In the muddy woods near Camden Tennessee on the morning of March 6 1963 Charlie Dick bent into the trees and lifted the things that had belonged to his wife Patsy Cline including her broken wristwatch her cigarette lighter her studded belt and her gold colored slippers while cold rain fell and crowds gathered near the crater where her plane had gone down
The night before the 29 year old had sat beside the telephone inside their new home in Goodlettsville Tennessee while Cline mother Hilda Hensley stayed beside him and Nashville Cornelia Fort Airpark kept its runway lights burning for a flight that never arrived
Two days earlier on Sunday March 3 the 30 year old singer had sung three benefit shows inside the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Kansas City Kansas for the widow and family of radio disc jockey Jack Cactus Call who had died in a car wreck in January and the bill had also brought together Cowboy Copas Hawkshaw Hawkins Dottie West Billy Walker and George Jones
Still fighting a cold after performing in Birmingham Alabama the night before she changed gowns for every show wearing light blue at two in the afternoon red at five fifteen in the evening and white chiffon at eight fifteen at night while Dottie West listened from the wings to the roar that rose when she sang Bill Bailey Wonโt You Please Come Home
She closed her last set with Iโll Sail My Ship Alone a song she had recorded in Nashville in February before returning to the Town House Motor Hotel and when dense fog grounded flights on Monday March 4 Dottie West and her husband steel guitarist Bill West urged her to ride home with them by car
Determined to spare herself a sixteen hour drive and reach Charlie and their children four year old Julie and two year old Randy she chose instead to wait for her manager Randy Hughes and his four seat Piper Comanche and a seat first held by Billy Walker opened for Hawkshaw Hawkins after illness in the Walker family sent him home early on a commercial flight
Hawkins was racing toward his pregnant wife singer Jean Shepard who was only weeks away from delivering their second child and with Cowboy Copas who was also the father in law of Hughes aboard the group left Kansas City around two in the afternoon on Tuesday March 5 and touched down in Dyersburg Tennessee at five in the evening to refuel
Inside the terminal restaurant Cline called the house on Nella Drive and told her family she was on the final leg home while workers at the airfield warned Hughes about high winds and poor visibility ahead and although he was not certified for instrument flight he answered that he had already come that far before taking off at six oh seven in the evening
He had already come that far
Minutes later four miles west of Camden local pilot S C Ward heard a low engine fall silent beneath the overcast before a dull thud echoed near US Highway 70 and when the plane failed to reach Nashville Benton County Sheriff Loye Furr joined state troopers in searching the rain soaked timber through the night
At 815 Nella Drive Dick and Hilda Hensley kept vigil by the radio inside the brick ranch house Cline had bought ten months earlier for $30000 and decorated with a pink black and gold bathroom while they waited for news that never brought her home
Shortly after six in the morning on Wednesday March 6 searchers wading through a swampy hollow off Mount Carmel Road found the wreckage and her broken wristwatch stopped at six twenty in the evening and as broadcasts confirmed there were no survivors Loretta Lynn June Carter and Dottie West called and gathered around the grieving families
That morning Dick drove ninety miles west through the cold rain with his friend songwriter Roger Miller who ran through the brush calling the names of his friends while Dick gathered the watch lighter belt and slippers that would travel home with him
The grief widened across Nashville on Thursday March 7 when Opry star Jack Anglin one half of the duo Johnnie and Jack died in a car crash in Madison while driving to a funeral service for Cline and on Saturday night March 9 the Grand Ole Opry opened with a silent standing tribute and a hymn
On March 10 Dick accompanied his wife coffin to her hometown of Winchester Virginia where thousands lined the road to Shenandoah Memorial Park and then he returned to Goodlettsville and put away the keepsakes he had pulled from the Camden mud inside 815 Nella Drive where Julie and Randy were still waiting for their mother and where he would now raise them alone