Joe Bonsall didn’t want anyone to know he had ALS when he was alive because he didn’t want people to feel sorry for him, close friend and Oak Ridge Boys bandmate Duane Allen said.
However, Bonsall made the revelation in death. Allen said Bonsall wrote his death announcement himself, including that he passed from complications of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
“Joe just didn’t want any kind of pity party or anything like that happening,” Allen said. “A few of us knew. He just wanted to address it as a muscle degenerative disease, which is what ALS is. And so that’s the way we addressed it.”…