"You're gonna have to learn to get out there in front of those cameras and hold your head up. Take charge when you're singing."
-Patsy Cline
On Sunday, March 10, 1963, Winchester came together to bury Patsy Cline. For that era, when Winchester was still a small town, this was a pretty big event. The police and local newspaper estimated the crowd at 10,000 to 15,000.
Most actually never arrived at the 3 p.m. ceremony, because the two-l...
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Anyone who knew Phil Whitney knows how he would light up remembering a young girl pressing her face on the studio glass wall inside radio station WINC. It was Virginia Hensley.
Whitney managed the station, an ABC affiliate that broadcast only local programming on Saturday mornings. Whitney execute...
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Virginia Patterson Hensley became Patsy Cline at the Moose Hall in Brunswick, Maryland. Bandleader Bill Peer named her Patsy, after his daughter, in September 1952. Her last name changed in March 1953 when she married Gerald Cline.
For the community of Brunswick, which required dance lessons as pa...
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Patsy loved movies. All her friends tell of this passion.
One July, the Capital Theater in Winchester played Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah. Doors opened at 12:45 p.m., and it ran continuously all day. Children under 12 were charged 35 cents and adults 65 cents for matinees, and $1 for ev...
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Julie Fudge, Patsy’s firstborn daughter, barely knew her mother, but she and her grandmother, Hilda Hensley, were close. Hilda knew how much Patsy meant to her fans, and she would give the favored few one of a pair of the many long, elegant gloves that went with Patsy’s formal dresses.
Patsy had...
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On Sunday, March 10, 1963, Winchester came together to bury Patsy Cline. For that era, when Winchester was still a small town, this was a pretty big event. The police and local newspaper estimated the crowd at 10,000 to 15,000.
Most actually never arrived at the 3 p.m. ceremony, because the two-lane roads into town were overwhelmed. From Winchester’s many houses of worship, folks at afternoon activities heard all the commotion and looked out the window and figured, “They must be burying Patsy Cline.”
Former Winchester Mayor Claude Smalts said his profession drew him into the middle of it all. A florist by trade, he handled requests for specially designed flower arrangements. He and his family stayed up all night to create guitars, musical notes, and assorted shapes requested from out of town. Thirty years later, Mr. Smalts and his wife were on a cruise ship and smiled to one another as the pianist played one of Patsy Cline’s songs.
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