As final work is being completed to open Johnny Cash’s boyhood home in Dyess, Arkansas as a museum, his daughter Rosanne Cash came to Little Rock over the weekend for a sold out show and to be honored for her work in helping to restore the small house.
…The Cash family sold the house in the 1950s and it changed hands a few times over the decades until Arkansas State University, realizing the cultural importance of Johnny Cash, recently bought the house and recruited family members to help.
…“I was really thrilled to be involved and really moved by what they’ve done,” Rosanne Cash said. “Their historical accuracy is just beyond belief, to find just a chip of paint and then send it to the lab to find exactly what the color was. And they consulted my aunt Joanne a lot, who lived there, who grew up there, about what the furniture, what the linoleum looked like. So the restoration of the house is complete and it’s really amazing.”
…A soft opening of the museum is planned for next April, says Dr. Ruth Hawkins, director of ASU’s Arkansas Heritage Sites program, who has been overseeing the project. The Cash family and those involved will mark the opening on April 25, while it opens to the public the following day.
“It will be limited hours for a while because we will be staffing it with graduate assistants, but then we’re looking for a grand opening and being fully open in the fall of 2014,” Hawkins said.
Read more at UALR Public Radio.