Marty Stuart told an audience at The Riley Center in Meridian Sunday afternoon of arriving in Nashville in 1972 to spend Labor Day weekend with Lester Flatt. "I got off the bus at 2:30 in the morning with my guitar in one hand, my suitcase in the other, wearing a Marks-Rothenberg suit." Thirty-seven years later Marty played to a sell-out audience in the locale of the Marks-Rothenberg department store which has been beautifully restored to its Opera House beginning. Philadelphia connections sighted in the audience were Butch and Kim Hodgins, Mack and Janice Eubanks, David and Brenda Vowell, Don and Jo Fulton, Gerald and Joyce Elliott, Betty Seward, Jean Myer, Beth Darby, Rachel Evans, Helen Thomasson, Jane Hodgins, Sarah McKay, Pat Thomasson, Shane McNair, Steve and Jane Thomas, Marty and Sherry Gamblin, Josh Gamblin, Frances Jordan, Sylvia Huffman, Patricia Burton, Patsy Kilpatrick and Peggy Joyner.

By Rachel Evans