A Carolina Love Story

Back in 1965, when Jimmie Stradley and Parks Cruse met at the Shoney’s drive-in in Gastonia, girls just did not get out of the car to go talk with the boys. The boys did all the courting.

 

That’s just how it was back then all those 60 years ago.

 

But, you see, Parks had a cousin, with a real pretty friend named Jimmie, and Parks just had to meet her. So one day, Parks hopped in the back of his cousin’s car and did just that.

 

The two got to talking as teenagers do, and a month later, they went to the Carolina Theatre in Uptown for their first group date to see The Sound of Music.

 

“I just remember how beautiful the theatre was,” Jimmie, who’s now 76, said. “It took my breath away.”

 

Breathtaking as the theatre was, it was Parks she remembers most. Thinking back now, trying to remember exactly what it was that made her fall so deeply in love with him for all those years, Jimmie keeps coming back to how kind Parks was, how tall and lanky he was. It was the way Parks spoke, the kindness in his words.

 

So when Parks asked Jimmie to go see The Sound of Music at the Carolina Theatre two weeks later – just the two of them this time – she said yes.

 

“Being at the Carolina Theatre, and being at the movie just the two of us, it was exciting,” Jimmie said.

 

From there, Parks went off to the University of South Carolina – but not before he asked Jimmie to go steady with him. He gave Jimmie his high school ring; Jimmie had to add wax to it so she could wear it on her finger.

 

But in the late 1960s, young men always knew the war in Vietnam loomed.

 

“One of the best calls I ever got in my life was that he had gotten orders,” Jimmie recalled. “You knew if you got orders for the west coast that you were going to Vietnam, but he got orders for the east coast.”

 

Parks would not have to go to Vietnam after all, and he was discharged in 1970.

 

That Christmas Eve of 1970, Parks asked Jimmie to marry him. She said yes, of course. She had wanted to say yes since that first time in their seats at the Carolina Theatre.

 

The couple married in August of 1971, one week after Jimmie graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Jimmie didn’t even walk across the stage during her graduation because she was too busy with wedding showers and parties.

 

But that didn’t matter. She had Parks.

 

For years, Jimmie and Parks looked to complete their family by having children. For years, they tried, hoping for a blessing. Eventually, doctors told Jimmie she would never have children.

 

But then 12 years after they got married, here came Elizabeth, a beautiful baby girl.

 

“She was a miracle,” Jimmie said.

 

And so Parks and Jimmie made a life with this beautiful little miracle baby named Elizabeth in their home in Gastonia.

 

The Carolina Theatre closed in 1978 – just a few years after Parks and Jimmie married. It sat vacant, abandoned and derelict for 47 years at its home on Tryon Street, waiting for its time in the spotlight again.

 

That spotlight came in March 2025, when the Carolina Theatre reopened following an eight-year and more than $90 million restoration process.

 

One of the first movies the Carolina Theatre showed? The Sound of Music.

 

“Given the beloved history of this movie at the Carolina Theatre, we knew we’d show this movie before we even reopened the theatre,” Jared Misner, the Carolina Theatre’s communications director said.

 

On June 28, the Carolina Theatre showed the Julie Andrews movie back-to-back – a matinee on a sweltering summer afternoon and then again in the evening for a sing-along version. Nearly 2,000 people came to the Carolina Theatre – some dressed as nuns – to see the movie that meant so much to them in the place that meant even more.

 

Parks wasn’t one of those people. Parks never got to see the Carolina Theatre restored. After a battle with emphysema, Parks died in November 2024.

 

So Jimmie took their daughter, Elizabeth, to see the theatre where her parents fell in love.

 

“It was very special to her and to me for the two us to be able to go back,” Jimmie said.

 

Here, as Jimmie thinks about that June afternoon, she begins to cry, wishing Parks could have joined her.

 

But she had her Elizabeth there, and that was special.

 

“She was keeping her eye on me the whole time,” Jimmie said. “She knew it would be very emotional for me.”