Saving Dalton Days
A happy childhood memory finds new life in Meade, Kansas.
Categories: Old West Saviors
By: Jana Bommersbach 01/01/2008
Brent took over the family’s cattle feed lot and started staging rodeos. Then he convinced his girlfriend to move to Meade, where they married in 1998, and Susan became the county’s economic development director. “I’d tell her about the old days and how we had these great Dalton Days, and she asked ‘Why can’t we do that again?’”
So in 1999, this 20-something couple did. They revised the tradition. To raise the money to stage the festival, Susan tackled the big corporations that conducted business in the area, while Brent talked with local businesses. “Not one business turned me down,” he says.
With eager, young volunteers like Brent and Susan, others in town enthusiastically joined the effort. “I remember one night our local historian came over and dropped off a box of stuff from the old Dalton Days and said, ‘It’s all yours.’”
In fact, that is why the festival had died on the vine in the first place, says Carolyn Meredith, a community leader and member of the historical society board. “It’s all volunteer work for a festival like this, and people got tired of doing it.”
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