Patsy Cline’s Death on March 5, 1963, was a tragic day for the country music community. Patsy, together with fellow country music singer Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins, was killed in a plane crash while she was on her way home from a benefit concert.
Two days before her untimely demise, the “I Fall to Pieces” singer performed three shows at a benefit in Kansas City’s Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall, for the family of Jack “Cactus” Call, a disc jockey who died from a car crash that year.
Dottie West, wary about the bad weather conditions, invited Patsy to travel back to the Music City with her and her husband Bill by car. Patsy declined and said, “Don’t worry about me, Hoss. When it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go.”
“I walked out and watched the shows, and I will never forget that gorgeous white chiffon dress she wore,” Dottie later revealed in the video biography “The Real Patsy Cline.” “I thought, ‘My God! She sings like an angel, and she looks like one.’ She was just beautiful.
“It seemed she sang so effortlessly. She just did it so easily,” Dottie added. “I remember that night that they just screamed and yelled when she did “Bill Bailey.” She sang the fire out of it — like it had never been sung. She was really happy that day.”
The private plane, which her manager Randy Huges was piloting, crashed in the woods near Camden, Tennessee, approximately 90 miles outside Nashville. It instantly killed everyone on board, and the wreckage was only found the next morning. To this day, the cause of the plane crash was blamed on the inexperience of the pilot paired with poor flying conditions.
Patsy Cline, who was only 30 years old during that time, was survived by her husband, Charlie Dick, along with her two children, Julie and Randy, who were respectively four and two then. She was laid to rest at Shenandoah Memorial Park in Winchester, Virginia, as she wished.
