"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
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 each of the favored few one glove (of a pair) of the many long, elegant gloves that went with Patsy’s formal dresse...
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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 (aka Ginny Hensley).
Whitney managed the station, an ABC affiliate that broadcast only local programming on Saturday morning...
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Virginia Patterson Hensley became Patsy Cline at the Moose Hall in Brunswick, Maryland. Bandleader Bill Peer had 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 ...
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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...
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On Sunday, March 10, 1963, Winchester, Virginia 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 th...
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Last week, we prepared lunch for and met with Douglas Gomery, a retired professor from the University of Maryland who is working on a book about Patsy's life. He is sharing the proceeds from the sale of the book with our organization to go towards the restoration effort. We met at my mom's house s...
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Last week, we prepared lunch for and met with Douglas Gomery, a retired professor from the University of Maryland who is working on a book about Patsy's life. He is sharing the proceeds from the sale of the book with our organization to go towards the restoration effort. We met at my mom's house so he could glean more information of the spectacular news we had just discovered. While Patsy's father worked for Colonel Sleeter at Hill High Orchard, Patsy attended Lincoln High School and took sewing in the old home economics school on the same property as the school. When Lincoln High School became Lincoln Elementary - my parents purchased the old home ec school and restored it as their home (this being my childhood home). We just not only learned that Patsy took sewing in what is now my mom's bedroom, but that my husband's father's aunt was her teacher and my aunt was in class with her! All this time, my aunt didn't realize that her classmate, Virginia "Ginny" Hensley, was actually Patsy Cline.
-- From Tracie Dillion, CPC Board Member
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