An honored chair at the Skipworth Performing Arts Center has been purchased for Mary Ruth Dunn Henderson.
Her oldest child, Randy Henderson, honored her with the chair.
“I think it’s wonderful that he wants to honor me,” she said about the purchase. “I feel real honored he did that for me.”
The Skipworth Performing Arts Center is being renovated, and the sale of named chairs is a fundraiser for the upgrade. Each auditorium seat will feature a brass plate bearing the name of the person it was purchased in honor of.
Mary Ruth Dunn Henderson praised the renovations. “It’s wonderful. It’s great. I love the auditorium and chairs. Last time I was there, we had wooden chairs with no cushion and felt like they were falling apart.”
She reminisced on what the auditorium and the band were like when she was a student there in the 1940s. She and another student, Joyce Hollingsworth, were responsible for flag girls being added to the marching band. The two girls were nervous about approaching the band director, W.G. Skipworth, with their idea, but he agreed to it. “Can you imagine two little kids doing that?” Henderson he said, pointing to a photograph of herself at that age. “We were nervous.”
The first year, she and Hollingsworth, along with two others, were the first flag girls. Their uniforms were handmade by a local seamstress. She enjoyed her experience as a flag girl.
“I had fun; we made lots of trips. We went to Greenwood every year to take part in the Christmas parade,” she recalled. “Late spring of ’47 we marched down Capital Street from beginning to end and it was hot as blazes. By the end I was ready to pass out.”
Anyone interested in the auditorium renovation project or honoring someone with a named seat can visit www.kfeems.org/projects to learn more.
