The Jacksonville, Florida home of Ronnie, Donnie, and Johnny Van Zant, that birthed both Lynyrd Skynyrd and .38 Special has been designated a Florida Heritage Site. The family home on 5419 Woodcrest Road stayed in the Van Zant family up until recently, with both their parents dying in the house –mother Marion in 2000, father Lacy in 2004. Youngest brother Johnny Van Zant — who shared a bedroom with Ronnie and Donnie growing up — took up the mantle as Skynyrd’s frontman a decade after his brother Ronnie died in the infamous group plane crash. Middle brother Donnie co-founded .38 Special in 1974. Since 1985, Donnie and Johnny, billed as Van Zant, have also released five studio albums and one live set. Lynyrd Skynyrd is currently on the road performing its farewell tour.
The historic plaque reads, “Musicians Ronnie, Donnie, and Johnny Van Zant spent their formative years growing up in this house with their sisters and parents between the 1950’s and 1980’s.” Johnny told The Palm Beach Post: “That house was our life, that neighborhood was our neighborhood. We all learned how to play drums in that house, we all learned how to swing on the swing-set out there — that’s where we learned to sing. We didn’t have 700 channels like today. We didn’t have nothing but four channels. We weren’t super rich.”
Pulse asked Johnny Van Zant — who was only 14 when the Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd album was released — if he can remember the first time his big brother Ronnie played the record for the family: “Wow! Lynyrd Skynyrd’s debut album! Y’know, I know it exactly. There used to be a department store, it was called Montgomery Ward, and my parents — me, my mom and dad and Ronnie — actually went down to the department store and bought one of the old, the real long turntables. . . It was kind like a big, huge, God, I don’t know what the heck it could be, but it had two speakers on the end of it with a turntable in the middle. And actually, Ronnie brought the record over and we sat and listened to it on this (laughs) brand new stereo (laughs)! And I thought it was the coolest thing, I was, like, ‘Wow! They really made a record!’”
