Honoring Patsy Cline

by Charlie Jackson
The Winchester Star

Photos by Rick Foster

They came from Kentucky, California, and Ontario, Canada.

Many make the trek annually.

But this year the trip was just a little more special.

Country music icon and Winchester native Patsy Cline was unveiled for all to see in two separate events Saturday.

The day began with roughly 60 people crowded around an unassuming home on a quiet Winchester street.

Cline’s husband, Charlie Dick, and daughter Julie Fudge were greeted by adoring fans requesting photographs and autographs.

Dick and Fudge obliged and a ceremony to unveil a historic highway marker at Cline’s childhood home began.

“I remember a lot of things about this house,” Fudge said from the front porch. “It feels like home.”

Fudge and Dick reached up and pulled the protective drape off the sign as fans clamored to take snapshots at 608 S. Kent St.

“This represents a significant milestone for the city of Winchester,” said Mayor Elizabeth A. Minor. “It’s long overdue.”

The sign received the blessing of the Board of Historic Resources and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in June.

Celebrating Patsy Cline, Inc., which organized the event, paid for the marker.

After the sign was displayed, Cline’s fans and family went to another unveiling of sorts.

A museum dedicated to the life and work of Cline will open in March 2006 at 48 S. Loudoun St.

Joanie Evans, a representative with the regional office of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, stands by a portrait of Patsy Cline during a presentation at the new Patsy Cline Museum. She said her organization is helping to get 608 S. Kent St. — onetime home to Winchester’s most famous singer — onto the National Register of Historic Places. A historical marker was unveiled over the weekend, too. “This represents a significant milestone for the city of Winchester,” said Mayor Elizabeth A. Minor. “It’s long overdue.”

Charlie Dick, Patsy Cline’s husband, and their daughter, Julie Fudge, stand beneath the new highway marker dedicated to Cline. The marker was unveiled Saturday at 608 S. Kent St. where the country music star once lived.

Fans and donors were able to view the collection of Teresa Shelby of Nashville, Tenn.

The walls were lined with newspaper articles and advertisements, chronicling the life of Cline.

Also on display was a program from Cline’s last concert before she died tragically in a plane crash in 1963 in Camden, Tenn.

“This is a huge day,” said Phillip Martin, president of Celebrating Patsy Cline, Inc., the group responsible for the museum.

Martin said the group is working to acquire Cline’s childhood home and to advance its collection of Cline memorabilia.

He said Celebrating Patsy Cline is working to acquire several of Cline’s outfits and other collectibles.

The effort and hard work of Celebrating Patsy Cline, Inc. and other fan clubs weren’t lost on Cline’s relatives.

“We feel like we are just riding the wave and you all are making it go,” Fudge said.

Charlie Dick and Julie Fudge, Patsy Cline’s husband and daughter, look up at the new highway marker about Cline they unveiled Saturday. The crowd for the event filled a blocked off S. Kent Street in front of one of the houses Cline had lived in.

Singer George Hamilton IV talks to those gathered for the memorial service for Patsy Cline at her gravesite at Shenandoah Memorial Park.

Country music star George Hamilton IV knelt down and placed a Baby Ruth candy bar with a red rose stuck inside the wrapper at the grave of Patsy Cline in Winchester Sunday afternoon.

Hamilton was one of nearly 30 people — some family, others friends, and all fans — who came to Shenandoah Memorial Park to pay tribute to the late country music icon.

Hamilton talked about the inspiration Cline was to him early in his career and even now.

After the brief ceremony, Hamilton shared stories of his encounters along the country music road with his friend.

It was early in his career in the mid-1950s and he had just released his first album titled “A Rose and a Baby Ruth.” He performed the song on the Town and Country Jamboree, which eventually turned into the Jimmy Dean Show, with Patsy Cline also performing that evening.

The first time the two met, Hamilton spoke of an “instant connection.” Cline was performing “Life’s Railway to Heaven.” She told Hamilton it was her favorite gospel song.

“I told her it was mine too,” he said, shortly after performing the song next to Cline’s tombstone.

Hamilton spoke glowingly of the late country music legend. He told stories of Cline’s generosity with young and up and coming artists.

“She called them her sisters,” he said. “She didn’t see them as her competition.”

Hamilton’s words moved many of the mourners who make the trip to Winchester each Labor Day to celebrate the life of Cline. One such person was Kim Hinze.

Hinze, from Schuylkill, Pa., is distantly related to Cline. Hinze’s grandmother, Eula Miller, was a cousin of Hilda Hensley — Cline’s mother.

In the early summer of 2003, Hinze and her husband rewrote one of Cline’s biggest hits, “Crazy,” into a gospel song. Months later the song appeared on the Christian country charts.

Country music star George Hamilton IV and a friend of Patsy Cline placed “A Rose and a Baby Ruth” on her gravesite prior to a memorial service for her. Hamilton wrote and recorded a song by that title and performed it on the Jimmy Dean Show on the same night Cline was there.

Darlene Caudle, who performs Patsy Cline music, has an appropriate vanity license plate as she prepares to leave the memorial service for the singer at her gravesite in Shenandoah Memorial Park.

“When I was told the song was on the Christian charts, I drove all the way up to her grave and thanked her,” Hinze said.

While this was the first time Hinze came to Winchester for the annual Labor Day festivities, others like Denny Mellott have been coming for years. Seventeen to be exact.

“I’ve been a Patsy Cline fan since the 1960s,” Mellott said. “Nobody to this day in country music can match her singing.”

Jim Spears came to Winchester from Raleigh, N.C. He’s been making the jaunt every year since 1984.

“She has a voice that is hard to duplicate,” he said. “Just hearing that voice ... that sends chills through me.”

Spears, Mellott, and a host of others are by now well acquainted. The fans and family of Cline catch-up with one another, share stories of Cline and their own. For many, it’s a family reunion of sorts.

The group ended the tribute with a prayer led by Hamilton. With their heads bowed and a few sets of eyes moist with emotion, Hamilton said “We thank you for the life of Patsy and the inspiration that she is, not was, is.”

With that, Hamilton embraced Charlie Dick, Cline’s husband, and after the group reminisced a bit, they departed. But they shall no doubt see one another again.