The Way- Lela and Raymond Howard

            -Some songs have meanings, while others have something to say. And others show history. They're names were Lela and Raymond Howard.

There is a lyric that goes:
"You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere, they wont make it home, but they really don't care, they're there and they're happy, never finding the way, the way...………."

Who were they? Lela and Raymond Howard were an elderly couple in Texas. They vanished into thin air, never to be heard from again.
  How does a song connect to this?

No one has ever known about the sad fate of that elderly couple. The lead singer of the band Fastball, with their one hit wonder: "The Way" thought they just wandered off and made it to heaven they're own way.

They were off attending a Pioneer festival as they usually do. However, they never made it back, or even there. They were stopped by a police officer all the way in Arkansas, not knowing that they were missing at the time.

   They're car was found in a dirt field. Seemed they ended up dead in a car crash.

It is a sad ending to an elderly couple, one suffering from brain damage and another in the early stages of Alzheimer's. 

   Around the time they vanished, the lead singer, Tony Scalzo decided to write the lyrics thinking about that elderly couple and what could have happened to them.

    Consider the lyrics:

"Anyone can see the roads that they walk on are paved in gold, it'll always be summer, they'll never get cold..."

  Meaning, wherever they went, they were happy, even if it meant the ending of their lives.

Finding closure. Their son, and grandchildren think of the song as a memory to the elderly couple. 

  Their son, said it was a moving tribute to his family, that they had been searching for when they vanished in 1997.

 The Howards vanished in early 1997 in Texas, their car found in a cliff in Arkansas. The memory of the family knew that Raymond and Lela were gone. The song is a living tribute to that elderly couple.

     I never knew about that until I started college that this song was based on a true story.

Sadly the band broke up and Tony went on his own. Still singing, but the song that will always be on the back of his mind is: "The way"

The music video was ok. Cheerful, upbeat and it was fun, although hiding the darkness of the true story of an elderly couple vanishing off the face of the earth.

The song is still played on the radio, the memories of Raymond and Lela still linger over Texas as, even though the family has closure, and a song to remember Lela and Raymond, it doesn't mean the lyrics are pretty well given the answer:

    "Where were they going without ever knowing the way"

RIP Lela and Raymond Howard of Sandelo, Texas.