Minnie Pearl's Been Stolen

A statue honoring beloved country comedian Minnie Pearl — famous for her homespun humor and "howdeee" salutation — was trucked out of Centerville, TN this past Saturday morning. Her departure is the latest move in a dispute between town fathers and one of the benefactors who paid for the statue.

Officials in Centerville, the village of 4,000 where Pearl was born, want to move the statue a few feet from where it has stood since it was installed almost four years ago, as part of a plan to rebuild downtown streets and sidewalks. Rod Harris, a local resident who helped get the statue in place, opposes the plan.

The dispute rose to a new level Saturday morning when Harris uprooted Minnie and moved her to the lobby of a hotel in equally tiny Linden, 25 miles away. Now he's negotiating her custody with the town, and locals are waiting to see when — or if — she'll be back.

"Everybody's sad to see it gone," says Nancy Rowland, executive director of the Hickman County Chamber of Commerce and makeshift curator of a small Minnie Pearl museum that has drawn visitors from as far as Great Britain and Puerto Rico.

Born Sarah Ophelia Colley, Minnie's rural humor made her the first female member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1940. In 1969, she joined the cast of TV's long-running syndicated show Hee Haw, and she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1975. She died 13 years ago today at 83.

In 2005, the 900-pound bronze statue of her likeness went up on the east side of the Hickman County Courthouse. Harris spearheaded the project, which was privately funded. An anonymous donor covered much of its $150,000 price tag.

The donation came with a caveat: The statue couldn't be moved from its position in front of the courthouse without Harris' permission. The notion of moving her even a few feet in either direction irritates him. "Minnie Pearl should be center-stage," says Harris, who runs a small music management company.

But the statue's old perch, surrounded by a rock wall to keep drivers from running over it, stands right in the way of a massive downtown construction project 15 years in the making. The pedestal where Minnie had stood would give way to an expanded courthouse lawn. Centerville Mayor Ronnie Martin says Minnie's presence creates traffic problems. Her pedestal is so close to the roadway that picture-takers sometimes back out into traffic to get the statue in focus, he says.

Harris and the city are negotiating redesigns that could land Minnie back among the brick buildings around the public square, but it's unclear how close they are to an agreement. Harris says he's willing to walk away with the statue if he isn't satisfied.

"Right is right and wrong is wrong," Harris says. "Government doesn't have a right to make an agreement and turn around and break that agreement." For now, Minnie's likeness holds court in the lobby of the Commodore Hotel in downtown Linden, smiling like she's happy just to be there.

There isn't a real connection between Linden and Minnie, Harris says. But Michael Dumont, a friend of Harris' who runs the hotel, says her visit is good for little Linden. "We are having tough economic times, and we could use a boost."

Town librarian Mary Beth Pruett believes Cannon would have shied away from the bronze immortalization in the first place. She's in a position to know: The comic was her great-aunt.
"The whole thing is kind of nuts," Pruett says. "I guess she would have thought this was funny in a way. But I don't think she would have wanted to be the source of controversy."