant. I didn't think it would at first, but after I saw the video finished the second time, I realized that it was much more relatable to people because you can picture anybody in your family there instead of it just being the Reagans.
I found it very interesting.