“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.” —Samuel Adams (1778)
In a simple message from Jase Robertson, the son of Duck Dynasty’s patriarch Phil Robertson, he wrote: “My dad has gone to be with the Lord today! He will be missed but we know he is in good hands, and our family is good because God is very good! We will see him again!”
For those of us who grew up in the South (by the Grace of God), Phil and his family seemed like kinfolk or familiar neighbors.
Phil Alexander Robertson was born in Vivian, Louisiana, in 1946, the fifth of seven children. His parents, Merritt and James, suffered financial setbacks, and he grew up in very distressed circumstances by any standard — in a home with no electricity, toilet, or bathtub. His father was often gone, working the oil fields. His mother suffered from acute mental illness issues and was periodically removed from their house. They largely lived off the land, harvesting and canning produce from their gardens, and obtaining meat from some livestock, but mostly from deer, squirrels, and fish.
In his book Happy, Happy, Happy, words Phil often would utter, he wrote, “It was the 1950s when I was a young boy, but we lived like it was the 1850s … but we were always happy, happy, happy no matter the circumstances.” He added, “I never heard anyone say we were poor, not once. No one ever said man we are really up against it here. I wonder why somebody done bail us out.”
But in reality, there was not much “happy” about his early life.
Phil did get some formal schooling, overcoming almost insurmountable odds. He was a natural athlete, and in the 1960s excelled in high school sports, ranking all-state in football, baseball, and track. That, and the fact he was a smart guy, provided him the opportunity to attend Louisiana Tech in the late 1960s on a football scholarship. For his first two seasons he played first-string quarterback ahead of his friend and eventual Pro Football Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw. But football was not Phil’s first love. As Terry once noted: “Phil loved hunting more than he loved football. He’d come to practice directly from the woods, squirrel tails hanging out of his pockets, duck feathers on his clothes. Clearly he was a fine shot, so no one complained too much.”
In fact, Phil declined an invitation to play pro football for the Washington Redskins because it interfered with his hunting and fishing seasons. He said of Bradshaw’s NFL success: “Terry went for the bucks, and I chased after the ducks. And I think we’re both pretty happy.”
But the best thing that happened to Phil in college was marrying his high school sweetheart, “Miss Kay” Carroway, in 1966. She was “from town,” and her father owned a general store, which meant they were “filthy rich.” By Phil’s measure, they had everything, and he did not understand why she would pay him any attention — but she did. Phil noted with a smile, “There’s an old saying in the South that if you marry them when they’re about 15 or 16, they’ll pick your ducks; if you wait, then they get to be 20, they’ll pick your pocket.” Kay was pregnant with their first child before she graduated from high school.
Soon after Phil graduated from Tech, their marriage began to suffer, as a Christian Post article noted, due to Robertson’s “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.”
Phil spent a few years as a teacher before finding his stride fishing commercially and running a bar. But the bar led to his near ruin — not the bar itself, but those with whom he surrounded himself, and the alcohol culture that became a higher priority than his marriage and kids. Miss Kay recalled, “Phil, who had never drank before, started drinking and … it was scary to me.”
Phil said of those years: “I was on my way to being a bone to be chewed.”
But Kay did not give up on him. She was the first to become a follower of Jesus, which, after 10 years of marriage, likely contributed to Phil kicking her and three of their sons out of the house.
She continued to be vigilant in her prayers for him, and Phil eventually found his way to the faith that would bring them back together and bind them until death. “I would tell my boys all the time, ‘That’s not your daddy, that’s the devil in your daddy,’” Miss Kay said.
Phil recalled: “I owned a beer joint when some guy came in with a Bible, and he wanted to introduce me to Jesus. I ran him away. I said, ‘Get out of here.’”
What was his life like without his wife and kids? “That was the low point. You’re all alone and miserable. That’s when I began to seriously contemplate a way out of all this.”
In a conversation with Phil, Kay suggested he reconnect with the preacher who had walked into his bar a year earlier: “Why don’t you sit down with him and just see what he has to say?”
He did connect with that preacher, who explained the core Gospel message of dying in order to be reborn, leaving the old behind and starting anew. “I was blown away when I heard that Jesus died for me and was buried and raised from the dead,” Phil said. “It was something so simple but profound.” At the time, he said: “My life was spiraling out of control in a hurry. It’s literally what Jesus said, ‘from darkness to light.’”
He pledged to Kay and his whole family: “I’m gonna make Jesus the Lord of my life. I want to follow Him from this day forward. I’m turning from my sinful past, and I am fixing to make a valiant attempt to be good.”
And he was reborn.
He would become a devout believer and an elder at the White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ in West Monroe.
As a duck hunter, Phil thought most duck calls were insufficient, and he developed and patented his first duck call. In 1973, he scraped together $8,000 and founded the Duck Commander Company. Kay was very concerned about his transition from fishing to making duck calls, telling Phil, “We are gonna starve to death.” He assured her, “No, we’ll be alright.”
And they were alright. Today, Duck Commander is a very successful family company in Monroe, Louisiana, headed by his son, Willie. “I am giving the credit to God Almighty in heaven for the duck call sales,” he said.
It was almost 40 years later that the A&E network would create the very popular reality TV series “Duck Dynasty,” which ran from 2012 to 2017. The show featured the daily lives of Phil and Miss Kay, and their sons Willie, Jase, and Jep, and their wives and children. Phil used the A&E platform to promote his family motto: “Faith, family and ducks.” He declared: “We’ve gone public with our faith, and when you do that, you’re going to get attacked. We’re all sinners, the difference is when we mess up, we’re honest about it, we’re truthful, and we use that as a way to show people how to overcome adversity and trust in God.”
And attacked they were, but he would not let gold and silver silence his beliefs.
In December 2013, A&E announced Phil’s indefinite suspension from the network because when he was asked in a GQ interview what he thought was sinful, Phil responded: “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there.”
He paraphrased a passage from 1 Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers — they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.” He added that he does not judge: “We just love ‘em, give ’em the good news about Jesus — whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later, you see what I’m saying?” But Phil made clear, “I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me.”
Six months before his suspension, A&E requested that the #1 show in cable TV history eliminate its references to God and guns, but Phil said no: “God and guns are part of our everyday lives [and] to remove either of them from the show is unacceptable. If we can’t pray to God on the show, then we will not do the show.” And he stood his ground on behalf of his faith and their message to millions of viewers.
Because A&E spends a lot of money marketing to its gender-confusion cult constituents, Phil’s comments about sin were an invitation to boycott the network — because he would not back down from the truth.
The execs at A&E assumed the rest of the Robertson clan were more invested in their lucrative commercial contracts than the faith component of their show, and their viewers were more invested in the asinine antics of reality shows than the substance and worldview of the Duck Dynasty characters. They were wrong.
Days after Phil’s suspension, his family advised the network that they would not go on without their patriarch.
Consequently, in a rare and very rapid corporate reversal, A&E folded its hand, and Phil was back in a flash.
In fact, in remarks at a large church service after the suspension and A&E reversal, Phil piled on: “They were mad at me … because instead of acknowledging their sin like you had better do, they railed against me for giving them the truth about their sin. ‘Don’t deceive yourself’ — you want the verse? The news media didn’t even know it was a verse. They thought I was just mouthing off.” Nobody complained this time around.
And Duck Dynasty fans did not back down when other companies piled on Phil and his family.
After the A&E suspension, Sandra Cochran, CEO of the the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain, which was closely aligned with Duck Dynasty, announced with much fanfare that she was ordering merchandise connected to Phil Robertson removed from their gift shop shelves. Cochran declared: “We operate within the ideals of fairness, mutual respect and equal treatment of all people. These ideals are the core of our corporate culture.”
The execs at Cracker Barrel also assumed their customers were not invested in the substance and worldview of the Duck Dynasty characters. They were wrong.
As I wrote to Cochran in a public letter at the time: “Nothing Phil Robertson said offends your ‘corporate culture,’ unless you are offended by the foundational sacrament of marriage between man and woman as defined in the Old and New Testaments of Christian Scripture — and every other major world religion.”
The backlash against Cracker Barrel was immediate and the commercial implications grave.
In less than 48 hours, Cracker Barrel issued one of the most stunning corporate apologies on record. “When we made the decision to remove and evaluate certain Duck Dynasty items, we offended many of our loyal customers. Our intent was to avoid offending, but that’s just what we’ve done. You flat out told us we were wrong. We listened. Today, we are putting all our Duck Dynasty products back in our stores, and, we apologize for offending you.”
Having taken note of the blowback that came Cracker Barrel’s way, the nation’s largest retailer, Walmart, wisely kept its shelves loaded with Duck Dynasty products.
Keep in mind, the A&E and Cracker Barrel incidents were 12 years ago. Phil and his family were bold — they were way ahead of the recent rapid erosion of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion empire, and the decline of corporate and public support for the Rainbow Mafia’s so-called “pride” events.
Phil has consistently declared: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel. What about you?” You can hear more about the Robertson family’s faith in the Unashamed podcast.
(For the record, my favorite Duck Dynasty character was Phil’s Vietnam Vet brother, Uncle “Hey” Si (Silas Robertson), who, along with Miss Kay, was very instrumental in bringing Phil to faith. Si regularly dispensed with bayou wisdom, such as, “Hey, it ain’t gun control we need; it’s sin control.” Speaking in third person, Si said, “The fans always ask me, ‘Is Si that crazy in real life?’ and I said, ‘No, hey, he tones it down for television.’”)
In 2023, Willie and his wife, Korie, released a film about his dad titled, “The Blind.” It aptly depicts the tragic years of his youth and the raw struggles faced by Phil and Kay — particularly as a result of his alcohol abuse and infidelity — and how God saved their marriage and family. You can watch it on the Angel Studios platform, which I recommend for all of its family-friendly content. The trailer is here.
I watched the movie this week, and (spoiler alert) a key theme of the film is when Phil tells his former alcoholic partner in crime, Big Al: “It’s hard to talk about who I used to be. Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful. I mean to my bones, about how my life turned around. I didn’t do it. Only God can pull off a move like that because of Jesus.”
At the end of the film, there is a great epilogue with photos of the real characters. Moreover, there is a segment where Phil himself addresses the audience about his life and faith.
He says: “Y’all have just witnessed what happens when Satan controls a man. You’ve seen it in living color. It’s embarrassing and shocking. Y’all saw the initial me. ‘The acts of the sinful nature are obvious’ (Galatians 5:19). Ya’ll just saw the acts of the sinful nature. They’re obvious. Jesus beat death for us! Removed our sin, cleans us up, and guarantees he’ll raise you from the dead.”
Quoting 1 Corinthians 15, he continues: “‘I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received.’ I did [receive it], 50 years ago. I’m standing on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. You really can have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You can have those qualities for your own life. Come to Jesus through faith, believe he died for you, was buried and raised from the dead, he’s seated at the right hand of the Father right now. It’s a wonderful thing, and I highly recommend you just start walking by faith.”
He concludes, “My question is: You got a better story? I’d love to hear it. We could be wrong, but I doubt it.”
On Sunday, at age 79, Phil died peacefully after several years of illnesses and ultimately Alzheimer’s disease.
As Korie says: “We celebrate today that our father, husband, and grandfather, Phil Robertson, is now with the Lord. He reminded us often of the words of Paul, ‘you do not grieve like those who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. Thank you for the love and prayers of so many whose lives have been impacted by his life saved by grace, his bold faith, and by his desire to tell everyone who would listen the Good News of Jesus. We are grateful for his life on earth and will continue the legacy of love for God and love for others until we see him again.”
Phil is survived by his entire family, including Miss Kay and Uncle Si, both now 77.
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
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