THAT'S MY HOME

by Stephanie M. Mangino for The Winchester Star

Most Winchester residents know about Kent Street. But what they know may be wrong. When Kent Street is mentioned, often the first thing that comes to mind is the image of a neighborhood infested with drugs. That negative perception may have created a bit of emotional distance between the rest of the city and the street.

But this is a neighborhood where teachers, writers, military personnel, medical professionals, company presidents, entrepreneurs, and even entertainment legends grew up. Kent Street is one of the earliest established in Winchester, with its name first appearing in 1759. A Presbyterian church once stood at Kent and Boscawen streets, the current site of The Winchester Star. Confederate Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson once worshipped in the sanctuary.

Here's one resident.....

Legendary singer Patsy Cline spent her formative years, under her given name of Virginia Hensley, in a small South Kent Street home. She was married in another house on the street. She at 30 died in a Tennessee airplane crash. Cline returned frequently to visit her mother.

“Kent Street was the gateway to education,” said June Gaskins Davis, the daughter of Kirk N. Gaskins, who was the Douglas School’s principal from 1940 until the city school system completely desegregated in 1966. Davis’ family tree includes Kent Street connections not just through her principal father, but also her mother, Ella Virginia “Tessie” Finley Gaskins, who was related to Dr. Taylor F. Finley, an educator and the city’s first black dentist. The Douglas School fostered a deep respect for education, which left a lasting influence on its students.

Helen Jennings Cartwright was a woman of note, being the first black head nurse at Winchester Memorial Hospital (now Winchester Medical Center). While the Cartwrights were one of the only black families on Kent Street during the city’s segregation years, relations weren't overly strained between them and their white neighbors. The people next door “were very friendly,” Myles Cartwright said, even though some other white people up the street weren’t.

Virginia Hensley (aka: Pasty Cline) lived several blocks south. Myles Cartwright remembers older men, white and black, helping the young Hensley cross the street when her mother sent her to the store. Retired Zeropack President Richard Boxwell Jr., also known as “Dick” and “Butch,” was raised at 520 S. Kent St., a few houses away from the Hensleys. Boxwell knew of Virginia Hensley before she became famous as Patsy Cline, but he was more familiar with Charlie Dick.

The two delivered newspapers together. Dick married Cline in 1957 at 720 S. Kent St. After Cline’s 1963 death, the couple’s children would regularly return to Kent Street to visit their grandmother, Hilda Hensley. “It didn't change a lot,” over the years, Dick, who now lives in Tennessee, said of Kent Street.

“You walked everywhere you went,” said Lucille Long, a 76-year-old who has lived most of her life just a block or so off Kent Street. “Our heritage is all we know of ourselves,” Long said. “What we preserve of it is our record.” And the record shows that Kent Street has a hold on people’s hearts.

Even though Boxwell doesn’t live there anymore, he occasionally drives by the house at 520 S. Kent St. “I always look and say, ‘That’s my home.’”