Emporia turned 150 years old on Tuesday. And 6-year-old Isaiah Perez was determined to make sure there were enough birthday cards on hand.
“We live in Emporia and I like Emporia very much,” Isaiah said as he used crayons to create his third or fourth card of the night at White Auditorium. Those cards and a few hundred like them are destined for a time capsule to be opened in 2057.
“It’s exciting,” said Isaiah’s grandmother, Alice Salazar. “It’s just an uplifting atmosphere. You don’t see that much these days anymore, unless you’re at an ESU basketball game.”
The afternoon and evening was a little short on rebounds and three-point shots but overflowed with everything else. Historical displays. Old-time costumes. Even a local version of “Deal or No Deal” with Mark Schreiber as host and Steve Haught as a grimacing, posturing banker trying to offer just a few dollars less for a contestant’s box. Haught ultimately paid $50 for what turned out to be “150 stars,” or 3 U.S. flags.
In fact, about the only thing the day didn’t have was a faster line for refreshments.
“We’ve been waiting about 45 minutes,” said Chris Thompsen, waiting with his wife Vanessa and two oldest sons Collin and Dylan in a line that was moving about two feet a minute and had a long way to go. “We hope they don’t run out of chili and hot dogs.”
There were a few other rough spots like that, like the ear-piercing feedback that squealed from the microphones every so often during the evening program. But mostly it went well. School children began pouring into the place about 11 a.m. and things stayed busy from then on, whether with teachers and classes or parents and families.
“That was my goal, to get the kids to learn the history of the city of Emporia and see it first-hand,” sesquicentennial co-chair Evora Wheeler said Tuesday. “I was pleased with the crowd tonight. It’s been a great birthday today.”
Some of the kids crowded around to hear Laura Dodge in pioneer garb taking about frontier foods or Darren Biggs in his Union Army uniform talking about the Civil War. Biggs proved especially popular with the kids after he began passing out replica 19th-century $5 bills, serious money back then.
“You all have your front teeth! That’s good — you can’t fire your gun if you don’t have front teeth,” Biggs told one group of kids, who giggled. He demonstrated biting off the paper that enclosed the bullet, before loading it in, ramming it down and readying it to fire.
“You have to be able to do all that three times in one minute,” Biggs told them. “That’s hard to do.”
Nearby, Steve Brosemer was in rare form as John Calhoun, the states-rights surveyor who originally laid out the town. Calhoun died just two years later, in 1859, but not without getting a black name among the newly arriving free-staters. The feeling was mutual.
“This place is overrun with free-staters and as good and proper Democrat, I am concerned about their unholy influence,” Brosemer said in character, a twinkle in his eye.
Maps and records nearby showed several of the town sites that didn’t make it, such as the once-promising Columbia just southeast of Emporia. Emporia itself nearly dried up for lack of water before a town founder, John Hammond, began “water-witching” with a peach tree limb and hit a well around the area of modern-day White Auditorium.
“Preston Plumb ... handed John five $20 gold pieces and said ‘John, you really have saved this town,’” descendant Rick Hammond said.
Descendants of the Fowlers, the Plumbs and the Sodens had similar stories to tell. So did a delegation from Americus, who had a bone to pick about Emporia’s “theft” of the county seat. Aided by people holding signs such as “W.T. Soden — Emporia Villain” and “County Seat Records and Papers — Property of Americus,” Claude Roswurm, portraying Americus champion D.C. Grinell, told the story of how Emporia sent a petition to claim the county seat and Americus sent a “remonstrance” to protest it, with both messengers staying at the same hotel on the way.
“In some way, the papers got mixed up,” Roswurm said. “And when the petition (for Emporia) got there, it somehow had all the names that were on the petition and the remonstrance. ... It was all over.”
Cake and ice cream after the program circulated much more quickly than the chili and hot dogs had. And that’s not counting the more than 100 cakes that went out the door during the “cakewalk” early in the evening.
“I have seven kids,” said Peggy McConnell as she picked out an especially large one loaded down with white frosting. “They like cake.”
To one side, passersby signed birthday wishes onto a large banner, also to be put into the time capsule next February.
“What a wonderful place to live,” Bernadette Ihde wrote. “Happy Birthday.”