KENTWOOD, La. — Half the Kentwood Historical and Cultural Arts Museum is dedicated to an exhibit honoring local men and women who served in the U.S. armed forces. The rest is Britney.
You can see Britney Spears’ awards, the jacket she wore on “The All New Mickey Mouse Club,” painstakingly crafted re-creations of her childhood bedroom and the stage she performed on in an HBO concert special.
Signs of enduring love in Kentwood, population 2,200, for a hometown girl turned good — and lately, not so good.
“I cry every time I see another story about her on television,” said Pam Wright, 44, who works at a convenience store along Kentwood’s main drag, U.S. Highway 51. “I think she needs to come home and we’ll get her right again. Everybody here loves her. We believe in her.”
As the 26-year-old singer’s meltdown morphs through broken marriages, hospitalization, her two sons removed from her custody and bizarre behavior, residents of Kentwood stand by their marquee native.
“The media should leave her alone,” said store clerk Becky Gill, 35. “Everybody has problems, she’s not the only one. But she’s the one gets her problems on television. She’s the one under constant scrutiny.”
Amid its abandoned buildings and a dying dairy industry, Kentwood is known for Kentwood Springs — a Gulf Coast brand of bottled water — and for Spears. She grew up in a ranch-style house near town where her father, Jamie, still lives.
Driving into the town about 90 miles north of New Orleans, you can’t miss the hot-pink sign that welcomes visitors to “The home of Britney Spears.”
About five miles out of town is “Serenity,” the huge French-country style mansion Spears built for her mother, Lynne. It’s just past the crossroad convenience store featured in the movie “Crossroads,” which starred Spears.
“We don’t see much of them these days,” said Gill of the family. “But everybody in Kentwood knows everybody else.”
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