A city-wide celebration of tourism
Acouple of weeks ago, El Dorado was host to the Governor’s Conference on Tourism. The idea that several thousand attendees would flock to the center of town gave us the impetus to finally change out all of our Christmas lights and replace them with white lights.
That was one heck of a job, as was switching out winter foliage in the multiple downtown planters. However, it was a needed spring cleaning project, and everyone pitched in.
The entertainment part of the conference kicked off the Saturday night before the official start of the conference with a knockout performance at MAD’s First Financial Music Hall of multi-award-winning country music star Ashley McBryde. It was an opening home run, and set up the conference welcome reception and a concert by the South Arkansas Symphony that will long be remembered as the Symphony’s best ever.
But it wasn’t just the concert. The pre-concert VIP reception at Municipal Auditorium treated concert goers to a delightful sampling of south Arkansas goodies. The atmosphere in the large open area in the auditorium gave visitors a super Southern-hospitality welcome.
A number of out-of-town visitors, some who had never been to El Dorado, gave us a two-thumbs-up for the friendly welcome. That welcome wasn’t just a hello and a “Glad you’re here.” It was punctuated with a spread of goodies, a lot more than a few nibbles of the usual fare, including our own Madison Murphy’s
Presqu’ile wine.
The South Arkansas Arts Center, which laid out the spread, also displayed some special artist demonstrations, and the tempting hors d’oeuvres gave visitors a true celebration of what makes El Dorado unique, as did background vocals from Andria Gleghorn and others from the sellout hit “Mamma Mia!”
After an hour of welcoming visitors to El Dorado (easily the best-kept secret in the state), we were ushered into the auditorium where the South Arkansas Symphony, the longest running symphony in Arkansas, performed “The Three Phantoms in Concert,” directed by international acclaimed maestro Kermit Poling.
Broadway’s Craig Schulman was the lead tenor of the three who performed, and is the only tenor in the world to have performed three of the most extraordinary musical theater characters ever written. He has appeared in the title roles of “Jekyll & Hyde” and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” and in nearly 2,000 performances as Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” on Broadway and around the world.
That was the highlight of the evening for me since “Les Miserables” is my all-time favorite Broadway musical, and Vertis and I had seen Schulman perform on Broadway.
The best part of the concert was the combination of the three tenors. Vertis and I sing in our church choir, and we make a joyful noise, but the voices of those three men have to be heard to fully appreciate their talents, especially when it came to holding some of the high tenor notes.
We have certainly heard a variety of talented individual and numerous symphony orchestras over the years from Zurich, London, and New York.
Yet this combination was a rare event which we were delighted to have experienced.
Then on Monday, the Governor’s Conference on Tourism officially opened in the conference center where books, gifts and more nibbles were featured in the lobby. I was part of a presentation committee which included Beth Brumley, Diane Hammond, Sylvia Thomson and Don Hale.
Our job was to tell the conference attendees how wonderful our town is, and when we finished several folks were shaking their collective heads as if to say, “My gosh; we didn’t realize El Dorado has so much going for it.”
But we were just getting rolling; later at 5 p.m., A Taste of El Dorado was held at the Union County Courthouse. Our courthouse is certainly impressive, with several hundred folks enjoying food and friendly folks, it was a fun evening.
The next day a full breakfast at 8 a.m. at MAD kicked off the last day, with sessions beginning at 9:30 a.m. at the conference center. Numerous sessions were presented, and the Natural State’s outdoor tourism entities were featured.
That night the awards reception at MAD started at 6:30 p.m., followed by dinner at MAD’s First Financial Music Hall. This was the final event of the conference, and featured a speech by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
She focused on our state parks and the Natural State tourism potential. Then, as the dinner ended, hundreds of attendees swarmed the MAD Cabaret to drink and be entertained by former Gov. Mike Huckabee and his band Capital Offense, featuring our own Madison Murphy.
As an old country boy once said, “A good time was had by all.”