I enjoyed watching the movie Ray on the big screen, but I never imagined that, eight years later, I would be tracking down historic markers in Ray Charles’ childhood hometown.

I still remember how I felt as I watched that movie. I went into it with low expectations, and I was caught off guard by how much I enjoyed it. For those two and a half hours, I couldn’t untangle my emotions from the beautiful music, the compelling story, and the outstanding performances. (And I was very happy with the Academy’s decision to give Jamie Foxx an Oscar for his portrayal of the blind musician.)

My favorite Ray Charles song is “Georgia on My Mind.” And just a few miles from Georgia (in Greenville, Florida) is a lovely park with a statue of Ray Charles.

We had passed through the county on a couple of road trips, and I had picked up a flier for one of the bigger towns, Madison. When I researched it online, I found out that there were two Ray Charles sites nearby: a statue and his childhood home. One day, we actually had the time to stop there. And since I remembered how enjoyable it had been to watch Ray, I couldn’t resist the urge to track down the Ray Charles sites.

First, we looked for the memorial in Haffye Hays Park. The beautiful park stood out among the deserted streets around it. When I walked up to Ray Charles’ statue, it looked so full of life–as if it captured a real moment in time, when he was joyfully singing to one of his tunes.

Then we stopped by Ray Charles’ childhood home. Shortly after he was born in Albany, Georgia, he moved with his family to this house, where he lived until he was five years old. (Around that age, he began to have vision problems, and he was blind by the age of seven.) The house had no electricity or plumbing, and if you look closely, you can see a hand pump for getting water behind the house.

This is technically a reconstruction of the original house, which had deteriorated and was scheduled for demolition before the Town of Greenville bought it in 2006. I found it interesting that Greenville bought it and restored it after the movie Ray came out. It’s intriguing to observe how movies generate the public’s renewed interest in historical figures.

It seemed odd to find a historical site in the middle of a half-abandoned and deteriorating neighborhood. I got out long enough to take a couple of pictures, but I quickly got back into the car, because I didn’t feel secure in that neighborhood.

It’s interesting: websites can’t seem to agree on the details of Ray Charles’ life. One fact that seems consistent is that he had twelve kids by ten different women. The details about his relationships with those children is unclear, however. According to Wikipedia, “Charles gave 10 of his 12 children each a check for $1 million (USD) in December 2002 at a family luncheon, while the other two could not make it.” The Hollywood Reporter, on the other hand, states, “As for Charles’ children, before he died, the singer gathered most of them (two were in jail) and told them that they each would be given an irrevocable trust for $500,000 — and that’s all they’d get.”

One of his daughters, Sheila Raye Charles, was addicted to crack for many years, lost custody of all five of her kids, and ended up in prison. While she was incarcerated, she had a conversion experience, which she describes in an interview for cbn.com, “Every minute of the day, from the time I woke up til the time I fell to sleep exhausted, I was reading the Bible and praying.” She gradually forgave herself and her father, whom she hadn’t met until she was fourteen, and she reconciled with her oldest daughter, Jeanna. A singer herself, she and her husband now travel around the country with One Way Up Prison Ministry. In 2007, another sculpture of Ray Charles was dedicated in the city of his birth, Albany, Georgia. According to Wikipedia, Sheila Raye Charles was the only one of his twelve children to attend.

On her blog, Sheila Raye Charles mentions that her father’s birthday was three days ago, on September 23. That same day, the USPS memorialized Ray Charles on a Forever stamp. He would have been eighty-three years old. I have no doubt that, if he’d lived past the age of seventy-three, he would have continued to expand his treasury of beautiful music.

Maybe it’s time to watch the movie Ray again. I wonder if it will mean more now that I’ve researched Ray Charles’ life, seen his bronze statue, and driven through the neighborhood where he lived before he lost his sight.