Jimmy Wayne's Journey Brings Out the Best in People

Posted by Jessica Gertler on 01/12/2010
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Country singer Jimmy Wayne continues his trek across the United States, and as of Monday, he had made it through Jackson, Tenn. He also held his first live Webcast from the road on Monday, updating his followers on the experience so far.
Wayne left Nashville New Year’s Day to begin his Meet Me Halfway walk to Phoenix to raise awareness for homeless teens. He admitted the journey has been lonely at times, but he has expereinced a great outpouring of support since the beginning. People have left food along the road with his name on it, and the Hawk family even offered him a place to sleep Sunday night.
“There’s been so many people come out and offer me coffee,” Wayne told GAC Monday morning in a webcast interview from the outskirts of Jackson, Tenn. People “just pull their car up on the side of the road and give me a place to charge my cell phone and, you know, even these goofy goggles here… Snow was gettin’ in my eyes, and I was thinkin’, ‘I need some goggles.’ And about a mile down the road during a stop, [a man] gave me these goggles. There’s so much good out there in this world. I know that sometimes we tend to say, ‘You know, it’s a cruel world’ or ‘the world sucks’ or something. But really it doesn’t. I think when you get out and you really try to promote goodness, it attracts [good people]. You guys have proven that.”
Wayne chose the winter to travel  because he was homeless at age 14 in North Carolina and wanted to give people a sense of what it is like to live outdoors in the cold. Radio stations follow him on a daily basic, and he has gained more Twitter followers since beginning his journey.
“What if we generated so much awareness that we got 500,000 people to get involved in this campaign?” he said. “What a difference 500,000 people would make if 500,000 people donated one dollar to HomeBase [a Phoenix agency for troubled teens]. That would make a substantial amount of difference in that organization or [in Nashville’s] Monroe Harding.”
Wayne wears a reflector patch on his ski cap to make sure he is visible to cars and has three supply packs strapped to his back. He uses ski poles to help him walk and said his hands were freezing.

Wayne is on his way to Memphis, Tenn., and he “can’t wait to get there, ‘cause I know there’s a good rib place there to eat. I’m gonna definitely check that out!”