why. The clear impression is that her reason was solely because of Jamie’s drinking. Yet this masks the true background; a history that Lynne clearly isn’t keen on forming part of the Britney Spears’ story. Instead, after acknowledging the ‘wrecking balls’ and upset Jamie’s drinking created, she reflected that the first five years of their marriage were ‘an oasis of calm and happiness in our often turbulent life together.’ But that’s not the story contained in the legal papers she served just three years and six months into their union.
Lynne filed for divorce on grounds of adultery. This, perhaps, explains why she had no desire to reveal the finer details, going no further than mentioning gossip about his ‘flirting’ at bars. Intended or otherwise, by not mentioning infidelity as the reason behind her divorce petition, the focus remains on Jamie not her; on his addiction, not her desirability; his irresponsibility and not the humiliation she felt when he chose to have sex with someone else—and in their marital home.
According to the petition, Jamie committed adultery on the evening of Christmas Day, 1979. Heartbroken and livid, Lynne wasted no time in consulting local attorney Lou Sherman. Eight days later, and on the first working day after New Year, she submitted a detailed petition to the courts. It was this stormy prelude that foreshadowed the ‘dysfunctional marriage’ that Britney was born into and, as will become clear, this would prove to be a highly relevant event.
For Lynne, the betrayal followed a prolonged period of enduring her husband’s ‘benders’. In her book, she lays bare his alcoholism and told how he’d gone missing on Christmas Day morning as she and two-year-old Bryan waited to open gifts. When he didn’t show, she packed a bag and went to her mother’s. There must have been a furious row because Jamie clearly realised he’d be spending Christmas alone and that Lynne had deserted him. If she didn’t know what her husband would do, she soon found out.
In her petition, she makes allegations of cheating, and told how Jamie was seen entering one of his regular hangouts, a Kentwood bar called Baby Tate’s. But he went in with a local woman who Lynne named. Inside, it was claimed, he was ‘observed hugging, kissing and fondling this woman throughout their stay’. From there, she writes, they went to the Spears’ trailer, ‘where he committed adultery…during the late evening hours of December 25th and the early morning hours of December 26th.’
And therein lies another truth that has never previously emerged: the origins of the Britney Spears’ story can be traced to a trailer park where the family had their first home. Simpson’s Trailer Park, located off Highway 51 in Kentwood, two minutes from the state line with Mississippi, was where matrimonial life began for Jamie and Lynne. Lot No. 13 housed a cramped but cosy trailer that Lynne had helped fill with appliances and furniture; it was their first purchase as a couple along with a 1979 Chevrolet, a 1978 Dr Lincoln Continental and a 4-wheel drive pick-up truck. One trailer and three vehicles represented their humble beginnings. It was here that the family lived with their only son, and it was here that Jamie was alleged to have marked Christmas with his lover.
A friend who has known the Spears since they married said: ‘Y’all must understand. Miss Lynne is mighty proud. Image and reputation matter, especially since she’s become known as Britney’s mama. She don’t want to be seen as “white trailer-park trash” because that ain’t Miss Lynne. She’s always wanted to be viewed as a lady.’
Just like her English mother, Lillian.
Trailer-park homes and little shacks on the roadside are the norm in Kentwood and no one bats an eyelid over such realities, but perhaps its juxtaposition alongside Britney’s stardom felt uncomfortable for Lynne Spears. Britney wasn’t to spend a single day of her life in a trailer, but if anything, these beginnings further enrich the family history. From a trailer park to ‘Serenity’ is far more inspiring than from ranch-style bungalow to ‘Serenity’. It illustrates how far the Spears have travelled in the past 30 years.
According to the legal papers, the trailer belonged to Lynne. In fact, she was greatly worried that Jamie would damage it, and her furniture, when he learned she was filing for a divorce. She clearly feared his temper and she even alluded to what he was capable of when drunk. In that same petition, her attorney said: ‘She fears the defendant will become angry when served with these papers; that he will harass and/or physically harm her, especially if he has been drinking alcoholic beverages, as he has done in the past.’
Those words, ‘as he has done in the past’, form the first-known mention of Lynne going further than saying that her husband was merely an alcoholic. Here she was, telling a court that Jamie had harassed and/or harmed her previously. She was also making it clear that she sought the court’s protection and Lou Sherman sought a temporary restraining order.
The use of restraining orders would become something Jamie would utilise to protect Britney in later life but back in 1980, his own wife sought to exercise those same powers against him. Indeed, if this was the extent of Jamie’s temper, it might go some way to explaining some of Britney’s reported reluctance at him being installed as her conservator in 2008.
Lynne was loath to leave Jamie because she dearly loved him and she’d been vehemently opposed to divorce, living in a less nonchalant era when the very idea was frowned upon within a Baptist community. So the fact she actively sought a decree nisi illustrates how desperate she had become. Her friends have suggested it was an overreaction in the red mist of betrayal but in that January of 1980, it could not have seemed more final. She sought a custody order over Bryan; $200-a-month child support and $400-a-month alimony; and declared to the courts an intention to find her own place. Jamie was ordered to attend a hearing on 1 February to explain himself and state his case.
For Lynne, this sad episode marked the end of the fairytale in which she’d described their union as ‘the Barbie and Ken of Kentwood’.
It was a fairytale that began in the spring of 1976. Lynne’s maiden name was Bridges and she was a 20-year-old student at a community college renamed Southeastern Louisiana University in nearby Hammond. She was an education major who met Jamie Spears, 23, at a local swimming pool in July 1976, after skipping summer school. He was relaxing from his ‘tough-ass job’ as a boiler-maker—a trained craftsman who fits, welds and constructs steel plates and sections on projects as diverse as bridges to blast furnaces. By then, he was used to going where the contracts were: from Louisiana to New York, Missouri to Memphis.
Spears was considered as quite a catch by the ladies: it wasn’t just that he was regarded as ‘high, wide and handsome’, he was renowned for being one of the region’s finest athletes, basketball and football players; the all-round sportsman whose abilities are still remembered to this day.
‘He could shoot the basket with one step over the centre-line, let alone the shooting zone. Let me tell you, when you’ve got black basketball players complimenting the skills of a white basketball player, then you’re somebody special—and Jamie was that man. He was also a mean quarterback. That big son-of-a-bitch would have had some career if someone had punched him between the eyes and made him focus,’ said one ex-peer, who believes, ‘the reason for Jamie’s ultimate downfall was Jamie himself’.
Another friend who has known Jamie since schooldays said: ‘He should have made the big-time. He was one of Kentwood’s finest but could have been much more.’
Lynne was smitten, swept off her feet by either the man or her romantic ideals. However, the same could not be said for her parents, Barney and Lillian Bridges, because they knew what everyone else knew: Jamie had been married before. In Baptist Kentwood, getting together with a once-married man could bring a shame that was community-sent. But local archives prove it was much more complicated than a blotted copybook, and ‘Mr Barney and Miss Lillian’ could be justified for harbouring real concerns for their daughter’s welfare.
Lynne
