NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Businesswoman and philanthropist Martha Ingram died Thursday at the age of 90. With her death, we wanted to take a look back at Ingram's longtime mission to elevate the arts.
A room in the home of Mac Pirkle has posters of Nashville plays, mostly from the 1980s.
"There was a fertile ground for music theater, for sure," Pirkle reflected, looking around the room.
Especially important to Pirkle's story is a friend named Martha Ingram.
This story starts in 1980. At that time, Ingram's husband E. Bronson Ingram was running Ingram Industries, a publishing and barge transportation company.
Ingram had worked years for a particular day; the 1980 opening of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.
"By the time it gets to convincing the state to participate in the process of building the performing arts center, I think there were doubters," Pirkle remembered.
At the time of the TPAC opening, future governor Ned McWherter was speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.
"I had a fellow from down in my home county say, 'Mr. Speaker, did you let that Ingram woman talk you into voting for that damn swimming hole?'" McWherter told the crowd to laughs.
Pirkle was starting to notice, Ingram had this way of convincing people to believe in projects.
"People you would not expect would be in favor of that, and she had her work cut out for her, certainly with the state legislature," Pirkle remembered.
Actually, Pirkle's theater group had a performance at TPAC on this very opening weekend. He didn't know five years later in 1985, he and Ingram would work together to co-found what was then-called the Tennessee Repertory Theatre. It has since been renamed the Nashville Repertory Theatre.
"That was not going to happen without someone like Martha who had the means to make it happen, who had the vision to make it happen, who had the passion to see it through and not take no for an answer," Pirkle said.
Pirkle went on to be a longtime artistic director for the Tennessee Repertory Theatre.
Ingram served on the boards of the Nashville Ballet, Nashville Opera, Nashville Symphony, and many more.
"This is your symphony!" Ingram told NewsChannel 5 in a 1988 interview. "We want to hear from you! We want to hear what you want to hear!"
"Martha always had a vision about how culture helps create a great city," Pirkle continued. "It also meant access to the arts for lots of people across the community. My sense of Martha was that 'no' was not a word that bothered her because she always felt she could turn it into a 'yes.'"
In 2006 came the opening of another project where Ingram was an important force; the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.
"She was a very astute business woman," Pirkle said. "She took over after her husband died with Ingram Industries."
In 2014, NewsChannel 5 got to sit down with Ingram to talk about her contributions to the arts.
"I wanted to live in a city that had these things," Ingram said in 2014. "I wanted my children to have them. They're humanizing. They bring people together."
"Martha was a mentor," Pirkle said. "When you go into a theater, and you sit there, and it's a sold-out house, people are cheering at the end of it, one only has to imagine what it would have been like if there had not been Martha Ingram. I mourn her passing and celebrate everything she accomplished."
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