Jamie O'Hara

1950 - 2021

(News story) Jamie O'Hara, a Grammy-winning songwriter and a chart-making country music recording artist who years earlier turned heads in northwest Ohio with his athletic feats, died Jan. 7 in Alive Hospice, Nashville. He was 70.

He had cancer, his wife, Lola White O'Hara, said.

Mr. O'Hara was inducted last year into the Ottawa Hills High School Athletic Hall of Fame. A 1968 graduate, he'd been a standout in baseball and basketball and led the football team to three consecutive conference titles.

"Jamie was a unique combination of an exceptional athlete, very humble, the nicest person, friends with everybody," said Robert Shopneck of Denver, a friend since childhood. "Yet he was this incredibly fierce competitor. He was a person of great character. That stood out."

Mr. O'Hara played football for Indiana University. An injury his sophomore year ended his playing career.

He'd first made headlines as a 5-year-old swimming sensation.

At his death, music trade publications noted his achievements in another arena.

Billboard, in its report, said that Mr. O'Hara as a songwriter had 31 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. They included 10 top 10 songs and three No. 1s. Most notable was the Judds' recording of his song, "Grandpa (Tell Me 'Bout The Good Old Days)," which won Mr. O'Hara the Grammy in 1986 for best country song. Other No. 1s included, in 1987, "Can't Stop My Heart From Loving You," which he recorded with Kieran Kane as a member of their duo, the O'Kanes, and in 2003, Gary Allan's "Man To Man."

Close vocal harmony was an O'Kanes' hallmark and, the publication said, the duo had six top 10 Billboard country songs. Their vocals on "Can't Stop My Heart From Loving You" prompted a Grammy nomination for best country performance by a duo or group. According to Billboard, the O'Kanes received credit for helping spearhead the alt-country/?Americana movement in the 1980s and early 1990s.

"I can't really call it country music and don't try to define what I write," Mr. O'Hara told The Blade's Hank Harvey in 1987 ahead of an O'Kanes performance at the University of Toledo's Centennial Hall. "That's for the public to do. If it hits my soul button, then that's what I like."

The late Mr. Harvey - himself a musician who'd been a radio disc jockey in the South - wrote: "Instrumentally and vocally, the O'Kanes are in the bluegrass stable, but it is a delicate and measured music that allows the vocals to soar...Their songs say a lot, but do it subtly...Some of the duets bring back memories of the Louvin Brothers, a gospel/?country duo who came out of West Tennessee in the early 50s to become regulars on the Grand Ole Opry."

The duo split in 1990. Mr. O'Hara continued to write - his songs were recorded by Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynette, Randy Travis, among others - and he recorded as a solo artist.

"When the O'Kanes broke up, I kind of went into a hermit mode here in Nashville and began writing...As I began looking at the body of material that I was writing, I felt like an album was taking shape," Mr. O'Hara told The Blade in 1994 about his debut solo recording, released that year. A song on that album, "50,000 Names," about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, later became a hit for George Jones.

"His athletic training and discipline very much influenced his approach to his musical career," his wife said by email. "He worked hard, every day, just as he continued to work out physically every day, even when he was in great pain from the knee injury that ended his athletic career, and the severe back pain due to spinal stenosis that he suffered in recent years, and right up to his death."

She added, "...he was very meticulous about always doing his BEST work."

James Paul O'Hara, Jr., was born Aug. 18, 1950, to Lindy and James O'Hara, who became founder and president of Louisville Title Insurance Co.

Training and competition began early. "Jamie O'Hara, At 5, Already Winning Prizes As Swimmer," said a 1956 Blade headline. At age 6, he set a national record in the freestyle. A decade later, a Blade headline about his football talent, said "Hill's O'Hara Is Golden Boy." The Blade's Bill Fox noted that, as a junior, the halfback wanted to be known as "Jim."

"His teammates call him 'Gold,' perhaps because on the football field he's as good as the precious metal," Mr. Fox wrote.

After his knee injury at Indiana, he came home to recuperate. His parents gave him a guitar for his 21st birthday. Three months later, his father died.

"It was an extremely emotional time. But all that emotion went right into the guitar and started coming out," Mr. O'Hara told The Blade in 1994. He moved to Nashville in the mid-1970s.

He was formerly married to Meredith Roemer Delone.

Surviving are his wife, Lola White O'Hara, his life partner since 1979, whom he married Feb. 14, 2019; stepsons Brian Claflin and David Halberg, and sisters Lyndell O'Hara and Patricia "Micki" O'Hara.

A memorial service will be held "when it is safer to hold such gatherings," his wife said.

This is a news story by Mark Zaborney. Contact him at mzaborney@theblade.com">mzaborney@theblade.com">mzaborney@theblade.com">mzaborney@theblade.com.