Oliver Lynn Had a Turbulent Marriage With Loretta Lynn
Doo was born of Irish descent in Butcher Hollow, in Johnson County. He was a coal miner and moonshine runner in Kentucky in which earned him the nickname Mooney.
Oliver Lynn married Loretta Lynn on January 10, 1948, just one month after they met. The couple left their home state of Kentucky while Loretta was pregnant with their first child. They traveled to the logging community of Custer, Washington, where they settled down. The Lynn family quickly grew. Their first four children, two daughters, and two sons were born over the course of only six years.
But their marriage was far from ideal. The problem with Doo was that he was very physically abusive. His acts of rage were usually caused from days or nights of heavy drinking.
But this doesn’t mean Loretta did not put up a fight.
“If he smacked me or anything, I’d stand up and be fightin’ him just like I’d be fightin’ the other woman,” Loretta said about Doo, who was also notorious for womanizing. “He’d smack me, I’d smack him; he’d pull my hair, I pulled his hair. That’s the way it was.”
Loretta recalled one such fight that started when Doo came home drunk. Doo got her on one of her pin curls. She fought back by throwing a punch and was shocked when it landed in Doo’s mouth. “There was a hardwood floor, and I’m telling you, the teeth broke into tiny little pieces, and it seemed like they just kept falling. Click-clack-clack-clack. I thought: ‘I’m dead. I am dead. I am completely dead,’” Loretta recalled.
But Doo did not say a word and just laughed. He lost two of his front teeth and was only replaced after Loretta started making money from singing.