HIS FATHER'S PLACE.

• Author: Edwards, Lynda

How two small-town movers and shakers got a celebrity to back their dream of building a performing-arts center.

The highway into Henderson is lush with leaf shadow and spring blossoms, white dogwoods blooming beside the deep magenta of wild cherry. But there's little lush about life in this town of 17,000, the county seat of Vance, where per capita income is barely $19,000 -- more than 20% below the state average and less than two-thirds that of Wake's. Raleigh and the Triangle's booming economy is 45 minutes south and a world away.

Henderson, like many small towns outside the state's urban corridor, doesn't have a lot to brag about, but today it has a star: 60 Minutes II correspondent, PBS talk-show host -- and native son -- Charlie Rose. A CBS film crew, flown here on his dime, circle him, the sound man twirling a boom to capture recollections of his boyhood, a camera zooming in as he pauses in front of boarded store windows.

"Charlie made it crystal clear that he doesn't have time to work regularly on this with us but said he would help us develop a story -- his story - to sell," explains Kathy Powell, the town's special-projects director. "The video will be sent to his rich friends to help raise $15 million for a downtown arts center named after his late father." It's the biggest privately funded project in the county's history.

Rose, 58, has already coaxed $100,000 from pal Patty Stonesifer, who oversees Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates' charitable foundation. But he's worried about lending his prestige to a gamble that he guesses "has a 30% chance of succeeding." Out of camera range, he confides that he knows nothing about Henderson's many economic crises. He doesn't follow hometown news and only drops by once a year when filming interviews in Durham or Raleigh for his talk show. "I just wanted to add a computer room to the library in honor of my father. An arts center named after him wasn't my idea. They talked me into it."

They are the Watkins twins, Sam and George, who made their fortunes via Rosemart Inc., a chain of 19 convenience stores. They are 66 years old and, respectively, president and executive vice president of Rose Oil, a jobber. After finishing college, Sam Watkins worked at Charlie Rose's daddy's general store, then was his partner in Rose Gin & Supply. "Other young people did what Charlie did, left for greener pastures," he says. "I stayed."

The Watkins believe the arts center -- with its cascade of balconies and promenades, revolving stage, plus a movie theater and art gallery, part of a project that will cover eight acres on two city blocks downtown -- will help Henderson hold on to its own and maybe even attract some newcomers. It's a small-town version of what the state's biggest cities do with their coliseums and convention centers -- try to...