John Rich is mourning the loss of his beloved grandmother, Cleda Ann Rich, known to everyone as Granny Rich. The matriarch was 88 years old when she  passed way on July 28.

“Granny Rich lived through the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl Days, WWII, and many bouts of personal struggles in her life but managed to always persevere and work toward a better future for herself and everyone she loved,” John said in a statement. “She was a fierce Patriot and expressed her love for our country loud and clear. Her work ethic is legendary, as she ran her own business on her own terms up until one month before she passed away at 88 years of age. She is an inspiration to me and anyone who had the pleasure of meeting her and will be sorely missed.

“She gave her life to Jesus many decades ago, so I have peace in knowing she is now in the arms of Jesus,’ he continued. “I’m sure there’s a line of angels waiting on her to sew some golden thread into their heavenly apparel! Rest in peace, Granny. You will always be ‘The Queen of the working class.’ Job well done.”

Last year, John celebrated Granny Rich’s 87th birthday, which happens to fall on Valentine’s Day, with a party at his own Redneck Riviera in downtown Nashville, where they also celebrated the launch of her own Granny Rich Reserve 86-proof whiskey. The whiskey was part of the same line of John’s own Redneck Riviera whiskey, which had Granny Rich’s seal of approval on it from the beginning.

“We worked on the original for a long time and Granny Rich was the final say so on that blend,” John told Billboard at the time. “What I brought her as the final product, she said, ‘That’s the smoothest thing I’ve ever drank.’

“So the question became, ‘How do you make that better? How do you make a reserve version of that?’ The answer was a more aged version,” he continued. “The whiskey sat in the cask longer. Granny tried that and said, ‘That might be even better.’ That’s when we knew we had it right.”

At the party, Granny Rich also explained why, at 87 years of age, she chose to continue to work.

“It’s what you get up for every day,” she explained. “If you’ve got a job to do that you enjoy doing, it’s so much more fun than it is to sit in the house and look at four walls. I’d be dead and gone if I did that but here I am.”

John credits Granny Rich with being his inspiration, in every area of his life.

“We were blessed to grow up around a woman like this. She’s the person we look up to. She’s the person we want to be like,” John said. “I want to be 87-years-old, drinking whiskey down on Broadway and launching something new. This is the American dream!”

Funeral services have yet to be announced.