The music industry said goodbye to a pioneer last week. Now those at Destination Cleveland County are continuing their work on a facility that will serve as both a tribute to Cleveland County native Earl Scruggs as well as the region.

News of the work being done at the old Cleveland County Courthouse has become intertwined with national and international coverage of Scruggs’ death. It was mentioned by the Associated Press, noted in Scruggs’ sermon held Sunday at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium and garnered attention across the state. The obituary even read that, in lieu of flowers, the family requested donations sent to the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum and the Earl Scruggs Center: Music and Stories from the American South.

DCC’s Brownie Plaster recalls the four TV news trucks that showed up outside the courthouse doors March 29, the day after Scruggs died at the age of 88.

“We’re just on this journey and we’re so, so sorry that Earl didn’t make it to the finish with us,” Plaster told The Star on Wednesday. “But he’s with us in spirit.”

Plaster said a Facebook page for the Scruggs Center launched March 29, the day following Scruggs’ death. A week later and that page boasts more than 900 fans from throughout the world that want to keep up with the progress at the museum. Recent fan postings span Vermont to Virginia and the Carolinas to New York.

DCC has also launched a PayPal account for those wishing to provide the museum donations online. The first donation received, Plaster said, came from a fan in Massachusetts.

But the interest had been growing for months. Cleveland County Tourism Director Jackie Sibley said a tour bus has already been booked to visit the Scruggs Center, which isn’t even set to open until later this year.

Sibley previously told The Star that each tour bus brings with it a $3,000 impact to the local economy.

The stories of Cleveland County

And the museum isn’t just about the king of the three-finger roll. It will house the stories of many others who called Cleveland County home.

Including names from Cleveland County’s past, like Ezra Bridges, longtime educator and the first black woman in the county to earn a master’s degree, county sports leader and South Atlantic League founder John Henry Moss and Martha Mason, who graduated first in her class from Wake Forest University despite being confined to an iron lung in Lattimore.

Beginning in 2008, DCC conducted 100 interviews with county residents. They were young, old, black, white, men and women.

“We learned in (2007), when we did our research that 93 percent of museums were in the red,” Plaster said. “We looked at the seven percent that were in the black. What did they do? They all store their artifacts off-site, they all have rotating exhibits and it’s the voice of the people. The museum of the 21st century has the voices that tell the stories of the objects.”

Four areas were focused on – music, textiles, the untold African-American story and the 21st century story which, Plaster said, is the story of what we want to be in the future.

“It’s a variety of voices and we hope that will be a rich texture that will give the visitor a glimpse of who we are,” she said.

Plaster said more interviews will be conducted.

“It will be ongoing,” she said. “It’s not like there won’t be more oral histories done.”

There are even tentative plans, she said, for visitors to record their own stories when they visit the museum.

“For the overarching theme of the Scruggs Center, Earl is of this place and to understand his music, you need to understand where he came from,” she said.

Plaster recalls watching banjo musician Bela Fleck perform at Scruggs’ funeral on Sunday.

“He played a piece called ‘Katmandu.’ He said ‘I couldn’t have done this without Earl Scruggs.’ That spoke to me. This is what Earl did.”