In early 1865, a young Tom Ryman sewed $3,500 to the inside lining of his shirt and headed for New Orleans.
In the Crescent
City, he would buy his first steamboat. The condition of the Southern rail system after the Civil War put river transportation in great demand. Long before he purchased his 35th steamboat, Capt. Thomas Green Ryman was a very wealthy man.
By 1885, there were more than 90 saloons in Nashville. Ryman happened to be the owner of one such establishment.
Returning from a long voyage on May 10 of that year, he found many of the downtown businesses, and all the saloons, closed. A brief inquiry led him and his crew to a tented sermon administered by the prominent Rev. Sam Jones, one of the nation's leading evangelists and prohibitionists.
By his own testimony, Ryman became a Christian that day. To celebrate his newfound salvation, he sold the saloon and initiated the creation of the Union Gospel Tabernacle on Summer Street (now Fifth Avenue) just north of Broad. The "born again" capitalist wanted Nashville and the Rev. Jones to have a permanent indoor place to conduct spiritual meetings and gatherings. The construction was completed in 1892.
However, by the end of the century, "The Auditorium," as Nashvillians then called it, was having difficulty covering its expenses.
Then in 1901, an imaginative and resilient young widow named Lula Clay Naff became manager of the Tabernacle. Hired by the captain himself, she began her mission with two identical black dresses and a large box of playbills. Instantly, her enthusiasm and hard work transformed the struggling facility into a prosperous multipurpose theatre. When Ryman died in 1904, the Union Gospel Tabernacle was renamed the Ryman Auditorium.
Naff mothered the Ryman until her retirement in 1955. Amazingly, she did so without ever experiencing a loss on a single balance sheet or receiving any public criticism connected with the operation of her beloved theater. "When you're
talking about the Ryman," she proudly said, "you're talking about my life."
For 24 years before the Grand Ole Opry was born and 42 years before the live radio program began broadcasting from her playhouse, Naff put Nashville on the schedules of the world's greatest entertainers, personalities and political leaders.
By the time the veteran Opry cast members first performed at the Ryman in 1943, they found themselves on the same stage that had supported the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Sarah Bernhardt, Mary Pickford, Enrico Caruso, Rudolph Valentino, Theodore Roosevelt and Will Rogers -- to name only a few.
In 1938, while Helen Hayes was performing in a play, a curtain came crashing down on her in the middle of a scene. The audience gasped. Undaunted, the eventual "First Lady of American Theatre" crawled out from under the debris and simply resumed her monologue from the point of the interruption.
Today, because of the storied past of the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium is revered as the "
mother Church" of country music. Consequently, most people are surprised to learn how much history actually happened there before Roy Acuff and WSM Radio moved in.
Lula Clay Naff died in 1960. Yet, because of her excellent life and long-lasting contribution to Nashville's character, she will forever be the "Mother of the Ryman" to me.