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Singer’s Dormant Bell Tower Rings After 17 Years
By: Val Van Meter The Winchester Star The voice of a long-dead country legend hailing from Winchester beckoned a fan here from California. “It’s her voice that does it for me,” said Mario Munoz of Fresno. The 32-year-old traveled across the country to hear the first songs Sunday from a memorial bell tower in Shenandoah Memorial Park. With roses in hand, he joined nearly 100 other fans to remember Patsy Cline. It took 17 years to get the tower operating.
Knicely told Cline’s fans Sunday that, in April, “I just got disgusted,” and started “pestering people.” The pestering paid off. Don Daugherty offered to find a method to bring music to the tower, despite the lack of electricity. Jeff Ricketts, of Ricketts Construction Co., sent in a crew to make a brick podium to house the necessary electronics. Tim Emmart, of Emmart Oil Co., volunteered his new bucket truck to lift the workers to the top of the tower to install new speakers and wires. Knicely said he has raised about half the $5,000 cost and still is taking donations. At a special dinner for the Patsy Cline Fan Club Friday night, members bought photos of the tower to help pay for the installation. Thanks to everyone’s help, Knicely said passers-by will hear the 6th Dimension Handbell Choir every day at 6 p.m. The choir volunteered to tape the music for the bell tower, and has offered to record more seasonal music at Christmas time. Supporters originally planned to have the tower play some of Cline’s songs, but Cline’s husband, Charlie Dick, decided that would not be proper. Instead, chimes will ring out three hymns and one old standard. On Sunday, Cline’s friend and fellow Grand Ole Opry performer George Hamilton IV sang some of her favorite hymns. “Patsy would be so thrilled,” Hamilton said following the ceremony. “The tribute is these people. Forty-one years later, they all came to remember her.” Frederick County Supervisor Lynda Tyler recalled listening to Cline on KLIF out of Dallas-Fort Worth as a child. “Mom was a hard-core Patsy fan,” she said. When she moved to the Winchester area, Tyler said one of the first things she did was join Celebrating Patsy Cline Inc. Tyler recalled a T-shirt that reads, “Women who behave rarely make history.” Cline, she said, “broke barriers,” and made it easier for the women who came after her to achieve their dreams. Restoring Cline’s childhood home on Kent Street and placing it on the National Register of Historic Places are two goals for her group, Tyler said. “It’s the responsibility of this community to let future generations know what a treasure we had,” she said. Hamilton introduced the crowd — more than half of whom were from out of state — to Mary Klick, one of the original members of Jimmy Dean’s Texas Wildcats. Cline and Hamilton were part of that show. Klick recalled driving from Richmond every day to appear in what was the first country music television show in the Washington, D.C., area. She said the group would often sing a gospel song together. “My claim to fame is that I sang backup for Patsy Cline,” she said. During the dedication, the Rev. Pete Wadsworth of the Montague Avenue United Methodist Church prayed the music from the tower would “touch the hearts of hearers.” Daugherty and Knicely touched the play button on the battery-operated tape and everyone listened to “Amazing Grace.” The other selections, which will rotate through the week, include “In the Garden,” “The Blessing,” and “Shenandoah!” Following the ceremony, most of the visitors walked to the grave of Virginia Patterson Hensley, Cline’s given name. Many, like Munoz, placed flowers on her grave. Georgianna Hartley, who visits the graves of her parents just feet from Cline’s headstone, said people leave strange things on the singer’s grave, including cigarettes and money. Once, she said, the grave was completely surrounded by turkey feathers, stuck into the ground. Hartley’s mother, Marion Zirk, “worshiped Patsy Cline,” and used to push her daughter in a stroller to WINC Radio, where Cline sang. “[Cline] picked me up and said ‘What a beautiful baby.’ She loved children,” Hartley said. Cline was born Sept. 8, 1932, and the Patsy Cline Fan Club chose Labor Day weekend for her memorial tribute. On Sunday, one woman tied a Happy Birthday balloon to Cline’s grave. Cline died in a plane crash in March 1963. Munoz, who never heard Cline sing during her lifetime, said he had not been a country music fan until he heard her work. The “sheer powerfulness” of her voice moves him, Munoz said. Each of her songs “is a story. Everything she did, I love,” he said. Klick said while the fans’ tribute was wonderful, Cline left an even more wonderful legacy. “Her music and her singing will always be here, there and everywhere,” Klick said. Donations to the bell tower fund can be sent to Knicely at 2630 Blue Ridge Terrace, Winchester, 22601. |
Originally Published In The Winchester Star on September 7, 2004
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