2008 Irwin Award Winner (VIDEO)
Dianne De La Vega Receives 2008 IRWIN Award for Entertainment Book of the Year

First Place Creative Non-Fiction Santa Barbara Writers Conference

Perhaps you do not remember me. My stage name was "Dick Haymes." I sang, made technicolor musicals, and married Rita Hayworth, among five others. What is not known is the miracle that happened to me during the last 14 months of my life-and that is what this book. "Heaven Knows" is about.

I died 24 years ago, but interest in my music hasn't. The Dick Haymes Fan Club is thriving despite Helen Forest's death-she headed it both in England and the U.S.-much to my amazement. Besides my fans, I believe the reading public and movie-goers will embrace this remarkable love story of a singer and psychologist, who after all these years, still have continuous interaction on both sides of the parallel universe.

I credit my co-author, Dianne de la Vega, with humor and strength, who never betrayed her love for me, in spite of my six wives, six children, alcoholism, bankruptcies, celebrity, and cancer. Because of her, I was able to spend my final months touring with my old friend Harry James-also over here-in the "Big Broadcast of 1944."

At Findhorn, Scotland, during the 1980 OneEarth Conference, Dianne first told our story to 30 people from all parts of the world. They sat in rapt silence until she finished, "The Miracle of Relationship." At that moment, she was shocked to find everyone weeping, including a German medical doctor with whom earlier in the day she had an altercation concerning her conference on "Cancer as a Stress Disease." For several years, she continued telling our story under the title "Love Never Dies," until after much prompting from me, she wrote it down.