Courtesy Photo Graphic /Dawn Summerhill
Kyle Summerhill (at right) posed to match this cover photograh of Toby Keith (left) as his entry submission to radio station Z-100 in Johnstonville City, Ill., where he garnered a full third of the votes against nine other contestants in August.

Local look-a-like hopes ‘Ford Truck Man’s’ fame will rub off
By Pearl Cantrell
Monitor Staff Writer
CEDAR CREEK LAKE–Folks around Cedar Creek Lake and surrounding communities have been reporting seeing the famous country singer Toby Keith, whose single “American Rider” and music video consistently wins top ratings on the charts.
“If it’s not him, it’s the closest thing to,” comes the rejoinder.
Well, he is the closest thing to. And to prove it, he recently won a Toby Keith Look-A-Like Contest.
Summerhill Services owner and longtime Tool resident Kyle Summerhill is a dead ringer for the Oklahoma native.
During the heavy storms that plagued much of the mid-west Aug. 20, including here, Summerhill, along with his buddy, was making a treacherous 12-hour drive to Johnstonville, Ill, where radio station Z-100 FM was holding a live Toby Keith Look-A-Like Contest.
Summerhill had learned about the contest, just days before the deadline to submit a photograph.
On Aug. 17, he got a call from the radio station begging him to come up for the live event, as he was a front runner with the on-line voting.
He hesitated going, because the other local contestants would have local support and he wouldn’t.
“But she told me, ‘the majority of the calls are for you. You’ve blown our phones up. You have lots of support here,’” he recounted.
“My wife (who is expecting the couple’s fourth child mid-September) wasn’t that happy about the whole Toby look-alike thing, but she finally agreed that I should go up there,” Summerhill said.
After a 12-hour adventure, in which Summerhill alerted 9-1-1 to a possible problem in a snaking truck ahead of him, possibly saving the diabetic driver’s life and others on the roadway, which he and a van prevented from traveling near the troubled motorist; and got an up-close view (on video) of the biggest wall cloud he’d ever seen in Steele, Mo., responsible for spinning off seven tornadoes with video of flipped trucks and bad wrecks, Summerhill became the hands-down Toby Keith Look-A-Like Contest winner and stayed an extra day for an on-air radio interview.
During the storms, Summerville’s mother, Joanne, and friends listened to the radio station via the Internet before electric power was interrupted due to falling trees in Wildwood Acres.
“When I heard them announce that the winner traveled the farthest to be there, I knew it was Kyle,” she said.
He was one of the 10 finalists and one with a little more than a third of the total vote.
As the winner, he receives a trip to Nashville, Tenn with a free stay at the Gaylord Opryland Resort, admission to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, dinner for two at the Aquarium Restaurant and admission to the Grand ’Ole Opry to see the performer of his choice, including backstage passes.
Guess who he wants to see at the Grand ’Ole Opry? You’re right, it’s Toby Keith or Willie Nelson, his other favorite performer. “I loved the movie “Beer For My Horses” that had both of them in it,” he said.
Summerhill hasn’t met Keith yet, having just missed him a couple of times. However with recently developed contacts to those close to the performer and an offer from Marie Sligh to be introduced to her Las Vegas performer son Terry Fator, Summerhill knows he’ll be meeting him soon.
Summerhill tells one story after another of his mistaken identity over the last two years.
“I was in Beall’s looking at a straw cowboy hat (Keith is well-known for wearing such a hat), when a woman came up to me saying ‘oh my gosh, if you don’t buy that hat, I’ll buy it for you. You look just like Toby Keith.’”
Summerhill, nearly 42, is also a poker player and one a place in a professional game in the Windstar Casino in Oklahoma. His friends having convinced him to dress as Keith, Summerhill was the constant object of cell phone cameras and requests to be photographed beside others.
“I kept telling them I wasn’t Toby Keith. And then when I was in the nearby restaurant waiting for my table, a woman comes up to me and says, ‘my friend texted me that you were here and I drove 40 miles at 90 mph to get here, are you really Toby Keith?’
“I told her I really wasn’t, and just then the host comes up and says, ‘Mr. Keith, your table is ready.’ I knew she thought I was lying,” Summerhill said
He often gets followed out of the local Walmart until he climbs into his Dodge truck. Big Dog Daddy is a Ford Truck Man.
Last year, friend Buddy Wilson, antler furnishings artist, convinced Summerhill to work a Nashville, Tenn. trade show with him as a Toby Keith impersonator.
While relaxing after hours, Summerhill met the 2008 Driver of the Year award-winner NHRA driver Tony Schumacher, who asked to have his photo taken with Toby Keith.
NBA draft pick Blake Griffin, who mistook him for the singer in an Oklahoma casino also requested a photo.
Last year, Summerhill and Wilson rented a limousine to take their wives to a Toby Keith concert in Dallas with a stop in Wills Point for a steak dinner on the way.
While in Wills Point, they couldn’t resist stopping at the Peckerwood Feed Store along I-20 to get a photo. But before they were ready to leave, the parking lot had filled with cars and drivers who had heard that Toby Keith was at the feedstore. “It was a riot,” he said.
They arrived late for the concert and produced another pandemonium when Summerhill tried to get to his seat and again when they tried to leave afterwards.
Summerville hopes that all the notoriety he’s been receiving will pay off for him and his family in some added boost to their finances.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m perfectly happy right now. I’ve got a great life, a great wife and kids. But if I could made some extra money, why not?” He asks.
Besides operating a tree trimming and power washing service, Summerhill coaches the Skyhawks United soccer team in Mabank.
Last year, the team won at state and got to play at Disney World, where it ranked sixth.
A 1986 Malakoff High School graduate, Summerhill was an all-state football player and also played football for Navarro Junior College.
Summerhill says he’s always enjoyed watching his sons, ages 13, and 9, perform on the field and cheering them on and noted it’s a little strange to be the subject of so much attention at his age.
But he’s going to build on this opportunity and see where it goes, hoping that winning the radio contest will lead to bigger and better things, perhaps even with his favorite local radio stations KCKL in Malakoff, The RANCH in Corsicana or 95.9 The Wolf in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
With his outgoing personality, 6-2 frame and muscular build, blond curly hair, moustache, beard and blue eyes, all under a cowboy hat; the days ahead may fill up with opportunities as a Toby Keith impersonator.