By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
The Hoisington Labor Day Celebration is coming up this weekend. It will include a weekend carnival, a demolition derby on Sunday and the 125th edition of the parade on Monday. But two notable people will also be in attendance, both former residents of Hoisington.
Doug Dumler played professional football in the mid-1970s. He was an offensive lineman for the New England Patriots and the Minnesota Vikings. Hoisington Chamber of Commerce Director Karen Baldyga says you’ll be able to meet Dumler.
"Doug is coming back for this weekend,” Baldyga noted. “He’s going to be at our Community BBQ. He will have some memorabilia there, and he’ll be able to chit chat and talk with anyone who would like to come up and have a conversation with him.”
The Community BBQ takes place Friday evening on the corner of North Green & West 7th Streets.
You can also meet author Patricia Watts, a woman who lived in Hoisington in the 1950s and 60s. Baldyga says Watts wrote a book entitled “South of the Tracks.”
“It’s about her experiences growing up in Hoisington in a pre-dominant black community that was south of the tracks,” Baldyga explained. "She’s such a sweet and wonderful woman. Her story is one of understanding what it was like to live then but growing from that experience.”
Watts will be reading from her book and signing copies during an ice cream social at the Hoisington Historical Museum on Sunday afternoon from 2-4 p.m.