Vivian Dorraine Libertohttp://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=sh&GRid=11025335 (
April 23, 1934 –
May 24, 2005) was the first wife of country singer
Johnny Cash.
Liberto met
Johnny Cash in
1950 at a
roller skating rink in
San Antonio, Texas three weeks before the
Air Force deployed him to
Germany. At the time, she was still a senior at
Providence High School, an all-girl Catholic school in San Antonio. During Cash's military tour overseas, the couple wrote each other over 10,000 pages of
love letters.
On
July 3, 1954, Cash was discharged from the Air Force. On
August 7, 1954, the two were married. A brief portrait of their marriage and early life is provided in the poignant song "I Was Watching You" by their eldest child,
Rosanne Cash, from her
2006 album
Black Cadillac.
Vivian and Johnny were married until
1968, before his
addiction to
amphetamines and occasional
womanizing led them to a
divorce. She married
Dick Distin that same year.
In 2004, Vivian fought to get a memento of her romance with Johnny, who died in
2003 — a bench into which Cash had carved the words "Johnny Loves Vivian" in
1951. San Antonio city officials declined her request, and promptly placed the bench under lock and key in a storage facility.
She died on
May 24, 2005, of complications from
surgery to remove
lung cancer at the age of 71; on the same day as her daughter Rosanne's 50th birthday.
She was portrayed by
Ginnifer Goodwin in the 2005 Johnny Cash
biopic, Walk the Line. According to
Kathleen Cash, one of Vivian's daughters, the portrayal was inaccurate and unfair to her mother.
John Carter Cash, Kathleen's half-brother and executive producer of the film, responded that he understood her concerns.
Cash-Distin's memoirs, entitled "I Walked the Line: My Life With Johnny," was posthumously released by Scribner's in September of 2007.
Vivian is buried at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura,Ca.