She signed her name to pieces of his legacy one certificate at a time long after the tour buses stopped rolling and the gates of Twitty City closed for good.
That quiet loyalty was there on June 4 1993 when Conway Twitty collapsed on his tour bus after performing at the Jim Stafford Theatre in Branson Missouri. Rushed to Cox South Hospital in Springfield with an abdominal aortic aneurysm he was taken into emergency surgery while Delores โDeeโ Henry remained at the hospital beside him. He died early the next morning at age 59 and ended a marriage that had given him the calm home life his earlier years on the road had never allowed.
Henry had first known him from behind a desk. During the late 1970s and early 1980s she worked at 30 Music Village Boulevard in Hendersonville Tennessee inside the management headquarters of the singer she would later marry. By the time Twitty opened the nine acre Twitty City complex in June 1982 the property held a 24 room colonial mansion along with tour buses gift shops and homes built for family members. Henry worked alongside longtime associate Hugh Carden helping run an operation that kept dozens of musicians road crew members and compound employees on the payroll.
From that front office she had watched the weight he carried. She understood his quiet temperament and the constant financial pressure behind the enterprise including a multi year tax dispute tied to his defunct Twitty Burger restaurant chain. She also knew the personal cost of his workaholic touring life. His brief first marriage to Ellen Matthews in the 1950s had produced his eldest son Michael. His marriage to Temple โMickeyโ Medley began in 1956 and brought daughters Kathy and Joni Lee and son Jimmy before a divorce in 1970 a remarriage months later and a final end to their 28 year union in 1984.
When the 54 year old star married his 36 year old secretary in 1987 in a private ceremony Nashville observers focused on their 18 year age gap. Inside Hendersonville Henry paid little attention to the talk. She stepped away from the secretarial pool and turned the bustling mansion inside a fan attraction into a real home where he could step off the bus and simply rest.
The six years in his corner were the happiest and proudest chapter of my life
That peace was shattered by the will he never updated. On June 14 1993 his last will and testament was admitted to probate in Sumner County with Hugh Carden and accountant Donald Garis named as co executors. The document had been drafted before his 1987 marriage and left the entire estate to his four adult children with no mention of his wife.
Under Tennessee probate law a surviving spouse left out of an outdated will could claim an elective one third share of the estate. Twitty had little liquid cash available because his fortune was tied to real estate touring equipment and music publishing agreements. Working out that share set off a multi year legal dispute between Henry the co executors and the four children over property appraisals royalty rights from a 1990 Sony ATV publishing agreement and administrative expenses that kept the family in Tennessee courts through the end of the decade.
The strain spilled onto the grounds she once called home. While the executors employed Henry to help inventory and catalog estate property for valuation daughters Kathy and Joni confronted her outside the Twitty City office over boxes being loaded into her car trunk. In June 1994 a probate judge ordered the full liquidation of the physical estate to satisfy debts and legal shares. The Trinity Broadcasting Network bought the Twitty City complex at auction for roughly 3 million dollars while public auctions scattered his stage wardrobe musical instruments awards and household furnishings.
Every item sold from Conway Twitty The Legend Collection carried a printed certificate of authenticity. At the bottom of each document beside the names of Hugh Carden and Don Garis the former secretary who once managed his paperwork in life signed her married name Dee Henry Jenkins and let another piece of the man she loved go.