Great Bend City Council members’ support for a coming outdoors event was a good decision, and it also helped to show it takes more than just your run-of-the-mill conventions to make a community a success.
Just as Great Bend officials have learned the importance of cashing in on our community’s singular place in the history of drag racing in America, we are also developing our place as a preeminent location in other sporting ventures — specifically in connection with outdoors events from hunting to bird watching.
The council this week agreed to help fund Bottoms Up 2012, an “outdoor showcase and calling contest,” which is described further elsewhere in the Tribune.
The important thing is that we are finding out way in this community to take advantage of our singular assets.
No other community in the nation can say it was the home of the first national drags.
That was Great Bend in 1955.
And we are equally established in the outdoors circle, whether most of us recognize it or not.
Other communities might wish they were located between Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira — two wetlands of international importance — but they aren’t. They never will be.
Great Bend is.
Recognizing these attributes is not the only answer. We also have to build on them, provide quality experiences, make sure that we are a welcoming community where visitors enjoy themselves.
We need to LEARN to be good hosts.
But we CAN learn that — if we will do it.
The opportunities are there. We just have to grab them.
— Chuck Smith