Towns Fight To Claim Cline

Residents here once considered the late country singer Patsy Cline an immoral, wild woman. Now, it’s claiming bragging rights as her hometown.

Winchester is throwing its first “Patsy Cline Festival” next weekend. Hundreds of fans are expected to visit her high school, the pharmacy where she once served sodas, and attend a graveside memorial service.

But residents in Gore aren’t happy. The community is 12 miles away and was Cline’s first home.Winchester’s embrace of Cline is annoying because Winchester shunned Cline when she was alive, Gore residents say.

“It’s a joke,” said a cashier at Gore’s only store, the C&S Again Groceries. “She was considered a wild woman who ran around with men, and people in Winchester didn’t like her much. Now, all of a sudden, they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re the home of Patsy Cline.”’

Kitty Zuckerman, Winchester’s di rector of tourism, acknowledged Cline was an outcast in town during her career. But that’s in the past.

“That’s the way people thought about her then, but that’s 30 years ago,” Zuckerman said. “Things change, and we’ve changed. I think it’s time to put that aside and honor a very remarkable talent.”

Not to mention the tourism dollars.

Six years ago, a local real estate developer convinced city leaders that honoring the country queen would be good for business. Winchester put up a sign declaring itself Cline’s hometown and filled a display case in the visitor center with her records.

Cline, who crooned such hits as “Walkin’ After Midnight,” “I Fall to Pieces” and “Crazy,” died in a plane crash in 1963 at age 30.

Margaret Jones, author of a Cline biography, said there are a dozen places in Virginia that could claim to be the nomadic Cline’s hometown.

“Part of the problem is that the family moved around 19 times before she was 15,” Jones said.