Cash Home Project to hold ground breaking ceremony on Cash's birthday

On what would have been his 80th birthday, Feb. 26, the legendary Johnny Cash will be honored with the official ground breaking ceremony of the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Project in Dyess at 2 p.m.

The Cash home is one of the few houses still remaining in Dyess. The restoration of Cash's childhood home began in January and is expected to be finished in June of 2013.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done before we can actually open the home up to the public," Ruth Hawkins said, director of the Arkansas Heritage Sites.

With the unpredictable weather and conditions of the gumbo soil, the ceremony will be in the Dyess Community Center, but there is an opportunity to drive past the Cash home and see the progress of the restoration.

During the ceremony the Cash family will make tributes, performances from the family; along with the status of the restoration.

The funding for the project came from the very first Johnny Cash Music Festival held last year at the Convocation Center.

"We raised $300,000 from the festival, part of the money is going to scholarships in Johnny Cash's name for students from that area, as well as money towards the restoration," Hawkins said.

As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program in 1934, the town was originally built as an Agricultural Cooperative Project.

The main purpose of the town's administration was to give poor families a chance to start over.  The Cash family was one of 500 families to receive this chance, moving to Dyess in 1935.

The current status of the project is stripping away the paint of the walls inside.

"When the Cash family lived there, it had wood panelling that was milled on site in Dyess," Hawkins said.

With the help of photos and memories of relatives

of the Cash Family, Hawkins and her team have been able to make this restoration possible. When all is said and done the home will be an exact replica of the time when the Cash children lived there.

His family's economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression was the inspiration of many of his song fans know and love today. The project will not only be a tribute to 'The Man in Black,' but a reflection and illustration  of what life was like during the Great Depression.

The Arkansas Heritage Site is not only working on the restoration of the Cash home, but also have acquired the town theater and the administration building.

"After the completion of the theater it will be used as an orientation center for visitors, where there will be Johnny Cash films along with documentaries from the 1930s," Hawkins said.

The exterior of the administration building has been completed. Once the interior has been completed, half of the building will be leased out to the city hall. The other half will be a museum dedicated to the city of Dyess and the impact Dyess made on Johnny Cash's life.

"The overall vision for this project is to create a museum complex that tells the story of Dyess and Johnny Cash," Hawkins said.

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Cash Home Project to hold ground breaking ceremony on Cash's birthday