The “Big Dog Daddy” continues to inspire.
Though the world tragically lost Toby Keith back in February, the music and the legacy he left behind will live on forever. Toby loved being a country music star, but he arguably loved giving back even more. Keith launched his foundation (The Toby Keith Foundation) in 2006, and through that and many other charitable acts, he was always able to utilize his platform to help those that were less fortunate.
Another modern artist that seems to be following in the big footprints left behind by the Big Dog Daddy is rapper-turned-country artist Jelly Roll. He’s currently on his Beautifully Broken Tour, and had a stop at the WinStar World Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma on November 15th.
Jelly has made sure to make the most of his travels across the country, stopping at jails to play and perform with inmates, as well as putting on a free concerts for families that were affected by a school shooting. And while he was in Oklahoma, he decided to pay a visit to Toby Keith’s OK Kids Korral.
Around the same time that Toby started his foundation in 2006, he decided that he wanted to provide cost-free housing for kids with cancer families. So he and his foundation got to work with the OK Kids Korral, which opened in 2013. The foundation’s website describes the facility as the following:
“OK Kids Korral helps make life a little easier for children with cancer by providing a safe, convenient, and hopeful place for families to connect with each other and focus on the well-being of their child.”
The cost-free housing can host 16 families at once, and provides them all with private bedrooms and shared living and dining areas. Since it’s designed for pediatric cancer patients, it also boasts indoor and outdoor play areas, along with many other fun features to give children an escape from their cancer treatments.
As Jelly Roll toured the facility, he was blown away by all that it offered for families in need. The “Save Me” singer was moved by all that he saw, and described the inspiration he felt in a video he posted to Instagram:
“A big part of his heart was to give back. I’m hoping – especially in Toby’s absence – the country music community will do this every time one of us plays here. Go up, do what he did, be as big as he was. That’s the kind of legacy you really want to leave behind in life.”
Jelly Roll, like Toby Keith, is certainly someone who loves to give back and interact with fans. There’s a really special moment featured in the clip below that shows a little girl gifting a rainbow drawing to the country star, and like always, Jelly handled it with grace and made the young fan feel loved and heard.
In a message that he shared along with the post, Jelly Roll praised both the OK Kids Korral and the legacy that Toby Keith has left behind:
“I’m honored to get to stop by the Toby Keith Foundation’s OK Kids Korral and see their set up and some of the incredible work they’re doing. Seeing Toby’s legacy like this is nothing short of phenomenal.”
Touching stuff right there, and shoutout to Jelly Roll for expressing a desire for country artists to keep Toby Keith’s spirit and legacy alive through giving back.
If you were wanting to know more about the OK Kids Korral, I thought it might be nice to hear from the Big Dog Daddy himself. This video below is from the facility’s grand opening in 2013. In it, Keith talks about how the cost-free-housing came to be, and the close-to-home cancer story involving his close friend and former guitarist, Scott Webb, that inspired he and his foundation to build the OK Kids Korral:
“10 years ago when Scott and Linda lost their two-year-old, they came back from St. Judes in a last ditch effort to save their child’s life. They said they didn’t know what to take, they didn’t know how long they were going to be there. When they got back, they said they found out when they got there that they didn’t need anything.
They had this type of facility and St. Judes leads the way on that. So it was… we need one here in Oklahoma and it was kind of a calling by God for me. It was like, ‘I’ve got my foundation, I raise money, now what am I gonna do with it?’ So this place was built with that kind of love.”