March 5, 1963: The Death of Patsy Cline

March 5, 1963: Country music star Patsy Cline is killed in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee. She was only 30 years old.

She was born as Virginia Patterson Hensley on September 8, 1932 in Winchester, in the northern corner of Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, about 80 miles northwest of Washington, D.C. At age 13, Cline was hospitalized with a throat infection and rheumatic fever. Speaking of the incident in 1957 she said, "I developed a terrible throat infection and my heart even stopped beating. The doctor put me in an oxygen tent. You might say it was my return to the living after several days that launched me as a singer. The fever affected my throat and when I recovered I had this booming voice like Kate Smith's."

In 1953, she married her 1st husband, Gerald Cline, and was appearing on local television shows, billed as "Patsy Cline." They split before her 1957 appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, where she sang "Walkin' After Midnight," which became her 1st hit. Later that year, she married her 2nd husband, Charlie Dick, a man she described to her piano player, Del Wood, as "a hurricane in pants!" Together, they had daughter Julie and son Randy.

She realized a lifelong dream when the Grand Ole Opry accepted her request to join the cast in 1960. In 1961, she had hits with "I Fall to Pieces" and a song written by a young Willie Nelson, "Crazy," which became the song most identified with her. She gave singer Dottie West her big break, and toured with her, and also became close friends with Loretta Lynn.

On March 3, 1963, Patsy performed a benefit at the Soldiers Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas. She was unable to fly out the day after the concert, because the airport was fogged in. Dottie asked Patsy to ride in the car with her back to Nashville, but Cline refused, saying, "Don't worry about me, Hoss. When it's my time to go, it's my time."

On March 5, she got onto a private plane, a Piper PA-24 Comanche, also carrying Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, and pilot Randy Hughes. It encountered inclement weather, and crashed in a forest near Camden, Tennessee. Patsy's recovered wristwatch had stopped at approximately 6:20 PM, revealing that as the time of the crash. (6:20 Central Time, 7:20 Eastern.)

In 1973, 10 years after her death, she became the 1st female solo artist inducted to the Country Music Hall Of Fame. Her mother, Hilda Hensley, guarded her legacy until her death in 1998, turning the family's former Winchester home into a museum. Charlie Dick lived until 2015. Later that year, daughter Julie opened a museum in her mother's memory in Nashville. Julie now holds the rights to Patsy's name, likeness and music, and has 3 surviving children. Sadly, in what sounds like another country song, she lost a child, named Virginia for her mother, in a car crash in 1994.

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March 5, 1963 was a Tuesday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were 3 games played in the NBA:

* In the 1st half of a doubleheader at the old Madison Square Garden, the Detroit Pistons beat the San Francisco Warriors, 111-102. Don Ohl scored 42 points for the Pistons, while Wilt Chamberlain had what was, for him, an off-day for the Warriors, scoring 25.

* In the 2nd half of that doubleheader, the New York Knicks lost to the Syracuse Nationals, 131-121. The Warriors had left Philadelphia in the previous off-season. The next off-season, the Nationals took their place, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers.

* And the Chicago Zephyrs beat the St. Louis Hawks, 116-93 at the Chicago Coliseum. The failing Zephyrs moved the next season, becoming the Baltimore Bullets. They moved to Washington in 1973, and became the Washington Wizards in 1997.

There was 1 game in the NHL: The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-3 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.