Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander

how they feel about me. If they hate me, I’m not going to hold it against them. If they don’t like me, they can walk away. But I have to love my enemies. If anyone has a better explanation as to how I can be resurrected, I’m open to listening to new ideas. I’m all ears when it comes to an alternative, but I’ve never found another way in which I’m going to make it out of here alive. I don’t know any other way, so I’m sticking with what I know to be the gospel.

    I’m all ears when it comes to an alternative, but I’ve never found another way in which I’m going to make it out of here alive.

    The man who wrote me the letter was baptized and saved, but he went down kicking and screaming. Most of the other people we’ve converted over the years have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior more willingly. For about twenty years, we had Bible study at our house on a weekday night and housechurch on Sunday nights. One time, Jep and his best friend, Trey Fisher, brought eighteen teenagers to the house, and we baptized every one of them that night in the river.
    We were never really sure what we’d find on the riverbank when we walked down for a baptism. One night, we took about twenty people down to the river to take their confessions and baptize them. About the time we were ready to walk into the water, a couple of rednecks pulled up in their boat. It was obvious they’d had a couple of beers to drink.
    “What the hell is going on around here?” one of them yelled.
    “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “We just preached the gospel to these people, and we’re gonna baptize ’em right here. You all want in on the action?”
    I ain’t never seen a motor crank up that fast and leave!
    Our dogs always seemed to follow the crowd to the river for baptisms. I was baptizing a young man one time, and just as soon as I pulled him out of the water, the dogs started fighting for some reason. Without skipping a beat, I told the young man he must have had an evil spirit in him, which God had miraculously transferred to the dogs! There were about ten dogs squealing and barking, and I told him the dogs were going to fight the demon out of them! The funny part is everyone on the riverbank thought I was telling the truth!
    We conducted another baptism at our house one nightwhen the river was really high, which brings water up close to our house, along with the snakes, alligators, and other dangerous debris. My boys went out with flashlights and shotguns to clear our path; they were always on sentinel duty when we baptized someone at night. In fact, during a baptism one very dark night, I accidentally stepped off the normal path and led us into an alligator or turtle bed, and we both disappeared into the water. I like to think that baptism was a twofer!
    A lot of the people we’ve converted over the years have become our very close friends and some of them were even married in our front yard. We’ve probably conducted a dozen weddings at our house, with Alan officiating most of them. Paul Lewis was Willie’s best friend growing up. Paul received a full scholarship to play basketball at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. He even played against Shaquille O’Neal one time and seemed to have a very bright future. But in 1995, Paul was arrested for transporting drugs in Texas and was sentenced to fourteen years in federal prison. He ended up serving twelve and a half years, which was a hard lesson to learn, and Willie was at the prison to pick him up the day he was released.
    Willie gave Paul a job at Duck Commander, where he met his future wife, Crystle, a former Texas police officer. They both rededicated their lives to Jesus Christ and were married in our front yard. Paul is African-American; Crystle’s mother is Hispanicand her father is black. So the wedding crowd consisted of African-Americans and Hispanics but mostly white, bearded rednecks. About the time the wedding proceedings were starting, a friend of mine was putting his boat into the river at our boat dock. My friend later told me he realized then that there must be a God, because every other time he had seen so many ethnicities together, there was usually fighting involved! But there, under the towering pines and oaks next to Cypress Creek in our front yard, he saw a lot of people from different backgrounds who seemed to genuinely love each other and were enjoying being around each other. It was a perfect picture of what Christ’s body