Episode
Take a Seat: Supporting Winchester Schools and the Patsy Cline Theater
- Podcast
- The Valley Today
- Published
- Jun 16, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1399
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
The Patsy Cline Theater isn't just an auditorium — it's Winchester's de facto civic center. From Willie Nelson to Vince Gill to Sara Evans, from the Apple Blossom coronations to 35 years of community gatherings, it's where Winchester has shown up for itself. And the seats, after nearly 40 years of student traffic and standing ovations, are showing every bit of their age. On this episode of The Valley Today, host Janet Michael welcomes an old friend back to the show — Larry Weiss, Executive Director of the Winchester Education Foundation — for a conversation about how the Foundation supports Winchester Public Schools and the year-long Community Comfort Campaign to replace all 1,100 seats and the carpeting in the historic theater. Larry walks through the full scope of the Foundation's work — scholarships for graduating Handley seniors, a unique endowment from Mindy Loy that funds continuing education for Handley graduates who come back to teach in Winchester schools, and the brick-and-mortar work that brought the Emil and Grace Shihadeh Innovation Center into existence (now featured in a national PBS-style documentary called Multiple Choice ). Plus: a special August benefit concert at the Patsy Cline Theater by Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Valerie Smith, whose new "musical journal" Maggie's Journal sets her grandmother's post-Civil War handwritten journal to bluegrass, Americana, and roots music — with all proceeds going to the seating campaign. ABOUT THE COMMUNITY COMFORT CAMPAIGN A year-long fundraising campaign by the Winchester Education Foundation to replace all 1,100 seats and the carpeting in the Patsy Cline Theater at John Handley High School — the venue that serves not just the school but the wider Winchester community as a civic center, concert hall, and…