Merle Haggard’s Oldest Daughter Dana Dies at 61

Merle Haggard’s eldest daughter, Dana Haggard, has died, family members confirmed Wednesday. She was 61.

“My oldest sister Dana passed away yesterday,” younger brother Ben Haggard wrote in an Instagram post. “This absolutely broke my heart. I know she’s hugging dad’s arms gain. I’ll miss you, sister. RIP.”

Dana is believed to have died in her sleep of natural causes Monday night or Tuesday morning, her sister Kelli Haggard Patterson said.

“Her husband left for work early in the morning [Tuesday] and she was still asleep,” Patterson told the Bakersfield Californian. “When he got home later that day he found her and she hadn’t moved.”

Patterson told the news outlet she and her sister were best friends.

“Dana was my best friend and we talked several times a day,” she said. “Our life when we were young was very different from what dad’s youngest ones, Ben and Jenessa, experienced, so the four of us, Dana, me, Marty and Noel, clung to each other. This is like having a limb removed.”

Ben noted that Dana was experiencing heartache upon the second anniversary of their father’s death “and she was missing the old man.”

He said he last saw her at one of his band’s shows in Oklahoma last month. “She got up and sang, ‘Today I Started Loving You Again,’” Ben said. “And she sang her heart out. We all knew who she was singing for.”

Dana was born in 1957 to Merle and his first wife, Leona Hobbs. She toured with her brother Marty as Marty and Dana Haggard and the Driftwood Band, and for some time sang with her father’s band, The Strangers. She also sang back vocals at her father’s performances over the years, and she also performed solo shows and gigs with her brother Noel.

Patterson said Dana was as outspoken and outgoing as they come.

“She thought it, she said it,” Patterson said of her sister. “But it was usually good, and it was usually funny. She was so fun and outgoing. She couldn’t be in a grocery checkout line without making a friend.”

During her father’s 2016 memorial service in Bakersfield, Dana described Merle like this:

“My dad was a lot deeper than anybody saw,” The Californian quoted her as saying. “He loved to pick our brains. We never got in trouble for any thought we had, but he always played devil’s advocate with us. There were a lot of layers to that onion.”

The first of Merle and Leona Hobbs’ four children, Dana was married and lived in Russellville, Arkansas.

She was an infant when Merle, then 19, attempted to break into a diner and was later apprehended and spent five years in San Quentin State Prison for that conviction after the judge factored in the weight of his other misdeeds.

Merle had two children with his fifth and final wife, Theresa. Ben Haggard is Merle and Theresa’s son — a half-brother to Dana.

Dana is survived by husband Terry Lemons and her four children: Matthew, Kelli, Jarrod and Michael, as well as her stepson Austin and nine grandchildren.

Plans are under way for memorial services in both Arkansas and Bakersfield.