Lynyrd Skynyrd

Alan Thompson Jun 16, 2023

My friend Charlie Craig and I were seniors at Meadowbrook High School in 1977. Charlie was born with muscular dystrophy and was bound to his wheelchair. We heard that Charlie’s favorite band, Lynyrd Skynyrd was coming to the Richmond Coliseum in Richmond, Virginia on their “Street Survivors” tour on 4-27-1977. The best I can remember it was me (Alan Thompson), Charlie Craig, Robbie Davis, Ronnie Heath and a few others. I told Charlie we will get him to the Richmond Coliseum to see Lynyrd Skynyrd, his favorite band and probably the most popular band in the country. I was 16 years old and didn’t have a car. I worked at Thursdays restaurant with Robbie Davis so we talked to one of the waitress about giving us a ride to the concert. The deal was if she drove us to the concert we would buy her ticket. I think tickets were around $8 or so back then. The concert was general admission and you could stand on the floor in front of the stage. We planned to get there super early so we could get Charlie right up to the stage. I think we got the an hour or so before people started to arrive. While others were smuggling various things into the concert, I smuggled in my Minolta SRT-101 35mm camera with a 50mm 1.8 lens loaded with Ektachrome 400 film. Here are some of the photos I took that night. As you can see in my photos we could touch the stage. After the start-up band finished and Skynyrd started to play, the crowd pushed us really tight to the stage and I could see that Charlie was getting scared so 4 of us “youths” (mentioned in the newspaper article) lifted Charlie up above our heads so he could see. The crowd went crazy. All of a sudden lead singer, Ronnie Van Zant came over to us and grabbed Charlie’s wheelchair and pulled him up onto the stage. I remember a Richmond cop was on his way over to us and someone grabbed the cops hat and threw it up on stage. If I remember correctly, when bass player Leon Wilkeson gave Charlie his hat, he put the cops hat on and wore it for the rest of the concert. Ronnie dedicated Free Bird to Charlie. The newspaper mentions that after the show Charlie went backstage to share “drinks and pizza” with the band. Charlie told me it was much more than “drinks and pizza” ! Charlie was with the band all night. One place they went was a bar on Broad Street called Much More. Like the newspaper article says; Ronnie didn’t bring Charlie up on stage for PR reasons, Ronnie says “ I did it from the heart.” Alan Thompson Richmond, Va