What I saw was Phil who had never drank before started drinking.
I was on my way to being
a bone to be chewed as they say.
I met a couple of guys and I just thought, you know, maybe I should just
experience what the world has to offer.
I found this persons name an in her purse, I'm just like,
I mean, why is this here?
My dad that I thought was my dad all my life
was not really my dad.
I started to get like real cynical. It eventually led to
like thoughts of suicide, stuff like that.
[The Patriarch] I got in a big bar room brawl, ran Miss Kay and the kids off.
Then I'd take another drink.
[The Matriarch] So all of a sudden it came to me that
I've been fighting for this marriage for a long time and it's not working.
I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.
[The First Born]
The worst part of your wife cheating on you is
that you think you're going crazy.
[The Prodigal] I pretty much did anything that was put in front of me.
Where's the drugs? Where's the alcohol? Let's just keep going.
The battle was just...
[The Next Generation] My dad told me and he said,
"That's the most selfish thing that you can do,
is to leave this world because you can't take it."
[The Unexpected] I always had the sense of
maybe something is different about me.
So I called my mom and said, "So who's my dad?"
[Their Dynasty]
[Begins in Dysfunction]
I began to contemplate, "Is there a way out of all this?"
[Eight Unique Chapters]
[Eight Unique Chapters One Family Redemption]
[Chapter 1 Phil Robertson]
The chaos of our family starts in the chaos of the '70s,
as a college quarterback in Louisiana
finds himself in a lifestyle of being drunk and lawless.
This is our father, Phil Robertson.
And this is the beginning of our journey from dysfunction to dynasty.
[I Am Second Presents]
[Dysfunction]
[Dynasty]
[The Robertson Family Dysfunction to Dynasty]
We all go six feet deep in the ground.
I think now they're digging them about four and a half feet to save money.
But we all end up in a casket.
And people wipe their eyes.
Because we're gone.
It's called fact.
[West Monroe Louisiana]
If you saw where I grew up.
The time period would be in the 1950's,
but if you saw it,
you would have thought it was 1850.
Log house, milk cow, plough horse, no bathtub, no commode.
Like Coca-Cola, this little, none of that.
No.
But I never heard anyone say we were poor.
Not once.
No one ever said, "Man, we are really up against it here.
I wonder why somebody doesn't bail us out."
No.
I ran up on Miss Kay when she was 14.
There's an old saying in the South,
if you marry them when they're about 15 or 16,
they'll pick your ducks.
If you wait till they get to be 20, they'll pick your pocket.
So Miss Kay and I married early.
[Phil Married Marsha "Kay" Carroway after she turned 16]
[They had their first son, Alan, while Phil attended Louisiana Tech University on a football scholarship.]
Phil started school and we were so poor.
So in love, but so poor.
Baby on the way,
actually Alan was born I was 17 years old and Phil was 18 years old.
So we were basically two kids with a kid.
But you have to grow up and you do, that's what you do.
Now, when I got to college, I was on my way to being
a bone to be chewed as they say.
I started seeing the change in Phil, and this really came
when he started spending a lot of time with the football team.
Parties in college, you know, it was the '60s.
Ya'll remember the '60s don't you?
What I saw was Phil who had never drank before
started drinking.
And what happened with me was, it was scary to me.
Jason was born.
I was so thrilled about another boy, Phil was happier than ever.
Unfortunately, the drinking got worse.
He would be mad and just be in and out like a flash.
And I knew then but I didn't want to believe it.
was running around on me.
Probably was smoking dope, other things, pills he took and things like that
it was just all new to me, the whole thing.
I owned a beer joint when
some guy came in with a Bible and he wanted to introduce me to Jesus.
I ran him away.
I said, "Get out of here."
I'd take another drink.
Then we have our new baby, Willie Jess.
So there I was, a barmaid, who doesn't drink
and had three little boys.
I've been fighting for this marriage for a long time
and it's not working,
but what went on next was horrible, it was like the nightmare of my life.
I got in a big bar room brawl.
The laws got after me, but I went to the woods of course
and hid it out.
Phil came to me and said, "I probably won't surface for two or three months,
do the best you can with what's left here."
And he was gone.
[As years went on, Phil's battle with alcohol and lawlessness continued.]
He became more and more mean and mean spirited,
and what I would tell my boys all the time is,
"That's not your daddy, that's the devil in your daddy."
I would say the low point is when I ran Miss Kay and the kids off.
You're all alone, no hope, miserable. That's when I began to serious contemplate
is there a way out of all this?
So I came to Miss Kay and she said,
"You know that guy that came up there to the beer joint that time
and wanted to talk with you?" I said, "Yeah."
"And you ran him off," I said, "Yeah."
"Why don't you sit down with him and just see what he has to say?"
So I sat down with this guy, he said,
"Phil, what do you think the gospel is?"
And I said, "I don't know,
gospel music on the radio or something like that."
He said, "You don't even know what it is."
I said,
"I don't guess I do."
I didn't even know what the gospel of Jesus was,
so when he went through Jesus coming down in the flesh
through a little virgin girl, Mary,
dying on the cross, being buried and raised from the dead,
I'm like, "How in the world did I ever miss that?"
I had missed it.
I was blown away when I heard that Jesus died for me,
was buried and raised from the dead, something so...
it is simple but profound
that happened back there almost 2000 years ago.
I had never heard it.
When we came back home,
I think it was a note that said they had gone to the church building.
So we headed in there and when we got into the auditorium,
I just stopped because there he was up in the baptistry with a man,
and the boys all stopped and they were on each side of me.
And I remember just looking at them and he was, I heard Phil say,
"I want to make Jesus the Lord of my life.
I want to follow him from this day forward."
And I looked down at each of the boys, tears were rolling down their eyes,
even three year old, three and a half year old Willie Jess.
Big tears were coming down.
And the next thing I knew he was baptized,
and he came up and the boys started hollering and singing,
jumping all over the place, and they said,
"My daddy... my daddy is saved, my daddy is saved, my daddy is saved."
They were so happy.
And it was a complete family then.
I said I'm fixing to hang another gear, and I'm turning from my sinful past
and I am fixing to make a valiant attempt to be good.
I said, "I've never tried it before,"
I told the guy, when he studied with me he said,
"Just love God and love your neighbor and try to be good."
I'm like, "I've never tried that before."
He said,
"Can you try?"
I said, "I can try."
See you've got rednecks then you have river rats.
So I'm reading over in Romans Chapter 12,
"Be good to your enemies, pray for those who persecute you,
do not return evil for evil."
The river rats tend to be far better thieves than your just local rednecks.
"You be good to them and don't return evil for evil."
I was fishing for a living. It's my livelihood.
I'm working my tail off.
"If they are hungry, feed them."
These river rats would steal my fish. I'd caught several of them before
and usually I'd just come up roar out there,
come up with my shotgun and say, "The next person who moves dies."
They're stealing my fish here Lord.
"If they are hungry, feed them."
And you want me to do what?
"Do not return evil for evil."
Well,
I have to see if that will work,
but it makes no earthly sense that's for sure.
So one day I heard a motor slow down.
These guys pull over to my float and I'm watching them through the bushes.
So I said I'm going to be good to them, but I'm carrying my gun
just in case they're not good to me.
And I'm going to do what the Lord said, I'm going to be good to them.
So I roar up on them and they're getting my net
almost up in their boat and they look up
and they see this guy coming. That'd be me, wide open.
I said, "What were you boys doing with that net?"
They said, "Is that what that was?"
I said, "Yeah.
That would be a hooknet. It belongs to me."
I said, "Here's the good news, I'm going to raise the net
and whatever is in there I'm going to give them to you."
Now when I said that, they looked at each other and they said...
they left me looking back
and all of a sudden up and down the river, they quit stealing my fish.
I just gave them what they were trying to steal.
I took that to mean
God was right all along.
[With the help of his wife and sons, Phil crafted and sold a new duck call from his living room. He called their business Duck Commander.]
The first year in sales, I had turned to God,
first year of sales Duck Commander,
8,000 bucks.
I said, "Miss Kay, we are rolling."
She said, "We are going to starve to death."
I said, "No, we're not going to starve, we'll be all right."
[Within years, Phil and his four sons made Duck Commander a multi-million dollar business.]
This is Alan, Jason, Willie, and Jep.
They all run the company and their wives.
So one of them told me the other day, he said, "Dad, you remember when you
started out with that $8,000 worth of duck calls?"
I said, "Yep."
They said, "This year we're going to sell close to a million duck calls."
It was either dog luck, but I am giving the credit
to God Almighty in heaven
for the duck call sales, the fish that were in the nets way back,
for my life, I'm giving the credit to the Almighty.
And we shall see at the end how it turns out.
I feel pretty good about it.
My name is Phil Robertson and I Am Second.
See, in the South we don't say second, we say secont,
like it's a T on it, secont. You know what I'm saying?
[I Am Secont]