October 2026

In 1994, just one year after Conway Twitty passed away at age 59, workers took down the iconic Twitty City sign and its cartoon Twitty Bird mascot at the entrance of his nine-acre compound in Hendersonville, Tennessee. When the singer opened the 3.5-million-dollar complex on June 11, 1982, he poured his savings into building a permanent home for both his fans and his family. Beyond the landscaped gardens, red-brick walkways, and the Music Village museum that traced his life from a poor boy named Harold Lloyd Jenkins in Helena, Arkansas, to a country superstar with walls of Gold records, the grounds held his Colonial mansion alongside separate brick houses he built for his mother, Velma, and his four children. Whenever he was off the road, Conway walked the gardens in casual clothes, pruning bushes, signing autographs, and welcoming the hundreds of thousands of visitors who came through the gates, especially during the massive Christmas light displays he hosted each winter. That shared life ended after his sudden passing in June 1993 left behind tax obligations and a bitter estate dispute between his fourth wife, Dee Henry, and his four adult children. His children searched for Nashville music investors to help preserve the property as a country music landmark, yet the immediate cash required to settle the estate proved too high. In 1994, the compound was sold for roughly 3.35 million dollars to Paul and Jan Crouch’s Trinity Broadcasting Network. The new owners renamed the property Trinity Music City and dismantled the Music Village displays to make room for administrative offices, satellite equipment, and gospel television studios. Before the renovation was complete, Conway’s mother Velma and his children had to pack up their belongings and move out of the brick homes he had built to keep his family together. Twelve years after he opened the gates, the sanctuary Conway Twitty built so his family and fans would always have a place to gather existed only in the memories of the people who once walked its red-brick paths.

Introduction 💔 THE DAY CONWAY TWITTY’S DREAM DISAPPEARED — THE HEARTBREAKING END OF TWITTY CITY...