On the night of October 8, 2022, Scotty McCreery walked onto a stage in Memphis, Tennessee, and accepted the Randy Owen Angels Among Us Award from the Alabama frontman himself. His wife, Gabi, was expecting their first child in early November. Their son, Avery, arrived on October 24, just sixteen days later.
For Scotty, the timing turned an honor into something closer to home. The award recognizes service to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases are treated and families never receive a bill for treatment, travel, housing or food.
The ride to the hospital he never forgot
In interviews that weekend, Scotty went back to the very first time he visited the St. Jude campus. He remembered being nervous on the drive over. By then he had already been to a few children’s hospitals, and he expected the same heavy feeling he had carried out of those visits.
That is not what he found. Inside, he said, the children and their parents were smiling, even while going through things he could hardly imagine. He remembered asking himself how that was possible.
Over the years that followed, he came to understand the answer: how much the staff cared for each family, and how the hospital shares its research freely instead of profiting from it. That first visit, he said, was when he decided St. Jude was a place he wanted to stand behind for a long time.
Eight years of showing up
Scotty’s work with St. Jude reached back to 2014. That January, he was among the artists who appeared at the 25th Country Cares seminar in Memphis, the same gathering where he would be honored eight years later.
From there, he and Gabi became regular faces. They visited the Memphis campus, lent their names to several St. Jude campaigns and encouraged his fans to give. When the couple appeared on Celebrity Family Feud, they donated their $25,000 in winnings to the hospital.
He has described his approach to St. Jude requests in plain terms:
“Once I hear St. Jude, it’s not a question.”
An award with Randy Owen’s name on it
The award carries weight because of the man who stands behind it. Country Cares for St. Jude Kids began in 1989, after Randy Owen met St. Jude founder Danny Thomas and asked his friends in country music to help. The program grew into one of the most successful radio fundraising efforts in the nation, and in 2021 alone the country music industry helped raise nearly $50 million for the hospital.
The Angels Among Us Award takes its name from Alabama’s 1993 song from the album Cheap Seats, and it goes to one country artist each year. Before Scotty, it had been given to Randy Owen himself, Florida Georgia Line, Lady A, Jake Owen, Brad Paisley and Darius Rucker, along with industry leaders Lon Helton and Bill Mayne.
What he said on that stage
Scotty opened his acceptance speech by calling it an award that stood apart from any other he could win. He credited his parents with teaching him, long before his music career began, to try to make a positive difference in people’s lives. To do that, he said, you have to line up with people and organizations doing the same, and St. Jude sat at the top of his list.
He thanked Randy Owen for bringing the country music family together around the hospital, and he thanked St. Jude for helping children and families in Memphis, across the country and around the world.
In a statement released by St. Jude, he added that receiving the award from Randy Owen in person was “a moment I’ll treasure always.”
A father-to-be, five weeks out
Talking with reporters, Scotty admitted that impending fatherhood had already changed what he noticed. He found himself watching the strollers parents pushed through Walmart and the way they handled babies on airplanes.
With his own child about five weeks away by his count, he said being a dad would only make him more passionate about helping families facing what St. Jude families face. He said he could not imagine going through it.
Three voices and one Alabama song
After the award, Scotty took his place in front of the crowd between Randy Owen and Craig Morgan. The three traded songs, and for their final number they came together on “Angels Among Us,” the Alabama song the award is named for. It was released in 1993, the same year Scotty was born.
Two days later, in a Facebook post, Scotty wrote that receiving the award from Randy Owen was an honor he would never forget, and that performing with Owen and Morgan made it quite a night. He also had another Alabama date ahead of him: he was set to open for the band in Virginia that December.
Sixteen days later
On October 24, 2022, Scotty and Gabi McCreery welcomed their son, Avery. In the months that followed, Scotty spoke about how becoming a father had made his commitment to St. Jude even more personal.
The night in Memphis had been about the children he had met over eight years of visits. Before the month was out, he was holding one of his own.
Do you remember where you were the first time you heard “Angels Among Us”? Share your memory in the comments.