SESQUI SAGAS Pulling the Plug On the Sesqui-A Little Early

Turn out the lights; the Official Sesquicentennial Celebration is unofficially over. The money ran out before the year did.

Don Dorsey, the executive director of the Greater Dallas Sesquicentennial Committee, was graciously given the gate four months early. The committee couldn’t see paying his entire $45.000-a-year salary when contributions allocated to office operations for the year totaled less than $24,000.

Peggy Dye, Dorsey’s $19,000-a-year assistant, is more affordable. Now she can give herself pretty much any title she likes- until November 1, when the Sesquicentennial office at Fair park closes for the last time.

In the first three years-1983, ’84, and ’85-the sesqui fundraisers scared up $232,000 for office operations. In 1986, that dipped to $40,000. In April of this year, at about the time the Dallas economy began to bottom out and right at tax time, contributions came to a grinding halt with barely enough chicken feed in the coffers to keep the office open through the State Fair.

The prevailing attitude among the sesqui set is, “Heck, we were all finished anyway, except for the State Fair, and they’re handling that themselves.” Says Dorsey. “We probably could have gone to our contributors and said, “we really need to keep it open through the end of the year,’ but we had another, bigger fundraising project that needs the money more”

That bigger worry: when will the Sesqui Committee be able to pay its’ S3 million share of the work on Exposition Plaza? As the year draws to a close, it has raised only half that amount. The committee has no answer to that question.

Some of us have only slept through it, but at least one person has really pigged out on the Sesquicentennial; Dallas County Commissioner Chris Semos, known as the Father of the Sesquicentennial. Nine years ago, as a slate representative, Semos sponsored the legislation that created all of this.

Semos thought about the wagon train, covers of telephone books, George Bush at San Jacinto. James Michener’s Texas, the Final Four, the commemorative postage stamps, and all the hoopla and grandstanding, and lo, he pronounced it good.

“Gee,” says Semos. “It’s been a wonderful year.”

Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the Bicentennial and watching the memorabilia appreciate.