I have interviewed a lot of people over the years—singers, cowboys, comedians, cooks, and small-town heroes of every shape and size. But I have never sat down with someone and secretly thought, “That’s who I want to be when I grow up.”
Until Sean Dietrich.
You may know him as Sean of the South—the man who spins long, winding sentences into stories that somehow land right in the middle of your heart. He writes about front porches and funeral homes, church ladies and baseball, dogs and grief and God and the quiet decency of ordinary people. He can make you laugh and cry in the same paragraph (which ought to be listed somewhere as a superpower).
I first met Sean in person in Lufkin, visiting with him backstage. I told him how I follow his work. How I hurt for him knowing how as a young boy he lost his father to suicide. How I read along daily as he and his wife Jamie walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain. How on the day he wrote the short piece about leaving his father’s hat at the cross, I sat at my desk and sobbed like a baby.
Part of it was the power of those few words. Part of it was knowing people all over the country were praying them through that journey. And part of it was simple gratitude that someone out there is still telling stories that remind us to let go, to hang on, and to look up.
In January, Sean and Jamie are coming to Huntsville to spend an evening with us at the Old Town Theatre. Before that happens, I wanted Postcards readers to get to “meet” him the way I did—not as a celebrity, but as a real southern gentleman who is honest about brokenness, generous with grace, and very sure about who the real Author is.
In the newspaper world, they call it “the daily miracle.” That’s pretty much what it is for me. You sit down and say, “All right, God. Is there anything for me to write? What do I need to say? What happened to me?”
I think writing more often takes some of the pressure off. It is harder to write less frequently, because the pressure builds and builds. I can get it wrong for days in a row, and it’s okay. When you do it every day, there’s less pressure to get it perfect, and more room to just show up and explore.
Oh, yeah. I’ve got a picture of that hat at the cross sitting on my mantle right now. We printed it and framed it. Leaving it there was powerful. Everybody out there is carrying something, and that spot on the trail becomes a tide of people saying, “Let’s let it go.”
I worked to get to that place. My legs were taped up. I kept walking away from the cross and then turning around thinking, “Maybe I should keep the hat. Nobody cares if I leave it or not.” But that little voice kept saying, “You need to let it go. Keep walking.”
After I left it, pilgrims I had never met kept sending me photos of that hat. For days and weeks. Then, months later, somebody emailed and said it was gone. So, maybe now it’s on someone else’s head, at the beginning of their journey. Maybe it’s doing some good instead of just holding pain.
I left school about the middle of seventh grade, tried to go back a little in eighth, and then that was it. One minute I was in school, the next minute I wasn’t.
But in sixth grade, I had a teacher who did something nobody had done before—she treated my writing like it mattered. Not as a cute hobby for kids, but as something important, something worth our time. She put my work on the wall. She told me to stop doing other things so I could write.
Most writers I meet have a voice on their shoulder saying, “This doesn’t matter. This isn’t your job. This doesn’t take care of your family.” That voice wears them down. My teacher gave me a different voice. She let me know what I was doing had value, that I should spend time on it. A teacher who can change the way you think can change your whole life.
Music is my earliest memory, really. My mother says the neighbor lady used to watch me through the window when I was raking leaves. She couldn’t hear me, but she could see my mouth moving because I was always singing.
They took me to talk to the music minister at church, and I started singing there around age seven. It was a small church, so once they realized I’d do it, I was up there all the time.
My dad bought a piano out of the classifieds for my ninth birthday. I wanted lessons. He said, “No. I already spent everything we had on this piano. If you want to learn how to play, you’ll learn how to play.” So, I watched the church pianist, went home, tried to copy what she did, and over time it clicked. Piano is still my main instrument, but I play guitar, fiddle, banjo, accordion, flute, mandolin… I try to put them down before people realize I don’t know what I’m doing. I just love having a place to put all that. When you have interests and no outlet, they wither. I’m grateful I get to use them.
Like a snowball you didn’t see coming. After I went back to school and finished, I tried to get into a big university to study music and writing, but it fell through at the last minute. We’d already rented an apartment near campus, stocked it with furniture, and then the school said, “We can’t let you in. Your transcripts won’t work.” I went home with my tail between my legs and started painting.
That led to selling paintings, and then I started writing little pieces to go with the paintings. People paid more attention to the writing than the art. So, I started a blog. Folks said they looked forward to reading every day, which was a shock to me.
One Christmas, I printed 150 books and gave them away. People figured out how to pay my wife on PayPal, and we used every bit of that money to print more copies and give those away. After a few years of that, a library in Dothan, Alabama, asked if I would come speak. I told them, “I’m not a speaker.” They said, “Come anyway.” So, I went.
I stood there and said, “What do you want me to do?” They said, “Tell us a story.” Then, “Read us something.” Then, “Play us a song. We didn’t know you did music.” We never advertised after that. We never announced, “This is a thing now.” But people kept calling and asking us to come. That was about ten years ago, and we’ve been doing it full-time ever since.
I love to make people laugh. I love to make them feel good. That’s my goal, whether you’re reading something I wrote or sitting in the theater. This world is tough. It’s hard to find joy. If I can help nudge somebody toward a little bit of happiness for one evening, then I feel pretty good myself.
My favorite part is hearing the laughter and then hugging necks after the show. Jamie and I stay and hug everybody. I love hearing their stories. That’s important to me.
If you read a really good book and it blesses you up one side and down the other, it would be silly to go to the author and say, “Can I hold your pen? This pen has changed my life.”
The pen didn’t do it.
I’m just the pen. Pixels on a screen. Full of ink. The Author is the one doing the real work. I’m humbled to be part of it, but I know who’s really writing.
I wouldn’t hate being compared to Mr. Rogers. I love him. When people talk about Mr. Rogers, they don’t really talk about him—they talk about the people he loved on his show. The kids he cared for. The time he put his feet in the pool with a black police officer to cross a barrier. They talk about the helpers. He removed himself from the center of the story, and that left a big space for people to look up.
If anyone remembers my name, I hope they remember the people I pointed to. Other than that, they don’t have to remember my name at all.
For more information, visit www.seandietrich.com
On Friday, January 30th at Old Town Theatre in downtown Huntsville, Sean will walk out onto stage. There will be multiple instruments. There will be music. There will be stories. There will be laughter that turns into a lump in your throat before you know what happened.
Most of all, there will be a gentle reminder in a world that can be loud and sharp around the edges, kindness still matters. Small towns still matter. Your story still matters.
I hope you’ll come sit in the room with us. We are also excited to let our readers know that starting now (with Sean’s permission), Postcards will feature one of Sean’s columns every month. Take a moment to read it. But know that in January, you’ll get to hear it live, feel it in the shared silence, and maybe even leave a little lighter than you came.
